Tag: Wine

Lazy Girl Raspberry Rosé Lemonade

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Raspberry Rose Lemonade 3

Earlier this month, I celebrated a bachelorette weekend for one of my closest girlfriends. This was super exciting for me, since she’s one of the first of my friends to be tying the knot! Besides killer décor and entertainment, one of the necessities for a successful bachelorette is of course beverages – and I quickly went on the hunt to find the perfect girly (and fruity!) drink to cheers to the occasion.

A sweet, easy-drinking rosé seemed like a no-brainer, but I wanted to step it up a notch and decided to create an easy rosé lemonade. For a weekend-long event like the one we had, sipping on something light during the day definitely helps to keep energy levels up (especially for shimmying the night away!). This drink is perfect for summer, not to mention it looks super pretty!

Ingredients:

  • One (750 mL) bottle of XOXO Rosé
  • 1 cup raspberry lemonade
  • 1 cup club soda
  • Fresh raspberries
  • Lemon slices to garnish

When I say this is a lazy girl’s recipe, I mean it – this is basically a “throw things in a pitcher and call it a day” kind of drink, and I’m all for it! To make the raspberry rosé lemonade, I simply combined a bottle of XOXO Rosé, a cup of raspberry lemonade I picked up from grocery store, and a cup of club soda to balance the sweetness and add some bubbles. To enhance the raspberry flavour, I topped it with fresh raspberries and then cut thin rounds of lemon for a cute garnish.

I chilled the wine, lemonade and soda beforehand, so I decided not to include ice, but you can easily include crushed ice if that’s what you prefer! If you want to avoid diluting the drink, you can use frozen raspberries as a way to add flavour while also keeping it cold. For extra fizz, you can also opt to top your lemonade with the soda instead of mixing it in.

Raspberry Rose Lemonade 2

Raspberry Rose Lemonade 4

Raspberry Rose Lemonade

Here’s a little peek at the décor we had at the bachelorette!

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Raspberry Rose Lemonade 6

Thank you to XOXO Wines for providing all of the beverages for the weekend’s festivities! What’s your favourite drink for the summer? Share your favourite recipe with me in the comments below!

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Wine Tour in Niagara-on-the-Lake

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Anyone who knows me knows I love a good Groupon – I think it’s a fun way to try new things, especially with a group of friends. So when I saw an offer a few weeks ago for a summer/fall wine tour in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I had to snap it up! Having lived just an hour outside Niagara all my life, I’ve never actually had a chance to visit a local winery and was excited to see what was in store.

Advertised as a 6-hour guided tour, including visits to four award-winning wineries in Niagara, the trip included transportation (basically a wine tour party bus) and complimentary samples at each winery. Our tour guide was extremely passionate about his job and I definitely picked up some fun facts throughout the day:

  • Match the weight of your food to the weight of your wine (e.g. a light salad would pair well with a lighter wine)
  • Roses are often planted near the edge of the vineyard to help the growers know when the vines are prone to insect attacks
  • As white wine ages, it’s colour will become darker, while red wine will become lighter in colour with age
  • After sampling all the wines, there’s no doubt about it – I’m a white wine kind of gal!

While I’m no connoisseur (and the day got fuzzier with each winery we visited), this tour helped introduce me to a lot of different kinds of wine I hadn’t previously tried. Here’s a list of the wineries we visited:

Marynissen Estates Winery

This was our first stop and was fairly quick. Each winery offered a white, a red, and an ice wine sampling. I learned early on that I’m never going to be a huge fan of red wine!

Caroline Cellars

This was my favourite stop on the tour, and also where our group stopped for lunch. A family owned winery with a cute café in their main building, they had a great menu to choose from. I ordered the cheese plate, which came with a yummy red wine jelly.

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Lailey Winery

Lailey was a smaller winery and also included a guided tour from one of their staff. This was definitely one of the “snootier” wineries – we spent a lot of our tasting sniffing, swirling and slurping our wine.

Diamond Estates Winery

This was our last stop and the largest winery we visited. It didn’t have the same charm as some of the other smaller wineries, but had a large selection of wines to choose from, including a red ice wine.

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If you live in the area and want to try your own wine tour, the company my friends and I used was Niagara Fun Tours. Whether you choose to do a tour or not, I totally recommend visiting Niagara-on-the-Lake if you have the chance – it’s beautiful!