Yesterday we ventured out (again) to try our luck getting into the venue at Bull Run Park, Centreville.  We were leaving ourselves open to both Sat. and Sun., but preferred Sat. as we had a neighborhood cookout on Sunday --but that wasn't scheduled to start until 5:00 p.m. anyway, so no biggie.

The festival starts at 11:00, and on Saturday, we thought we'd try to get there around noon, but we didn't actually leave until 12:15 or so, which was a bad calculation. After an hour of barely inching along when we still had miles of winding road, we decided to ditch the plan and head for Wegmans instead. Mr. Mo had never been there, and it truly is an experience not to be missed. It's amazing to us that they can keep prices so low and yet be so "gourmet".

So, our spur-of-the-moment "plan B" actually worked out well.  Plus, we figured it had to be more crowded that first day at the festival. 

On Sunday we left home around 10:30 (still later that we thought we should) and had no traffic tie-ups whatsoever. It was fantastic.

Lesson learned!


Mr. Mo got some photos with his i-Phone, which didn't turn out badly. 

This one was kinda funny-- an inflatable slide with a Roswell theme.



Making my way over to the Mountfair Vineyard tent.  We enjoyed the "Engagement" Merlot.



This was an interesting idea by "Thousand Oaks Barrel Co."
Make your own spirits using vodka, or aging a bottle of whatev that much faster.



This new cosmetic company from France "Votre Vu" had a unique gimick: a Jetstream trailer where they were giving out free samples of the "Snapdragon" health drink, and samples of various cremes. I tried a combo lipbalm and hand lotion that was very nice, and they gave me a sample of neck cream. It was really too warm to try anything, even on the back of one's hand.
Temps. yesterday were in the high 80s.



And lastly, a pic overlooking about maybe 1/3 of the venue.



To the left, some nasty clouds were making their way over, so after about three hours we thought we'd better scoot.

Before we left, we spotted some people with plates of cheese, fruit and bread and were thinking we should probably get a little something to eat, keeping in mind that we were having the BBQ later, so eat light.  It was a Trader Joe's tent, and they were actually giving these generous plates away!  "Just remember to patronize the stores!" they asked in return.
Uh... no problem there.  We love T.J.'s!

I just wished I had some wine to go with this brie, swiss, cheddar, grapey goodness!

The samples we had MAYBE amounted to a full glass. I estimate we sampled maybe 1/10th of all the wineries, and not even all the wines that one particular winery offered.
We didn't make any wine purchases, but did bring home some garlic and herb Virginia peanuts from "Purely American", as well as Virginia Farmstead Cheddar Cheese with Garlic, Chives & Parsley by "Marshall Farms".

I'm detecting a theme here :-) The Virginia Wine & Garlic Festival is in October at Rebec Vineyards in Amherst.  Don't know if we'll make it, but it sounds like a lot of fun.

One of the other vineyards that is new to us is Hill Top Berry Farm.
I'm not generally a fan of sweet wines, but these were absolutely mind-blowing, especially their various meads. Leaps ahead of any mead I've had at a RenFest, for example. Many of them are infused with various fruit such as apple, pear, blackberry, blueberry.... and they were not cloyingly sweet in the least. Very refreshing.



The last purchase we made was at this booth with funny  T-shirts, hats and gadgets, which was actually focused on beer and ale instead of wine. A couple of Fairfax Co. policemen were amused as well, promising to come back and purchase items later.


Front:                                                                                                                 Back:
 

The guy had all kinds of novelty items, and to hear him talk about and demo this stuff was very entertaining.

This is the first wine fest that we had not gotten together with a group of folks. Everyone else had other plans.

But we had a fun time, just the two of us.