The Mrs. and I spent 4 days in the Finger Lakes region in NY. This was our first trip, which seems ridiculous as it's only about three hours from home. There are about 43,056 wineries per square mile here (just guessing). There are parts of the road where we couldn't read the signs fast enough before the next winery appeared.
We did some research and visited 9 wineries. We shared each glass, which gave us generally 10 different wines from each winery. As the driver I was careful to only drink enough from each glass to form an opinion, and the day we visited three the schedule was one after breakfast at 10:00, one after lunch at 1:00 and the last at 4:00. I'm a cheap date, so a lack of care here would not have been judicious.
After trying some 90 wines (and purchasing almost half) we had some surprises. While I normally favor reds, many of the Finger Lakes reds were not purchased - I suspect because the weather there is so unpredictable, as well as the great variety in soil. Gewürztraminer (which I didn't know and had to use the Google machine for a pronunciation) was a new favorite. The most shocking to us was the Dry Rose. While not having any for years, our collective memory was of a sweet wine - and we apparently have no tolerance for sweet wines.
A bottle of Saperavi (red wine from the Georgian region) was our splurge. We'd like to stay around $20, many bottles were closer to $30 and the Saperavi was $65. This was another new wine for me, and strangely enough, when we paid at the end of the visit all the wines there were discounted, so we only paid $55 (still a king's ransom for us). I would have advertised the discount back when customers were making purchase decisions.
I guess the moral of the story for us was to be open to new tastes. We won't be shopping for a while now.
We did some research and visited 9 wineries. We shared each glass, which gave us generally 10 different wines from each winery. As the driver I was careful to only drink enough from each glass to form an opinion, and the day we visited three the schedule was one after breakfast at 10:00, one after lunch at 1:00 and the last at 4:00. I'm a cheap date, so a lack of care here would not have been judicious.
After trying some 90 wines (and purchasing almost half) we had some surprises. While I normally favor reds, many of the Finger Lakes reds were not purchased - I suspect because the weather there is so unpredictable, as well as the great variety in soil. Gewürztraminer (which I didn't know and had to use the Google machine for a pronunciation) was a new favorite. The most shocking to us was the Dry Rose. While not having any for years, our collective memory was of a sweet wine - and we apparently have no tolerance for sweet wines.
A bottle of Saperavi (red wine from the Georgian region) was our splurge. We'd like to stay around $20, many bottles were closer to $30 and the Saperavi was $65. This was another new wine for me, and strangely enough, when we paid at the end of the visit all the wines there were discounted, so we only paid $55 (still a king's ransom for us). I would have advertised the discount back when customers were making purchase decisions.
I guess the moral of the story for us was to be open to new tastes. We won't be shopping for a while now.
