Maryland Wine Tasting: A Tour of 3 Vineyards in Mt. Airy

This past weekend Rob and I celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary. After our long runs in the morning we spent the day on Saturday wine tasting at 3 wineries in Mt. Airy, Maryland.

Wine Tasting in Mt. Airy

We reserved a town car to drive us the 50 minutes out to Mount Airy, around to the different wineries, and back home, so that neither of us had to drive. I was able to find a good deal at Limos.com.

 Loew Vineyard

We made our first stop at Loew Vineyards just before noon. It was a small winery but everyone was really friendly. We tasted 8 different wines and ended up buying 3 bottles (2 of which were dessert wines).

Because of the time of year, all the grapes were already off the vines in the vineyard.

Black Ankle Vineyard

The second stop on our tour was Black Ankle. I had heard about this winery from some of my dad’s coworkers who have distributed their wine. It was busier here, and we did a tasting with a few other people. We only tasted 4 wines here, but spent more time learning about the wines and about the history of the vineyard. The wines we tasted here were really good, so I am going to share what we tried:

• Passeggiata
• 2011 Rolling Hills
• 2011 Syrah
• Terra Dulce III (dessert wine…this is delicious! We bought a bottle)

However, I think these wines are only available in Maryland.

We also took a tour of the vineyard at Black Ankle. We were told that 6 people hand pick all the grapes from the vine every season. In looking at the vineyard, that sounds like a lot of work!

I asked Rob how long it would take us to drink all of this wine:

We should have brought a straw:)

Elk Run Vineyard

After the tour we headed over to the final winery, Elk Run. This was smaller than Black Ankle but bigger than Loew. We did a tasting of 5 wines and chose a bottle to purchase. We also each got a glass of wine to enjoy before we headed home.

Then this happened:

This cat that was around the vineyard just jumped onto Rob’s lap and then onto the table! (We are not cat people:))

Wine Tasting Logistics

We were pretty tired after all the tastings so it was really nice to have a ride home. Everything worked out so well with our self-planned tour. The timing was perfect: we rented the car for 5 hours, which included 50 minutes each way from Baltimore to Mt. Airy. We were only at Loew from about 12-12:20, so we arrived at Black Ankle at 12:30. After the wine tasting we took a tour at 1pm. We left Black Ankle around 1:45 and got to Elk Run at 1:50, so we had a full hour there to relax. It was such an enjoyable day and a perfect way to spend our anniversary!

When we got home we relaxed for a little bit before heading to Flemings for dinner.

 This is our favorite nice restaurant, mostly because of the chocolate molten lava cake:)

The also brought up a card and truffles for our anniversary.

Flemings happens to be located right next door to the Marriott Waterfront, where our wedding reception was held last year. We stopped in for a drink after dinner.

We were out until like 10pm, which is super late for us these days.

Sunday, which was our actual anniversary day, was really laid back. Church, grocery shopping, beer, football, lasagna, and year old wedding cake. We also watched our wedding video….everyone definitely took advantage of the open bar!

I still can’t believe its already been a year since our wedding! We had a perfect weekend celebrating, but now its time to focus on the last bit of training before the Annapolis half. I’m feeling ready!

Have you ever been wine tasting?

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