Doing the Madera Wine Trail for Sue's Birthday

While camping in Coorsgold, Calif to visit Yosemite, we all gathered to celebrate our friend Susan's birthday (she's the one with the 'birthday hat' in the center) - from left rear : Co, Elaine, Ann, Cheryl, Pearl - left front: Mary, Susan, Anne, Flo.

Susan decided to try a new beer while the rest of us tasted wine.

This place had lots of boutique beers to try.

And plenty of yummy wine to taste too.

For Susan's birthday, we decided to do the Madera Wine Trail to do a little tasting.   As you can see there are lots of wineries here - each arrow points to another winery - we didn't know where to start.   Since we tasted lots of wine while in Napa, we decided to taste what this area is noted for - Ports!

Our first port Winery was the Birdstone Winery.  Great Port and tasty and very affordable Chardonay wine..... so we bought both.

Next we went to Ficklin Winery where we had the best time tasting wines and mostly lots of different Ports - even Razbery Port, Chocolate Port, and Black Cherry Port.  Needless to say we bought lots of Port here.

This is Ficklin's Port bottling area - small but efficient.

This is where the Port ages to perfection.

Our hostess and tour guide was lots of fun and very informative in giving us the history of Port.

The birthday girl - Susan - decided this was her favorite Port Winery.

My favorite Port was the Award winning 10yr Tawney Port.

As you can see Ficklin has been awarded many many gold, silver and bronze medals for their ports.

That evening we all assembled at the Sweet Water Steakhouse to finish celebrating Susan's birthday.

The restaurant gave Susan a complimentary decadent chocolate cake for desert - gotta love the hat.

As we said goodbye to all each of us left Coorsgold and headed in different directions for the next few weeks of RV'ing fun.