Week 56: Spontaneous Wineries

Week 56: January 21-27, 2024

A spontaneous decision this week led me to a few wineries in Temecula with my friends. I am by no means a wine fanatic (most wine just tastes the same to me... not great..), but after this week, I can appreciate fermented fruit a bit more.

Since Temecula is the wine country of Southern California, we had many options to choose from, but my friend Victoria (an actual wine fanatic) had to pick up her membership bottles at Lorimar and Avensole. A wine club membership at most wineries includes free tastings each month, so we lucked out.

It was a very windy day, and I was glad I wore a tighter dress so I wouldn't have an unwanted Marilyn Monroe moment. Thankfully, despite the wind, it was warm, otherwise we would've been miserable in our dresses and sandals.

We started at Lorimar Winery. I don't have much to compare to, since any large vineyard and bougie buildings are impressive to me, but I did like this place because it was right next to an orchard of orange trees. I've been to Napa Valley and Anderson Valley up north, and after a while, I think most wineries have similar vibes. Lorimar gets extra points though because after our tasting cards were filled out, they offered me a free sixth tasting just for the heck of it. We were by far the youngest group in the VIP Wine Club tasting room. We were surrounded by old rich white guys, but being a "VIP" was fun. It seems that Victoria has sophisticated taste. The rest of the clientele was made up of mainly young families with babies and bridal parties.

The Lorimar theme was Wine and Music, as you can see from the note

All of these descriptive wine words meant nothing to me, not gonna lie.

There was live music outside at Lorimar, and a lot of their decor was music-themed. The woman at the counter said the founders have a passion for music and entertainment as well as food and wine, so they combined the two when creating Lorimar.

The second winery we visited was Avensole, just a couple minutes down the road. This one felt a bit more corporate than Lorimar, but both were gorgeous spaces. The crowd at Avensole was younger and a bit more yee-haw. There were fewer families with babies and more groups of friends.

A nice, sunny (windy!) day at Avensole

With great foresight, Victoria had booked us lunch reservations at Avensole's restaurant to ensure we ate enough during our day drinking escapade. We enjoyed calamari, ceviche, brie en croute, and oysters as appetizers. Victoria, Mel and I shared a chicken club sandwich and a burger between the three of us. All of my friends prefer family style eating, because we want to try everything on the menu, and luckily most of us aren't picky. All of the dishes we got were pretty good. Unfortunately, I failed in my mission to take photos of the food (my phone did not eat first, I failed as a screenager), so I have no visuals for you. To drink, of course we had wine, but I got a delicious Irish coffee as well.

Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed a couple of the wines I tasted. My favorite was the sweet muscat at both Lorimar and Avensole, but I still was not moved enough by any wines to actually buy myself a bottle for later consumption. My palate for old grapes in liquid form is not as sophisticated as Victoria's, I guess.

Our last stop before heading home was Ponte Winery. I liked their large selection of gift shop items and their retail displays were well done. I only tried one wine there, and did not like it too much. After a while, they all kind of taste the same, anyway. I honestly preferred looking at the different label art on each bottle. Still, you shouldn't judge a wine by its label, you know.

The Ponte Winery list

I apologize for my lack of images this week. If you want to see more professional photos from actual photographers or read more about each place I ventured, check out the site for Ponte, the site for Avensole, and the site for Lorimar.

It was nice to get away for a few days, celebrate a potential new job (more on that when I officially sign my offer letter!) and I am looking forward to more fun, spontaneous trips with my friends throughout the year.

See you next week.