Escape

Lately, I've been craving two things: strong black coffee, and Shiraz. So when my sister-in-law (one of only two people from My Real Life who read this site) suggested that we spend Sunday afternoon at a nearby winery, I was elated. After spending all of Saturday and most of Sunday morning enduring wave upon wave of toddler tantrums, I would have agreed to an afternoon of dusting her knick-knacks if wine were being served. In fact, when she and our other friend came to pick me up, I may or may not have been standing in my front entry waiting for the sounds of her car pulling into my driveway, much like a child listens for the jingle bells of Santa's reindeer on Christmas Eve.

We drove the 45 or so miles to one of the most po-dunk towns in Texas. Actually, it's metropolitan compared to my hometown, its neighbor, but whatever. This town's claim to fame for the last 50 years or so has been its title of Headquarters for the Largest Chicken Producer in the U. S.

And now, they have a winery. A darned cute one, too.

It seems that some lunatic from O. C. decided that he wanted to relocate and establish a winery far from the traffic and hubbub of Southern California. Let's see...trade in a few hours of congested, yet billboard-free traffic in Southern California, along with its damned-near perfect year-round (OK, so lately, it's been a little toasty) weather, miles of beach, the PC-effing-H, In-n-Out, IKEA, real shopping malls, and online grocery shopping for (C)Hickville, where the nearest "mall" is about an hour away, one grocery store chain monopolizes the market, and your best bet for finding a decent fast food burger and shake is at Dairy Queen?

Frankly, I don't see the rationale, but since we now have another source for decent wine close to home, I'm not going to argue.

For five measly dollars, we enjoyed a tasting of 3-4 generous samples each. We ordered glasses of our favorites and copped a good ol' Sunday afternoon buzz. The atmosphere was charming, the tapas were perfect, and the wine was excellent.

More than once, we marveled at the idea that this is here.