Text 21436, 76 rader
Skriven 2007-10-16 17:17:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip cotd 300
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Rolled out of there with a growler of F.A., with the
promise from the guy behind the bar that it would last
two days in the car trunk and a week after that.

I had waxed nostalgic about the Ben and Jerry tour, but
as I read the literature I discovered that the tour,
formerly free, now costs $3 - and as I have difficulty
eating $3 of ice cream, tour or no, we decided to give
up on that and see what was north on rte 100 ... there
was the Cabot Creamery Annex (a silly tourist trap if
I ever heard of one) and then the Cold Hollow Cider Mill,
which was a definite go. More tastes, of which I found
the pumpkin butter relatively delightful and the rest
of the jams and jellies kind of ehh. But they were
giving samples of cider down at the cider house, where
you could see the stuff being made in the semi-modern
way that they do. Excellent quaff, and we had a couple
cups each before buying a dozen cider doughnuts (pretty
good, nothing particularly notable despite their being
touted by Gourmet magazine in 2000 as one of the five
great doughnuts in the country) to taste and for
Lynnie the Sac, who is a cider doughnut fiend.

Across the parking lot is the Grand View Winery tasting
room, so how could one resist? Turns out that to discourage
freeloaders the tastings are a buck or two, for which one
gets a tablespoon or so of half a dozen things. Not really
worth it, especially as the wines are pretty nasty.

A hard cider was okay, not much of that old shoe quality,
which the pourer mistakenly attributed to Woodchuck's using
frozen apples from China. It was fresh-tasting, nothing
special, but probably the best thing on offer.

Pear wine tasted like sweetened nail polish. Bleurgh.

Next was a Seyval made from Finger Lakes grapes - it was
pleasantly neutral and probably one of the least disgusting
Seyvals I've had.

A raspberry-apple wine was appropriately raspberryish, and
a strawberry-rhubarb wine appropriately strawberryish, both
more like melted Jell-O than wine, though.

Finally, we tried a tart, strange-tasting cranberry wine:
started with a peculiar petroleum distillates nose and
foretaste, smoothing out to sour cranberries later.
Extraordinarily weird, and the pourer claimed 1. that it was
a mistake, the company having ordered cherry juice and been
given cranberry juice and 2. that it had become the winery's
best selling item.

In an odd brain fart, I picked up a bottle of the blueberry
wine just because it was blue (and not very blue at that).
It wasn't on the tasting list or even the availability list,
but there were a few bottles tucked in a corner. It was
meant as a gift for Dave the Sac, but we forgot it in the
trunk, so it went back with us.

Down scenic rte 100, the colors just beginning to turn,
to the wooden bowl factory in Granville, which to me was a
bit of a disappointment except that, as with most of these
manufactured tourist attractions, it had a restroom.
Carol picked up a bowl made out of sugar maple, the notable
feature being that it had a taphole. I didn't particularly
see the point. She said it was cute.

Down scenic rte 125 to Middlebury and back to the Club's
Main Dining Room, which sadly housed only about 6 couples
for dinner. It was after the weekend, of course, so that
might have been to be expected, but I wondered if it was
also chef's night off. In retrospect I think it wasn't.

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