Wine-ing Around the Botanical Gardens

Does it get any better than gorgeous flowers, a great date night with your fiancé, a big kid playground, and all the wine you could want to taste?

Um, no, no it doesn't.

Patrick, my parents, and I all ventured over to the Botanical Gardens at Riverbanks Zoo last Friday for their annual wine tasting event. It's an event that my parents have been to quite a few times but Patrick and I were the rookies this year.

If you've been to Brew at the Zoo before... well, the wine tasting isn't anything like that. At Brew, the name of the game is get to all of the beers as fast as possible to avoid lines/sample everything available. Wine tasting is a much more slower paced event.



Kind of. We were still zooming all over the place because there was so much to see and do! The best part of the night {for me} was that the new Waterfall Junction was open for the Wine Tasting. Y'all. The five year old in me was extremely happy.

How happy?

Happy enough to chow down on a BBQ sandwich later in the evening while sitting on the floor of a tunnel meant for a small child.

We did try a good bit of the food while we were there. I heard that the shrimp & grits were a big hit {these two + my dad loved them}:



Personally, I was all about the pimento cheese at Liberty's station.



There were SO MANY wine stations at this event! There was probably close to two dozen stations with four wines at each to try, and I bet that we didn't even get around to half of the stations during the two hours that we were there.



The wine that we did end up trying was all fantastic. We had red wine, white wine, champagne, etc. However, there was one that I loved more than any of the others and it completely caught me by surprise. I requested prosecco at one station but was distracted when the server poured my sample. I walked away, had a sip, and immediately had to go back for more of whatever this deliciousness was in my glass.



Turns out that it wasn't prosecco but it was a sparkling rosé instead. I now officially see what all the fuss is about rosé - it was so good. And I'm going to need to find a bottle of this sparkling rosé sometime in my near future.



Surprisingly, there was also a craft beer tasting area which Patrick LOVED. They had a good little selection of beers there including some SC favorites {Holy City Brewing} and we made sure to stop by this area a few times. We wanted to make sure it stayed busy so that they offer it again at the next wine tasting because it was such a perfect addition to the night.

We came, we saw, we sipped. We will hopefully be back at this event in the future!