One New York Life

If you can imagine, following a day of chugging sampling wine, the morning didn’t come early. We got motivated around 9:00 so we could make full use of the breakfast buffet to build a solid morning drinking base. We silently made the executive decision to only go to two places rather than three before checking in to the next hotel which was both another sampling place and relatively close (by New York City terms) to other places. Fortunately, the first place was about 50 miles away so we spent about 17.5 hours driving to it.

Wagner Valley Brewing and Vineyards: PLR, God love her, managed to find one vineyard on the wine trail with a brewery and a beer sampling. The woman assembles a Danny Tanner Clipboard Of Fun like no other person. We did the wine sampling, then I did a beer sampling, and we chose to have lunch here before purchasing some of their products. This was, by far, my favorite place. Not just because of the beer (which didn’t hurt) but really because the people were the nicest and most knowledgeable. The guy who did the wine tasting seemed like he enjoyed his job, was approachable and didn’t make me feel foolish for asking questions. He gave backgrounds on how each type of wine is made and the type of grape in it whereas everyone else just gives you a list and pours your glass. He was the only person the entire trip to tell me that the “RS” on each wine meant “Residual Sugars” and was a measure of a wine’s sweetness. He was the first one we didn’t feel ripped off tipping. His equal was the guy who did the brewery tasting. He told me about each beer type and what ingredients were used and warned me off the IPA. It’s like he knew me. We also had lunch here and sat out on the back porch overlooking the vineyard and lake. The place was fantastic. Sadly, I wish I lived closer as they also have weekly Pub Nights all summer. I’ll go in to a little more about the brewery as part of the Wagner Valley Brewing Beer Snob series. Stay tuned.

Following the Live Bait Vending Machine it was well-past check-in time for hotel two. On the ride back, we decided to make one more stop as we clearly didn’t have enough to drink yet.

Rock Stream Vineyards (website down at the time of this writing): This place was… interesting. Traffic for the Seneca Lake Wine & Cheese Weekend was just starting to pick up as we arrived. This place had a cheese spread that was only for the people who had wine and cheese tickets. As we were sampling, I noticed the music (which had been playing in the background since we came in) switched over to Divinyls I Touch Myself. That, in itself, was a bit strange — but it is a place for people 21 and over so the song wasn’t that inappropriate. As the song progressed, I realized that, in fact, it was not Divinyls, but the woman who, I think, owned part of the vineyard singing a Rock Stream Vineyard themed version of I Touch Myself. Seriously. “I don’t want annnnything else. When I drink Ro-ock Stream I touch myself.”

Have you ever something dawn on you at movie slowness? Like the final scene in The Usual Suspects when Kujan identifies Kaiser Soze? With the music building in your head and everything? This best describes the building horror as I realized what was being played. Not only that, but the “recording studio” was in the loft space above the sampling room. We could see where the magic had been made. I truly wish I could tell you the other songs that came up during our watching-a-bad-comedian uncomfortable sampling as the singer laughed about the song with some of the other customers. “Yeah, that’s me!” There was also an unidentified male singer/guitarist. She wasn’t the only guilty party.

The best part about this place was the older, non-songbird woman handling our sampling showed me the proper way to pair chocolate with a port. It was delicious and I probably should have bought some, but I didn’t. I think we bought one bottle here before dashing to the car Dukes of Hazzard style with me sliding across the hood. I’m not sure my door was fully closed before PLR peeled out of the parking lot. The look I got when I suggested we should have picked up a couple of their CDs was epic.

Up next: Glenora Wine Cellars