Big Rock Winery: Feb 16-17
Many of the reviewers of Big Rock Winery on the Harvest Hosts website complained about the difficulty they had finding the place and the terrible road in from the highway. Both our GPS and Google Maps on our phone knew exactly where the winery is and directed us straight to it (are there really travelers who still don’t have this technology?).
And yes, the road in is rough and has some pretty big potholes, but if one obeys the 10 mph speed limit signs (“No Dust!”) and picks one’s ways carefully, the often-clattering contents of the campervan’s cupboards and fridge barely rattle. It’s only about a mile and takes no more than 10 minutes, so I don’t understand what people are on about.
Anyway, the winery itself is quite lovely, an 80-acre, mostly treed property in the midst of scrubby ranchland. The buildings include Rickey and Gail’s house, the winery itself (consisting of tasting and wine-making rooms), a garage/barn, and a couple of lean-tos and sheds. Vehicles include a car, a pick-up, a dump truck, a golf-cart, and a tractor, as far as we could see. There are 10 rows of vines in a field alongside the flat parking area.
When we stopped in front of the house, and I got out of the van, Rickey came out and crossed the lawn to greet me. He’s a short, wiry, bow-legged guy in a cowboy hat and with a gun on his belt, probably in his late 60s or early 70s. His handshake was firm, but all he said was “You can park anywheres over there,” waving his hand in the general direction of the white gravel loop of driveway.
I backed off the drive towards the first row of vines, the windshield facing the winery and out-buildings. I turned on the propane and the water heater, and that was it for setting up. We would be depending on our batteries and solar power for the length of our stay.
I decided to work on the blog for awhile, and Sande read and worked on her diary. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful, except when Rickey drove by on his golf-cart. There was a barely discernable back-drop of quiet country music coming from one of the buildings.
After a bit, we heard Rickey start the tractor, and soon we saw that he had a post-hole digger on the front of it and was struggling to drill a hole in front of one of the sheds. He later told me that the land is about 18 inches of hard packed stone and then a foot-thick layer of solid rock. The post-hole machine kept sliding sideways. Eventually, he either completed the job or gave up: he put the tractor away and disappeared.
Sande fell asleep at some point, and I kept at the writing. It must have been a couple of hours before I finished what I was working on and Sande woke up. I decided we better go over and try some of the wine on offer (it’s part of the Harvest Hosts deal: you are urged to purchase at least some of the Hosts’ products), but Sande wasn’t interested since she was still on antibiotics and couldn’t have alcohol.
With no sign of Rickey (or Gail) around the property, I went and peered in the door of the tasting room, but it was dark and deserted. So I went and knocked on the front door of the house. Gail answered. “Isn’t Rickey out there? I woulda thought he’d be in the winery.” Despite my protest that I could look for him, she insisted on taking me over to find him.
When she yelled, Rickey came out from the wine-making room in the back, and Gail went back to the house. I spent the next hour and a half sampling the product and listening to Rickey’s stories. Most of the wines are too sweet for my taste (the most interesting is a Cabernet infused with chocolate, called Chocolate Rain), but he did have one dry red (quite a tasty Cab called High Plains) and a dry white (Moscato). I bought a bottle of each.
When I got back to the van, Sande said she’d been afraid that I’d been murdered and chopped up for hog feed and was just about to go for help. I got out our folding table and portable grill and barbequed some crab-and-salmon jalapeno burgers for supper, while Sande put together a salad. We finished off the cheesecake for dessert.
The temperature was dropping and there was a strong wind battering the van. It was supposed to go below zero overnight, so we put the furnace on before turning in for the night. We’ve taken to using ear plugs at night; they dull the sound of the furnace coming on, as well as any traffic noise when we’re sleeping at a Walmart.
Neither of us slept really well that night (I was up reading in the front of the camper for an hour or so), and we woke for good before 7. There was no sign of other life around the property. We had a quick breakfast—coffee and cereal, as usual—then packed up and headed out the rough, gravel road.
Our destination that day (Saturday) was another Harvest Host, the Artesian Ranch, northwest of Hamilton. This place is a working ranch, where they breed and raise Akaushi cattle and grow pecans. They offer tours of the ranch, and of course you can buy beef and pecans. We would be parking right near the cattle-loading pens at ranch headquarters.
However, since the ranch was little more than an hour’s drive away from the winery, we decided to take a detour up through Meridian and Glen Rose (which sounded like an interesting town) to Dinosaur Valley State Park, where there are dinosaur tracks in the riverbed rock and an exhibit about dinosaurs at Headquarters. We could then make our way to the ranch by one of several routes.
You’ll hear about that adventure in our next post.
I’m afraid that we have only two photos from Big Rock Winery:
Travels without Pinot 