Finger Lakes Region Wine Excursion – Quality Wine Tours

A while back, darling StB and I were chatting about taking a brief weekend trip with the girls to taste wines in the Finger Lakes region.  After a bit of back and forth, I managed to pull together 7 girls to rent a house in Penn Yan.  I rented a ginormous SUV – consider that I currently drive a small Japanese car – and managed to figure out how to drive it.  Sort of.  That thing was heavy… no acceleration whatsoever! 

While we were up there, I wanted to go wine tasting, but I didn’t want to be or need a designated driver.  What kind of girls’ weekend is that?  So I asked around and found Quality Wine Tours, who were very helpful in accommodating our last minute addition and all of my crazy questions.  Jack was our driver for the day, helpful, friendly, not intrusive at all, and awesome, telling me upfront that any time we wanted a group picture, he was ready to take one for us.  Unfortunately, it rained pretty hard, on and off throughout the day, so we didn’t get as great views of the lake as we probably could have, but… it was a great day! 

Our first stop was at Hunt Country Vineyards.  Apparently, I don’t know how to keep my camera straight or follow horizons, so you have this weird, crooked picture of the entrance.   

At Hunt Country, for $2 you could pick… I believe it was 5 wines from their list to taste.  If you wanted to try their ice wine, it was an additional $1.  No matter which you chose, you were handed little $1 off a bottle coupons, which helped make it an easy choice later to buy a lot! 

I tried a bunch of their Rieslings, but what surprised me was the Sweet Gus blush table wine.  I bought a bottle of this… I wound up buying bottles of wine here, our first stop.  Hehe!  Our pourer here was a friendly woman who seemed amused by our chatter and excitement, and she knew her stuff. 

Two bottles: Cayuga White Estate Bottled, Sweet Gus Table Blush Wine. 

Our next stop, it started raining much harder, so I only caught this picture through the window.  Had it been a clear day, that’s the lake right in front of us… 

Dr. Konstantin Frank, where tastings were free.  Our server, whose name completely escapes me right now!, was super friendly, knowledgeable, and went through the list by offering us tastes in pairs, and named them relatively: “sweet or dry” – which helped me choose.  I wound up buying quite a few bottles here, but in all fairness… half of them were for Beer Boor at his behest, so hopefully we’ll see those in a post soon.  😉 

Four bottles: Reserve Gewurtzaminer (which just about all of us bought); Salmon Run Coho Red; Dry Riesling (for Beer Boor); Celebre, a sparkling Riesling (also for Beer Boor that I’m hoping he shares with me!).

Our next stop was Bully Hill – which I actually had prior experience with!  Remember Rochelle of Sexy Girls Eat?  No?  I mentioned her here a few times; the first time I met her, she gifted me a bottle of Bully Hill – so sweet of her!  So when I discovered this was going to be one of our stops, I was pretty excited.  As you can see, there were two types of tastings; for $2, five different pre-selected wines, or your own custom tastings.  The pre-selected wine tasting was in a huge room with a lot of other people and seemed really campy, and we all agreed that we both knew our palates well enough to know what we’d like to try.  So we trooped over to the smaller bar. 

The ‘menu’ of wines from which to choose our $1 tastes was pretty large, colorful, and a bit distracting, but I managed to pick out a bunch to try. 

I wound up getting two bottles – a bottle of red for the BF that I could not drink (I don’t tend to have the same palate as him when it comes to wine), and a huge bottle of Grower’s Riesling.  Not too sweet, not too dry, but they only had this magnum bottle size.  It was only $14.99 though so I didn’t think much about it. 

They also had popcorn on the bar, which we all fell to munching on because we’d been drinking for hours at this point and were starting to get hungry.  Dr.Y turned out to be the only other person besides me to buy anything here, though. 

Two bottles: Growers Riesling and Cabernet Franc.

Dreary countryside. 

Heron Hill!  Tastes were only a few dollars- $2 to get 5 pre-selected, or $5 to choose 6 from the list.  I decided to choose a bunch on my own. 

Unfortunately, the acidity was very high in all of the wines I chose, and this was the only winery where none of us bought a single bottle.  In all fairness, though, at this point, we were all starving and really keen on getting some food in our bellies.  Since it was off-season when we went in mid-April, the cafe attached to Heron Hill was not open.  We asked our driver to make a stop for food and he recommended a place – which I’ll describe in a separate post.   

After we were finally done eating, we headed to our final stop on the trail: Keuka Spring, where the tastes were free.  I was feeling sleepy and wound up at the same time, so I tried one, then opted out and wandered around the store looking at things instead of tasting more. I still managed to buy a bottle though…

One bottle: Crooked Lake White.

Cute corner where all of the wines had gold medals around their necks.

Really cute display for one of those appetizer plates that are meant to hold your wine glass while you nosh; the cheese candle was so cute, I flipped it over to see how much it was and was met with big, bold letters that said NOT FOR SALE.  Darn! 

Overall, I had a fabulous time buying wine, drinking it, tasting it, drinking more, buying some… and I want to thank Quality Wine Tours and our driver, Jack, for making it happen safely!  We had a great time and Jack was a great driver who helped us load the wine into the van and, my favorite quality in a driver, knew when to engage us in conversation and when to let us sleep 😉  I would definitely recommend Quality Wine Tours to anyone looking in the area – prices were reasonable too. 

I think the big surprise for me was how many bottles of red I purchased for myself (two, if you’re counting).  I’m not really big on red wines, but I’m glad I got to try so many wonderful wineries where someone explained things to me, and really knew what they were talking about.  It helped me expand my horizons and expectations to try new wines and exposed me to new things.  I also appreciated how less touristy/gimmicky these places were than Napa Valley – the prices were actually reasonable, good deals, whereas in Napa Valley, a lot of the places just jacked prices because they could.  In the Finger Lakes, you got a sense of people who really wanted you to try their wine, because they were proud of their product and knew you’d like it if you just gave it a chance.  A lot of the wineries are family-owned and run, and just about every single place offered discounts if you bought more than just 3 bottles.  We combined our purchases to get these discounts and no one ever said “hey! you can’t do that!” but instead encouraged us and helped us get the best discount possible. 

I had a really incredible time, and I will definitely be planning more trips northward for this purpose in the near future.  By the way – my total, for 9 bottles of wine? couldn’t have been more than $100.  That includes one bottle that was $23.99 on its own (the Dr. Frank Reserve Gewurtzaminer).  The discounts were good, and some of the bottles were what I describe as ‘drinkable’ – the kind of wine I can just open and have a glass while doing whatever, working, watching TV, and just keep drinking…

I highly recommend the Finger Lakes region for a very awesome wine tasting excursion – I realize we only visited 5 wineries which is barely the tip of any iceberg, but I will definitely, definitely be going back for more.  Love!