Field-Trip-a-Palooza

The last couple of weeks we have hit the field trips hot and heavy. Today was yet another notch on our belt. We went to a local winery and had a blast. We had 17 kids and 8 adults and a tour guide named Doug. We call him Dougie because that's what his sisters call him. This is Dougie:

 I have to say he was one of the best tour guides we have had at any of our field trips. He was engaging, he was fun, and that man pours a great glass of wine. Lots of knowledge and willing to share it.

 This is some of the fields from the viewing deck. The better fields were on the other side, but we couldn't get to those. This is a family owned winery. It is also the largest winery in the state of Florida. They grow mainly muscadine grapes and they make awesome wine.  

 This is "Big Brother". It's one of the harvesters they have. The have a smaller version, Little Brother, but he is old and slow. He also does not have easy to get replacement parts. They bought Big Brother and can go up the road to the John Deere dealership and get what they need. It is more efficient and faster. Not bad for $200 grand.  

 This is part of the bottling equipment. The storage tanks are able to hold 450,000 gallons of wine. In the immortal words of Dougie, that's a party. The sound of the bottles clanking together was enough to drive me crazy. I cannot imagine having to hear it over and over every day. Now, if I could sip on what's going into the bottle, that might be different.

When I scheduled the tour, I was told that since we had kids coming, we would not be able to participate in a wine tasting. Ok, a little disappointed. One reason we wanted to go was to find a wine that we actually like that doesn't come in a box. The kids got to do a juice tasting. They set up plastic cups of the muscadine grape juice they bottle and gave the kids the whole spiel. Pretty cool. We were able to go downstairs and taste several wines. So, yea, since we didn't think that was going to happen.

And this is just a basket of corks. I liked the way it looked. We all got to keep one for a souvenir.

I like the fact that the winery does not use pesticides on their vines. The only thing keeping them from being organic is the food grade fungicide they spray to keep mold off the grapes. That was interesting. In the pressing process, they keep the skins and seeds, called musk, and use it as compost for the fields. It has to sit for awhile because it is too acidic at first and would burn the soil and the plants.

Another interesting tid bit about the muscadine grapes. There has recently been a study that seems to point to the musk helping to correct Type 2 diabetes. They are doing further studies and the winery has agreed to supply some of their musk for those studies. I thought that was pretty neat.

After the tour, some of us took off to our local park for lunch. It was a beautiful day to take advantage of a great field trip, so we did. Hubby and I came home with an excellent Chablis, which I don't usually care for but really liked theirs, and a bottle of Southern Red.

We have a field trip scheduled for next week to Canine Companions. They train service dogs. That should be fun. And I have ideas for a couple of more that we want to take. We'll see how they work out. You know I'll post about them all.

Have a great day.