Our twenty-first birthday gift to Marisa was a wine tour around Seneca Lake. With thirty-four wineries on the official wine trail, along with multiple other small vineyards, we obviously couldn’t visit them all. So we chose, somewhat randomly, nine to check out.
Granted, our plans changed a bit. When we realized there were multiple bachelorette parties at two of our intended stops and they would be incredibly crowded, we decided to skip them. And then we stumbled onto a little organic winery that wasn’t on the official wine trail, so we ended up with eight stops:
Fruit Yard Winery , whose specialty is unique fruit wines, though they do have some excellent grape wines as well. We ended up bringing home a bottle of the pear wine (made 100% from pears) and one of the sweeter white wines. We would definitely visit this one again.
Next up was Torrey Ridge and Earle Estates Meadery , which were actually in the same building. While we bought a bottle at Torrey Ridge, I don’t think we would go out of our way to visit either of these again. They were good, but not outstanding, and there are so many other wineries to explore!
We somehow don’t have photos of the next two. Which is too bad, because the fourth winery was actually our favorite: Miles Wine Cellars. The employee running our tasting was exceptional, answering all of our questions about the wine and telling us stories about the ghosts that supposedly live in the winery.
We had lunch at Ventosa Vineyards, chosen because of their Italian cafe and Tocai Friulano wine, which is only made at this one vineyard outside of Italy. Unfortunately, the food wasn’t my favorite and they didn’t actually have the Tocai Friulano available for tastings, so it was a bit of a let-down. The view was gorgeous, though.
Next up was Lamoreaux Landing Wine Cellars, which specializes in Rieslings, one of my favorites. While Marisa and Nick chose to sample both the red and white wines, I stuck with the Rieslings. It was so interesting to taste how much the wine changed just because they used grapes from one end of the estate versus the other!
After deciding to skip two of the wineries on our list, we stumbled upon little Silver Thread Vineyard, which had a small but great variety of red and white wines, many of which had mineral undertone flavors. I was particularly intrigued by this vineyard because it uses sustainable farming practices and employs solar and geothermal power to make the wine.
And finally, we ended with Penguin Bay Winery. We particularly loved their very clean dry wines and their sweeter varieties. Plus, the labels are adorable!
So there you have it. Eight winery visits in a single day. To sum it all up…
Wineries we would definitely visit and/or buy wine from again:
Wineries we might visit again:
I visited Ventosa over the weekend. I thought the food was OK, but I loved the Riesling I had. The view reminded me of Italy; it was absolutely beautiful.
The pictures look amazing! I can tell you guys had fun
What a fantastic way to celebrate a 21st birthday
I love your pictures & your reviews!
Thank you. All photo credit must go to Dan, our DD and photog
Your photographer and designated driver sure did a good job. I wonder who that was…
Yes, huge thanks to Savvy Dan for being DD and photographer!
I sure wish there was a picture of that excellent photographer and driver….
Somehow we didn’t get one. Too busy tasting, I suppose!
Ohh, a wine tour- you are totally speaking my language.
I’ve been on that trail a few times- I love the finger lakes for that reason! Glad you guys enjoyed yourselves 
I would say that we should do a blogger wine tour this summer but… that’s probably not the best idea for your baby girl!
Mmm wine tours = lovelovelove!
That looks like lots of fun. I’ve only been to one winery – the Maui winery and honestly, the wine was kind of bad.