The Tennessee Wine Festival, The Yazoo Brewery Tour and Music in the Vines at Arrington Vineyards all in one day. Saturday, May 17th.
Isn't it funny how things just sometimes fall into place in terms of weather, timing and just plain old luck. The weather has been very iffy this spring here around Nashville, but yesterday was beautiful with mild temperatures, slight breezes and beautiful blue skies dotted with those big puffy white clouds. It made a perfect day to visit the The Tennessee Wine Festival 
held at Nashville Shores on Percy Priest Lake. We attended with our friend, Joy, and we had all been to this little festival before when it was held at the Nashville Super Speedway, but this was our first visit to it since it moved to Nashville Shores a couple of years ago. The move looks to be a good one because the little festival that was back then is now the bigger one that is in need of room to spread out. We arrived around 3 pm and found large crowds in all of the tents which each held 3 or 4 different tasting stations for wineries from all around Tennessee. Many old favorites were there such as Beech Haven from Clarksville and Stonehaus from Crossville, plus some pretty good new ones like Amber Falls from out near Hohenwald and Arrington near Franklin. There were also gourmet food stations, wine seminars and crafts for sale, and being situated right on the lake at Nashville Shores there were lots of places to have a picnic lunch. We have made a note to get there earlier next year and hopefully make a day of it.
But not this year because we were on a tight schedule with The Home-made Hooch Tour '08 and it was time to move on to our next stop, The Yazoo Brewery in downtown Nashville. The three of us arrived at the site of the brewery off of 12th Avenue around 5 PM and had arranged to meet our friends, Woody and Linda, for the 5:30 tour of the brewery. Woody introduced Rob to Yazoo beer a couple of years ago and Rob in turn introduced it to Joy last year - nothing like a mutual co-dependence society. The brewery is housed in an interesting old car manufacturing plant and the folks running it couldn't be nicer (in fact, they allowed us 5 and two others to join the already technically "full" tour since it was the last one of the day). Our tour guide was funny and a great sport to have to handle so many people on the last tour of the day. The tour was informative and casual and included a free glass in which a lot of samples were given out. It's hard to decide a favorite beer since among the five of us we all had a different choice as to which was the best, so in no particular order and all tied for 1st place here goes:
Dos Perros, Onward Stout, Sly Rye Porter, Pale Ale and the IPA.
Yazoo is only distributed in Southeast and they have no plans for nationwide distrubution so support your local brewery and give Yazoo a try if you haven't already. 
After the tour was over and growlers had been purchased (a growler is a half-gallon of beer in a take-home bottle and the one question our tour guide couldn't answer was where the name "growler" comes from...and neither does Wikipedia so don't bother looking) it was time to move the tour to our final destination, The Arrington Vineyards near Franklin. This was our second visit to Arrington but our first time to experience their "Music in the Vines." As mentioned earlier, this vineyard is fairly new. It is also co-owned by Kix Brooks of Brook & Dunn fame. It sits on top of hill with beautiful views and lots of area to spread out blankets and chairs, buy a bottle or two of their pretty darn good wine and listen to some music. They do this every Saturday and Sunday night in late spring and summer and we will defintely be back and hope for weather as perfect as it was yesterday and last night for Home-made Hooch Tour '08.
held at Nashville Shores on Percy Priest Lake. We attended with our friend, Joy, and we had all been to this little festival before when it was held at the Nashville Super Speedway, but this was our first visit to it since it moved to Nashville Shores a couple of years ago. The move looks to be a good one because the little festival that was back then is now the bigger one that is in need of room to spread out. We arrived around 3 pm and found large crowds in all of the tents which each held 3 or 4 different tasting stations for wineries from all around Tennessee. Many old favorites were there such as Beech Haven from Clarksville and Stonehaus from Crossville, plus some pretty good new ones like Amber Falls from out near Hohenwald and Arrington near Franklin. There were also gourmet food stations, wine seminars and crafts for sale, and being situated right on the lake at Nashville Shores there were lots of places to have a picnic lunch. We have made a note to get there earlier next year and hopefully make a day of it.
But not this year because we were on a tight schedule with The Home-made Hooch Tour '08 and it was time to move on to our next stop, The Yazoo Brewery in downtown Nashville. The three of us arrived at the site of the brewery off of 12th Avenue around 5 PM and had arranged to meet our friends, Woody and Linda, for the 5:30 tour of the brewery. Woody introduced Rob to Yazoo beer a couple of years ago and Rob in turn introduced it to Joy last year - nothing like a mutual co-dependence society. The brewery is housed in an interesting old car manufacturing plant and the folks running it couldn't be nicer (in fact, they allowed us 5 and two others to join the already technically "full" tour since it was the last one of the day). Our tour guide was funny and a great sport to have to handle so many people on the last tour of the day. The tour was informative and casual and included a free glass in which a lot of samples were given out. It's hard to decide a favorite beer since among the five of us we all had a different choice as to which was the best, so in no particular order and all tied for 1st place here goes:
Dos Perros, Onward Stout, Sly Rye Porter, Pale Ale and the IPA.
Yazoo is only distributed in Southeast and they have no plans for nationwide distrubution so support your local brewery and give Yazoo a try if you haven't already. 
After the tour was over and growlers had been purchased (a growler is a half-gallon of beer in a take-home bottle and the one question our tour guide couldn't answer was where the name "growler" comes from...and neither does Wikipedia so don't bother looking) it was time to move the tour to our final destination, The Arrington Vineyards near Franklin. This was our second visit to Arrington but our first time to experience their "Music in the Vines." As mentioned earlier, this vineyard is fairly new. It is also co-owned by Kix Brooks of Brook & Dunn fame. It sits on top of hill with beautiful views and lots of area to spread out blankets and chairs, buy a bottle or two of their pretty darn good wine and listen to some music. They do this every Saturday and Sunday night in late spring and summer and we will defintely be back and hope for weather as perfect as it was yesterday and last night for Home-made Hooch Tour '08.
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