Summerside Vineyards' Harvest Party

I'm back! I wont bore you with excuses of my absence- I just hope you'll keep reading! Forgive me, pretty please.

This past weekend we celebrated my lovely mother's birthday:

(She'll kill me if she sees this!)

It just so happened that Summerside Vineyards' 10th annual harvest party fell on the same weekend offering the perfect opportunity to celebrate with family and enjoy some of my mother's favorite things: wine, jazz, and the outdoors.

Summerside is about an hour northeast of Tulsa on Historic Route 66 and, with over two dozen types of wine, mead and juice it was quite the popular place to be, even early on a Saturday. We were greeted with live music, breakfast treats and a delicious glass fo grape juice before learning more about the winemaking process. For instance, only red wines are fermented with the skins left in the juice, port will be the only thing you find in the winery's oak barrels and all the wines get filtered through increasingly fine filters until even bacteria cannot pass through. And thanks to my mother's battery of questions, we learned a lot more! I'm not convinced she's not going to start a botteling operation in the basement.

Next it was time for grape picking- my favorite part of the day. All 60+ guests caravanned to a small vineyard minutes from the winery and in the beautiful 80 degree weather we began the hunt for The Big Kahuna- the largest bunch of grapes.

Even though the crop was down this year by 75%, it was still beautiful and serene and there were plenty of bunches to keep me entertained. You just had to peek your head up under the vines and there you'd find gorgeous clusters begging to be picked.

At one point, my aunt and I were tied for the lead for The Big Kahuna. We managed to find a six ounce cluster each but were beat by a six-to-seven-ouncer. So close! Even though we didn't walk away with the title we did taste the freshest grapes of our lives and gather a fair amount of fruit. There's always next year...

Aren't they gorgeous? They're like jewels!

The fun didn't stop there! Next it was time to get dirty and do something we had only seen in the movies- stomp grapes!

Even though it was just a few stomps, it felt satisfying to see the rich, purple juice stain your feet. And as a cute memento, we got to leave our footprints on a souvenir T-shirt- clever!

Over a tasty brunch, we were serenaded by Tulsa's own Rebecca Ungerman with sultry jazz tunes and entertained with her witty banter- what a darling woman! And the cherry on top that made my mom's birthday perfect- my cousin, a former student of Rebecca, got to sing a number.

Be sure to look for Summerside's wine the next time you're out or if your looking for a close getaway, dine at their bistro and do some wine tasting- the blackberry wine in beyond amazing! Also delicious that I sampled: raspberry wine, hard apple cider, Beautiful, and their pinot grigio.

Summerside Vineyards

Address: 441251 E. Historic Route 66
                Vinita, Oklahoma 74301
Phone:     888-508-9463