Craig and I were scheduled to spend Friday through Sunday at a bed and breakfast in nearby Cascade, CO. It was my 40th birthday gift from him. Well, as some of you already know, we took a slight detour to Cascade: the local ER. We had a big scare Thur. and Fri. when Craig was admitted to the hospital with crushing chest pain. The happy summary is that his heart is just fine, and the docs feel the chronic, severe pain he's been in since Jan. due to a knee injury, as well as the pain meds he was taking for this pain were largely responsible for increasing his bp to the point that it required treatment. The bp is now under control, and we're counting down the days until his knee surgery on March 19.
So, while our little retreat was delayed by a day, we still were able to spend an overnight in a wonderful log cabin bed and breakfast in Cascade. The new experience occurred Saturday night when we went to Wines of Colorado, http://www.winesofcolorado.com/ , for dinner. I've driven past this restaurant/shop perhaps 50 times since we've lived here, but we've never visited it.
OK, sad as it may sound to most of you, I'm 40 and have been to a wine tasting. There, I admitted it. C'mon, I'm a beer kind of gal. Here's a summary of mine and Craig's wine selection technique: find a German beer in a blue bottle and it will likely be good. How's that for wine IQ?
So, this was a cool experience for me. First of all, this wine shop is limited to Colorado wines. I learned there are 20 wineries within 90 minutes of Denver and 30 wineries within 90 minutes of Grand Junction. Who knew? It was fun looking through all the native wines.
The wine "hostess" (is this the correct term?? I'm referring to the lady who poured the wine samples) was knowledgable and friendly. I know she is skilled, because she managed to find several red wines that I actually LIKED. I don't mean that I could get them down without gagging, I mean they were actually good. And, to remain true to ourselves, Craig and I asked for a Colorado wine in a blue bottle (yes, I do actually know we're referring to a Riesling, but it's more fun to just go with the "blue bottle" designator). It, too, was excellent.
It was a fun and educational experience. We enjoyed a great bottle of red wine with our dinner (hey, it's heart healthy, so if those doctors were wrong about Craig's heart, we were practicing our own kind of preventive medicine), and we finsihed off the Reisling back at the B&B. I also decided that one of my 40 new experiences should be to tour a winery--right here in Colorado. So, stay tuned on that one.
Oh, in case any of you are interested in the wines we chose, here they are.
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