temecula wineries + longs tip

so brian and i went up to temecula yesterday for the hot air balloon and wine festival. the best part of the festival was that WE GOT TO RIDE IN A BALLOON! i will write more about that later, once i get some pics uploaded.

anyway, after the balloon and family stuff, brian and i decided to wander around a few wineries on the way home. we stopped at 3. The first was Faulker. I hadn't been there before but felt like it was one of the more famous ones, at least for Temecula. It was fine, but there weren't any wines that we thought were really good and/or worth buying a bottle (seemed overpriced).

The second we went to was Baily. We both really liked this place. We ended up buying a nice Meritage there, and our server (?, bartender? what do we call the wine pourers at the tasting places?) was named Bill. he was really good... gave us a few extra tastes for free and was really cool.

the last place we went to was Hart, which i hadn't heard of at all, but it was along the way. it's right next to Calloway. this place is pretty small and humble. no gift shop and a pretty small and darkish tasting area, but the wine was really good for Temecula wine. i had gone to temecula a few years back and felt like it was all 'eh' whites, and i'm very much a red girl.... but this place had so many good reds as well as a few whites...brian and i couldn't really narrow down what we should buy. the prices were very reasonable as well ($18-$24/bottle). so we bought a few and left happy.

but on the way out we remembered that brian's uncle had told us that he had found some temecula wine at this longs drugs store, and it was even cheaper than the wineries. so we saw the longs and stopped, just for the hell of it. wouldn't you know, most bottles were about $5 less per bottle at longs than they were if you bought direct from the winery. we found all 4 bottles that we'd bought, so that was a bit of a bummer.... but we learned our lesson and hopefully you will too. the only thing is that they didn't carry all wines from all wineries, so you'll still have to buy directly from the wineries in a lot of cases. but we wrote down all of the wineries that they carried for future reference:

* Baily
* Elevation
* Falkner
* Filsinger
* Hart
* La Cereza
* Las Piedras
* Maurice Carrie
* South Coast
* Stuart Cellars
* Thornton
* VR Vineyards
* Wilson Creek

the Longs is HERE (not sure this is applicable at any other Longs).