The Finger Lakes Wine Region

My first introduction to the Finger Lakes wine region was at my cousin, Ryan's, wedding at Belhurst (pictured below). They served wine from the Anthony Road Wine Company (Ryan is friends with the owner). I remember the Tony's White they served at the wedding being the best I had ever had and can't wait to try it again to see if it is as good as I remember.

Belhurst at Seneca Lake: Winery, Hotel, Spa, Event Center, Castle
Finger Lakes Wine Region

When Jessi and I visited James Arthur Vineyard last summer, the lady we talked to there reccomended that if we wanted to visit a huge wine region, skip Napa and visit the Finger Lakes. She said Napa was expensive, too commercial, and the people were less likely to spend time talking to you about the wines.... this coming from the daughter of James Arthur and wife of the head winemaker at James Arthur Vineyard. If they wouldn't talk to her, they probably wouldn't talk to us.

The Finger Lakes, she said, was more like the wineriers and vineyards in Nebraska. They were a close-knit group, friendly, and less commercial. Then and there, Jessi and I decided that sometime, we needed to find a bus tour of the Finger Lakes wine region and leave enough time afterwards on our vacation to New York to explore on our own.

I don't know a whole lot about the Finger Lakes wine industry, but exploring it is on my bucket list. With family in the area, it shouldn't be too hard to do... Plus, I'm hoping I can drag some of them along to enjoy the trip with us.

Here's a link that Anthony Road posted on their facebook page that tells about some of the New York wineries/vineyards and some of their wines: Drinking New York

Cheers!

Another Pour Decision

As Lent approached, the question of what I would give up continued to bounce around in my mind, daily.... helped along by others asking what I was giving up. I don't remember giving anything up last year so this year I decided to do something extra difficult to make up for my lapse.

So, I was sitting in the Lair one day, trying to decide if it was too early to have a glass of wine when it hit me: I found what I was giving up for Lent.... Wine.

FML

The first few days were fine, but as the weeks pass, it is getting more difficult. For example, I am sitting here craving a glass of the sweet red moscato I have in the fridge like you wouldn't believe. I can hear it calling and mocking me from half way across the apartment... its voice is amplified by the unopened bottles in my wine rack.

I am trying to stay strong. I think the only thing that is getting me through is the thought of Jessi and I hitting our first stop on the 2012 wine tour at the end of March. We have a stop planned for our way up to Wayne for March Madness and I am not allowing myself any slips until then.

It is my reward.

Broken Rule

I broke one of my rules for this one.... the one about not buying wine without a cork in the bottle. I'm sorry. It was just soooo damn cute!!!! It's like a pudding cup of wine!

God Bless 'Mur'ka!

NEWS!!!!

Exciting news today in the world of the Nebraska Wine Tour: I'm chalking it up to them knowing my address from sending in my passport from last year but I got a shiny new 2012 Wine Tour passport in the mail today!!!!

It wasn't really much of a surprise since Jessi had texted me earlier and told me that she had gotten one in the mail and that I should check my box when I got home. I ripped open the envelope to discover not one, but TWO passports just waiting to be stamped. Looks like they are encouraging me to recruit more friends to join Jessi and I on this year's adventure...

Challenge Accepted!!!!

Wine Review #3: Beringer's Red Moscato

With my adventures on the Nebraska Wine Tour, this blog, and my random wine-themed stories, my friends, coworkers, and random acquaintances know how much of a wineaux I am. This tends to have its advantages (although, it might look to outsiders that I have a serious problem).

For example, my friend, Cathy, and I recently got around to exchanging our Christmas presents (our goal was to do it by Valentine's Day, mission accomplished!) and I could not help but be excited by what she got me: 2 bottles of wine! The first was my favorite moscato, Rex-Goliath which is super cheap and has a rooster on the label (she had Puffy run recon so she got the right kind) and the second was one I had never heard of before, Beringer's Red Moscato. I was really excited to try it and I was proud of Cathy for stepping out of her comfort zone (she knows nothing about wine and is rather apprehensive about the subject) to get something new for me.

Beringer's Red Moscato is sweet and light like most moscatos but there is a definite difference. The only way I can describe it is the "red difference." Dry to Sweet, red and white wine have a different taste. Chalk it up to tannins or just the color but blindfolded, I bet most people could point out the red vs. the white.

Either way, I LOVED it!!! It was also a huge hit with my mom and friend, Matt... I made Puffy and Joey try it. They were not fans... so my mission to turn them into wine drinkers continues.

It has become my new favorite wine and the hunt continues for where to get it since Cathy refuses to tell me where she found it.

Pour Choices, Bad Decisions

Drinking copious amounts of alcohol usually leads to Pour Choices and Bad Decisions for most people. I am a wineaux who would love to present a refined and sophisticated air… but I know this first hand.

1) A general Pour Choice comes in the form of a design flaw by wine glass manufacturers. While I personally love the idea, I think it is a horrible thing to sell. What I am speaking of, is, of course, those HUGE wine glasses that you can fit a half a bottle of wine or more in.

While I know that you are not supposed to fill them to the brim, that they are made that big so the wine has room to breathe and you can swirl the wine to allow the different flavors and notes rise to your pallet, etc., but who honestly follows those unwritten rules when the second or third bottle gets uncorked?

2) My first true Pour Choice that involves wine came from a night of drinking with Jessi, my sister Laura, and our friend Owen. Jessi and I were drinking wine like we are wont to do when somebody had the brilliant idea of wine bombs.

Why? Oh, dear God, WHY?!

This is where a drunk and/or stupid person adds cherry flavored vodka to an innocent glass of wine. I want to say that it was to try to make that poor bottle of frozen strawberry wine from a previous post taste better, but I honestly can’t remember. I would think that that would be the only reason to add vodka to wine, but who knows.

After the suggestion, Jessi and I poured ourselves fresh glasses of wine and poured a about a half a shot’s worth of cherry flavored vodka in. Jessi did the intellegent thing- she sipped on it until it was gone… not the best idea but it was the better of the two.

I did what you are supposed to do with a bomb- I tossed it back in a huge gulp. Awful idea! One of the worst I have ever had. I was pretty much done for the night and spent a while holding onto the armrest so I wouldn’t tumble off the couch.

Damn gravity always trying to keep me down.

3) A fairly popular Bad Decision that has been known to spread mono is passing the bottle. While I love wine glasses too much to do this very often (they make me feel classy, what can I say?) it has been known to happen. It’s usually the cheap bottle that gets opened toward the end of the night when we have lost all ability to differentiate between good ideas and a hole in the ground.

Thank goodness that this does not happen all that much.

4) Pour Choice: Gallon of Sangria, ready at hand. This came about when Jessi and I were exploring the wine choices at the Bottle Shop. We picked out a couple different wines and then somebody decided it would be a good idea to get a gallon of Sangria… I probably had a hand in it so I could get a glass jug for round 2 of mead making (a fail any way you look at it since the jug got left at a friend’s house and then thrown away).

When we arrived back to my apartment, we cracked open the gallon of sangria and did something that shouldn’t happen (see #3 Bad Decision-passing the bottle) we drank straight from the jug. Mostly so we could get pictures.

It made us feel very Appalachian-esque, drinking moonshine out of a brown jug.

I’m ashamed to admit that it took a few minutes to figure out how to hook our thumb through the loop and rest the bottle just so on our elbow so we could drink one-handed. Something we accomplished amid lots of giggles and leaky chins. 

Well, that gallon of sangria did not fit in the fridge, so it got left on the floor under the coffee table in the living room. Bad idea… it left entirely too much wine too close at hand, which was evident one evening when I made supper for my friend/ roommie, Puffy, and friend Joey. We were sitting around watching movies after, the guys enjoying some beer… me drinking the wine.

My head hurt the next morning… and that’s all I have to say about that.

Wine Review #1: Manzanas Dulces

Since our wine touring days are over until spring, I thought I would keep my blog going by doing reviews of various local wines that I am discovering on my own... which might be new for the vineyards/wineries or just ones that I've never tried before.

I'm not 100% sure if this wine is new for Mac's Creek or if I've just never heard of it before, but I recently found Manzanas Dulces while shopping for wine.

It was a fall wine that was supposed to be launched at their harvest festival that Jessi, Jenna, and I went to, but that didn't work out. When we did not see it out, Jessi and I asked about it while we were there and found out that the labels didn't come in on time so it was still sitting in a holding tank, waiting to be bottled. I offered to sample it straight from the vat (who cares about a label when wine is involved) but I was shot down.

Manzanas Dulces is a white apple wine that is sweet, light, and the apple really comes through to delight the pallet. I really enjoyed it and think that it would be a great wine to use in the apple-cherry sangria recipe that I got from Arbor Day Farms. I have added it to my lengthing list of wines that I love from Mac's Creek.

The End of Our Adventure: January 5, 2012

Unbeknownst by Jessi and I at the time, but Miletta Vista would be our last stop on our very first Nebraska Wine Tour. The last months of the year flew by in a flurry of work, Christmas shopping, and missed opportunities to get together to try and squeeze in one or two more trips (a lot due to bizarre hours at the closest vineyards/wineries that we hadn’t hit yet).

The fates aligned once again and Jessi and I got the same day off so I made an impromptu trip to Lincoln to have a girls day with my bestie. On the To-Do list were shopping, gun shooting (which we didn’t get to do), cookie baking, movie watching, and wine drinking.

Jessi had the totally awesome idea of making color copies of our Wine Tour passports so we could send in the originals and have a copy to keep as a souvenir. We stopped at a copy place and had really good color copies made and laminated. We then made for the From Nebraska Gift Shop to pick up some Nebraska Wine.

I got two bottles of one of my favorite wines of the tour, Glacial Till’s Frontenac Rose, since it’s not sold in my part of the state. I have resisted cracking into them so far, I’ll probably save them for a “special occasion”: ie. when Jessi comes to visit. Then, we headed back to Jessi’s new apartment to watch movies, drink Nebraska wine, and make cookies.

The Nebraska Wine Tour is probably one of the best adventures I’ve ever been on. I met some interesting characters, drank some awesome (and not so great) wine, learned a lot, and created some amazing memories along the way.

Some of my favorite experiences of the tour (in no particular order):

1)      Finding Sir Drunkalot

2)      Glacial Till

3)      The "Posted Way" or "My Way" options at Windcrest

4)      Tropasti at James Arthur

5)      Tasting grapes off the vine at Soaring Wings

6)      Drinking wine with Grandma Liz at Cedar Hills

7)      Touring with my mom, Jessi, and Jenna to 5 Trails and Feather River

8)      Grape stomping at Kimmel

9)      The storm at Slattery

10)  The Harvest Festival at Mac’s Creek

As for my favorite vineyards/wineries of the tour, I enjoyed almost all of them but my top three would be (once again, in no particular order):

1)      Glacial Till

2)      Mac’s Creek

3)      Miletta Vista

Jessi and I plan on doing the tour again next year, and probably the year after that. I can’t speak for her, but I know I had an amazing time exploring the Nebraska wine scene. Hopefully, the experiences we had will only enhance our future adventures.
We always welcome the company of fellow wineaux on our escapades so if anything you see here or on Jessi’s blog, From Beneath The Cork, strikes your fancy, let us know. We’ll drag you along to share what we’ve learned and introduce you to our favorite stops and wines of the tour.

Sir Drunkalot still watches over us from atop my bookcase and will continue to protect our wine quests into the distant and hazy future.

Cheap wine

This one goes hand-in-hand with my Wine Snobs post because, for some reason, people have come to believe that in order for wine to be good, it has to be expensive.

Totally not the case.

While I am not proclaiming the virtues of Boon’s Farm or Fruit of the Vine (alcoholic Kool-Aid in my opinion), I am saying that you don’t have to spend $50 on a bottle to ensure that it is good.

My sister, Betsy, knows a man who owns a wine store in Denver called The Vineyard Wine Shop. They sell bottles of wine ranging from $7 a bottle to almost a thousand dollars a bottle. Everybody asks him for advice on wine, no surprises there, but I love his response when they ask him to point out a good wine. He says that if you like a wine, it is a good wine. No matter which one it is or what the price tag is.

During our wine quest, Jessi and I have found and tried hundreds (probably) of wines that were great and less than $20 a bottle. Most of the Nebraska wines are priced around $15-17 a bottle, usually a little more for dessert wines. Affordable, good wines made locally!

Don’t despair if you enjoy cheap wine… or boxed wine.

…But I do have to draw the line somewhere. It used to be at nothing less than $5 a bottle, which isn’t too bad of an idea when you consider the crappy wine you can find for less than $5. (Although, I’m not a total hater. One of my favorite Moscatos is usually on sale for around $4.77.) Now, I’ve graduated to nothing without a cork… or in a box… a girl has to have some standards.

Check out The Vineyard

Cougarlicious- Miletta Vista’s new vintage

After an especially rough day at work recently, I stopped at a local liquor store to grab a six pack of Boulevard to enjoy with a couple of coworkers. As I walked through the door, I noticed a poster hanging up announcing that Miletta Vista had a new wine out called Cougarlicious. My first thought was that I had to hunt it down and buy a bottle.

So I wondered around the tiny and packed sales floor of the liquor mart hunting for this new wine but finally gave up and asked the adorable, dreadlocked guy behind the counter. He searched for it on the computer to make sure that we had it and then joined me in the hunt, finally locating it nearly a foot and a half above his head on the top shelf of a display of Nebraska wines. I thanked him profusely, nabbed a bottle and my Boulevard and headed out. I didn’t even make it out of the parking spot before I had the bottle and my phone out to send a picture to Jessi.

“Miletta Vista has a new wine out that we are drinking next time you’re in town!!!”

“Yay!!!”

Was pretty much how our text conversation went.

When I got home, the newly acquired treasure found its home in a place of honor (the wine rack on top of our fridge), to await the time that Jessi would once again grace the Lair (my apartment, if you didn’t already know, is called the Lair) with her presence.

Thankfully, it didn’t have to wait too long.

Jessi made a pit stop in Kearney on her way home for Christmas and we finally got to crack into the Cougarlicious. It was very sweet, but not overwhelming. It reminded me of a sweeter Brianna or La Crosse. Jessi and I decided that it would be a great dessert wine with fruit or a dark, bitter chocolate.

I searched around looking for the significance of Cougarlicious, thinking that there might be a neat back-story to it. It’s not what I was expecting but here it is:

“Fun! Fun! Fun!
You've been asking when are you coming out with a fun wine label. Well here it is, New December 2011. Courgarlicious is a label and this sweet white wine will provide lots of fun!  A blend of two Nebraska grown grapes, LaCrosse & Brianna.  This fruity wine with flavors of citrus & pineapple will make a great gift this Christmas season. It's a prowlers cocktail, you're sure to enjoy and it goes very well with the Hershey’s candy cane peppermint candies.”

Jessi also suggested trying it as a breakfast wine, something I have never tried but I am always up for something new!

Cougarlicious

Wine Snobs

Facebook... along with pretty much everybody I know, knows I love wine, so my sidebar ads are often wine themed. Ads for things ranging from the Corkcicle- the icicle shaped wine chiller, to Wine Bottle Glasses (found at fab.com, hint hint), to Hobnob wines. So tonight, when I was creeping on Facebook, a sidebar ad made me giggle a little and reminded me of a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while now.

The ad was for Bordeaux wine that exclaimed: "Like Bordeaux if you are a real wine connoisseur. All wine connoisseurs like Bordeaux wine. Everybody knows that!"

WINE SOB ALERT!!!!

At the very beginning of my wine adventure, I was under the impression that my sister, Betsy, and her husband, Walt, were slightly snobbish when it came to wine. I can admit that I was wrong. Just because they do not like the same wines that I do, does not make them snobs. It makes them people who know what kind of wine they like. I also know that they are willing to try new wines.

My first true encounter with a wine snob came when I attended The Big Grape event in Grand Island with Jenna… I wrote about it a few posts ago. It was toward the end of our visit, we had tried most of the wines that we wanted and plopped down at an open table to chat and regroup. An older lady sat down at the table with us and we struck up a conversation when Jenna noticed and commented on the neat little bag she was holding.

(It ended up being a clear plastic bag with handles made to keep wine cold when you transported it. We hauled ‘glass’ it to the table where she got it and claimed ones for ourselves a little later in the evening.)

We chatted about some of the wines we had tried and made recommendations when she asked if we had tried a chocolate flavored wine from the same table that had the cool little bags. I said that I had and I had liked it, that it had tasted like tootsie pops and was WAY better than other chocolate wines I had tried. She made a nasty face at my opinion. She was almost physically upset that I actually liked it and soon got up and left our company. I was a little surprised… as was Jenna. We laughed about it a little but looking back, I am a little confused.

Most of the fun of wine tastings is trying new things. That’s why Jessi and I are able to drink drier reds now… because we kept trying things that we didn’t like in the beginning. Don’t be a wine snob. If you don’t try wines that don’t have a French name, or are the wrong color, or are too “cheap,” you could be missing out on your new favorite wine.