Hudson Valley Wine Festival

This weekend is the Hudson Valley Wine Festival at the Dutchess County Fair Grounds in Rhinebeck NY.   I will be there at the Hudson Valley Wine Country booth so please stop by and say hello.

The Hudson Valley Wine Festival is a great event.  There are wineries from the Finger Lakes and Hudson Valley that attend this festival. There is a nice variety of wines to taste and non wine vendors to purchase early Christmas presents from.

Visit these Hudson Valley Wineries at the festival:

• Brotherhood, America's Oldest Winery
• Brimstone Hill Vineyard
• Brookview Station
• Cascade Mountain Winery
• Cereghino Smith Winery
• El Paso Winery
• Glorie Farm Winery
• Palaia Vineyards
• Pazdar Winery
• Warwick Valley Winery
• Whitecliff Vineyard & Winery (be nice to my daughter, their cashier for the event - wish her Happy Birthday, her B-day is Monday)

Some of my favorite Finger Lakes Wineries to visit are:

• Atwater
• Hazlitt (ok, my mother-in-law loves their Red Cat, but I like their vinifera wines)
• Heron Hill Winery
• McGregor Winery
• Swedish Hill (actually they won the Governor's Cup - so see if they have their Riesling Sparkling wine to taste)

Tickets to the festival are $30 and there is a $50 two day ticket available.  You can purchase tickets at http://hudsonvalleywinefest.com/tickets.htm .  I hope to see some of you at the event.

Uncork the Experience of Woodstock at Winestock

This weekend "Uncork the experience of Woodstock" at Winestock being held at R Winery at Robibery Family Vineyards.

Relive the experience of Woodstock - listen to the music from the era as the Brian Dougherty Band, 1 Step West and Liquid Lunch get you rocking.  There will be food available for sale from Conklin Catering. They will be providing, hot dogs, hamburgers, barbecue items, shrimp skewers, fruit and cheese platters and more. All food will be prepared on site. There will also be local vendors selling items of the “Woodstock” theme.

Tickets for the event are $10 and include one standard tasting flight in the tasting room. Tickets can be purchased at http://www.winestock.eventbrite.com/.

This is going to be rockin' day!

Finger Lakes Wine Festival

This past weekend I gave a seminar on Hudson Valley Wine Country at the Finger Lakes Wine Festival. Have you ever attended this festival?

I had a booth at this festival for my travel business back in 2002. I swore I wouldn't go back, but I found myself there on Saturday dropping off wine for my Sunday seminar. The reason why I didn't want to go back was because of the Saturday crowds. Like any wine festival, Sunday is the better day, it's less crowded and you can get to the wineries tables without a fight. That is the reason I chose to have my seminar on Sunday.

I arrived at the festival on Saturday around 3p and dropped off the wine for Sunday. I then entered the twilight zone...Even after 3p, we found it difficult to get to the tasting tables. We visited our friends John and Stacy McGregor, and Dr Frank before it was time to go to the tweet-up arranged by Morgan McLaughlin.

The theme of the tweet-up was 2007 reds. We tasted a variety of wines from the Finger Lakes, Niagara Escarpment and Hudson Valley. I brought with me a Whitecliff Gamay Noir and Bashakill Blue Heron (Cabernet Franc.) Wines we tasted ranged from Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noirs. They all were quite good.

Morgan had all of us take a picture together. Here I am holding the two bottles of Hudson Valley Wine with the Finger Lakes winemakers.