台湾春天之旅 2013-宜兰酒厂 （Yilan Winery)

We 1st passed by 宜兰设治纪念馆, entrance fee is NTD50 if I am not wrong, but we decided to give it a miss as we felt that we are nt interested in the Japanese inspired buildings and further more, we are able to see some of the buildings along the way as the walls are not high. Whahah

You can peep inside as the walls are low

Map of Yilan Winery

On paper, Yilan Winey may look prety close to the train station, but actually we walked around 20mins to get there. We found out that Taiwanese term this distance as "Near" given their vast area of land. In Singapore, many will say "Very far" hahah.

Nevertheless, we pressed on, at 1 point, we werent even sure we are on the right track, keep refering back to our map and look for landmarks to nagivate ourselves. Luckily, the building is pretty tall and we are able to spot it from far, keep walking towards the direction..

Spotted from far!

 Admission is free here and we just walked in. There is a map showing the various part of the winery and its pretty empty as its near closing time at 5pm. As we were told that they sell nice wine sausage here, we headed to the food section rite away, skipping all other exhibits. Haha.

Map of the winery

An old equipment, I believed..

 Brought a wine sausage at NT35 and shared. There is a tinge of wine taste to it,duh! And it gives a sweet taste to the sausage, differentiating it from the traditional kind they sell around Taiwan. The 阿姨at the stall would reheat the sausage when you order thus making it piping hot. This is realli worth the 20min walk in, we have no regrets on skipping the previous attractions to come straight here.

Wine sausage..Must try!

 We then move on to check out the other stalls. There is a hot street here selling food & wine. Skipped the wine stalls though and came face to face with a stall selling desserts- 包心粉圆冰。
There are tons of flavour for you to chose from and we ordered the recommended 1(I forgot the name)hehe.

The 1 we ordered is the cold version, you can chose the hot 1 though. But having just walked 20min under the unforgiving hot sun, we are craving for something cold. It costs NT55 for 1 serving and the serving is so huge that we are secretly glad we didnt ordered 2.

There are green beans (绿豆）， red beans (红豆）, peanuts （花生）, grass jelly （仙草) , 2 balls of shaved ice and lastly 粉圆冰  in the serving. The ladyboss told us to add the 粉圆冰 as we eat. 1 thing to note is, the 粉圆冰 is hot, thus not as cooling as we wanted it to be.

We are actually not sure of if there is any correct way to eat this dessert and decided to do it our way, since no 1 is around us.hehe We mixed all the ingredients together with the shaved ice and started to tuck in. Along the way, scope a 粉圆冰 to go along.

This dessert is nice alrite but as I am not a lover of the beans, I rather not have the green and red beans added to it. Nevertheless, it cool us down alot and we proceed to explore the winery.

粉圆冰

 Next to the food street is the gift shop, as time is running out (near to closing time) we decided to go in for a quick glance before heading out.

The things here are pretty reasonably priced, and we got some coasters as gifts. The sales had mentioend that it can absorb water and we are amazed by it. Hehe

As we exit the winery, we realised there is a 3D art piece that you can take photo with. There is a designated position for the photographer to stand and snap a shot.

With this, we ended our short visit to the winery. Till the next time, Yilan Winery, I will miss the wine sausage. Haha