Day 2 of Our Journey - 5 Wineries and a Distillery

Time flies when I'm busy and I realized I hadn't written anything since July!  I want to get our journey down in black and white mostly for my reference, but also for anyone who might want to read about some of these great wineries we went to.

The second day of our trip began as we drove away from our bed and breakfast after eating some wonderful blueberry pancakes and a fresh fruit and yogurt parfait.  Most wineries don't open until late morning, so we made our way to North East, Pennsylvania, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery near Lake Erie.  Mazza Vineyards (www.mazzawines.com) was our first stop of the day.

 This well decorated and welcoming tasting room was upstairs in a beautiful stucco building.  The people working there were very helpful and full of information.  Samples were 4 for $2 or 6 for $3.  David and I each picked out 4 to try and share.  The Country Red, a medium sweet red, was our favorite without a doubt.  Country Blush, medium dry & fruity; Niagara, sweet & fruity white; and Reflections, semi-dry white, were the others that we enjoyed the most.  We found the Bare Bones Red too dry for our taste and did not like the Vidal Blanc at all.  I learned on this trip that it's not the wine, but the Vidal Blanc grape that I don't like because every place I tried a Vidal Blanc I didn't care for it.  Mazza had several varieties of fruit wines of which we tried the cherry and raspberry, but they were just average.  We bought a bottle each of Niagara, Country Red and Country Blush.

Then we were off to the Penn Shore Winery and Vineyards for our second stop in North East, PA.  The owner of the winery was our tasting pourer and he was quite informative about his vineyard and the wineries in the area.  They all seem to be quite helpful to each other.  We only tried a few wines at Penn Shore and bought two that we thought were very good.  Normally a Pink Catawba is too sweet for us, but we liked this one and we usually find a Burgundy too dry, but found this one quite enjoyable.

Our third stop in North East was at the sister winery of Mazza, the South Shore Wine Company.  This was by far our favorite building.  The tasting room is an actual wine cellar built underground (as a cellar should be) of stone in 1864.  It was a historical delight to walk down into this cellar and feel the coolness of the stone around us. I was so taken with our surroundings that I didn't make good tasting notes, so all I can tell you is that we came home with 2 bottles of Hops and Honey, which is a honey wine with added hops, and a bottle of Unwooded Chardonnay.  Normally a Chardonnay is too oakey and too dry, but this one was unoaked and had a nice light flavor.

Our next stop was just over the New York border in Westfield, NY, at the Five & 20 Spirits, which is a distillery owned by the Mazza Vineyards people.  The people at the winery had told us about Five & 20, so we decided to try it for something different.  It was still before noon and we hadn't eaten lunch, so we didn't try much, but bought a bottle of Limoncello to enjoy later.

We grabbed a quick lunch in Westfield and headed to one of our favorites from our trip last year - Johnson Estate Winery (www.johnsonwinery.com), which is also in Westfield, NY, near Lake Erie.  We had fond memories of several of the wines here and we weren't disappointed.  Our favorites were still there along with some new discoveries.  The Ives, a semi-sweet red, was a new favorite along with the Liebestropfchen, a sweet and fruity white wine from the Delaware grape.  A couple of other favorites are the Finger Lakes' Riesling and the Chataqua Rouge.  The Riesling is slightly sweet and the Rouge is a
semi-sweet blush made from the Delaware and Ives grapes.

Our last winery for the day was the Noble Winery (www.noblewinery.com), also in Westfield, NY.  We had tried to find this winery last year, but never did.  This year we tried a little harder and were successful.  Most of the wines here were either too dry or too sweet for our tastes, but we did find a couple that we liked enough to buy.  The Elvira is a semi-dry fruity white with lots of flavor and the Pastavino is a sweet red with a clean finish.  Both were very enjoyable.  The tasting room is very nicely done and has big windows with great views.  If we had more time that day we might have enjoyed a glass along with the views, but we had to move on and head to the Finger Lakes where my cousin and his wife were expecting us for dinner.