Our Visit To Door Peninsula Winery In Door County Wisconsin
By Doreen Ruplinger, Mon Dec 26th

If you like wine, stop at the Door Peninsula Winery inCarlsville, Wisconsin the next time you get to Door County. Thewinery is north of Sturgeon Bay on Hwy 42. It is located in anold schoolhouse.

My husband, one of my grown sons, and myself stopped thereduring a recent trip to Door County. The evening before we haddined at Shipwrecked in Egg Harbor, Wisconsin (also in DoorCounty), and had been given a coupon for a free tour of thewinery and free tasting. It seemed like too good of a dealto pass up.

Even if you don't have a coupon for the tour, it's a bargain at$2 for each adult. And if you're not interested in the tour butjust in the tasting, the tasting is free to anyone 21years of age or older.

We decided to take the tour and then taste some of the wines.The tour started in the front of the schoolhouse where our guidetold us the building had been used as a schoolhouse for 100years, from 1868 to 1968. At one point in time, the school had60 students in 8 grades with only 2 teachers. The building waspurchased and turned into a winery in 1974.

After being given some history on the building, we were taken tothe basement of the building, which is where the is made.We saw how the was bottled, the vats it is made in, alongwith the barrels it is stored in for aging. Along the way welearned how the fruit juice the winery uses gets turned intowine. Then we headed back upstairs to the bar to starttasting the wines.

With over 50 wines being produced by the winery, it wasdifficult deciding which ones to try but we managed. The wineryproduces quite a few fruit wines from apple to blackberry toplum to cranberry to peach to strawberry, along with theirsignature cherry which is made with Door County cherries.The fruits for some of the other wines come from other places,such as California, but all the is made at the Door Countyfacility.

The top selling wines at the Door County winery are theStrawberry Zinfandel, Blackberry Merlot, and Razzle DazzleRaspberry. Our favorites were the Blackberry, Cranberry, andSparkling Razzle Dazzle Raspberry. Other wines we liked includedthe Port Reserve, a sweet desert wine; Sweet Cherry, a sweetwine; White Christmas, one of the winery's holiday wines; theWhite Zinfandel,



one of the winery's signature series wines; andCranbernet, a made with a combination of cranberry andgrape juices.

The winery also offers several non-wine products includingcherry juice, sparkling juices, jellies, gourmet mustards,and Door Peninsula Cheese Spread which we thought was sogood that we bought two containers to take home.

The large shopping area in the winery also has hundreds of otheritems for sale including glasses, racks, gourmetfoods, gift baskets, and butlers.

In addition to taking home some of the winery's cheese spread;we bought a mixed case of to take with us. And we didn'tbreak the bank buying the wine. The wines at the winery are agood value. The wines start at around $8 for the fruit wines toa little under $30 for some of the winery's signature serieswines.

We enjoyed the couple of hours we spent at the Door PeninsulaWinery. It was a fun way to spend part of our afternoon duringour trip to Door County. During our next trip we plan to visitsome of the other wineries in Door County to see what they haveto offer (http://www.doorcountycountry.com/shop/doorcountywine).

About the author:Dorrie Ruplinger is a featured writer for http://www.doorcountycountry.com. Visit the site for info on Door County WI, DoorCounty wine, & Door County wineries.