Fall Date Idea: Visit a Vineyard

After a stressful week and even more stressful weekend, my boyfriend and I decided to take a drive to a local vineyard last Sunday. It’s only a few minutes from us but its location, at the very end of a long, winding road, makes you feel like your miles away from town.

Broken Creek Vineyard and Winery is understated and relaxed. They have an outdoor catering service, where you can order a variety of appetizers and flatbreads, including a hummus and tabbouleh plate, a local fruit and cheese plate, a pear and gorgonzola flatbread, and a caprese flatbread. After ordering food, you select a bottle of wine from their collection. We went with a medium-bodied red called Maddie’s Rescue Red.

We brought our opened bottle and glasses to an outdoor picnic table near the vines. The sun was starting to fall behind the trees as we toasted to an afternoon alone together. The wine was delicious, tasting a bit of cherry but with a bite. Our blend included the vineyard’s Marquette grapes blended with Merlot and Syrah grapes from California. Boy, do I love a good glass of red!

When our food came, we were pleasantly surprised at the quality and tastiness of every dish. We went for the wine but the food was just as good! The tabbouleh had fresh cucumber and mint mixed into the barley and tomatoes, and the feta had a touch of honey drizzled on top. I don’t like tapenade but Matt raved about it — and the fresh olives. We also got two flatbreads and a cheese board! It’s safe to say I wasn’t even hungry for dinner later because we ate every last bite of our apps.

Visiting the vineyard was such a nice way to relax after a stressful week. The atmosphere was laid back and the scenery was gorgeous. I didn’t realize that even grape vines’ leaves turn golden yellow in the fall. I don’t think I’d ever been to a vineyard outside of summer; if I did, it was in California, where the leaves don’t change nearly as much.

It makes sense, though, for a visit to the vineyard to be a fall activity — the experience of harvesting the crop that will eventually become a wine you’ll drink in a few years is an autumnal ritual. Harvest time is a time for appreciating your growth, a time for gathering, a time for sharing and enjoying the reward of hard work.

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So, at the end of a hard week, it felt good to enjoy — a bottle of wine, delicious food, one another’s company. We even got another bottle of wine to take home — a raspberry fruit wine — and started back toward the house, which was only a few-minutes-drive away.

We all deserve some time to rest and relax and recognize the hard work we put into every day. If we don’t slow down and put our feet up once in a while, we will just become exhausted and bitter. Just like nature starts to slow down in fall, we too have to recognize our limits and shift our pace when we need to. Believe it or not, rest is part of life, too. And if we have loved ones to enjoy our restful days with, then I call that a life well-spent.