To make a long story short, we went a weekend early, and we made it a triple date, with all of us getting rooms at the Temecula Creek Inn for Saturday night under a romantic weekend promotion that included chocolate covered strawberries in our individual rooms and a multi-course pre-fixe dinner in the hotel's Temet Grill, where we've previously experienced their great breakfast service.
As we made our way out past rain-induced accidents on the freeways, the gray skies made us question our choice of weekends, but then behind us, Julie spotted the biggest, brightest rainbow we have ever seen, bigger and brighter than the ones in Maui or Ireland, and we decided to consider that an omen of good times ahead.
The hotel had also ran a promotion for golfers that weekend, and the rain had scared many of them off, so the property wasn't at all crowded. We were upgraded to their deluxe rooms with terrific views of the golf course and its lake. Actually, besides the big lake, there were a lot of smaller lakes when we arrived, all over the fairways. It surprised me when I learned that in the afternoon, golfers had been out on the course. They apparently have a great drainage system.
Soon both Jay and Katie as well as Mike and Linda arrived, and we were off to tour wineries. After re-visiting the Hart Winery, we headed for the Winery of the Year, South Coast. It's understandable how they won the award. The winery itself is beautiful, with a large tasting room decorated as nice as any tasting room in the Napa Valley. The wines are consistently good, inducing Mike and Linda to purchase a case, and in their usual generous mode, they ended up giving a bottle to each of the other two couples as well as sharing another bottle at dinner. We especially liked the combos like Merlot Rose. The wines were modestly priced compared to other wineries and probably geared less toward wine connoisseurs, which might be why we all liked them.
On a previous trip, you may recall that we had joined the Falkner Winery's Club, and on this day, we decided to enjoy lunch there, taking advantage of our 10% member's discount. We didn't use the half price wine discount for club members, preferring to sip water with our late lunch. The Pinnacle had a great menu that, while not cheap, is reasonably priced. The large, open floor plan surrounded by windows takes advantage of the hilltop views of Temecula Wine Country, and it's spacious interior is casually elegant.
We all enjoyed our lunches. I would recommend the Coastal Cobb Salad with roasted chicken that I had, and I think everyone else would recommend theirs too. Mike had the Lobster Mac & Cheese, which is sort of the Pinnacle's signature dish, and he said it was great with big chunks of lobster.
Of course, we returned to our club winery for a few free samples, including the famous Hot Lips, and then headed to Mount Palomar, where we have also been on previous trips, to chat by their outdoor fire ring. I thought we were heading home from there, but in response to Linda's lament of only having been to one new winery, we stopped at another we had never visited: Thornton. (insert doom sounding music here)
They have an odd system, at least at the time we went, where they sat us at a linen clothed dinner table and served flights of four wines at once as a tasting. After protesting that we really didn't feel right taking up one of their dinner tables, we sat down and ordered two flights between the six of us. Service turned out to be extremely slow, taking fifteen minutes to bring out the wine, which was somewhat irritating since we had told the waitress we had dinner reservations at our hotel.
The waitress never smiled and acted in all ways like we were a major inconvenience. The flight of sweet wines wasn't too bad according to Jay and Katie, but Linda's flight of red and white had three marginal wines and one that literally smelled and tasted like turpentine. It was nasty, and Linda wrote a note saying so.
The waitress was nowhere to be found to bring us our bill, but when we left money on the table to pay the bill, including a totally unwarranted generous tip for the lousy service, she appeared from nowhere to head us off like we were high schoolers skipping out on a bill. While perhaps we just went on the wrong day, there's no point in risking this kind of terrible experience when there are so many great wineries in the area. We won't be back.
Dinner turned out to be okay but certainly not worth the $60 per person at which it was valued. The mashed potatoes had so much horseradish in them that most of us left them on our plates, which if you know this group is really saying something. The appetizer and choice of soup or salad were good if not great. The meal came with both salmon and steak, and the steak was terrific. The salmon was okay. The creme brulee desert was reportedly good, but I was too full to have any.
A hot tub dip preceded a good night's sleep. Julie and I took a walk around the property in the morning, but with that being Super Bowl Sunday, we all checked out before noon to head to the next part of a great weekend.
What are you doing for Valentine's Day? My buddy Nick knows how to do it right. He's taking his sweetie on a Western Caribbean cruise aboard Voyager of the Seas. It may be too late to make plans for a Valentine's Day cruise this year, but what about next year?
