Keel & Curley, Plant City, FL

Anyone who's driven across I-4 has seen the signs for the Keel & Curley Winery in Plant City. Many people have uttered, "we need to go there sometime," and many of them actually follow through with their good intentions.  However, there are so many people, especially those outside of Plant City, who haven't made good on their I-4 driving dreaming.  Well, that needs to change, and now, there's even better reasons to go.

Keel & Curley began in Joe Keel's kitchen in 2003, brewing a small batch (10 gallons) of blueberry wine. Since then, Keel & Curley has grown to produce 20,000 cases of wine, opening u-pick fields of blueberries, blackberries, and peaches, hosting an annual blueberry festival, and brewing craft beer.  Today, Keel & Curley produces three types of blueberry wine using 100% blueberries, two blackberry wines using 100% blackberries, and seven different fusion wines, which are a blend of fruit juices and grape wine. A nice aspect of the growing Keel & Curley brand is the public tasting room and the availability of their wines in larger supermarkets and some convenience stores.  As Keel & Curley has grown, their popularity has spread beyond their loyal followers.  

We've visited Keel & Curley a few times, each for a different purpose.  Our first trip to Keel & Curley was for the annual blueberry festival.  We purchased a Groupon-style voucher for festival admission, parking, wine tasting, and a take home bottle of wine for a fraction of the price.  I'm not sure how many vouchers they sold, but it was packed.  Even the tastings had to be moved outside to accommodate the mass of people at the festival. We sampled nearly every wine in their line up, and while they were good, we're huge fans of sweet wine.  Luckily, the blackberry wines tend to be drier, so we took home a bottle.  A few years ago, when we drank tons of sweeter wine, we would have taken home a case.

Our second trip, also on a discount voucher, was to visit their brand new brewery--Two Henry's Brewing.  The voucher gave us a flight of beer and a take home gallon..yes, GALLON of beer. We purchased an additional flight and still spent less than $30 for the afternoon.  Again, well worth the trip.  We've had our fair share of Tampa area craft brews, and for a start up brewery, their doing it right.  Most, if not all, are named for something or someone in Florida and the Tampa area.  None of their beers are high in ABV, nor particularly heavy, but they are most certainly tasty.  In their normal line up, they have the Gilded Age Golden Lager, 7-Mile Bridge IPA, The Standard Chocolate Stout, Runaway Locomotive Black IPA, Fletcher's Drool Wheat Ale, and  Snowbird Amber Ale. We took home a gallon of The Standard Chocolate Stout.