80 cases of wine waiting to be opened at this weekends Grand Tasting at the Killington Wine Festival 

The tent is pitched, the wine is delivered, guests are in route to Killington.... as I write this we are 2 hours away from the start of the 10 Annual Killington Wine Festival.

The festival kicks off this evening at the Killington Grand Hotel with an Estate Tasting of Fine Wines in Ovations Restaurant. The Estate Tasting runs from 6 to 8PM. It is followed by a "Pop Goes the Cork" party at the Killington Grand, beginning at 7:30 PM tonight.

At the K1 Base Lodge, final preparations have been made to host the Grand Tasting on Saturday afternoon. 80 cases of wine have been delivered for sampling. Tables have been set up under the tent. The Grand Tasting is open to the public at 12 noon with VIP tickets priced at $75 at the gate. General Admission begins at 1 PM with tickets available at the gate for $55. The Grand Tasting ends at 4 PM.

At the Grand Tasting, musical guest Sean Kelly from the Samples will be performing 2 sets. The first will start at 2:00 PM. The second will begin roughly at 4:00 PM.

If you are attending tomorrows Grand Tasting at K1, dress for comfort and , as they say, where sensible shoes. It should be a great afternoon of wine tasting and music at the base of Killington.

And last, but not least, at the Birch Ridge Inn Chef Frizzie is busy putting on the finishing touches on his "mise en place" to prepare for tomorrow nights wine dinner at the inn with Boyden Valley Winery. We have a great menu in place...I'm getting hungry (really a little thirsty) already!

Stay cool and "In Vino Veritas"

10th Annual Killington Wine Festival this weekend. 

All the planning work is done. The tent is up. The wine is being delivered tomorrow....lots of wine....cases and cases of wine....Chef Frizzie is putting the finishing touches on our wine tasting menu for our Wine Dinner with Boyden Valley Winery on Saturday night. (See our menu online for full details.) And Mother Nature looks like she is going to cooperate with warm temperatures, bright sunshine, and brilliant views of the mountains that make up Killington.

For the last few years I have lead the planning efforts at the Killington Chamber of Commerce to produce the Killington Wine Festival. We are now in our 10th year. (It's really hard to believe...10 years!) This year we have 42 different wineries and wine importers visiting Killington over the weekend to sample their wares.

While there are a lot of tasks that make up an event which hundreds of people attend, today was a milestone that had to be completed without a hitch....the raising of a huge tent (actually a series of tents) which will house the event at the base of Killington by the K1 Base Lodge. Here are a few pictures of the tent after it was raised:

The tent at the K1 Base Lodge to house this years Killington Wine Festival Click image to stop rotation. Click again to resume rotation.

The tent itself is actually 5 tents married together to cover 9600 square feet of space. When it is totally outfitted, it will hold 72 tables ranging from the obvious (wine from the various suppliers) to the sublime (water for hundreds of people).

If you are interested in attending the Wine Festival, tickets are still available through the Killington Chamber of Commerce either online or by calling 800-337-1928. At the inn, we still have a couple of rooms left which are available with our Killington Wine Festival Package which includes festival tickets and seats at the wine dinner at Birch Ridge on Saturday night. You can visit our reservation page, or call us at 800-435-8566 to make reservations.

We hope to see you this weekend in Killington. Where every you may be...stay cool, don't forget your sunscreen, and "In Vino Veritas!"

"The Bagel" on safari on the eleventh hole at Green Mountain National 

All this morning, delivery trucks are driving up and down the Killington Road visiting every establishment to get ready for Independence Day weekend and the kick off of the summer season at Killington. At the Birch Ridge Inn, for instance, we have had deliveries from 3 different beer and wine distributors, and 3 different food purveyors. And we are not alone in firing up our kitchen for the summer.

The Killington Resort begins it's operation today with the official opening of mountain bike season. The K1 Gondola is running, taking people to the top of Killington Peak. There should be some spectacular summer views from the Killington Peak walkway that the resort installed last fall.

Elsewhere in town, the golf courses are lush with all of the spring rain the area has received. I played yesterday with some friends at Green Mountain National Golf Course. While it was damp in a few predictable locations (Hole 4 for instance), overall the greens and fairways are in superb shape. Of course, my golf game needs a little work, but the summer is still early.

Stating the obvious, however, as todays picture shows, to enjoy the greens and fairways at Green Mountain National, you have to hit the ball on them. "The Bagel", demonstrating the fine art of the recovery shot, had a few errant shots during yesterdays round. Today's picture is of him on the 11th hole at Green Mountain. He hit his drive deep into the woods to the right of the tee, but before an area that is 'red staked". He found the ball, and was able to successfully hit it out of the woods into the fairway, setting up a third shot to the green on the 350 yard hole.

The restaurant at Birch Ridge reopens for the summer season tonight with dinner service this weekend on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening starting at 6:00 PM. Next week we begin our normal summer dinner service with dinner Tuesday thru Saturday evenings. If you have a chance to visit Killington this weekend, stop on bye.

Where ever you may be, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sun screen!

6th Green at Killington Resort Golf Course with Killington and Skye Peaks in the background. 

A day without rain...YES!

It is hard to guess when summer will establish itself in Killington. Thus far this month the weather, work, and family health issues have conspired to limit my time on the golf course. Other than the year I was out of action with a torn up shoulder, I doubt I have posted fewer scores in June (only 2 this year) since moving to Killington and becoming an innkeeper. Hopefully, as a new weather pattern gets established, that should all change.

Weather or not, and that is not a typo, the commercial part of the summer season in Killington is rapidly approaching. Inn guests are starting to randomly arrive at the inn from various points around the globe as they begin their summer vacations. Chef Frizzie is back at work, getting the restaurant ready to re-open for the summer season this Friday. (Can you believe that this coming Friday is July 1st?) Projects around the inn are being completed. Today, for instance, it was cleaning the carpet in the Great Room. Planning is taking place for other projects to be completed before the arrival of the fall season in late September. It has actually been a pretty busy spring.

One of the projects I have been working on is a new mobile website for the inn. A while ago I changed the blog to properly display on mobile devices with some custom designed software. The state of the art in software technology has continued to changed. For those of you who are technically inclined, there are any number of "frameworks" that can serve as a foundation for web development. For the mobile version of birchridge.com, I am using a framework based upon JQuery called, appropriately enough, JQuery Mobile.

If you are interested in looking at our mobile website and use an IOS or Android based mobile phone, you can go directly to birchridge.com and you should be routed to the mobile site. Otherwise, you can visit m.birchridge.com and visit the site directly. (If you visit the site on a desktop or laptop computer, you can shrink the width of the browser window you are using to simulate what the screen would look like on a mobile phone.) Its just a start, and more work will undoubtedly be done on our web sites in the coming weeks and months, but as is said in proper Bostonian...ya gotta start somewhaare...

With the July 4th weekend coming, we do plan on being out on the course a few times this week(weather permitting). The rain we have received has left the Green Mountains a resplendent emerald shade. Just perfect for a walk in the woods, or a stroll down the fairway.

Where ever you may be, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sun screen!

Killington Wine Festival planned for July 22-24, 2011 

In fits and starts, summer is gaining a foot hold in Killington.

The last bits of snow are barely visible on the upper Superstar headwall. A few hardy souls, our assistant Merisa among them, have been hiking almost daily for the final turns of the season. She has written about them on her blog, "Tales from a Female Ski Bum".

Around the inn, Mary is in full swing planting the gardens. The perennial beds have mostly been cleaned out. Annuals are starting to appear in strategic locations. And bark mulch is just about every where.

I have been focusing my time writing some software for a project you will hear about in a couple of weeks, and working on planning this years edition of the Killington Wine Festival.

This year, the Killington Wine Festival celebrates it's 10th Anniversary with a 3 day event from July 22 thru July 24th. The event kicks off on Friday the 22nd with and "Estate Tasting" of fine wines at the Killington Grand Hotel. On Saturday, July 23rd, the "Grand Tasting" takes place in tents outside of the K1 Base Lodge at the Killington Resort. The Birch Ridge Inn will be hosing our 10th Annual Wine Festival Dinner in the evening of the 23rd. The festival closes with the "Bubbly Brunch" and "Wine and Nine" on Sunday the 24th. The "Bubbly Brunch" will take place at Wally's restaurant on the Killington Road. "Wine and Nine" will be held Sunday afternoon at the Green Mountain National Golf Course.

More information about the Wine Festival, including online advance ticket purchasing, can be found by visiting the Killington Chamber of Commerce's wine festival web page. Of course, at the Birch Ridge Inn, we are offering a complete set of Wine Festival Packages including lodging, tickets and dinner, for the event. Follow the link to birchridge.com for more information on wine festival packages from Birch Ridge.

Where ever you may be, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sun screen!

Driving the ball off the 6th tee at Green Mountain National Golf Course. 

In the "be careful what you wish for" category, summer has finally arrived in Killington.

The fierce weather which brought the tragic tornadoes to the mid-west has finally made it to the Green Mountain State. While we have had some very significant periods of thunderstorms with heavy downpours, we also have had a few days where the weather was sunny and warm, if not down right hot and humid. The weather has improved so much, in fact, that we were able to get in 2 full rounds of golf at Green Mountain National Golf Course this week for the first time this golf season.

On Wednesday, Mary and I had the opportunity to play in the "Jeff Hadley Day" charity tournament to raise funds for ALS research. Jeff was the first golf pro at Green Mountain National who sadly succumbed to ALS in 2006.

In addition to Mary and I, our group for the Jeff Hadley Day tournament included former innkeeper Nina Tasi, Steve Selbo of SP Land and Phil Davis, VT PGA pro at Manchester Country Club. We came in at 9 under for the tournament. Given that none of us other than the pro had played a full round of golf this year, our score was quite respectable. We were well out of the money, however, as the winning team of the tournament came in at 17 under.

On Friday, Mary and I had a chance to play a regular round of golf. Green Mountain National is in great shape. With luck, this week should be the start of a nice golf season in Killington.

Where ever you may be this Memorial Day weekend, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sun screen!

Daffodils in bloom in Killington 

Although Edgar Allen Poe wrote his iconic poem about a bleak December, he could have easily been commenting about the weather we have been having all over the Northeast this May. While we watch with angst the television reports of the Mississippi River overrunning it's banks, many in Vermont and New York along Lake Champlain are facing the same problems. In Killington, aside from the local pond or two that is beyond it's normal high water point, the primary disease afflicting those of us calling Killington home this May is probably some form of Vitamin D deficiency, caused by lack of sunshine striking the area.

While there is still a patch of snow on Superstar, the ski season is quickly receding into long term memory. The immediate tasks of cleaning up from a very snowy winter are foremost on many of our minds, as we prepare for the summer months in the Green Mountains.

Around the inn, there are a number of projects that have been completed this spring; with an equal number still to go. Mary had begun her annual battle to get the gardens around the inn in shape. It will be several months before the results are truly visible. But a little work now, brings a lot of results when the warm sun of July hits the gardens.

Much of the immediate work around the inn was repairing damage sustained during the winter from all the ice and snow. The slate roofs on the restaurant and Great Room aframes are particularly susceptible to damage. The beautiful snow bridges that form between the aframe roofs and the ground when we have multiple feet of snow on the ground raises havoc with the bottom courses of slate shingles on each roof.

Slate roof repair is an art. Click to enlarge..

Of course, many buildings in the area are slate covered. As long as they are maintained properly to repair any weather damage, their lifetime is virtually unlimited. We made out trek this year over to Poultney to acquire reclaimed slate shingles for the repairs. It is a work of art, matching repaired sections to the existing roof. We are very fortunate to have skilled craftsmen in the area who understand how to do it.

In the realm of "you've got to be kidding", we also had a very large sink hole open up in the parking lot in front of the inn. We have had a couple of small sink holes in the past. The asphalt section of the parking lot dates back to the early 1970's. Every time we get a sink hole, we discover rotten wood as the culprit. It appears that when the parking lot was originally created, a lot of fill with tree stumps and other organic products was used. As the organic material decays over time, voids are created. In the winter months, the voids get filled with water ice, which is a good thing because we don't want the parking lot swallowing guests cars during the dark of night.

Sink hole being repaired Click to enlarge..

But as soon spring hits and warmer temperatures greet Killington, the ice filling any voids melts setting the stage for a surprise. This years surprise was created by a propane truck making a u-turn in the parking lot. The good news is that the truck did not get stuck. The great news is that it happened when the parking lot was empty.

Our excavator was able to clear the hole and pack in some fresh soil. It will take a month of so for the soil he used to settle, before a top coat of hard pack is applied to level out the driveway. It is just one of those things that make running your own business never a dull moment.

The web site for Birch Ridge, birchridge.com has been updated to our summer colors. If you are planning a trip this way, our golf package calculator has been updated with rate information from both the Killington and Green Mountain National Golf Courses.

Keep in mind.....Summer is just around the corner at Killington. The rain will stop. The sun will shine, and the Green Mountains will turn a luscious shade green. Now if I can get all my work down around the inn so I can go out and enjoy it...that would be great too!

Wherever you may be, hopefully you don't need a raft, and you need some sun screen!