The great wine getaway

Everyone's favorite blog took a brief vacation last week while my wife and I celebrated her recent milestone birthday (that's right, she finally turned 21!) with an overnight trip to the Finger Lakes. We were able to visit six wineries around Keuka and Seneca Lakes, stayed at the lovely Esperanza Mansion, and generally had a fantastic time. If you're considering a trip to the area, here are my thoughts and recommendations:

• We started by visiting Hunt Country Vineyards, near the northern tip of Keuka's west branch. Maybe it was because it was the first stop on our tour, but Hunt Country might have been our favorite of the wineries we visited. More likely, it was because they offered a wine & chocolate tasting (for my wife) and a pretty fantastic Pinot Gris (for me). It's a small, charming place, and the young man who walked us through our tasting was friendly and knowledgeable.
• Our next stop was at Dr. Konstantin Frank, whose wines have been among my favorites for years. Unfortunately, it was probably our least favorite tasting experience. Dr. Frank is such a big operation that they've evidently chose to put only minimal effort into their on-site customer experience. The tasting, the attitude of the employees, the facilities... they were all entirely adequate at best. Plus, my wife was pretty pissed from the start of our visit as a dog had been left in one of the visitors' cars in the parking lot. Sure, it had been left running with the A/C on, and you can certainly go through the tasting and a quick visit to the gift shop in about fifteen minutes, but leaving your dog in a car on a hot summer day is still an incredibly stupid thing to do.
• We then visited Bully Hill, which is pretty much the polar opposite of Dr. Frank in style and substance for visitors. A restaurant, a wine museum, an art gallery, a two-floor gift shop, and a winery tour make for an impressive slate of attractions, but the wine tasting was impressive in its own right. Bully Hill offers two different tasting options: the cellar bar, with a fixed list of wines, or a choose-your-own-adventure option that lets you select from their catalog. The people were very friendly, the facilities are terrific, and the location offers a beautiful view of the lake. The only negative was that Bully Hill's wines generally trend towards the sweeter end of the spectrum, which isn't our favorite.
• Before visiting the next winery, we stopped in the small town of Hammondsport for an ice cream and some window shopping. We got a chuckle out of the prominent banners and signs around town celebrating Hammondsport's status as "Coolest Small Town in America" by the noted arbiters of cool at Budget Travel Magazine.
• Our final winery visit on day one was at Heron Hill. With a beautiful building and gently sloping land all around, it was clear that Heron Hill is a popular place for weddings and other events. Arriving late on a Thursday afternoon, however, meant that there were only a few other visitors there. The wine tasting was excellent, with an impressively wide selection of options. I don't think I'd tried their wines previously, but a couple of them immediately became favorites. We even splurged on a bottle of their Riesling Reserve, which was phenomenal.
• We concluded our day by checking in to the Esperanza and having a (very) late dinner at their restaurant. I'm not sure if we just caught them on a bad day, but they were having a dickens of a time getting customers to finish their meals and turn over tables. Our outdoor reservation became an indoor one and the food service was agonizingly slow. However, when we did finally eat the quality of the food was superb. I'd be willing to go back and give the place another chance; at any rate, the Esperanza itself is lovely and the view of the lake is wonderful.
• We slept in a bit on Friday morning and then decided to drive over to Seneca Lake to check out a few of the wineries there. We started by visiting Fox Run, which was in the middle of setting up for their annual Garlic Festival to be held that weekend. Even in the midst of that chaos we had a wonderful tasting and even went on their brief winery tour. Walking through the vineyard and the wine making facilities was nifty.
• Last and honestly kind of least on our winery tour was Belhurst. Honestly, it's not really fair to compare it to the other places we visited; the Belhurst's winery is really just a gift shop and tasting bar attached to the inn and castle. By their own admission, they don't have their own vineyards and instead contract out for their grapes. Still, they have some nice wines, and the tasting was a very pleasant experience. The castle and grounds are lovely, and I can see why they are top choice for weddings in the region.

We wrapped up the trip with a quick stop at the Waterloo Premium Outlets, which made my wife pretty happy (even if we both acknowledged that there wasn't much in the way of "outlet pricing" to be had). Then we hopped on the thruway and were home by mid-afternoon. All in all, a wonderful grown-up overnight getaway.