Every fall George Washington's home, set high above the Potomac River, hosts one of the DC area's premier Wine events; The Fall Wine Festival and Sunset Tour at Mount Vernon.
The festival takes place over 3 nights in October and gives visitors a sampling from 17 Virginian wineries combined with a supremely beautiful and historic venue. We attended Sunday evening and despite the rain had a really fun time.
I don't know a whole lot about wine or wine tasting, but I had a fantastic time and sampled, from what I can tell, some excellent wines. First difference between beer tastings and wine tastings - they give you A LOT of wine. You can sample each wine (typically 10) at each and every table. Watch out! It didn't take me too long to realize that most people sampled only one or two and even then didn't always finish their tasting. Pacing with bread and water breaks became important early on.
The second difference between wine and beer tasting - The crowd. I'm not the youngest guy these days, but I'm pretty sure I was the youngest guy at the Festival. A whole lot of grey hairs and polo shirts, if you catch my drift... Many of these wine tasters seemed equally as geeky as the beer geeks I encounter at beer tastings, using vocabulary words that hint at their inclusion of a secret society, just older and cleaner. Likely wealthier too. In all fairness, I did see one guy wearing a cape.
Because of the heavy rain the tent where the wineries were set up was extra crowded. In the lawn between George's Mansion and the river, a Jazz band was setup and was jazzing it up through most of the night. The Mansion was also opened for candlelight tours. We roamed through the house in near darkness and got to see the bedroom where our First President breathed his last. We even got to take a rare tour of his wine cellar below the house. There wasn't much to see down there, but it was neat be in the very spot that our greatest founding father kept his all-important booze stash.
Our box of snacks and free wine glass (being modeled by a Washington insider):
In the cellar, where Prez #1 kept the booze:
The wine tent, filled with people. Old-ish people:
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