Posts Tagged ‘Agritourism’

Vintner’s Dinners at Maize Valley, New wines, New food, New friends

Thursday, February 11th, 2010
1st Vintner's Dinner Jan

Welcome Guests

Your seat awaits!

Your seat awaits you!

Never sit with strangers, but leave as friends

Never sit with strangers, but leave as friends

Wines paired with the dinner are boxed and ready to go!

Wines paired with the dinner are boxed and ready to go!

January 21 saw the first of our Vintner’s dinners at Maize Valley for 2010. They are reservation only dinners limited to 40 persons held on the third Thursday of every month. The menu and recipie for each dinner can be found by visiting our website. Reservations can be made by calling or e-mailing us in either case be sure to get a confirmation.

New wines, new food, new friends is how we like to put it for this event series. Our focus is on introducing guests to new wines and pair them with foods we feel are complementary. We hope our guests also meet new friends and enjoy learning more about food and wine along the way.

We try to feature items on the menu we either grow or source as local as possible while still maintaining high standard of quality. During the evening we explain a little about the pairings as well as some of the history surrounding our winery and family farm. Sometimes we just talk about the food other times we might even tell a story about how the Vaughan family has made a living with the land here in Marlboro township since the 1800’s. They have been school teachers, leather tanners, and farmers, you never know what might come to mind.

So please stop on by sometime, sit a spell, but no don’t take your shoes off, this is just a bit higher end than that!

Rounding Third and headed for the home stretch:#farm,#agritourism,

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
What's up Doc?

What's up Doc?

On the way to being Raspberry Wine!

On the way to being Raspberry Wine!

Cabbage Patch

Cabbage Patch

Pa, Pa, Pa....Peppers!

Pa, Pa, Pa....Peppers!

Maters' still going strong!

Maters' still going strong!

Vineyard view

Vineyard view

LaCrescent Vineyard

LaCrescent Vineyard

It has been a very interesting season. Weird weather to say the least. Cool, cloudy & dryish early, wet later, some heat now in Sept.? Yea, whatever we just roll with it and make the best of it and are happy to wake to see another day.

The Ohio Wine and More formal blog has been difficult to keep up as of late. My desktop crashed and was either sick or in the shop for almost three weeks. Then we are dealing with some family health issues as we head into harvest as well so my eye has been off this ball.

Been doing a lot more “Micro-blogging” via face book w/fan pages and such. Really trying to redefine my local marketing efforts etc.

I am also running for school board this fall, an election run during harvest? What was I thinking!!

Today my wife and I are taking a motorcycly ride on my V Strom headed down towards Harrison County Ohio. Cool gravel roads down there, most of them end in the word “Hollow” too! One of those “smell the roses” days if ya get my drift?!

Here are a few crop updates and general farm stuff from grapes to corn mazes.

Haunted Corn/Sorghum Maze getting started for 2009, #Agritourism, #farm

Friday, July 24th, 2009
No-tilling sorghum

No-tilling sorghum

Galen and Tim planting sorghum

Galen and Tim planting sorghum

Back in the day we ran a haunted corn maze attraction. We started it because people asked us and we thought it would be fun to chase people around in the dark with a chain saw over our heads screaming at them till some of them peeeed their pants. Well yes that was fun for a while, then we got older the winery business started taking off and I lost my brother-in-laws help managing it as he was off making wine and taking care of customers. Whatever……

So a few years ago I was up there in the dark by myself and I felt like the whole place was just spinning out of control. People running everywhere, the main maze was getting torn apart, and I was dead tired. It seems it is harder to pull 18-20 hour days when you get older and plus my chain saws were wearing out, or maybe it was me. So we pulled the plug on the haunted business.

Boy did we hear about it the next year. From who you ask??? Church groups, families, Mom and Dads and kids and teens too. You see when I do something I give it my all and do 150% or more and people loved our haunted attraction. I always focused on not just scareing people but entertaining them too. We would have entire families go through our haunted event and the kids came out scared Mom a bit shaken and Dad laughing sometime crying and a time or two even sacred much to his suprise.

So we are reloading the event this season wtih the help from Terry’s Tire Town to help get the word out. Anyhow you can get and up close look at how a John Deere No-Till grain drill works too!

At Maize Valley We Make Great Wine…FUN!!