My plan today was to write about the beach. And while it was warm and sunny when I woke up around 9am, about an hour or so later it was still warm, but overcast. The sun kept trying to burn through all day, but it never succeeded. I went to Target and grabbed lunch and planned on just hanging out at my parents’ house.
But then I checked Foursquare and saw that my friend Maria had checked into a vineyard on the North Fork of Long Island, about 25 minutes from my parents’ house. So I inquired and was invited to tag along with her and her boyfriend.
I (am ashamed to?) admit I’ve never actually been wine tasting at the LI vineyards even though I’ve lived so close to them my entire life, but when I had a lot of friends here I was under 21 and then everyone moved on and my parents don’t drink and people from the city rarely come out to visit and there we are.
But I was excited to give them a try.
First up was Jamesport Vineyards. There indoor area, where you can do tastings, was packed, so we went outside, paid a $10 admission fee, and got to sit at a table and listen to music with our complimentary glass of wine.
It was very pretty and the jazz band was good, but it probably wasn’t the best deal.
Next we headed to Palmer Vineyards, which I think was my favorite. We each did a tasting flight and the pours were really generous. Plus, they give you all four tastings at once and you can take them outside to sit in the beautiful vineyards while you listen to the live band.
Definitely a pretty good deal. Who doesn’t want to look at this?
The negative part was that our white wines got warm, but when you’re sitting in adirondack chairs with that gorgeous view, really, who cares?
After finishing off our tastings we went to Martha Clara Vineyards. This was definitely the largest of all of the all vineyards we went to. Their tasting room was huge.
And the first things we saw driving up were these enormous animals.
I think Martha Clara tries to cater to the whole family as there were a lot of children and dogs there.
I really liked my “summertime” tasting, but my friends didn’t like their “dry and sweet” tasting. But the guy behind the counter was really funny and friendly and ended giving us our tastings for free after we bought a glass of wine. Plus we got to keep the glasses!
After buying our glasses we took them outside to drink by the fountain.
After finishing our drinks we went to visit the goats.
And the mini goats
And the mini pigs
After visiting all the animals we headed to TGI Friday’s for dinner (pretty much the only place to eat on the way back to the Long Island Expressway).
It was a really nice, unexpected day, but I am so ready for the beach tomorrow.
[...] went wine tasting on Long [...]