Wine Tour

As part of our (prior) weekend of wedding festivities, we took a wine tour along Seneca Lake with some of my family and a few of our friends. Since we moved to NC after graduating college (making some new friends down there) and a lot of our friends who went to college with us moved elsewhere after graduation, it was hard to get a large group together in one place before the wedding, but it was still a lot of fun with the 6 or so friends that were able to take the tour! My family helped make the trip memorable as well....more on that in a minute.

We all boarded a bus the Sunday before Memorial Day so we could enjoy ourselves (i.e. drink lots and lots of wine) at each winery. The tip of the lake is about an hour from my parents house, making for a nice ride on the way up. While on the bus, Alson and I were surprised with some marriage guidelines, each one with an accompanying gift for each of us. I won't go into detail about each gift....but we did get some blindfolds, a feather boa, some advil, massage oil....you get the idea. Taking the bus was a great idea, we were even allowed to drink on it!

Me and My BFF. And yes, I was forced to wear a "Bride" hat.

The tastings at each winery were all a little different. Some were pretty formal where they talk about the winery and the grapes and yada yada yada. Yawn! One winery we went to had a guy playing the guitar, including "Going to the Chapel" for myself and another group celebrating upcoming nuptials. The funnest winery we visited was Hazlitt Vineyards, which is well known in upstate NY for Red Cat (very funny tale of the wine). We had to learn a cheer and all chanted before toasting and drinking our tasting. The cheer goes like this:

Red Cat, Red Cat

It's an aphrodesiac

Red Cat, Red Cat

It will get you in the sack!

HILARIOUS. Some of my relatives were starting to get out of control at this point (it was the second to last winery we visited) and really got into the cheer. I think they also had an orgasm contest where whoever had the most "orgasmic tasting" got a free bottle of wine from the other contestants. Classy, I know.

We ended up buying a few bottles of wine at the many wineries, including a big bottle of Red Cat with a secret Jell-O shot recipe and all the necessary ingredients. I think I may make them when we got home from our trip this weekend in preparation for my birthday!

All in all, the wine tour was a lot of fun, and if you are ever in the Finger Lakes region of NY you HAVE to take one!