Wine Country Tour Day 1

You are cordially invited to read the first of a few posts describing my experiences on an Ontario wine country tour this past weekend.  

My objectives for this tour:

1. Test out my travel legs (in preparation for longer, more distant adventures);
2. Meet new people;
3. Perform wine research;
4. Bring gifts back for family and friends who offered suggestions or made requests;
5. Post something interesting in this blog that people would read and comment on. 

I planned to take photographs with my iPad Mini and Tweet under my pen name of Florence T Lyon.  I sure got a lot of photos but had difficulty with Twitter updates via the hotel wifi. 

Twas either the hotel wifi or Twitter choked when I attempted to tweet more status pics of the #tour. No, it wasn't due to XSF #wine tasting
— Florence T Lyon (@FloTLyon) September 16, 2013

 
I met about 18 other people on the bus.  I can only remember about half of the names.  

Although I was offered a seat at the front with the highway activity within feet from view, I gracefully declined and moved back to the mid-section, staking out two free seats. 

I think I was the third youngest person in the group.  There were a lot of retired couples travelling together.  There were also a gaggle of elderly women who had either taken this tour before or had been on many other tours to interesting places.  I befriended a near-ninety year-old dear who relied a lot on her walker. I soon became her travelling companion and fetcher of things by foot.  

The lengthy ride down along the north shore of Lake Ontario was broken up with pit stops, coffee breaks, stretch breaks and more pit stops.  We were also treated to an on-board viewing of Julie & Julia. I found it appropriate for the dining part of our tour and very, very entertaining.  Bon appétit!

On Friday evening, after settling in to our rooms and freshening up, we attended a pairing dinner with wines brought in from Peller Estates.  

When we arrived at the hotel's banquet room in our dressy attire, we were greeted with glasses of French Cross Pino Grigio Sparkler. That's one way of describing a bubbly white wine without infringing on the Champagne trademark. Tasty! 

Next we had delicious dishes served with the Family Series Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Merlot.  For a red wine, I found the latter went very well with the main dish.

  
The tasty dessert of Cherries Jubilee in a Phylio Cup with fresh black pepper and vanilla bean ice cream was paired with a Late Harvest Vidal.  I really enjoyed it. 

This was only the second wine and food pairing dinner I attended in the past year.  It was very enjoyable and I have made notes on my menu copy for wines to purchase when I returned home. 
 

There was only one complaint: We could have used some light exercise to move our bodies, to help digestion before and after dessert.  Someone suggested line dancing.  Of course that would require physical coordination.  We concluded that after a few glasses of wine, it may have been a difficult feat!

Thanks for reading this far. Watch for the Day 2 post of the wine country tour. 

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T