To save on expenses, we decided on a weekday trip. Less expensive room costs, great coupon offers on wineries and less people at the vineyards. If you search, "Temecula Winery Coupons" in your Google search, you'll find a wide variety of coupons for the wineries. Most of them are only valid on weekdays so traveling during a weekday is going to be more cost effective. There are over 30 wineries in Temecula, so it's best to pick a few you'd like to visit and find the coupon offers for those.
A tool we used while on our mini-vacay was Yelp. This is a great app to have on your phone because you get to see fellow travelers reviews and their pictures. They are not getting paid for posting and you know that you are going to see it all: the good, the bad and the ugly. This was a good resource for us because we were able to pair the coupons with the reviews to see if in fact we really wanted to visit that winery. For example: Callaway Winery had a 2 for 1 Wine Tasting coupon, the Yelp app had a cumulative 3.5 stars and the pictures that others had posted were beautiful. Based on all of that info, we decided we'd visit that winery. And we were glad we did. The bartenders were very knowledgeable, the views were spectacular and the wine was delicious!
After we'd had our fill at Callaway, we made our way into Old Town Temecula. We had another coupon for a 2 for 1 wine tasting at Lorimar Loft. It's not the vineyard, but more like a tasting room in Old Town. Very cute and cozy. I had fun having my tastings in that space. I may have had a little too much wine in me at that point, but it was a very nice and relaxing spot. Take note that some of the coupons are only valid for a specific time frame. The Lorimar coupon was only valid from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. We were in a little bit of a rush to make it on time! Also, if you don't have a coupon, sometimes if you "Check In" with Yelp, you get a discount that way too. Lorimar was giving $5 off of your tasting with a check in.
The next day we visited two more wineries. The first was Wilson Creek Winery and Vineyards, Home of the Famous Almond Champagne. This was probably the most gorgeous and most popular winery of the four that we visited that day. For a Wednesday, it was pretty busy. I could only imagine how packed it got on the weekends. They had my favorite kinds of wines here: the sparkling ones. They were all so heavenly. I'm already a huge fan of the Almond Champagne, it was nice to know that there are other sparkling wines I could be purchasing. Note: if you do not know what to choose from while at the wineries, no problem! Just let the bartenders know what you like, and they'll help you to choose your tastings and what order you should taste them in. I found this to be very helpful!
Our last stop of the trip was Wiens Family Cellars. It was very tranquil here, not a lot of traffic like there was at Wilson Creek. It was perfect for ending out the trip. I really liked the artwork on one of the bottles at Wiens and when I asked the woman if I could have the empty bottle, she kindly wrapped it up for me to take home. The grounds at Wiens were lovely and there were spots for picnics here as well. The time seemed to fly by in Temecula, I wish that it didn't have to come to an end.
