Nashoba Valley Wine Tour and Bed & Breakfast – Bolton, Massachusetts

Nashoba Valley Wine Tour and the Charlotte’s House

Bolton, Massachusetts

Up in a hilltop orchard in the charming town of Bolton, Massachusetts, The Nashoba Valley Winery is producing the most superior fruit wines and exquisite foods since 1978. Here’s a brief overview of this fantastic winery that makes them worthy of over 100 national and international medals and perfect destination for your next vacation. Every Saturday and Sunday of the year join the tour-guides and discover the process for making their highly-acclaimed fruit wines, brandies and distillates. The one-hour tour includes a tasting of four selected wines plus two additional standard wines and then receive a commemorative wine glass to take home. As book your wine tour, don’t forget to make the dinner reservation at the carefully restored rustic farmhouse now called J’s Restaurant. Mix up the vacation the next day to check out some of the finest distilled spirits and crafted beers made from the freshest ingredients. If you and your loved one really enjoy everything, Nashoba Valley Winery hosts a stressless and elegant wedding day.

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Caramelized Onion & Goat Cheese Tart Recipe from The Gateways Inn

Inn at Thorn Hill’s Tour of Italy

The Tour of Italy Friday Event on May 2nd at the Inn at Thorn Hill will start its wine weekend with a strolling feast of Italian foods and sixteen carefully selected Italian Wines. The event starts at 7:00pm in our lounge and costs $75 per person. The menu follows:

Come and join us for fun, food and wine and look for our Saturday night wine dinner menu to follow. Call us at 1-800-289-8990 or email us stay@innatthornhill.com

Innkeeping comes with surprises

As soon as Jim and Ibby Cooper crossed the covered bridge to Jackson, New Hampshire, and saw the Inn at Thorn Hill, they knew they wanted to buy it. Hospitality is in Jim’s blood, being from a family in the business and working for 20 years for various hotels. Ibby was a teacher whose skills would be applied to training staff and developing programs.

Yet there were surprises to come. the Coopers had three children in college and one in seventh grade when they bought the inn, and shortly after, Ibby became pregnant with their fifth. Their new son was popular with their guests, as Ibby waited tables with him on her back.

“I thought I could do this for five years,” Ibby says, “but it’s now been 16 years. New England was an adjustment, as we’d lived before where it was warmer. But we’ve learned to enjoy the four seasons.”

An even bigger surprise occurred on October 13, 2002, when a fire destroyed the inn. All guests and staff were safe and sound, but the Coopers faced a decision, whether to walk away or rebuild. They chose to build a new inn like the original but with a long-range vision for growth.

Now the main building at the Inn at Thorn Hill and Spa has 16 guests rooms (up from 12), an award-winning restaurant, a wine cellar, a cooperage, and a spa with exercise room and dry sauna. After more than a year, the inn reopened on December 22, 2003 to welcome new and previous guests.

Jim and Ibby see their warm and attentive hospitality, which they instill in their staff, as key to the fact that 35 percent of their guests have been there before. “They come back to try different rooms, new menu items, and the various seasons here,” Jim explains.

The Coopers were among the three inns in northern New England that founded DINE. The group encouraged Europeans with their long vacations to come to the U.S. and stay at all three inns. The DINE idea grew, and now guests (like you) from anywhere in the world can plan a vacation with stays at Distinctive Inns throughout New England.

Inn at Thorn Hill Wine Weekend

The Inn at Thorn Hill, the White Mountains only four diamond inn and restaurant is hosting its first wine weekend. The Inn has had a series of wine dinners for the last 11 years and is adding a weekend long celebration of food and wine for the weekend of May 5th & 6th. It will feature a reception and wine tasting on Friday night, wine appreciation class on Saturday and a gala wine dinner and pairing of Beaulieu Vineyards wines on Saturday night. The price for this event is From $458 to $658 for the wine events, and lodging. Check our website for availabilty and and price. www.innatthornhill.com is the address and the toll free telephone is 800-289-8990. Space is limited.

Windham Hill Wine Series Announced

Windham Hill Wine Series-2006

Spring is just around the corner at the end of our country road-a time for renewal after a winter of contemplation on the quiet snowy days-plenty of time to cook up the best Windham Hill Wine Series yet!!

Following the continued success of the wine dinner series in 2005, an expansion is in the works for 2006, with an added twist. One of the consistent questions I get at each wine dinner is “where can we get these marvelous wines??” More often than not, the answer has been that the wines are not readily available on a retail basis, which I know is not the answer you want. So…enter the Collectors Edition Dinners, two dinners over the course of the Windham Hill Wine Series designed to showcase wines that are available through Amory Consultants. These dinners will be held in the early summer and late fall and are designed to let you stock your cellar for summer and winter!!! Daphne Amory has a growing clientele in the area and is able to source most any wines that I get here at the Inn.

As always, Jenn Cayer and her wonderful kitchen staff create each wine dinner menu to complement and showcase the wines on offer and the wonderful organic ingredients we purchase and grow here for your pleasure and healthy enjoyment! The menus are created in the few weeks before each dinner in order to pair wines and locally available produce, meats, game and seasonal seafood-the result is always a feast for the senses in a convivial and relaxed setting.

This year Jenn will have a broad canvas at her disposal given the range of wines and the areas of the world where they are grown. Spring freshness and light will eventually meet the brooding warmth of winter’s slow food, in each case complemented by and enhanced by the expression of the grape and the terroir of its origin…..but I digress!

Menus will be posted at www.windhamhill.com a few weeks before the dinners. Join our mailing list and get email notice. These emails sometimes contain lodging discounts in conjunction with off peak season dinners, so sign up to receive these offers at windham@sover.net.

Our first dinner of the year will be held on Thursday March 30th at 6:30pm and will feature the astounding wines from Domaine Weinbach in Alsace. This is the second time we have focused on these fantastic white wines with Sheilah McGovern Reynolds of Vineyard Brands. Jenn Cayer and her team have fashioned a superb combination of flavors to complement and highlight the qualities of each varietal and stylistic impressions of the daughters Faller, the winemakers at this ancient family run estate. A full menu follows, and remember to check out our Midweek Reality Break Special for lodging.
Sante’!!