Great River Road Wine Trail, plus a Brewery

I had previously told you about the little mini-vacation my husband and I took going trout-fishing into the National Eagle Center and this was also part of that mini vacation to celebrate his birthday. We visited 4 places that made wine, cider, or beer. The above collages of some of the things we tried at each of the four places.

 This is Villa Bellezza. It is in Pepin Wisconsin. We had no idea what to expect from this place when we drove to it because the ad was very basic in the Guidebook and did not have pictures of the facility. But when we got there we were surprised to see that it was just gorgeous and looked like a mini Napa right in Wisconsin. Who knew? I will have more pictures of the grounds of this place in a wordless Wednesday post on Save Green Being Green in July. There was a wedding going on in the reception hall but we could walk around the grounds and see what they had their including a fountain and big Plaza area separate buildings for wine making and a lot of vines as well as a tasting room and they were in the process of construction of a restaurant on site. It is a pretty neat place. We did the wine sampling for $5 that includes your choice of three wines. And you also get to sample the wine of the month for free.

Next we drove about a half hour to go to Maiden Rock Winery & Cidery. One of the owners who was on site distributing free samples. They sell their own cider and wine as well as wines from other Midwest wineries. They also have a little gift shop there as well. The wine and cider tasting they offer for free includes five different samples. Since we were there we only wanted to try the things they made because we could try wines from other wineries at their location if we wanted to. We ended up buying a few bottles at this place.

This is just a picture of where they do the brewing at Maiden Rock. It is right off of The Tasting Room.

Next up was the Red Wing Brewery. We needed to get some food in our stomachs and the Red Wing Brewery is also a restaurant as well as growing their own beer and root beer. My husband tried a couple of the beers and I had the root beer. They were okay not spectacular, but what we really enjoyed was there homemade pizza that they use brewer's yeast in the crust. This is definitely something to check out if you are in Red Wing Minnesota.

Lastly as we were making our lop and starting to head back for home we went to Cannon River Winery. This place actually stays open quite late compared to all of the rest so we were able to go here and buy a sweet red as an after-dinner drink. Here we bought a bottle and had it while we were there. We have been to Cannon River Winery a couple times before and have done the same thing so we didn't feel the need to do it again. It was quite busy when we were there with a wedding upstairs and lots of groups of people enjoying wine on the main level. This is in Cannon Falls Minnesota