1) Cortland apples are divine. It's my new favorite apple, I couldn't get enough of them. And they don't exist here on the west coast. Must find out why not, though the answer is likely that our summers at least this far north aren't warm enough. Don't know what Oregon's excuse is. Macouns are good, too, but less winey and more similar to apples we have out here where there is nothing here even remotely close to a Cortland.
2) There is such a thing as a white concord grape. When Welch's makes that juice, they're not just removing the skins from the black ones as I thought. And they're good.
3) The best food for Finger Lakes wines is Austrian. If you go to that part of the world, do not miss a meal at Dano's Heuriger on Seneca Lake.
4) East Coasters don't get "chips and salsa". As a side dish for a hamburger? Weird.
5) The best olive oil in New York state is not French or Italian, it's Californian, being sold for $20 per 750 ml bottle by the people at Cascade Mountain Winery at the Saturday farmer's market in Troy. They have a relative in Temecula who sent barrels of his just-crushed 2011 oil to them which they bottled the day before I tasted and bought a bottle. I've never had any California olive oil even HALF, or possibly a quarter, this good; in fact it's on par with the $40/500 ml type oils I've bought in the past from the Rare Wine Company in California. It's astonishingly good. If you're an east coaster and you love great olive oil, this is worth searching high and low for, I promise. It's the best deal you'll ever get on a world-class olive oil, unless of course you too have an uncle with an olive grove.
6) Rob Keith, remember him anyone? Back in the pre-Facebook/Twitter days, Rob was one of the Australian regulars on this board. He was a very devoted wine guy but probably spoke up more here on FLDG than on WLDG. He lived in Melbourne, where Bob and I met him in the fall of 2000. Well, he and his wife Jenny have moved (permanently) to Marblehead, Massachusetts, and we met up with them on Friday night. They're doing quite well.
7) Ice Cream isn't as weird a thing to eat at 9:00 a.m. as I would have believed. Especially if it's Lake Night Snack flavor at the Ben and Jerry's factory.
My apologies to anyone who we didn't get a chance to meet up with on this trip. Where we had planned this as a four-couple trip to Vermont early this year where Bob and I would go on to spend three days meeting up with online friends in New York City, the plans fell apart and Bob and I had changed our minds about going at all. And then at the last minute, one of the other couples and we decided to go after all, but not having pre-booked accomodations and fall foliage tourism being the popular event it is, we had to take pot luck on flights (they flew into Albany, where our only choice was Boston), and the trip ended up being less about what we most wanted than what we could find at the last minute. Up until about 8 hours before we stepped onto that plane, in fact, the only booking we had was two nights in Lake Placid and we'd scrapped the Finger Lakes because the area was booked solid.
