Indy: Wine & Brews

Fortunately, I was lucky enough to get away to Indianapolis this past weekend to catch up with several of my closest girlfriends from college!  Yay for a well deserved girls weekend!

After grabbing a bite to eat, we spent Saturday afternoon enjoying Easley Winery and Sun King Brewery.  They're both on N. College Avenue, literally right across the street from each other.

At Easley Winery, it was $5 for a ten minute tour and a tasting of seven wines.  Everyone was extremely friendly; they had no problem recommending restaurants for us to do lunch at & mapping out the area too.  Our guide was knowledgeable, interesting, and easy going.  He didn't even mind taking several group pictures (pretty crucial when a group of sorority girls get together, right?!)  Tasting wise, rather than choosing the seven wines you'd like to taste most, Easley divides their wines by "barrels" pairing two per barrel and you chose which wine from that "barrel" you'd like to try when the employee comes by.  I'm not a huge fan of dry wines, so naturally I was more drawn to the sweet wines.  I liked the Sweet Barrel Red and the Reggae Red was a big favorite among all five of us!  We walked away with several bottles.

Across the street at Sun King Brewery, we walked in, showed our IDs, and were handed three tickets for house beer samples and three lids for the seasonal beer samples.  It was pretty packed and had a laid back, awesome atmosphere.  We were able to sample Sunlight Cream Ale, Wee Mac Scottish Ale, Osiris Pale Ale (all house beers;) and Bitter Druid ESB, Foxy Jam Pants, and Batch 888 (all seasonal beers.)  The six beer samples cover a variety of tastes from light, to medium, very hoppy, and even a seasonal ginger beer.  I liked several of them and actually ended up buying a 32oz flip top growler and the Batch 888.  It was super reasonably priced - just over $12 for both the growler and the beer!

All in all, we had a fabulous time.  You should definitely put these on your to-visit list!