It's Officially Spring, Right? - Part 3

Need to catch up?  Here's Part 1 and Part 2.

When last I blogged, Toni, Robert, Juliet, and I toured downtown Alexandria, and Toni and I met her lovely friends Emily and Jen for a girls' night!

Saturday, March 11th

After waking up at the somewhat reasonable hour of 8:30, I took a shower and then headed downstairs to see how everyone was doing this morning.  After a cup of chai and some leftover coffee cake (still delicious, even on Day 2), it was back upstairs to pack and get ready for Toni and I to start our cider tasting tour!  Since I've now visited Toni 3-4 times in Alexandria (plus, I've been to the DC area several times on family and school trips in the past), we decided it would be fun to venture out for an overnight/weekend trip to see some other local attractions (we'd been doing this in Phoenix, too, but now we have a whole new area to explore in Long Beach!); although Toni doesn't like beer or wine, she does enjoy cider, and the nearby area of Northern Virginia/Southern Maryland is chock full of cideries.  Since I also like it well enough, we figured this would be a fun adventure.

We bid adieu to Robert and Juliet (they were heading to ballet class), booted up the GPS, and drove off into the country to our first stop at Red Shedman, about an hour and a half from Toni's house.  When we got there, we learned they offered not only cider but also beer and wine, which seemed to be the case for many of the stops on our tour (wine plus cider seemed to be the most common, although some featured other combos); unfortunately, while the winery opened at 10am for tastings, beer and cider tastings didn't start until noon, inside the small tasting room across the patio.  As we found out later, certain state laws don't allow wine and beer to be tasted or, sometimes, even sold in the same building, so to work around this, places that make both beverages and have a certain type of license use this arrangement.  Since we didn't want to just sit there for another hour (and we had several other tasting locations on the itinerary for the day), we decided to head out to our next stop.

We hopped back in the car for about 40 minutes, heading to our next stop, Distillery Lane Ciderworks (DLC).  We made it there just as they were opening at noon, and we were the first folks inside their tasting room.

Picturesque, non?

At Distillery Lane...

be prepared to see many photos

kind of like this throughout this blog.

DLC's lineup was really interesting, and I think it was one of the most diverse we'd see throughout the weekend.  We tasted two sparkling ciders, a traditional Jeffersonian cider, a whisky barrel aged option, and even one that should be heated up to make mulled wine/hot toddy-style beverages.  We heard about each cider from our tasting guide, and she gave us an overview of the cider-making process as we peeked through the window from the tasting room to the operation (you can see the window behind me up there in the photo).  We even met one of the cider makers, who came into the tasting room accompanied by his two friendly dogs, a little white terrier of some sort and a full-grown Bernese Mountain Dog; I gave both of them some love, missing my kiddos at home quite a bit by this point.

The tasting list at DLC

Our haul - 

my bottles of Fireside (the warm option)

and Celebration (a sparkler).

Toni also ended up with

a bottle of Celebration as well.

As we finished up our tasting, lots of people started arriving (like 15-20), and the small tasting room was getting overly cramped.  We were happy to settle up and head back outside; in addition to having interesting cider, DLC was a really cute little place, so we took some photos as well:

Some shots of the apple trees.

And here be dragons.

It wasn't snowing right now,

but it was cold, ya'll.

By this point, it was time for lunch, so we retraced our steps a bit into nearby Jefferson, Maryland to the Little Red Barn.  

Not my picture,

but isn't it so freaking cute?

I opted for the chicken salad sandwich while Toni went with a BLT, and both of our options were great.  They also had a wide variety of soups and salads, and while I was too cold inside to try some, Toni enjoyed the scoop of ice cream she picked.  After a satisfying lunch, it was back on the road for around 30 minutes to our next stop, Corcoran Vineyards and Cider.

By this point, we'd crossed back from Maryland to Virginia, in Loudoun County, which is where we'd stay for the rest of our journey.  At Corcoran, I did the wine tasting while Toni focused on cider, and while they had some okay options, neither of us was totally bowled over by their offerings.  We did, of course, take some pictures:

A handy conversion chart...

Toni's friend Jen (from girls' night) recommended

the Route 11 potato chip factory.

While we didn't make it there (sadly),

we did find their chips here,

and we bought a bag to try them out.

They're pretty darn good!

Spelling is hard, ya'll.

While Toni was visiting the restroom (I'd already gone, of course.  Like 82 times), I meandered across the parking lot to see the horse sculpture in the corner of a nearby field.  He seemed to be part of one of those "city/county gets a bunch of animal sculptures and then local artists paint them" type things, and he was pretty cool looking, set up in front of the lake on the property.

OMG!!1!!  Ponies!

It was time to hop back in the car and drive another half hour or so, this time to Wild Hare Cider.  Overall, this was my favorite cidery of the tour, although the same was not true for Toni.  As we learned while touring, many of the ciders that are mass marketed in the US are what cider makers refer to as "American style ciders" - Angry Orchard, for example - and they have added sugars, which gives them their sweet taste.  Apparently, more traditional ciders don't have this added sugar - any sweetness they have comes from the sugars already inherent in the apples in the drink - and thus, they tend to be less sweet than what the big, corporate guys are making.  Wild Hare seemed to be a place focusing more on the traditional side of things, and their offerings were much more pleasing to my preferences than any other place we'd visit on the trip.

The tasting menu (with notes)

at Wild Hare

When we arrived, we were the only folks in the tasting room, so we took our time talking to the hostess and eating our chips, acquired earlier in the day.  However, like at DLC, by the time we finished, the tasting room was packed to the gills, and we were ready to head out.

Cheers!  Time to hit the road!

We weren't ready to check into our lodging for the night just yet, so on the way there, we hit up an actual beer brewery I'd noticed in the area, Dirt Farm Brewing.  It's situated right on top of a hill, so the scenery is great, and although it was too cold for us at the time, the copious patio would be a great place to chill when the weather is nicer.  On the way up the hill to the brewery, we passed several agricultural markers, including terraced areas for grapes and the obvious remnants of a recent hop harvest:

Empty trellises

I went with a flight of four different brews at Dirt Farm, and Toni, needing something sweet from all the dry ciders we'd been tasting, picked a different beverage:

Most of the brews I tried were good to solid, with one strange exception - a stout that smelled and tasted like strawberries.  Apparently, this was the intent, but it was still odd enough that I couldn't finish it.  After finishing our drinks and our pretzel bites, we headed out.

Noms

The patio at Dirt Farm

and its super boring scenery.

I mean, for reals.  Just awful.

It only took us about 15 minutes to reach our home for the night, the Airwell Bed and Breakfast.  Honestly, the Airwell couldn't have been better; we stayed in the Ashby Suite, so we shared a king bed in the bedroom area and had a couch and dining table in the other room of the suite.  The bathroom was lovely - all gray marble/granite with a massive walk-in shower with three different shower heads (rainfall, normal, and one that seemed poised to help you clean out your belly button.  When I Facetimed Chris later and showed him, he referred to it as the "butt washer").  The owners of the B&B welcomed us in and made us feel at home right away, letting us know we should help ourselves to the Keurig machine in the hallway, as well as the freshly baked cookies, cold bottled beverages (including Founders All Day IPA!  What?!), and snacks.  

We didn't get a great shot of the outside of the inn, but here's one from the internets taken at a much prettier time of the year:

A few shots around our room:

Taking a shot at our dining table...

Oh yeah!  We even had a real fireplace!

After chilling out at the Airwell for a few hours, reading and napping, we changed into real clothes again and headed into town to eat dinner at the West End Wine Bar.  Our dinner was good - a baked oyster appetizer for me with a venison dish for my main (where the collard greens were a bit too sweet) and lentil soup with ham and mac and cheese for Toni - and we enjoyed relaxing in the restaurant's calm (and warm!) atmosphere.  We had some ideas on other things to do for the evening, but after two late nights in a row, we were ready to hit the hay.  It was time to head back to the Airwell and retire for the night!

In the next blog, we enjoy the second "B" in B&B at the Airwell, we take a very short hike on the AT, and we hit a few more cideries on the way back home.

Later!

Amy