Days of Wine and Roses Festival at the Green Creek Winery

by Carole Carter

We met at CVS on Saturday April 14th for the drive to the Days of Wine and Roses Festival. Starting out were Gene and Carole Carter, Denny Taylor, Mark Farver with his son Matthew, and Steve Miller with Toni Tocco. We set off on what should have been a beautiful apple blossom drive. The damage from the Easter freeze was apparent, but the countryside is still pretty and twisty roads are always fun. We stopped at Ingles in Lake Lure as planned to find that Neal and Sharon Weinmann’s Mini had caught the group on Hwy 9. We waited for Southeastern British Motorcar Owners Club to get to their meeting point and then continued the drive, picking up their five cars along Hwy 9.

Arriving at the Green Creek Winery, the ten of us parked in the designated area on a small hill overlooking the festival. We didn’t have time to turn off the engines before people were coming up to see the show. We had lots of conversations with the other participants and festival goers. As the day went on, more British cars arrived and were waved in to join us, including a member of Foothills British Car Club and our own David Snider. And the weather held out the entire day!! It even broke into sun for a while. Everyone shed their coats, got out the folding chairs and enjoyed the live music, barbeque and hand crafted items for sale. Ashdown Roses gave away long stemmed roses in variegated colors, just beautiful. And the Winery sold out of its new Chardonnay Russo. Quite a few of us contributed to the sell out!

All in all, a great day, weather cooperated and we got to catch up with friends we might not see very often from other clubs. The publicity worked, and we may have a new member with an Austin Healey from Hendersonville. We handed out a few cards to more people as well, and hope our membership will grow as a result of this event. If you missed this one, don’t miss the next one!!!