One of my friends and I like to go out to taste wines. We’ve gone on several weekend trips to different places where we always look for different wineries around to see what’s out there. Neither one of us has expensive tastes in wine, and we like similar wines, for the most part.

There are a lot of places where you can go and purchase a flight of wine for anywhere between $5 and $25 and try as many as six to ten wines. They’re not giving you full glasses; you’ll get an ounce or so of each to try them. In total with six to ten wines, you’re drinking the equivalent of 2 or 3 glasses of wine, likely over a couple of hours.

My friend and I are responsible about this. We like going to a winery for lunch, say for appetizers or a cheese and meat and cracker plate, ordering a flight to split (we’ve been friends long enough not to care about sharing a glass, and that way we get to taste more and spend less). We’re responsible, we’re over 21, and we take our time. It’s a nice, relaxing afternoon with a friend, to dish about whatever’s going on in our lives.

Well, lately she’s been pretty stressed, and I have too, so when I saw this in the paper, we jumped on it.

www.daytonwinetrail.com

I’m hearing that they’re going to do it again, and I’ve heard May 15.

We had an absolute blast. We took pictures of crazy beer and wine labels. We tasted wine and cheese and crackers and bruschetta and coconut cake. I spent way too much on wine to take home (hey, I found some hard-to-find stuff I love and wanted to have on hand). Totally worth the time and money to go.