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Finger Lakes Wine Festival

Hi Y’all – this is a long one friends, grab the wine!

This past weekend Alex and I were lucky enough to visit the Finger Lakes Wine Region, for the Finger Lakes Wine Festival – for all my fellow Canadians this is the second largest wine region in the US behind California, and guess what! It’s only about 4.5 hours, by CAR from Toronto!

We started our weekend off Saturday morning at the Watkins Glen International. We picked up our tickets at Gate 2, got our wine glasses and began tasting! The event tickets gave you access to tasting wines from over 80 different wineries in the Finger Lakes Region from 10am to 5pm both Saturday and Sunday! There were also some pretty cool seminars, live music, awesome vendors, pace cars (the event was at a Nascar race track) and of course FOOD TRUCKS!

We spent the majority of the day tasting wine, enjoying the heat and snacking on some pretty awesome food… I have listed a few of my favourite wineries and a couple fun vendors that really stood out to me.


My Top Vino Picks:

  1. Hazlitt 1852
    Their whites and reds were both great! They had a “sweet” wine tent as well as a “dry” tent outside. This was our first stop, and our last before leaving. Their “Red Cat Fizz Red wine” was super yummy, light and sweet. Awesome for summer drinking by the pool or lake! 
  2. Ravines
    Ok, so this was my all time favourite winery that we visited and I LOVED their wine called “Ayre” which was a semi-dry, semi-sparkling white with fruity undertones. They also had one of the prettiest “set-ups” in my opinion, with lavender *swoon*
  3. 21 Brix
    I am a sucker for a good riesling and when I was starting to first experiment with wine this was always the bottle I would choose at the LCBO (a.k.a. liquor store for all my Americans!). I always found that rieslings were sweeter but also super light, making it easy for sip on. Still, to this day I almost always opt for a riesling first. This one by Brix was great. It was light and semi-sweet. I honestly could’ve drank the whole bottle ๐Ÿ˜‰

My Top Hard Liquor & Cider Picks:

  1. Four Fights Distillery
    This one was fun, they had moonshine (100 proof… crazy strong) and Apple Pie whisky, which was definitely more my speed. It was super smooth and easy to sip, not words I would usually use to describe a whisky… unless mixed with ginger and lime!
  2. 1911
    This booth was awesome. Almost everything I tried I loved, from the apple wines, to the hard grapefruit ciders and even the bloody marys! I bought a bottle of their Hard Rose Cider the next day.

Now, on to the good stuff… the FOOD!

I don’t know about you guys, but I think there is something super exciting about food trucks, they always have some kind of cool, innovative or super delicious food. For lunch on we had Mac & Cheese from Macarollin, how cute is that! Mac & Cheese on wheels and it was probably the best Mac & Cheese I have ever had, also could’ve helped that we ordered the Lobster Mac and the Maryland Crab Mac.


There were also tons of other food options, Smokin’ Pete’s BBQ was definitely my favourite decorated truck!

Keep scrollin’ for outfit deets!

What I’m wearing: Top (Cirana), Denim (Citizens of Humanity), Necklace & Earrings (Stella & Dot), Sunnies (Ray-Ban).

Saturday Night

Saturday night we had dinner at the Seneca Harbour Station, it was an old train station in the harbour in the late 1800’s. The staff was great and our food was even better! I had a grilled lobster tail, my fav, and Alex had a super yummy burger. We sat outside on the patio and had great views of the harbour and Seneca Lake, which was gorgeous.
We walked out to the end of the pier to sit and watch the sunset and then I convinced Alex to stop for ice cream, check out my cone!!!

What I’m wearing: Top (J.O.A.), Denim (Citizens of Humanity), Shoes (Call it Spring), Clutch (Francesca’s), Sunnies (Prada), Gold Hoops (Francesca’s).

Sunday

Sunday morning we were up early and headed into Watkins Glen for breakfast. We got breakfast wraps and spicy chai lattes (amazing!!) to go from Glen Moutain Market and took them to the harbour to sit and eat. All of their food is fresh made with local veg, meat, eggs, and dairy. I had a veg breaky wrap with eggs, gouda, wilted spinach, roasted red peppers, and garlic and a chai latte made with their house chai and chocolate, espresso, cayenne, brown sugar, cinnamon and oat milk. SO GOOD.

What I’m wearing: Dress (French Connection), Shoes (LC Lauren Conrad), Necklace (Bauble Bar) and Sunnies (Ray-Ban).

Later in the day we took a beer break from all the wine and did a tasting at a local brewery in Watkins Glen. The brewery was called Rooster Fish Brewing and they had a variety of different beers, lots of IPAs which made Alex really happy. My fave was a Hibiscus Sour, with rosehip, elderberries and hibiscus.

We then did some window shopping and explored some of the cute shops. There was a really cool boutique wine and spirits shop that we stopped at called Local 62 where we picked up a few things and even checked someone off our Christmas list! Woot woot!


Overall, it was an amazing weekend and we can’t wait to go back mid-August! Thank you to the Finger Lakes Wine Country for having us and special thanks to Brianna for getting everything organized for us! All of your recommendations were perfect, we truly had such a great weekend and are so thankful for everything!

xx
Becca  

 

 

 

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