Wine tasting and fireworks

Saturday we took our first SHAPE trips and tours adventure, to the Mosel Valley in Germany for a wine tasting. They took us to Weingut am Rosenberg in the town of Osana, where we had lunch and tasted 13 different wines produced by the family-owned business while getting a very informative seminar on wine. After we worked our way through the wines we went down into the cellars, where we saw the oak casks they use for the very best wines as well as the ultra modern wine press. Then we tasted a peach liqueur (yum) and something the owner called "moonshine" (a grappa-like drink) that was pretty powerful. We trooped back upstairs to find their "cream," a Baileys-like drink, waiting for us. We came away with a bottle of the peach liqueur, the cream, and some of the semi-dry red, which David took a liking too.

Note that during the wine tasting, the older folks among us - us and two other couples at our end of the table - filled up our waste pitcher pouring out the wine we couldn't finish with each tasting and the water we used to rinse our glasses. The younger folk at the other end of the table didn't splash a drop in their pitcher, so we ended up using theirs too. Those girls had a REALLY good time.

After the wine tasting and seminar, as if that weren't a full enough day, they took us to Bernkastel-Kues, an extremely picturesque village on the Mosel, which was celebrating its wine festival. There was a carnival spread along the river bank on one side of town, and various wineries had booths offering their wares on both sides of the river. We saw many, many people walking around town carrying an open bottle of wine, some swigging right out of the bottle. An interesting cultural experience... At 9:00 PM the fireworks started, from a spot down on the river and from up on the hill at the old castle. It was a spectacular show. We got back to SHAPE in the wee hours and dragged our weary selves home to bed.