Last I left off, we had just finished dinner at Brontë Bistro, so I’m resuming my trip recap with Saturday morning…
We got up super-early on Saturday morning to head to the Lexington Center, home of Rupp Arena (where the UK Wildcats play!) and my great-aunt’s store, Old Kentucky Chocolates.
I’m going to wait and do a whole post on the store, but here are a few teasers:
(forgot to take a picture after they had opened for business – the storefront isn’t always dark and closed!)
Mom and I took a couple of truffles for the road…
…and headed to my aunt and uncle’s house in Lawrenceburg. On the way, we saw lots of pretty horse farms…
…and this castle in Versailles, KY that I’ve loved driving past since I was a little girl. I’ve only just now thought to look it up, and the castle is a hotel!
We also passed by the Four Roses Bourbon distillery on the way…
I’ve never been a fan of bourbon, but being half-Kentuckian (and a Kentucky Colonel!), I owe it to myself to complete the Kentucky Bourbon Trail one day.
When we got to my aunt and uncle’s house, he showed us his newest hobby – winemaking!!!
I’m so impressed and amazed! …and thirsty! He’s transformed a corner of his basement into a wine cellar by building these humongous racks:
The full racks are bottles they’ve collected from various places and are color-coded according to varietals.
The empty rack is where his own concoctions will go once bottled. It’ll be awhile before he’ll be able to uncork and enjoy! I’m so impressed and inspired…I want to brew my own beer or make my own wine one day, so this definitely piqued my interest! Along with the new hobby of wine-making, my aunt and uncle have also been doing a lot of wine-tasting lately. There are lots of little wineries in Kentucky, and apparently Kentucky was home to the first commercial winery in the US. Who knew?? Well, we visited one of those wineries on Saturday…
Lover’s Leap Winery was having a lunch and wine-tasting event on Saturday that my uncle got us tickets for!
So…much…food…
In addition to trying 6 wines, we split a bottle between the four of us with lunch. Whooo boy. I’m not usually a fan of Riesling (I shy away from the sweet stuff), but this surprised me!
And the pièce de résistance – an employee taking our party out to the loading dock to show us the ol’ “open the sparkling wine with a sabre” trick. AWESOME!!!!
A good boozy time was had by all.
That night, everyone came together for one last meal out (we had NO home-cooked meals during our trip…for better or worse. I definitely came home feeling puffy, dehydrated, and miserable.). At Outback, I had a chunk of bread and a 10oz Foster’s (apropos, no?)…
…and a chicken caesar salad so chock-full of garlic, it left me breathing fire.
I was appalled at the amount of dressing they serve with it! I did the stab-and-dip method of using my dressing (as opposed to slathering my salad all at once), and it worked well for me!
The next morning, we got up at the ass-crack of dawn and headed home. I’ll leave out the eats because they were pretty boring (soup + salad at Atlanta Bread Company), but here are a few scenic images from the drive home (Mom took all the pictures while I drove, so don’t fuss at me!):
Pretty clear why they’re called the “Blue Ridge” mountains, eh? 
Thanks for reading my crazy-long recaps! I’m going to write a whole post devoted to Old Kentucky Chocolates in the morning, so stay tuned for that!