Wine Country

After checking out all the fossils on the beach at Joggins we headed to Wolfville to spend the night at an the Olde Lantern Inn and the next day traipsing around vineyards. This was my favorite party of our honeymoon. Most likely because it was the most 'honeymoon-y' part. :)

We arrived around 8 and startled the girl waiting in the lobby. I think we may have been supposed to knock, but that didn't occur to us and we walked right in. She quickly showed us to our room, The Wine Cellar. It was super sweet. The pictures online don't do it justice. It had a great view of the vineyard and this sweet little door into the front garden. It was super cute. And outside was lit by an old fashion lantern with a candle burning. It was sweet. The girl gave us directions to a fancy restaurant just down the vineyard, called Le Caveau. The path was also like by candlelight. We both ordered a glass of wine and the tuna. I just looked up the website to see what kind of wine we ordered and I realized....we went back the next day and I bought the wrong kind!!! I am pretty certain I had the Seyval Blanc with dinner and I bought the Vidal Blanc to bring home thinking it was the one from dinner. Silly. I guess I'll know for certain when I open it next week (my one month anniversary plan). But right now I'm strangely disappointed. Le sigh.

Anyway, dinner was fabulous. We were both stuffed. The next morning we got up and had breakfast at the Inn and sat with an interesting couple from New Jersey doing wine tours for 3 days. We ran into them later in the day and the woman whispered to me, "This is the best winery yet!" Since she had been doing tours for days I could only assume she was right. We only toured 3 wineries, but the one she picked as her favorite...it was fabulous.

On the Friday of our honeymoon we toured:

Domaine de Grand Pré bought by a Swiss Banker in the nineties and completely restored.

Muir Murray Estate Winery owned by an Irish doctor.

And

Gaspereau Vineyards which is owned by Jost Wineries.

It was all fabulous. But I have to admit Gaspereau was my favorite. Just like the lady from New Jersey. When we arrived there we found out there wouldn't be a tour for an hour. So instead we tasted wines. The girl there let me taste all of their whites. Chris just wanted to taste the reds. I wanted to taste everything that Chris tasted. In the end Chris bought two bottles there, a red and a super expensive Chardonnay for me. Yay! He loves me.

After we tried all of the wines at Gaspereau the girl gave us a mini tour. She showed us the steel drums where they aged the wine. And then she took us outside the back of the barn and showed us some of the vineyards. They do a lot of experimenting at this winery. The location, on the sunny side of the hill is a great place to experiment. Which is why they have a chardonnay. Most vineyards in Nova Scotia don't seem to make it. It was interesting and so pretty. Part of the vineyard is int he picture below. The hill behind has the chardonnay grapes. Closer to us are the grapes for their L'Acadie wine. (Which everyone vineyard we went to bragged about but wasn't really to my taste. Ick.)