George Orwell famously wrote about winemaking, "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a grape's face— forever." Have fun proving him right with today’s grape-smashing Groupon: for $20, you get a wine tasting for four (a $20 value), a select bottle of wine (up to a $15 value), and four souvenir wine glasses (a $14 value) from Talon Winery & Vineyards, which has two locations in Lexington and Shelbyville.

Located on handsome farmland amongst Kentucky’s rolling hills, Talon’s lush, five-acre vineyard produces a purple-hued spectrum of vintages. Round up three friends or distant family members, and head to the vineyards any day of the week to sample several of Talon’s liquid vinefruits before selecting a bottle to take home to crack open over the holidays. Try the Coyote Red, a semi-sweet soft red with a refreshing light cherry and strawberry flavor, sure to make you howl discreetly into your shirt sleeve ($12.95). Or quaff a sample of the Traminette, a spicy, Gewurtztraminer-style white wine with lemon, honeysuckle, and rosebud notes ($14.95). Talon’s Lexington tasting room, located inside a historical 1790s farmhouse, offers visitors the bonus of experiencing the grape-imprisoning process at the winery’s on-site corking complex.

Reviews

Talon Winery & Vineyards has been written about in Rural Mom and Wine Trail Traveler:

• Sweet Evening Breeze, with a residual sugar of 2.6 is the best selling white wine. It is a blend of Vidal Blanc, Cayuga and Chardonel. The color was a pale yellow. The taste was smooth and the finish was sweet but dry on the end. – Kathy Sullivan, Wine Trail Traveler
• …their Talon Blackberry Wine is wicked-good. – Barb Webb, Rural Mom