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ImageIt didn’t take more than a weekend after Labor Day for the fall colors to edge out around the swamps and high places. We travel through Whitney Point and Bainbridge to Albany and back several times a month so changes in the length of day and weather are important to us for safety reasons, but the changing scenery is a big factor in our enjoyment of the trip.

Given all of the variables, the ride home last Thursday afternoon was just about perfect. We had time to stop at the Pine Ridge Grocery just outside of Bainbridge for bulk cheese, oatmeal, and my favorite; chocolate covered coffee beans. The dress and the lifestyle of the people who run the bulk store may be plain, but they have more kinds of fancy candy, sprinkles for baking, and sugar filled treats than I’ve seen anywhere else. The store back ground music is a bit saccharine, but the folks are pleasant and sincerely helpful. On a previous trip when Jim had radiator problems and pulled in there to check, the men offered him a large bucket of water and helped him get back on the road.

We wandered further up the road to the Valley View produce market just outside of Whitney Point for our first of the season cider. They had a great array of fresh produce, but what caught our eyes were the huge Honey Crisp apples. These are a relatively new variety and well worth trying. I sent some to my granddaughter in Hawaii with some local artisan cheeses from The Ithaca Farmer’s Market for her birthday since it is too hot there to grow apples and they have only one dairy farm on the entire island. 

By the time we got to Lansing we were just in the nick of time for the special at Rogues Harbor. Everyone should have home port, and “The Harbor” is ours when we’re too tired to cook (by the way, we’re both good cooks). The Harbor has been a Lansing watering hole for generations and even served “strong spirits” throughout Prohibition. It is now on the National Historical Register, thanks to the painstaking restoration by the current owners, combining the best of a local pub (peanuts on the floor and all) with a fine, but reasonably priced, restaurant.

They take pride in using as many local ingredients as possible and serving exclusively New York State wines. If you want to sample a wide variety of wine from the second largest US producer of wine, this is a great place for dinner. By the way, we had the prime rib, one of their specialties, slow roasted and rare. The standard cut is generous enough that we usually have a snack to take home, especially if we opt for the wild berry cobbler for dessert.

ImageFriday, we dined in at the House of Sullivan, with a Blue Heron as our guest in the pond. We had baked chicken with fresh local tomatoes and corn while our young migrating “guest” helped himself to frog leg sushi. Hopefully the photo I’m sending will make it into this column. He was not at all alarmed about being photographed.

Saturday morning I went to the Lansing Farmers’ Market for very fresh corn and hand made birthday presents for a variety of young relatives this month. Not only do we have some excellent bargains in produce and prepared food at the Town Hall Saturday morning, but original T-shirts, walking sticks, and just plain fun, fanciful, aprons created by very young seamstress from recycled jeans!

Sunday we had to go into Ithaca for more materials for the aqueduct Jim is building from our roof gutters to our pond, so we made what we thought would be a quick stop at the Ithaca Market for tasting some of the newly released vintages. This is another place were you can taste a number of wines for free and many of them have either an owner or winemaker actually at the market representing their product. any of them have either an owner or winemaker actually at the market representing their product. 

We stopped at Bloomer Creek Vineyard first since they specialize in the very dry wines that Jim is fond of. We began with a very dry Riesling but, good as it was, we slightly prefer red, so the fruity hints of fig in the light 2006 Pinot Noir gave us the next pick. 2007 was, “a picture perfect year”, so Jim had the “wonderful dilemma” of trying to choose between the oaky smooth 2007 Cabernet Franc and the smoky raspberry 2007 Cabernet/ Merlot blend. Hard to go wrong with that year from almost any winery in the region and the 2008 vintage seems promising from the few preliminary sips we’ve had from select vineyards. We’ll be back in two weeks to try their “Red Emperor’ when it is first released.

We’re not “wine snobs” so, frankly, the wine Jim usually likes best is that which is currently occupying his tongue. Generally, Jim generally likes very dry and oaky red wine, while Mary prefers sweeter, fruitier wine, mead and hard cider. We moved on to Eve’s Cidery to try the very bone dry, champagne-like, Northern Spy. Jim liked this one while their peach wine was way too sweet for him and, while Mary likes to eat peaches, drinking them is a different matter. 

One of us has to drive, so if the wines are primarily dry or oaky Jim tastes and Mary takes notes, but the roles change at Sheldrake when Chuck Tauck, one of the managing partners, is at the other side of the table. Chuck knows the wine club members well and he was ready for Mary with their new Apple Splash Ice Wine that took best of class in a recent State competition. This is definitely in the after dinner, dessert, mix it with cinnamon and vanilla ice cream, class or warm it and sip it slowly. Even though we usually do only one or two small tastings we certainly couldn’t resist a bit of their 2007 Gamay either.

There are far too many free wine and spirits events coming up this weekend as the area swings into full harvest mode. Check out www.cayugawinetrail.com for events on both sides of the lake and wander up to Aurora for a harvest festival with Native musician Keith Secola, among others, on Saturday. If you see us out and about, stop and introduce yourself and give us your favorite wine or food place to share.

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