Wild Horse Vineyard – Feeding Floyd the Llama

Wild Horse Winery is located in the famous Templeton Gap area in the Paso Robles AVA.  The winery was founded in 1981 and has developed a reputation for producing fine wines from many varietals over the years.  Today, they produce 200,000 cases of wine that are distributed all over the US.

http://www.wildhorsewinery.com

The tasting room and winery are located on the property, along with an organic vegetable farm, an oak tree inhabited by acorn-hoarding woodpeckers and a herd of goats.

The Woodpeckers come back every year, bore holes in the trunk and store acorns.  At the same time each year, you’ll see the holes begin to fill up with acorns…they’re storing them for the Winter.  Pretty cool idea, huh?

Back to the herd of goats; there’s a well-known star on the property named Floyd the Llama.  Floyd is named after Pink Floyd, not because he’s pink, but because the animals on the property are named after Rockers.  His main job is to protect the goats from predators, and he does a great job.  There’s no arguing that Floyd is a rocker…he knows the routine!  Visitors come from near and far to feed Floyd apples, and he likes the ladies.  It took a little coaxing to get Floyd away from his favorite ladies (the goats) to come entertain us, but that he did.

Here we are feeding Floyd, and feeling a little anxious about it because llamas are known to spit, so we didn’t want to give him a break from the apples long enough to consider spitting at us.  We not only hand-fed him, but also gave him a little mouth to mouth apple love:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msyeC1B1FK8[/youtube]

It’s not every day that you get to feed a llama apples from your mouth with a terrific glass of Wild Horse Unbridled Chardonnay in your hand!