Wine With Strangers, Blue Danube Wine

This past weekend i got to have a delicious picnic with Croatian wine and a couple of amazing, awesome travel bloggers in my area; Dianna from DTravelsRound  and Abby from Daydream Away over some delicious red Croatian wine provided ever so graciously by Blue Danube Wine importers out of San Francisco.

croatian wine on picnic blanket, wine picnic

I woke up on the planed picnic day to drizzle with interminglings of light showers.  It’s the desert. Of course its going to rain on picnic day…but was a little moisture going to stop us?  HELL NO when Croatian wine is involved!

So we packed up food and wine and drove up to the mountain (which is gorgeous by the way.  I had no idea there was an actual pine forest 20 minutes north of Vegas!).

After our first attempt at a picnic area (which was thwarted by some young guy on a golf cart who announced it was $42 to use that picnic table cause its an RV area. Seriously? After driving an enormous vehicle that uses 10 gallons per mile you are expected to pay that much to ‘park’? I don’t get the RV’ing world!), we coerced info that there is a free picnic area up the hill.

fancy picnic, wine picnic

We drove up mountain to the free parking area and walked across the street and UP HILL towards the picnic table areas.  After UPHILL past 3 or 4 used tables, we decided it would be much lovelier to picnic on the ground, on the side of the road/walkway, between 2 trees.

Ok so we are lazy and didn’t feel like walking uphill anymore….there’s no time for exercise when we have Croatian wine for us.

pouring wine, woman pouring wine, goingnomadic

We laid out the blanket and spread, opened an amazingly dry, spicy, full-bodied red wine; that went amazingly with the figs and salami, and had a picnic, on the ground, in the road, with real wine glasses, which of course had everyone staring.

Because who brings wine glasses to a picnic?

Oh yea..WE DO!

Also, that all 3 bottles I had were out too didn’t help.  We only drank one before the rain picked up and we got soaked walking back to the car, but 3 girls, 3 bottles of wine, 3 wine glasses and no umbrella or rain jackets does make for a pretty interesting site.

Abby tegnelia, the jungle princess, picnic, rainy picnic

Ok, I lied. We drank half the red. Packed up, all wet, and walked back to the car, in the rain, still carrying our glasses of red, rain watered, wine.  After we drove down the street to a lookout point that had an amazing view of the clouds rolling in over and around the mountains.  So we continued the picnic there, finished the bottle, and sadly drove back into Vegas to end our lovely rain filled, red wine, food paired, picnic with strangers!

clouds over mountains, mount charleston, las vegas, wilderness, forest

(I was not drunk at all by the way. One bottle between 3 people over a couple hours is not a lot.  I was not even a little buzzed, so don’t go around thinking I’m promoting drinking and driving by any means! Driving intoxicated is NOT COOL EVER! )

storm around mountains, nature, wilderness, las vegas, mount charleston

Now that I’ve gotten my PSA over with, the fact that our picnic got rained out earlier than we wanted was not all sad because…

The 3 of us decided before we parted that SINCE there are still 2 bottles of wine, and SINCE our picnic did get cut short, we are going to have another Croatian wine picnic next week!  (but maybe on one of our living room floors or something).

Thank you Blue Danube Wines and Wines of Croatia for helping bring together what turned out to be an amazing day  for food and friend making and plans for even more!

And cant wait till our next Croatian wine party D and Abby!D, Abby, & Dani - picnic in the rain stylin

 

CHEERS!

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This is the wine that we drank on our picnic: