Holiday Spirits

On a recent trip to New York, we went to wine country which was more fun than I ever imagined.  At each winery, they have a sipping bar and for a very small fee (which is usually deducted from your first purchase), you get to try around a thimble full of wine.....now times that by 40 to 50 thimbles and it's quite a lot. By the end of the day, you're an easy sell. I was surprised, never having done this before, that all the wines had unique names, no such thing as Merlot or Pinot Grigio but names like "Red Hot Mama" or "Tugboat Charley" so of course we had to sample. The wineries had wonderful decor...

along with furry in house residents which I loved (I'm a total cat person).

The labels on the wine bottles were beautiful and often the reason for buying.

Each winery had it's own unique features helping you to remember your favorites.

The wineries we visited were on Lake Cayuga which is one of the five finger lakes.  Next trip to New York, we're doing the next finger lake, each lake has lots of wineries...too many for one day.  This particular lake is where Cornell University is located, only 1 1/2 hours from where I went to school, so old stomping grounds for me as well.  We ate lunch on the lake and it was beautiful.

Some wineries had antiques like this old piano giving it lots of charm.

We wound up with 36 bottles, some for gifts and many because we just loved the label.

I'm not much of a wine connoisseur, I don't even remember what these taste like, I just loved the labels.

These 3 bottles are all the same wine just different labels to get you to buy all three.  It worked!

This label was fashioned after a cat that lives at the winery a little black cat named Superstitious.

Our favorite labels were those that were holiday-ish like Mistletoe Magic and Rudolph the Red. We bought lots of these to use and give away at the holidays.

It was great fun and we look forward to returning.