Big Woods Brewing Company - Welcome Addition to Downtown Nashville, IN.

Big Woods Brewing Company, 40 Molly Lane in Nashville, IN is a little bit hard to find even with a GPS.  It's on a back street, and my GPS kept telling me we were THERE, but we WEREN'T, dammit!  The easiest way to find it is if you're heading south on SR 135 (I forget what it's in-town name is), turn west on Main Street and look for a 3'x3' old fashioned finger-pointing sign on the side of a building at the entrance to an alley on your right that says "Brewery".  We had come up from Louisville on our way home to Indy on Sunday of Labor Day weekend and it was about early dinnertime, like 5:00, so the tiny place was PACKED.  They have a cool little outdoor patio by the alley, er, street where you can sit and order beer while you wait for a table.  I had their Busted Knuckle Ale, which was a bit expensive ($6 pint) but delicious, kind of like a light porter or maybe a black-and-tan, and she had a Six-Foot Blonde, rather like a Sun King cream ale, only a bit heavier.  We were seated before we needed a second beer, which was fast considering how busy they were.  There is a tiny dining room, or you can eat on the tiny front porch, maybe 25 tables in all between them. The food was artisan-like, which is to say a little pricey, but it's a resort town, y'know?  I had a pulled pork sandwich, which was decent but not outstanding-- it came with an artisan-made horseradish sauce that tasted every bit like Arby's Horsey Sauce to me.  The Little Woman had a burger that was very good but nothing unique for the price.  I can't say I WOULDN'T eat here again, but I'd rather come back here for the great beer and go somewhere else to eat just for value purposes.  I had a wild-game sandwich at one of the other downtown Nashville places awhile back, and it was incredibly delicious and fairly cheap, too.  I just wish I could remember where I got it-- except I'm not allowed to eat that again because it produced a noxious gas by-product that necessitated the evacuation of the elevator of our hotel for several hours.  Anyway, Big Woods Beer is well worth the price, the food not so much.  

Salt Creek Winery: A Small, Beautiful Experience

Salt Creek Winery is at 7630 W. Co. Rd. 925N near Freetown, Indiana in (I think) Jackson County.  The Little Woman and I were coming back to Indy from Louisville via a detour to SR 135 (due to her aversion to Interstate Highways and my driving on them) so that we could visit Mallow Run Winery near Bargersville on the way back, but as I needed to make a pit stop to see a man about a horse and maybe drop off the kids at the pool, when we saw the sign on 135 that said "< Salt Creek Winery 2"  we decided to detour off the detour, and am I ever glad we did (and not just because of that pit stop thing)!  

SR 135 is very, very pretty in itself, but the little county road back to the winery is right out of a Thomas Kinkade/Currier & Ives/Ansel Adams picture, and the gravel drive off the road takes you right into the front yard of the owners' beautiful home where the little winery sits.  I dunno if General Steel or some other design company mass produces that type of building, but the exterior and interior layout of SCW is an almost exact duplicate of Buck Creek Winery in Acton (which I like very much).  Whereas BCW overlooks I-74, the back porch of Salt Creek Winery overlooks wooded hills and a beautiful green valley that stretches away for several miles.  We had a free tasting then each bought a glass of wine, and we drank them while relaxing in comfortable patio chairs on that back porch while enjoying the view and listening to the outdoor sounds of late summer/early fall accompanied by the giggles of two little children playing in the field that is the foreground for the long scenic view.  The field is about an acre or so, and has a deck/stage at its edge that I suspect hosts small musical acts, on occasion. 

Oh, yeah, the wine:  I'm not really a connoisseur but their wines are very good, although not as bold in flavor as some others, more of a subdued, subtle taste, very smooth.  The Merlot was very dry and thin, not nearly as strong as to what I'm accustomed, but the Cabernet Sauvignon was very tasty and the Sunrise Red was as good as any table wine I've ever tasted.  My favorite by far, though, was the Chambourcin, which was very complex, several different flavors melding together perfectly. We're dry not sweet wine drinkers, but She sampled their Blackberry wine and although She deemed it too sweet for her, I thought it was, again, smoother and less bold than most other places' fruit wines.

It was an idyllic, relaxing experience.  (Insert contented sigh here).  We tarried as long as we could, but eventually resigned ourselves to going back out onto the road home.  After this stop and another at Big Woods Brewing Co. in Nashville (look for a future post) we were, alas, too late to make it to Mallow Run, so that would have to wait for another day.  :-)   www.saltcreekwinery.com