Thursday January 25, 2007
Schnebly Redland's Winery
Oh, the mystery. Wine doesn’t grow in our climate, so how can there be a winery in Homestead? On the drive, the signs say “Winery” and even have a little picture of a bunch of grapes. But Schnebly Redland’s Winery in fact makes “wine” out of tropical fruits such as lychee, passion fruit, and guava. The winery itself is a bit of a tourist trap: housed in a pair of trailers (a new visitor facility is under construction), and charging $6 for a wine tasting and another $6 for a tour, wtf? We opted for the former and skipped the latter.
How’s it taste? Pretty good, actually. They all look like white wine (except the guava). And they taste much more like the juice of their respective plants with a little alcohol then actual wine. The closest to real wine was the oak-aged version of the carambola (starfruit) wine, but it wasn’t great. We agreed that the lychee one was the best, and ended up getting another bottle to drink outside, which was the best part of the whole thing. You can save yourself the trip and just order a bottle from their website if you’re curious.
The tour also gets you the privilege of doing a wine fruit-stomping contest. Like I said, tourist trap. There’s also a “Boo-Boo” wine, supposedly a heirloom blend of fruit to which the recipe has been lost, so “once it’s gone it’s gone.” It actually is delicious, but at $35 for a half-bottle . . . well, I guess you have to set your own priorities.