Solvang Thursday at Carivintâs Winery

We arrived in Solvang, CA, last Thursday afternoon after a two-and-a-half-hour drive for the 7th annual West Coast Greyhound Gathering. After unloading our stuff in our Royal Copenhagen Inn hotel room and walking about the town a bit, we stopped by the Carivintâs winery before a special wine-tasting (just for the gathering) started at 6pm.

Carivintâs, as part of their way of doing business, donates a portion of their profits to animal shelters and support groups. For Greyt Legs (the non-profit organization that helps newly-retired greyhounds with leg injuries get needed medical care, and who also puts together the West Coast Greyhound Gathering) whippet-owner Paul Ramos (who is in the second picture) of Carivintâs created two special greyhound-labeled wines (which featured Tennile, one of the first greyhounds helped by Greyt Legs, on the back label).

A percentage of proceeds from those two wines would be donated to Greyt Legs. So if you are ever visiting Solvang, with or without your pups, pay them a visit -- they're wonderful.

Here are a few pictures taken during the wine-tasting:

(All photos: Nikon D300; 18-200mm zoom; SB-800 with diffusion cover and light bounced off the ceiling; auto or flash white balance; exposure compensation +1/3; normal JPG but for the wine bottle, which was shot in RAW. Note also about the bottle picture: flash mode was slow-sync to exposure the background properly. In most of the other pictures, the flash mode was the default.)