Road Trip to Charlottesville

Lou and I took advantage of a sunny Saturday (and the 65 degree temp) to road trip down to Charlottesville for the day. It is one of my favorite places I have ever been. UVA, the school Lou attended for grad school, is in the heart of the town. The main campus was designed by Thomas Jefferson, whose house, Monticello, is on a hill overlooking the grounds and is amazing. Charlottesville is located 2 hours south of DC at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and has tons of boutiques, great restaurants and vineyards in the area. So began our first stop on our drive - Horton Vineyards.


We have been to Horton before, but this was a rare exception where they actually gave us a tour of the cellar and allowed us to do a vertical port tasting. Basically, a vertical tasting is where you taste every year that a certain wine or port was produced - in this case 1995-2002 - to compare the differences. On our tour, we actually got to taste several wine varieties that are still aging straight from the barrel. Our tour guide, who had imbibed much of the fruits of his labor, actually allowed us to turn the spouts on the big vats of wine and sample.

For some time, I have been asking (begging) Lou to teach me how to play golf. We found a nice course overlooking the mountains and hit a bucket of balls. My first shot I picked up a 7 iron and drove the ball dead straight 120 yards. After that my performance was fairly lack luster, but it is still a work in progress.