There’s no better time to go camping in Wisconsin than in the fall. There’s no better time to drink wine than… well, whenever. But camping and wine together in the fall is a great combination!
We ventured to Potawatomi State Park for our Door County camping and winery tour adventure. We had done the camping, hiking, fishing, 100% outdoors weekends throughout the summer, so with this camping trip we were looking to enjoy the fall weekend in a different way.
After the usual camp setup was complete and extreme measures were taken to ward off the angry hordes of mosquitoes (thank you, Off! and Thermacell), we were settled in and relaxed in our home base. We spent the evening around the campfire enjoying dinner and s’mores.
Saturday was our day to venture out on our tour of Door County wineries. After breakfast we packed up our gear for the day: the snacks. Here’s what we included in our travel cooler:
- Crackers
- Cheese (we picked up some standard and fancier varieties)
- Summer sausage
- Pickles
- Pretzels
- Bottled Water
We crammed into the car and set out with our map and our list and drove north to Fish Creek for our first stop of the day.
Lautenbach’s Orchard Country Winery & Market | Fish creek, WI
Lautenbach’s Orchard Country Winery & Market included a cute shop with lots of fun wine themed items and local snacks and food items. We sampled and purchased the cherry salsa that we can’t wait to enjoy! They have a tasting area where we did a complimentary wine tasting. You can’t beat that!
Snack Break #1
Lautenbach’s had a small picnic area outside on the lawn, so we took advantage of this for our first round of snacks. The wine expert among our friends introduced us to the winery-snacks-repeat method for winery touring, and I don’t think we’ll ever do it any other way!
Stone’s Throw | Baileys harbor, WI
I was instantly intrigued by the cute, unique architecture of the building when we pulled in. We headed straight for the wine tasting room, which was a neatly decorated wine cellar theme. Cute building. Neat wine cellar themed tasting room. We enjoyed 5 tastings of signature wines for $8. My personal favorite was the brandy-infused Salute!
Snack Break #2
As we left the winery, we walked past Bocce, where they serve oak barrel fired pizza. This looked and smelled delicious. I was tempted to grab a slice, but instead we had a quick second round of snacks in the car before continuing the journey.
Harbor Ridge Winery | Egg Harbor, WI
Harbor Ridge Winery is “solving the world’s problems one sip at a time.” Believe me, I had no problems here. I was a returning visitor to Harbor Ridge, and it didn’t disappoint. We went to the tasting area and enjoyed 6 tastings for $4.
My tasting system resulted in four smiley faces on my tasting menu, not including the giant grin on my own face after the additional taste of Chocovine. We purchased a bottle of the chocolate whipped cream flavor with the intention to enjoy this with our weekend coffee!
Snack Break #3
After the wine tasting and purchasing, Harbor Ridge Winery had our third snack break covered. We walked next door to a small cheese shop where we had a few cheese samples. We went for the four varieties they had prepared for samples, but they were willing to give a sample of whatever we wanted to try from their menu.
Door Peninsula Winery | sturgeon bay, WI
Our last winery for the day was Door Peninsula Winery, which I’ve visited on several occasions. I’ve enjoyed it every time, and this time was no exception. To change things up a bit, we started in the distillery bar area. In a past visit, we learned that we’re not ones that enjoy sipping hard liquor, so we felt obligated to make up for this previous distillery flight experience. We returned older and wiser this time and ordered specialty cocktails instead.
There was no need for snacks this time because Door Peninsula has a market area where we sampled various balsamic vinegars, olive oils, fudge, and more.
We then enjoyed the complimentary tasting of 7 wines and left with a bottle of our trip favorite Chaos Red!
This ended our adventure and from here we set off in search of ice cream, firewood and a campfire dinner. We didn’t make it to all of the wineries on our list, so that means we’ll be making another camping and wine trip again soon!
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