Day trip to Prince Edward County for wine tours!

June 10, 2018:  Continuing on from my previous blog post, after our visit to Closson Chase Vineyards, we reconvened on the bus and this time we all visited Hillier Creek Estates Winery (46 Stapleton Rd, Hillier) together!

This was our third wine stop of the day.

We were welcomed warmly and ushered towards the second floor of their building where there were chairs set up in a circle.  We took a seat and a representative gave us an overview of their wines.  It was clear to me that they were very experienced in hosting large group wine tours as they were so organized and efficient in serving four rounds of wines.

Gorgeous space. Maybe they use this for wedding receptions too

Wine tasting at Hillier Creek Estates Winery

We got to try four out of eight wines here!  The wines were given to us in two’s so I ended up trying all of them since my mom and I would share our wines.  We also got pizza bites thanks to Yelp and Hillier Creek.  It was really nice to enjoy the pizza bites with the wine.

We were able to try from eight different wines!

Pizza bites for all!

The 5 steps to enjoying wine. We learned about this at Konzelmann Estate Winery

After this, we had lots of down time to stroll the winery grounds which included checking out their wood fire pizza oven, the actual creek in their yard which is their namesake, and their chilled barrel room.  Their wines were very appropriately priced here and lots of people were buying wines to take home.

The Hillier Creek

Wood fire pizza oven and a gorgeous roofed space for dining

Entering Karlo Estates

After this, we visited our fourth and final winery which was Karlo Estates (561 Danforth Rd, Wellington).  This was also where we would be having dinner as a group together.

Karlo Estates had a huge property and after tasting the first wine (and given a very professional and thorough overview by Ms. Karlo herself), we ventured to view the malpec vineyards and then to the small bridge (which is featured on their wine bottles) for more tasting.  We were given nuts to taste with the wines which did provide a different taste and texture of the wines after the small bites.

Melpec vineyards

Clear summer day

Pinot Grigio

The Karlo Estates bridge

We actually got to enjoy the wine straight from the chilled riverbank!  This was so neat.  We all tried to take a photo on the bridge too.  It was a gorgeous area of land especially as the sun was getting lower at this time.

After this, we made our way to the large barrel room where we got to try another glass of wine!  It was surprisingly only at this point that I started to get tipsy from the wine.  It was a good kind of tipsy and I thoroughly enjoyed the wine buzz. 😀  There were more nuts and small snacks for us too as we toured the barrels of wine.

Ms. Karlo among the barrels

Rose wine

Our prix fixe dinner

Finally, it was dinner time.  The wine tour at Karlo Estates actually stretched on for a bit longer than expected so it meant that our sit-down dinner needed to be shortened up.   We returned back to the main building of Karlo Estates and into their dining room.  Luckily, the plates of pasta, salad, and garlic bread were all ready to go for us and we started eating within minutes of the food being served on the table.  I know lots of people didn’t enjoy the pasta as it wasn’t top-notch quality.  The pasta was also kind of cold.

Due to time constraints, we took our chocolate brownie desserts with us to eat on the bus.

The winners of the photo scavenger hunt were announced on the bus on our way home.  Congrats to those that won the grand prize of wines to take home!

We returned back to Vaughan around 9:30 p.m. that evening.

What an amazing full day of wine tasting this was!  We visited four wineries in total with a lunch and dinner in it as well.  I couldn’t have asked for a better day trip of wine tasting!  Aside from the little blip of waiting time during lunch, the day was perfect.  Thank you so much to Yelp for organizing this inaugural trip to Prince Edward County for us!  It was truly a pleasure to attend.