New York's Finger Lakes: Wine, Water, and Gorges

We'd always wanted to take a weekend excursion to the Finger Lakes from NYC, but we never made it while we lived there. While planning our route for this road trip, we realized we'd be driving right by them, so of course we added them into the itinerary. As mentioned in the last post, we got into the region at night and slept in Seneca Falls. The next morning, we got up and drove to Geneva (on Seneca Lake) to look around and shop at the local farmers market. It's a quaint little town, and the market was maybe half a block long, but we found some delicious strawberry rhubarb jam and counted the stop as a success. We continued driving through a more residential area and on toward some wineries. This region is so beautiful, and being right on the water keeps you from feeling landlocked even though you're in the middle of New York state.

We decided to tackle Seneca Lake the first day, so we drove south along the water from Geneva and stopped at two wineries along the way. We instantly loved the wine tasting scene here - it's far less touristy than Napa and Sonoma, and there's not an ounce of pretentiousness. AND - a tasting here is only $2 per person compared to $10-15 in California! Bottles of wine are also much more affordable. In Cali, we'd buy maybe one bottle at each winery, and here, we bought anywhere from 3-6 at each for the same amount of money. Don't get me wrong, we truly loved wine country out west, too. And in fact, the tasting room employees in CA were generally more knowledgeable than those in NY. But for a lot of reasons (proximity, price, level of comfort, water views), we'd come back here first if given the choice.

We hit two wineries on the way to lunch: Ventosa Vineyards Estate and Belhurst. Both were beautiful with gorgeous lake views and friendly people. We bought a few bottles at each, including a sparkling white wine from Belhurst to save for our upcoming anniversary.

Ventosa:

 Belhurst:

After liberal tastings at two wineries and only eating granola bars for breakfast, we were in need of food. We stopped in Watkins Glen at the southern tip of Seneca Lake for lunch at the Wildflower Cafe. Unbelievably delicious food and great local brews... wow. We had the best fried mozzarella ever - hand breaded with marinara and pesto sauce. Then we got a panini and a wrap to split. Everything was so tasty.

After lunch, we walked around Watkins Glen and its marina a bit.

 Next, we headed up the east side of Seneca Lake to Atwater Vineyards. We did another tasting here, bought a few bottles, and sat on their deck for a magnificent water view. This was the last of our Seneca Lake vineyard stops, and we headed east to Cayuga Lake and Ithaca for the evening.

We had dinner in Ithaca at a yummy Spanish tapas place. In the morning, we got an oil change, ran a few errands, and headed over to Cornell to check out the campus and the gorges Ithaca is known for. It's a beautiful campus, and the water running through it adds a lot of character. We spent 45 minutes or so here before driving up Cayuga Lake to our last Finger Lakes winery.

Our last stop was Sheldrake Point, New York state's winery of the year for 2009 and 2010. I said earlier that the staff of NY tasting rooms weren't quite as knowledgeable (or maybe just not as vocal) about their wines, but this one was right on par with those in California. We got great explanations for what everything was, how it was made, what their favorites were, etc. This is a great tasting room with a beautiful winery and delicious wines. We could see why it won winery of the year two years in a row!

By now, our wine selection had grown quite robust, but we decided to complete the case we had going in our trunk and even add a few more bottles. Between the vineyards of California and New York, we bought more than 20 bottles of wine on this trip!

From here, we stopped for a late lunch at another vineyard's outdoor cafe, and then we headed east for Massachusetts.

Up next: some personal stops in New England.