Me, driving, blithely: Which way should we go now?
She, under a pile of maps, furious: What, so I'm the navigator now?
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Our little wine-tasting junket was just perfect, I think. I admit I took a wrong turn in Livingston County, heading southwest along the wrong side of Letchworth instead of southeast along the right side of Letchworth, but to my credit we did see a really keen house along the way.
Even though this development put us off-schedule on our unscheduled vacation, we still managed to hit Bully Hill Vineyards
in Hammondsport before closing time. Bully Hill has a reputation for making cheap sweet wines with funny names and funny labels; it should be mentioned that they also make some very good cheap dry wines with funny names and funny labels. For a long time, Bully Hill produced Cylinder Head grape juice, unpasteurized and packaged in wine bottles - until Welch's brought this to the attention of the FDA, who told them they had to pasteurize it and produce it somewhere else [and in the process ruining my faith in humanity]. I am pissed, but that is another rant for another time.After that, the wineries were closing, so we mosied on over to Watkins Glen, where we ment (e:dragonlady7) 's younger sister for a pint and a burger at the Crooked Rooster
, where they brew up a mean selection of ales and grill up a formidable burger. I ordered a light ale from the mystery tap; she had a brown ale - mine was good, but hers was better.It was getting late and beginning to rain, so we made some quick reservations at the Tudor Rose
. Having never stayed at a B&B before, I was astounded to realize that it was just some lady's house. The rain on the roof zonked me right the hell out until I was awakened the next morning by the heavenly aroma of French toast and sausages wafting up the stairwell.The rain had stopped by the time we were done stuffing ourselves silly, so we had a little walk around the Glen. The gorge trail was not yet fully open for the season, but we still got to see a couple of the waterfalls, including the one that comes down over your head. Freaky.
The next winery we hit was Cascata
on NY 14 overlooking Seneca Lake. We nearly missed it, and when we pulled in to the driveway I said, 'You can't fool me! This is just some guy's house.' But the winery was housed in the first floor of a B&B [The Professor's Inn]. Cascata makes their own wine, but they do not have the facilities to grow their own grapes or age or their wine; rather they buy their grapes from the local farms and lease space at a larger winery down the street. Their Estate Red is outstanding: subtle, nuanced, complex, as is their Luna Rossa. Sadly, they had run out of their Cranberry Bog mead, a mead/cranberry wine blend, but we did get a taste of their limited-run elderberry wine. Yum.Next we hit Fulkerson
, known for their bright-red and quite tasty Red Zeppelin. They offer a Traminette, a sweeter version of Gewürtztraminer. Their Cabernet Sauvignon is full-bodied and flavorful, and their Matinee is an exceptional sweet white.We were both looking forward to visiting Earle Estates Meadery
, but their tasting facilities appeared to be closed. Instead we grabbed some ice cream in Dresden and took a drive along Keuka Lake back to Hammondsport, where we stopped in at the Pleasant Valley Wine Company . Their champagne is good, but their dessert wines are excellent. We asked about the Cooking Sherry on their tasting menu, and the woman behind the bar narrowed her eyes. 'I fight with the winemakers about this constantly. Local restauranteurs wanted a sherry that was sweeter than our Sherry, but drier than our Cream Sherry, so we came out with an in-between sherry for cooking. It's just sherry; there's no added salt or herbs or anything like that. I think it should be called Gourmet Sherry instead.' We tried their Keuka Blue, which is a traditional Port made with traditional techniques - only it is 100% blueberry wine fortified with 100% blueberry brandy - and it has a very unusual and complex flavor, both sweet and woody. We finished off our trip with a taste of their Vanilla Cream Sherry, which blew my mind so hard I'm still talking about it.- Z
Wow. Any winery with the balls to make loganberry wine is OK in my book.
- Z
Next time somebody says 'we need another columnist' I think (e:dragonlady7) knows the perfect wine critic. Then the Artvoice would get two reviews for each high end restaurant, and could still afford to send the two of you to every cheap eatery in town. ;-)
If you're ever out this way you should check out Bargetto's Chaucer label :::link::: wines. My ex-boss turned me and my ex-boyfriend onto Bargetto when we visited her in Los Gatos (Santa Cruz Mountains). We even signed up for the wine club and had their wines shipped to us in Boston until wine wholesalers got together to make that illegal :::link::: in some states, including Massachusetts. That's really why I had to move to California. And to save on shipping, haha.