Woodrose Winery & das Peach Haus

One other fun little stop between wineries was at Das Beach Haus, just off the main road in Fredericksburg. I have no other way to explain it than to call it the world's largest sampling room- peach cobbler, dips, chips, salsas, sauces, candies, wines, pickled everything under the sun, and so much more. It's worth a stop just for a free meal ;)



My beautiful, fun friend is somewhere between Sarasota & her new home in Philadelphia. Guess where I'll be going later this year?



Our last stop was probably my favorite at Woodrose Winery, on the main road just outside of town.



It's one of the newer wineries, but the owner is super cool and has very big plans for the place, including a dance hall & bed and breakfasts for the future. If it was a bit cooler, we'd have enjoyed their lovely deck & you can see the reception hall/dance floor in the background, still under construction.



Again- the seats and tables were a welcome sight at the end of the day. We also caught the tail-end of a live music performance and enjoyed the dog-greeting as we walked in the door.



We'd picked up a few chocolate covered strawberries from Chocolat & saved them for our big wine finale.



I"m just so amazed to see grapes growing in Texas! There are a few, non-typical varieties that are doing well. I wish I could remember them...maybe Viognier & Sangiovese?



Our super-duper tour guide Chuck was quite the man on many of these vineyard- we met 4 out of 5 owners at the wineries. We asked for a tour of the dance hall and a got personal tour of the entire facility by the owner himself. This was a huge barn-shaped building with the fermenting vats & large wings on each side.



We were able to take a sneak peak inside the vats & see what a big, smelly mess the wine is before it's finished doing its wine thing.



One of the wings of the building held all the aging barrels. Did I mention that the building was about 20 degrees cooler than the scorching Texas outdoors in June? The barrel room was air-conditioned, but I was surprised how well the architecture kept the area naturally cool.



Then we went into the awesome portion of the tour, where we actually tried some wines in the middle of the aging process. How awesome is that? Except that my battery on my camera chose that moment to run out of battery.



We still had a blast & tasted some super yummy wine.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: It's so amazing to be running in 60 degree weather....I'd almost stay in Chicago for an extra week if I could!