Texas Bluebonnet Wine Trail

My hubby and I visited all 7 wineries on the Harvest Trial on 7÷18÷15 and 7÷19÷15. If you want to visit all 7 wineries you will need at least 2 days. 1 day for the Montgomery wineries and 1 day for the Brenham wineries. The commute between the wineries were much longer than I expected. Per Google Maps it would take 3 hrs 40 minutes to drive between all 7 wineries. Plus the 1.5−2 hour drive from Houston it’s quite a bit of driving for one day!
We had originally planned to only visit the 4 wineries (Messina Hof, Peach Creek, Bernhardt and Cork This!) in Montgomery on Saturday with 2 other couples. Upon seeing the gift for completing the entire trial (a Picnic Stix Set to hold 1 wine bottle and 2 wine glasses in the grass) we decided to complete the trial on Sunday and went to the other 3 wineries (Windy, Saddlehorn, Pleasant Hill). The gifts were well worth the drive back the 2^nd day — i’m excited to use it during our next picnic!
Remember to buy your tickets at least a day before the event. Our friends tried to buy the tickets the morning of the event and was not able to do so online. They were also not able to purchase at the wineries since the event is organized by different company. We ended up doing a mixture of the wine trial samplings as well as normal tastings at the 4 wineries. It was great sampling the different wines at each of the wineries and exploring the area with friends!
Unless you go to all 7 wineries and get the Gift, the Bluebonnet Trial tickets are not really worth it. The pricing for tastings at each vineyard is very affordable. The appetizers at most of the vineyards were not impressive — pasta salad, saltine crackers, etc. Only a couple of them put in some effort for the appetizers (Peach Creek had yummy ribs and Saddlehorn had a hotdog bar). Not buying the trial ticket will also provide more flexibility in terms of travel — won’t have to visit all 7 in two weekends.

My friend and I did the harvest trail ⁰⁷⁄₁₈ to ⁰⁷⁄₁₉. We missed the first weekend. We visited all 7 wineries. The food was good at each, but 4 out of 7 served food my friend is allergic to as a snack with the wine. I’ve suggested crackers and cheese as an alternative for people with allergies on future trails. I have to say that peach creek wineries Dr. Pepper ribs were a standout. The wines were nice and it is interesting to taste the variety.
for visiting all 7 wineries we got a very nice prize, picnic stix that will hold a wine bottle and two glasses in the ground. (not sure if this will work in sand.)
We plan to go back out in October for the sausage trail.

Did this in one day with one of my close friends and we had so much fun! What a great way to get out and sight see. I will never ever forget this experience and I learned SO much about wine and port. I am a huge fan of this group that organizes trails!!!

This is a review of the TBWT’s Harvest Trail event which ran over the last two weekends of July this year. The ticketing site lists Retreat Hill Cellars’ address as the address of the event, so I’ve done the same here.
Single tickets were $ 25, while a pair of tickets were $ 45. Your ticket bought you a pair of tastings at ten wineries (with both Retreat Hill locations being included) and a food pairing to go with your tastings. Sometimes there was a variety in the tasting to go with each different wine, while at other times the tasting was general enough to go with both, and once or twice the tasting only went with one of the wines but not the other. The event is split over four days, but we were easily able to make two fully days out of it (while still being able to safely make our way home).
It was a great event to give us an opportunity to revisit some places we liked and to also check out a few new ones like Saddlehorn, who makes a pretty good Barn Red (although it’s apparently made in CA then shipped for sale only in TX), and Texas Star Winery who makes some prickly pear cactus wines and hibiscus wines, rather than using the «traditional» grape. Some of the good food examples included a salsa fresca at the aforementioned Texas Star, scallops and shrimp at one of the Retreal Hill locations and pulled pork sliders at the other, and a «picnic plate» of crackers, bread, cheese, piece of salami, and a couple of spreads at Saddlehorn.
Overall, it was a great experience and was a fun way to spend the weekend. You also received wine charms at each winery and were to receive a special TBWT charm after attending your 8^th winery. Unfortunately many places ran out at the end of both, but will be mailing them out. They were also handing out a map that you could have signed at each winery, but not all places had the map (as we didn’t find out about it until our last stop on the first day) and not all places were on the map either. Seems like they weren’t prepared for the large response the event would get and the extra map idea didn’t seem to be shared universally across wineries – although it really didn’t affect the quality of the event.
In the end, looking forward to trying this again as apparently they do similar events at different times of the year. Hopefully some of the wineries will be changed out with some new ones (if possible) as there were definitely some weak stops along the way.