“Want to go to the Texas Hill Country?” Steve asked me excitedly.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s the Texas wine country about 3 hours Southwest of Dallas.” He said. “We could stay at a beautiful B&B in Fredericksburg.”

“No.” I said.

We’d only been in Texas from Arizona several months and I resented everything. I did not like anything about Dallas and I missed my best girlfriend, longed for my old tennis circles and hated having to leave my volunteer work as a tour guide at a wildlife sanctuary. I know California wines pretty well and I couldn’t fathom that Texas even made wine much less that it would be drinkable.

“Oh, c’mon Beetle, it would be good for you!” my husband said.

“Okay,” I finally said. “I would like to get out of Dallas.”

Dallas reminds me a lot of Los Angeles where I was born so the fresh air, wide-open space and nature of the Hill Country were a welcomed relief. We stayed in a cottage at a place called the Herb Farm, which was charming in a funky way. We saw the entire little town in about an hour, stared in delight for over two hours at hundreds of goats; a quarter of them tiny babies and then looked at each other anxiously wondering what to do with the rest of the day.

“Want to go wine tasting?” Steve asked.

“No.” I said. I knew the wine would be ghastly but I suddenly realized I was being cantankerous. And what else would we do for the rest of the day? “Oh, wait, I meant yes!” I exclaimed, “Yes, let’s go wine tasting in Texas.”

At the first winery we took a sip, hated it but swallowed. For those of you who don’t know, spitting into a spittoon when you are wine tasting is perfectly acceptable. It’s supposed to be tasting, not drinking. Yeah, right. We moved on. At the second winery we bonded with the guy who coached us as he poured wine not to compare Texas wines with California wines. He claimed that in Texas they had no interest in making their wine taste like California wines. No kidding, really? We liked the guy so we tasted several wines, detested them but swallowed. Several hours later after a few more stops we were quite cheerful, having loads of fun and when we got to the sixth winery the wines were starting to taste pretty good! Whada’ya know? We bought three bottles.

A couple weeks later back at home, we opened each bottle one by one, took a little sip, spit it out and poured the rest down the drain.

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