One New York Life

In a couple months, Inside Pulse will celebrate it’s fifth anniversary since the brand separation from 411mania. Four-and-a-half of those five years were one headache after another — from people flaking and turning martyr to incredibly terrible service and constant crashing from our former four-figure/month, no-service webhost who couldn’t keep up with our traffic to our contracted-out server guys who thought it was perfectly reasonable to “upgrade” our server and put us down for days at a time to one-third of the ownership group not understanding that you can’t be an unreasonable dick to people who are writing for free stuff. About a year ago, we came thisclose to calling it a career and shutting the doors for good. It was approaching “not fun” and becoming an unbelievably-expensive hobby.

Then, Radio Exile’s own Shawn M Smith convinced us to switch the whole thing over to Wordpress to take all the development off the table. Then, we found the awesome Media Temple hosting service and a bunch of Wordpress caching plug-ins that solved the hosting and database issues. Suddenly it became a slightly-less unbelievably-expensive hobby. The last six months *knocks wood* have been awesome. With the hosting issues and development issues largely solved, we’ve been able to go back to what we wanted to do in the first place. Content. That’s led to the new niche Food TV Blog and commercial review blog and The Beer Blog. It’s also let me start side-development again and I wrote up a cool little wrestling news aggregator that’s still alpha but, once finished, will be able to index all the current wrestling websites and, hopefully, be a launching point for people who want to get all their news about a fake sport in one place.

All of that leads up to something Jon Widro and I have been tossing around for about a year. He’s hosted PPVs for about three years and we thought it would be fun to podcast our post-PPV discussions. We finally bit the bullet and did it so I present the first Post-PPV Rewind Podcast. The first episode features myself, Widro, the aforementioned Shawn M. Smith, and long-missing Joshua Grutman. The volume is a bit, uh, temperamental and Grutman’s fidgeting was picked up in the microphone as a weird bass pulsing — but, production aside, I think for a first try it came out OK. On the upside, my recorded voice didn’t sound nearly as bad as I expected.

So, if you have 20 minutes and have any interest in wrestling, give it a listen. Just keep the volume low and turn the bass down.

Wagner Valley Brewing Dockside Amber Lager

Brewed By: Wagner Valley Brewing
Brewed In: Lodi, NY
Type: Porter
ABV: 5.8%

What They Say: Only handcrafted once a year when the maple sap runs, this true, incredibly smooth dark robust porter is brewed with fresh East Kent Golding hops & has wonderful dry roasted & chocolate malt tones. Subtle molasses and vanilla notes are balanced by pure NY “Sugar House” maple syrup. This small seasonal batch is released annually near the first day of spring.

Website: Addressed in Part One (Sled Dog Doppelbock).

Why I Picked It: This is the fourth and final beer that I put in my sampler pack. Also, I was sadly disappointed by Tommyknocker Maple Ale so I wanted to give a porter a shot. I don’t usually drink porters at this time of year (and this seems like an odd choice for a spring seasonal) but the taste I got from sampling was way too good to pass up.

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Presentation: This another beer in which the website image in not the same as the current bottle. I like the new label much better than the one on the website. It took until the fourth beer, but it’s the cheesy, low-rent image on the label that I don’t like. The version on this bottle is blinged up. It’s got a rustic wooden theme to go with the “Sugar House” name, plus a non-symmetrical silhouette of the Finger Lakes across the bottom. This is a much cooler label. Love it. 5

Originality: Maple Porter is a little more of an explored territory than maple ale. 2

Taste: The flavors of even a generic porter support the sweetness of maple syrup much better than does an ale. In this beer, the bitter chocolate malts play a delicate balance with the sweet maple syrup. Surprisingly, the hint of vanilla in this is much more obvious than in Saranac’s Vanilla Stout. As a porter, it would be unfair of me to take points for it being too dry. Oddly, this beer’s flavors get more distinct as it comes to room temperature. The maple gets bolder as the beer gets warmer. 9

Body: It pours a thick, stouty black with a relatively thick, tan head. Minimal lacing and the lack of head led me to believe the carbonation would be nil. Surprisingly, though, the carbonation was much more distinct then I was expecting. It’s a pleasantly thin body to balance with the huge, heavy flavors. If the body here was too thick, combined with the heavy flavors would make this beer nigh-undrinkable. 8

Efficiency: Unlike with the maple ale, I didn’t find the maple flavor in the porter to be so sweet to regulate consumption speed. But, the distinctive drymouth of the porter combined with heavy flavors were. This beer is a heavyweight, filling me up after just two. The big ABV makes up for some of those limitations but it’s just too heavy to make up for all of them. As was mentioned earlier, the flavors actually get heavier as the beer warms up. I’m not sure exactly what that should do to an efficiency rating. 7

Versatility: This is a heavy, high ABV beer that isn’t really for beginners. However, if you’re a fan of porters and are looking for something that packs a punch before dinner, go for it. 7

Final Score: 38 of 50 – Great beer.

I just finished watching the DVD series of Joss Whedon’s Firefly series that was canceled by Fox after twelve episodes.

Someone should have gone to prison for canceling it.

I have a very dim recollection of watching this show when I was a little kid. I’m pretty sure I remember it only because I remember the bright red outfit and the funny symbol which imprinted on my 3-year-old mind. I remembered it being hysterically funny. When I saw it available on DVD, I decided to give it a shot to see if my dusty, 27-years-ago recollections were correct.

Turns out… meh.

The reason, I think, it appealed to me in my younger days because of its purposeful resemblance to a live-action superhero cartoon. The premise is not horrible — Special ed teacher Ralph Hinkley (or Hanley… or Hinkle, depending on the episode. Originally, I thought the change from Hinkley to Hanley was because a network-head thought “Ralph Hinkley” sounded too much like “Jewey McJewenstein” but it was actually because some guy named Hinckley trying to assassinate President Reagan — who knew?) is in the desert with his class on a field trip. He and FBI agent Bill Maxwell are visited by aliens who give Ralph the iconic, super-power granting red suit and charge Maxwell with supplying the hero with crimes to solve. As he’s walking back to his car, he loses the instruction booklet. It’s the wacky meeting of the by-the-book, cold-war, 60s era FBI agent and the special ed, change the world, 80s California hippie teacher! It’s Dragnet meets Superman, but if Superman was clueless!

The Good

• I don’t really recall if television shows generally had great soundtracks in the early 80s. But the soundtrack to this show uses real 80s tunes that always fit the scene. I remember most 80s shows using scores or stock music. In addition to the iconic “Believe It Or Not” theme song, which actually became more popular than the show hitting #2 on Billboard, the music staff picked songs that actually fit with what was going on in the montage they’re airing. I like it much better than the current “pick something by The Fray that someone will pay us for” model used by Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy.
• And speaking of the montages — this show has a lot of them. I’m not sure exactly when TV shows switched to the 42-minute format we get today from the 50-minute we have here but holy crap did shows in the 50-minute format have some filler. Montages and extended scenes that meander. I’m not sure why this is “good”. I guess I’m a fan of less commercials… on a commercialess DVD… whatever.
• Stephen J Cannell is the creator of this series. You might remember Cannell’s shows by the end of the episode where the pipe-smoking guy is typing away — then he rips the paper out of the typewriter and throws it into the air and it lands on a pile of paper and becomes the C in Cannell. He’s also responsible for shows like 21 Jump Street, Silk Stalkings (which was way ahead of its time on USA’s “character’s welcome” campaign and America’s love of the procedural crime drama), The A-Team, and Hunter. The first season’s ongoing B-storyline is Ralph’s quest to win over his special-education “delinquent” students by believing in them. Which is fine, I guess, but I do remain curious why his special ed students in Southern California all sport Brooklyn and North Jersey accents.
• It’s always amusing to look for the things that change from a pilot to the launch of a series. Sometimes it’s ridiculously brazen. In this show, for instance, Ralph has a son and an actress/model ex-wife who he’s trying to win custody from. After the show starts, the son is all but phased out and the wife is never mentioned again apart from an occasional plot hook. Also, Connie Selleca’s Pam Davidson is rapidly upgraded from “Ralph’s Lawyer” to “Ralph’s Girlfriend.”

The Bad

• The entire premise of the show is based on the fact they got a magical suit from the aliens and lost the directions on how to use it. Ralph lost the direction book in the desert. In the pilot, he shrugs and says “oh, I must have lost it. Oh well!!” Isn’t this a pretty major plot point? It seems like a glowing book would stand out in the middle of the desert. A cursory look between where Maxwell parked and where Ralph’s bus stalled would have been nice instead of immediately throwing your hands up and say “darn, it just must be gone.” The fact they never even tried to find the book bothered me for far too long.
• I know this is one of the comedic elements of the show, but the “I can’t figure out how to fly straight” running joke gets old after about the third episode. They keep it up for the entire season. I understand it’s the show’s gimmick, but if you were suddenly given a supersuit, wouldn’t you at least try to master the thing? You get the impression that Ralph only puts the suit on for the episodes and seems perfectly fine with crashing in to things and not landing. I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but I think I’d go out to the desert and try to learn how to fly straight in my off time. You know, so I could get where I needed to be.
• I’m sure I loved this as a little kid, but the stupid cartoon sound effects were distracting and dumb. Like, do you really need to dub in the sound of a chugging train when he’s using super speed or the Scooby Doo “we’re running in place before our feet finally stop sliding on the ground” noise or the Looney Toons “slip on a banana peel” noise when he throws a bad guy? Was the world really clamoring for Batman the television series’s combat in 1981?
• The “I’m a wacky guy in LA running around in a set of tights” thing is very overdone. The best example of this is in the third episode. Ralph is trying to figure out how the suit’s invisibility power works and can’t quite figure out how to become visible. He goes to a restaurant where he’s supposed to be meeting his girlfriend’s parents and suddenly becomes visible in the back of the restaurant and can’t figure out how to become invisible again. He tells his girlfriend he has to make his way through the dining room to get out while clearly standing next to a big EXIT sign in the back. So he pretends to be a stage performer who entered the restaurant to sell a show somewhere else in the city. Later, we’re supposed to buy that neither of her parents (hardware store owners from Montana or some such Middle America state) recognize the guy who made a spectacle of himself in the nice restaurant. I have some experience with rural parents who come to visit large urban areas. They remember things that are out of the ordinary. Exquisitely.

The Rest

I don’t want to get too much in to the poor quality of the special effects. It was 1981 so pretty much everything is done in front of a very obvious green screen. I could mention the gratuitous use of stock footage or the poorly-matched, Italian looking stuntman. In the Pilot, Ralph leaps over a wall to get on someone’s property and crashes through the trees and lands in a heap on the other side of the wall. He also crashes next to the same wall in a heap in no less than three other episodes. What I took from this is that Southern California is filled with large mansions surrounded by tan, stone walls beneath lush trees. Also, were all shows from the early 80s very obviously not filmed in sound studios? The conversations that are filmed inside have a very indie-movie feel to them. The dialog echoes and the lighting is weird. Am I just spoiled now?

A somewhat minor complaint about the DVD. Why in the world would you include the pilot movie for the Greatest American Heroine spin-off, which happens two years after the end of this show, on the season one DVD? It was cut from a two-hour movie in to a one-hour episode for the syndication package, but it gives away some pretty large plot points for the remaining two seasons. One being that the aliens give him another direction book which he also loses. And, holy crap is Heroine a bad show. Like, the regular show gets a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of mileage from Agent Maxwell being a 1960s guy who isn’t ready for Pam Davidson’s strong woman of the 80s, but Heroine turns it in to a major plot point. Robert Culp also ages about a billion years between 1981 and 1986. I don’t think the world was quite ready for a little 5′2″ woman beating up men in 1986.

And really, how has THIS show not been given another nostalgia run on some network? Regardless of my thoughts on the original, it does have a cult following. Doesn’t this seem like something that could get some legs on CW or Sci-Fi if you stuck some young, hot star in to the suit? Especially with the current string of comic book movie successes?

I’m kind of torn on whether to watch the next two seasons. It’s pretty bad.

Via Metsblog: Omar Minaya said [Carlos] Beltran will be put on disabled list with a bone bruise on his right knee.

Starting shortstop, center fielder, first baseman, 3-starter, 4-starter, set-up man.

I concede.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, the Mets took a 5-4 lead off three run homer from the unlikeliest of sources. Catcher Brian Schneider, not one of my favorites, cranked a three run bomb to give the Mets a lead late in the game.

In the top of the seventh, noted Met killer Pat Burrell opened with a base hit. What followed was Bobby Parnell deftly turning a one-run lead in to a two-run deficit before recording an out. What followed that was the rest of the bullpen giving up another two earned runs as the offense, as per normal, folded up shop and went home in the eighth and ninth inning as it only took seven batters for the Rays reliever to record six outs. I didn’t see this because after the Bobby Parnell debacle, I decided it would be more fun and less frustrating to watch golf than it would be to watch this game. In fact, I didn’t even know there had been a rain delay until I checked the box score.

The team is unwatchable. They don’t come from behind. I think in two months of Citi Field they have had 2 walk off wins. One was April 17th. The other was a walk off walk at the hands of the vaunted Braves bullpen. Discounting K-Rod, they have exactly one reliever who can consistently get outs. And, unfortunately, he can only get lefties out. Also, as it turns out, he can’t pitch every day. Pedro Feliciano has appeared in 40 of the Mets 67. I can’t even be upset that one of the last games was on his shoulders, because he’s done his job more times than not this year. Against Philadelphia and the Yankees, he gave the Mets a free pass through the tough lefty parts of their line-ups in late innings. In neither case could the team come back. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. He finally took a loss (his 2nd of the year — in 40 appearances, mind you) in Baltimore.

As I might have mentioned earlier in the season, this team’s only problem was not the bullpen. It was a chronic inability to hit baseballs late in games. This has not changed. They no longer have the bullpen as an excuse to fall back on for being .500. Going in to Sunday’s game, the bullpen has posted a better ERA (3.40 to 4.57), a better WHIP (1.40 to 1.37), a better K/9 (7.2 to 6.4), and a better K/BB ratio (1.81 to 1.75) then the starters. Yet they’ve taken 16 losses as compared to the starters’ 17. The bullpen works under an insane amount of stress considering if they give a up a run, the team loses.

I’m curious — what is the new excuse when the bullpen is no longer the boogeyman?

Wagner Valley Brewing Dockside Amber Lager

Brewed By: Wagner Valley Brewing
Brewed In: Lodi, NY
Type: Vienna (style) Lager
ABV: 5.1%
Awards: Bronze Medal – 2002 Great American Beer Festival

What They Say: This medium-bodied Vienna style Lager is rich in caramel maltiness. The clean ruby hue shows impeccable detail to the historical style. Brewed with only imported German and Vienna malts, its delicate, smooth flavor and aroma are perfectly balanced to provide a soft yet crisp world-class lager.

Website: Addressed in Part One (Sled Dog Doppelbock).

Why I Picked It: This is the third of the four beers I brought home with me from Wagner Valley. I don’t really remember this one at all from the tasting. Since he went from light to dark, I’ll presume this one was, if not first, pretty early on.

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Presentation: According to the bottle: Throughout the 19th Century steamboats were in their prime on Seneca Lake transporting people and produce from one end of the lake to the other. As I said previously — the Wagner Valley beer labels are serviceable but don’t seem very polished. The product is very good but there’s nothing about the labels that make them pop. I guess with a primarily local distribution they don’t see a reason to step-up the marketing. Probably valid. I give it an extra point for the creative names. 3

Originality: I’m going to go ahead and say an “amber lager” has been done by just about everyone — including Budweiser. 1

Taste: As I do more of these, I’m usually a fan of any beer claiming “caramel malts”. Most of them taste similar. The marketing blurb claims a “crisp taste” and that’s a very good description of the beer’s flavor. The taste was extremely crisp and refreshing while cold. The aftertaste was a little drier than I care for but the caramel sweetness was delicious and perfectly balanced with malty bitterness. 7

Body: A very dark amber lager with a minimal head and almost non-existent lacing. I was pleasantly surprised that the carbonation was much lower than expected. Lower carbonation is always a good thing as super carbonated beers just taste like carbonation. This is a great example of the style. 7

Efficiency: This is a delicious version of a Vienna lager with an average alcohol content. The flavor’s extreme dryness is a detriment to fast consumption and it lacks an ABV high enough to offset it. I also noticed the bitterness became more pronounced as the beer approached room temperature. If I could give the beer a sliding efficiency rating based on relative temperature, I would. Instead, I’ll just rate the average trending up. 6

Versatility: While I do love the beer’s flavor, its uses are limited. Caramel malts, while tasty in a standalone or a slow-drinking beer, have their limits. The sweetness and dryness doesn’t pair well with meals and I don’t know if it would be particularly refreshing on a thirsty summer day. But the decent alcohol content make this an excellent option for a slow Sunday sixpack. 6

The Beer Snob Says: Other products from this brewery blow this beer out of the water. If you’re filling a sampler pack, shy away and go for the more unique offerings.

Final Score: 30 of 50 – Good beer

1) When Bootleg makes his drive from Albany, Buffalo, or Rochester to Cooperstown next month, I look forward to his thoughts on the brain-numbing, supposedly 90-minute drive. I also look forward to his thoughts on either Brewery Ommegang or Cooperstown Brewing. I wanted to get to one or both of these places on the drive home but, sadly, it didn’t happen. We were actually afraid we’d be swallowed by time itself.

2) Unfortunately, something we didn’t notice until we were leaving Glenora was the Earle Estates Meadery. I’ve not had huge experience with mead, really only a 4-glass sampler at the unparalleled Sunset Bar & Grill in Boston but I would have definitely gone to a meadery just to say I’ve been to one. If we ever happen to go back to the area, I absolutely need to go here.

3) PLR and I have become huge fans of going to seasonal places in the off-season. If we were famous Food Network or Travel Channel people, we could make a whole show about it. We’d have to come up with a fancy, media-friendly name like staycation that’s obnoxious and hated by everyone. But we’ve done Maine and the Wineries in the offseason now and it saves huge amounts of money. Additionally, there are hardly any other people. It’s great.

4) As we were leaving Glenora, the Wine & Cheese festival was in full swing. Apparently, the transport of choice, other than driving yourself, is to rent a limo. PLR did something like this for a friend’s birthday down here. Their group rented a limo to drive them around to Long Island’s wineries. The vibe, she said, was much different. Long Island, if one can imagine, was much more tight-assed about their samples and looked down on, uh, oversamplers. Proving, once again, all other regions of NY > downstate NY.

5) I am one of the biggest proponents of Dunkin’ Donuts over Starbucks. Donuts has superior food and superior basic coffee. I was crushed when Donuts moved to Starbucks’s terrible syrup-based flavoring. Regardless, I have found something better than Dunkin’ Donuts. Tim Horton’s. My aunt turned me on to them a few years back because she used to bring 5-pound cans of their coffee home whenever she was out that way. Their baked goods are even better than Dunkin’ Donuts and, by God, their coffee might even be better. The take-home price of the five-gallon tub is very reasonable. Right now, they only go as far east as Syracuse, but here’s to hoping they continue moving west.

6) Apparently Upstate New York just has to shift their entire economy from being factory-based to alcohol based. If this one region can support so many different wineries, maybe the full upstate economy can recover by brewing, distilling, and vineyarding. I mean, it’s worth a shot, right? There’s got to be something better than rusty, dead factories.

7) Quite obviously, I prefer beer to wine, but this trip certainly gave me a little bit more of an appreciation for grape juice. It probably will never be my go-to given the choice of a craft-brewed ale, but at the very least I have a better idea of what I like. That said, even tasting the different types of wine, I’m pretty sure I’ll always find the idea of hundred-dollar bottles of wine to be stupid.

8) If I had my choice between the two places, I’d definitely return to Glenora over Belhurst. There was something missing at Belhurst. I’m not sure what. Between the strange weekday, formal-attire wearing group and the somewhat inconvenient breakfast buffet, I just felt like my stay was more pleasant at Glenora; even with the poor dinner service. It might be time for them to upgrade their televisions though.

9) When I’m a millionaire some day, I think I’m going to buy a winery. Or maybe just a house next to a winery so I can get lots of samples. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.

10) The trip was an excellent appetizer to the upcoming trip of doom in September. Much like the movie Beerfest, I need to start training somewhere. It might as well be an early summer trip to drink wine.

The weekend couldn’t have started any better. I couldn’t find someone to go out with, so I instead decided to watch the game at home. It was just as well. The Mets and the Yankees playing AL baseball featuring Livan “Full Count” Hernandez and Joba “Fuller Count” Chamberlain guaranteed three things. 1) The Yankees would be in the bullpen by the fifth (they were). 2) The Mets would need all the offense that bullpen would provide (they did). And 3) The game wouldn’t be over until after 11 pm (it wasn’t).

The consensus was they had to steal one of the first two games and then they’d be a shoo-in to beat AJ Burnett with Johan Santana on Sunday and take the series. I thought differently. I thought the Mets had to keep up with Joba and the pen on Friday — then rely on the Yankee tendency to be flummoxed by pitchers they’ve never seen to steal the win on Saturday. This would make the Santana’s start less important. There was no way Santana was going to have a good game in the Bronx. Anyone who’s paid attention this year would know it. Santana gets two fly balls to every one ground ball. Fly balls to right in the new Yankee Stadium go out. Santana doesn’t throws balls (to a fault, really) and has started pitching to contact in Yosemite National Citi Field. Counter-intuitively, the game with the best pitcher was the one with the worst odds of winning. That park was not going to hold fly balls. They needed to steal the first two. And it went according to plan.

Almost.

For 9 and 5/6 innings, the Mets played a great game. Then Luis Castillo dropped a ridiculous fly ball and Mark Texeira, earning those “gamer” and “plays the game the right way” tags, scored from first. The Mets lost a terrible game. The fans freaked out. Calls for Luis Castillo’s head were plentiful. On Facebook, I suggested he should light himself on fire. Yankee fans celebrated. Some even had the stones to call it a good win. In reality, the Yankees lost five consecutive games to their division rival and their crosstown rival and then did what the Yankees do — unleashed a dozen runs on an unsuspecting pitcher to kinda/sorta hide their pitching deficiencies. They did it with the Orioles in the first series this season (5-10, 5-7, 11-2), to the Tigers (11-0) following their first sweeping in Boston, and to the Rangers (12-3) after dropping a home series to the Phillies. Which is fine. As the Rangers proved last year, scoring a lot of runs with terrible pitching is a perfectly valid way to win a baseball game.

I didn’t listen to WFAN today. I knew it would be a predictable day of calls to trade half the team and releasing Luis Castillo. Basically, an overreaction to something that really isn’t all that bad. Just magnified because it was against the Yankees.

Castillo made a terrible error. It’s no worse or forgivable than any lollipop that loses a game; be it in the fifth, seventh, ninth, or fifteenth. But, as I said in the May wrap-up — the team still doesn’t know what it needs. It’s playing without its opening day shortstop, first baseman, setup man, and two starters. No one is asking for sympathy, but it’s not unreasonable to be satisfied with .500 baseball until players start returning. Anything the Mets do right now — especially trading prospects for a marginal rental — would be nothing more than overreacting to a freakishly bad week. They need to treat Friday as a win in every way but record. In that case, it’s a 3-3 week; par for what was expected in a week filled with the Phillies and Yankees.

This upcoming week is a bit different. Three against the pitiful Orioles with the Mets’ best current line-up (Fernando Martinez in left, Ryan Church in right, Gary Sheffield at DH) followed by a ten-game home-stand in which they MUST go 6-4 to make up for Friday’s loss. Taking the Orioles’ series and a 6-4 homestand is not unreasonable. That’s 8-5 through a week where the Phillies will be playing the Rays, Blue Jays, and Orioles.

I’d be lying to say I don’t have concerns about the team’s playoff caliber. But, as previously mentioned, I still don’t know what, if anything, they need. Sending a group of prospects to the Nationals for 1.5 years of Adam Dunn would be a panic move. Sending the remaining farm system to Cleveland for Cliff Lee and Mark Derosa would be a terrible idea. Cliff Lee has to come back to Earth eventually and the idea that Mark Derosa answers anyone’s prayers is idiotic. Besides, the claim that Indians are even going to sell at 6 games back is itself dubious.

Sad they dropped the series to the Yankees? Sure. Happy they’re playing .500 ball missing their starting shortstop and their only true power threat? Absolutely. But the Mets aren’t at the point where it’s time to make a panic trade. WFAN callers seem to think “big bats” are plentiful and free.

They’re not.

With traffic for the Wine and Cheese Festival starting to pick-up around the lake, we pulled in to Glenora Wine Cellar at about 3 PM. We considered stopping at one more winery, but then consulted our map and discovered additional wineries a half-mile in either direction from Glenora. If we wanted to visit another, we could walk the “avenue block” and skip extra questionable driving. This would be when we first noticed that wineries separated by a half-mile or less didn’t actually have a sidewalk between them. If we’d gone, we would have had to walk on the road’s shoulder. We did not go.

Glenora is a relatively small resort compared to the Belhurst. The resort features only thirty rooms. Looking at the accomodations section — the “Vintner Guestrooms” are housed in the foreground building. Our room (and all of them, I think) featured a private balcony overlooking the vineyard and lake, two queen beds, a gigantic bathroom, a complimentary wine tasting (at the building in the background to the left), a complimentary glass of champagne on check-in, a complimentary glass of port each evening, and a complimentary bottle of wine in your refrigerator.

This place was gorgeous. Maybe it was the combination of the awesome weather, the out-of-season price, and the right amount of wine over two days, but I loved almost everything about the stay. Sitting out on the balcony in silence overlooking nature was one of the more relaxing evenings I’ve ever had. It even featured a lightning storm over the open plains. The breathtaking natural fireworks show lit up the lake and the surrounding landscape. If you’ve never seen a lightning storm, it’s seeing something like this without any accompanying thunder or rain. The vast openness of the landscape added to it. It’s the best view I’ve had of one of these storms. I’ve mentioned before — even around Albany and Saratoga you’re surrounded by the foothills of the Adirondacks. It’s not completely open like Central NY’s landscape. It’s just lake, open land, and a completely unobstructed view of lightning. I could have watched it for days.

My only complaint about this place was the restaurant, Veraisons. While the food was excellent (I only got a medium-rare steak, which a chef would really have to work at to screw up), the service was terrible. Everything with our server took far too long. It took forever for her to take a drink order, to deliver the wine, to take a dinner order, to take a dessert order, to bring a check, to take the check. Nothing is more frustrating than awkwardly sitting at a dinner table when dinner’s done and the wine bottle is empty and the conversation becomes different incarnations of “where’s the waitress”. I think the service would be unacceptable even to people outside the waitress capital of the world. It took the restaurant down from a good-but-forgettable experience to a terrible two-star one. It ruined what was otherwise a great overnight stay.

However, the room-service breakfast was top-notch. We ordered breakfast at 9:00 am and it arrived around 9:20 am. In fact, it arrived before I had a chance to go to the front desk and get small bill for a cash tip. I ordered my new favorite breakfast meal — Johnny Cakes. I highly recommend them. Take corn-muffin batter and make a pancake out of it — then serve it with fruit and syrup. Awesome.

I loved this place. As we were leaving, I noticed that one of the staff was selling a couple on the benefits of having a wedding reception here. Other than the 15-hour drive from Albany — sold.