The Alcoholics of Prince Edward County

I've been on a lot of winery trips this summer. It started with a trip to the popular Niagara region. I biked from vineyard to vineyard, sampling some well known brands from the Ontario winery scene. A few months later, I participated in the Twenty Valley 10K, where runners sampled wines from the Twenty Valley wineries during the race.

This brings me to Prince Edward County. Apparently, while the Niagara wine region was going strong to the west of Toronto, there was a new winery region quietly making a name for itself east of Toronto. Prince Edward County is about a 2 hour drive away, and home to a vast assortment of wineries, each with it's own unique charm. While my trip to Niagara was about biking and wine... and my trip to Twenty Valley was about running and wine... my trip to Prince Edward County was focused solely on wine.

I'm pretty terrible when it comes to paying attention to the small nuances of wine tasting, but I can tell you that I tend to like crisp dry white wines. Fortunately, the Prince Edward County wineries are good at making distinctive Chardonnays. Each winery seemed to have a different take on Chardonnay, giving them all a different character that even a wine novice like I could appreciate. Perhaps it was personal preference or the hot weather, but I felt that the white wines of Prince Edward County were better than the reds. I suspect this could also be a case of not cleansing the palette enough between tastings. Next time, I will carry a box of crackers with me to every winery!

The trip was fun and educational. I learned a lot about grape varieties and their tastes from this trip. I'm still very very far from a wine expert, but that least now I can tell the difference between a Cabernet Franc, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and grape juice that was left in the fridge for too long. In closing, if you're looking for some more down-to-earth wineries that are off the beaten path and far less hoity-toity than their counterparts in the Niagara region, I strongly recommend visiting Prince Edward County.