4310. Go to the Wollersheim Winery in Pairie du Sac

While Stacy and I were enjoying custard at Culver's in Sauk City, not the original but on the site of the original, I played around with Google Maps and discovered we were only a short distance from Wollersheim Winery. Since neither of us were quite ready to head home, we decide to head over to Prairie du Sac for a winery tour and tasting.

The grounds of the Wollersheim winery are gorgeous. You walk up past vineyards and can see additional vineyards up the hillside. The original wine cave is on top of the hill. The winery itself is still the original stone structure. It is full of history and charm.There is even fall tree that makes the perfect archway.

We paid $5 for a demi-tour of the winery and a tasting. The tour starts with a short video of the 160 year history of the winery and how hard it is to grow grapes in Wisconsin's harsh winters. After the video, our tour guide, who was still new, led us outside to the vineyards and then into the fermentation and aging rooms. It was very interesting especially when you realize that Cedar Creek Winery in Cedarburg and Wollersheim are the same winery.

After our tour, we had a wine tasting of 4 wines. First we learned the 4 "S" of wine tasting -- swirl to see the color, smell, sip, and swallow the rest of the wine.

We sampled the following wines:

Prairie Fume -- it wasn't bad but not really my thing

White Riesling -- this one was better but still not fruity enough for me

Domaine du Sac -- being a dry red, this is not my kind of wine. My cousins would like it

Port -- I'm not into Ports -- too sweet and not into sipping my wine

We could have had a glass for $5 but decided against it.

After exploring the wine cave and the grounds a bit more, we made our way down the hill to their new distillery. I am not into straight up spirits and really don't care for tastings at a distilleries for this reason. I did learn that brandy is just distilled wine though. Stacy did do 3 spirit flight tasting. They were still too strong for me.

I am glad we stopped. I would love to come back, grab a glass of wine, sit outside and relax. If you are ever in the Dells/Madison area go check out the winery if nothing else just to see one of the oldest wineries in the state. Besides the wine is good.