Wine tasting in Wales

I can officially say that as of this month, I've now lived in Wales for half my life, it's crazy to think that.  And in all that time, I never knew we had a vineyard in Wales, and one that's so close to where I live (about a half hour drive).  Well, a good and old friend of mine who now lives in New Zealand is over at the moment, and he decided to gather up some of his friends and head to Llanerch Vineyard just outside Cardiff.  Today was that fateful day (today being Monday - writing this for tomorrow).

We met up outside Cardiff Castle in the pouring rain at 10:45, bundled into two taxis and arrive a little later than we should (our taxi driver had no idea where it was, and was using his phone as a sat nav on his lap - nice way to keep your eyes off the road!).

First things first, we bought a bottle of wine (whoop!), I had two small glasses and chatted with my friend as I hadn't seen him in 11 years, such a long time!

After that, and before we decided to eat, we had a little walk around the vineyard admiring the grapes.  We then headed to the restaurant for the wine tasting.

 

** My friend who'd flown over from New Zealand **

I'm not sure how it's done everywhere else, but here it felt like it might be unconventional.  We weren't talked through the process, but had a piece of paper that tells you what to do.  What I really liked was the 'coaster' in the pack that they place the wines on, so you know which you're having :)  This should have been £10 a head, but because we were a big group the lovely waitress discounted it for us to £7.50 each.

The two white wines were a little sharp for my taste, there was a dry and a medium dry, but the rose, that was lovely, quite sweet but still a little tart.

** Some pretty wild flowers on our table **

Then we moved on to food!  For starter I had Welsh Rarebit, the vegetarian version which had leeks on the top, it was so yummy!  Then for the main I had this delicious pasta dish, spinach and ricotta.  It was really good and not too creamy or rich - just right!

By this time I was quite tipsy, with the two glasses of wine at the beginning, the 3 small 50ml taster glasses and about another 2 glasses of rose after that, I'd had my fill, and all before 3pm.  After getting back to Cardiff, I grabbed a cab home (couldn't face rush hour Valley trains) and have been fighting having a hangover since!

All in all I really enjoyed my day there, the venue was beautiful and the food marvellous.  Is it somewhere I'd go again?  Yes, I'd love to take my hubby there for a nice lunch :)

This months Bigest-Pixi3 advertiser is the lovely Hayley from Water Painted Dreams

 

Written by Georgina Kent