Juice and Cheese

This may surprise you, but the Finger Lakes region is wine country. Supposedly the climate is similar to the Rhineland and the “whites” are top rated. Cornell offers wine tasting classes and going on wine tours along the “wine trail” is one of the main tourist attractions. Being LDS we didn’t expect to experience this aspect of local culture until last fall when some friends of ours introduced us to “juice tasting.” They had been driving up to Fulkerson Winery on Seneca lake several weekends during the grape harvest to buy grape juices that hadn’t been fermented. The winery sells it to local hobbyists who enjoy bottling their own wines. I had no idea there were so many kinds of grapes and it completely blew my mind how different they tasted. One seriously even tasted like lemonade! This taste bud awakening happened at the end of the season last fall so we resolved that we would check out this place for ourselves next year. We went up this last Saturday with friends and made a day of it. We tasted juices, bought juices, and stopped at a nearby “weinery” for hotdogs. Sadly, I didn’t take pictures.
On the way home we saw a sign announcing a stop on the Finger Lakes“cheese trail” so we decided to get some cheese to compliment our snobby grape juice. The place we visited was called Finger Lakes Farmstead Cheese and I highly recommend stopping by if you’re in the area.
Norah, Alex and Danya sampling cheese. Norah had to ask for juice samples at that winery but the cheese was all within her reach and she ate A LOT of cheese.The super friendly cheese makers invited us for a tour of their factory. It was seriously straight out of Picture Picture from Mr. Rogers. Definitely the highlight of the day. They can only give tours when they are not producing cheese though so call ahead if you want to check it out – we just got lucky.Check out all these cheese wheels aging! We didn’t dare put Norah down.That evening the two other couples we had gone juice tasting with pooled their purchased juices (and cheeses) with ours to host a juice and cheese tasting party. We had a great time being pseudo juice snobs as we sampled and critiqued the different varieties.