Burnaby's birthday is September 14. He'll be 9.
8 September 2013
For weeks I'd been telling Jack we'd do whatever he wanted to do on his birthday. I'd suggested a trip to New York City, but that fizzled. I suggested that if he wanted to spend the day lounging around in his underwear, he could do that, too.
Then, when I got home from yesterday's Sourland Spectacular and told him that we'd had a rest stop at Hopewell Valley Vineyards, we started talking about the (de)merits of New Jersey Wine. When he said, "I wouldn't mind taking a tour of a New Jersey winery one of these days," I jumped on it.
So off we went to Unionville Vineyards today.
Now, I don't drink. I don't like the taste. My scale runs, as Jack puts it, from "zero to negative one hundred." But I try to be a good sport. He's had to listen to so many years of bike talk that the least I can do is understand wine talk.
Lately I've even been volunteering to taste some of the vile stuff. Only if it's white, though, and only if he thinks I won't spit it out. Reds are out of the question. He and a few of our oenophile friends say I have a good sense of taste for wine. I'm good at naming the tastes as they hit. The problem is that I inevitably end my description with, "and it's barfy." As in, it tastes like barf.
Anyway, as I was saying, off we went to Unionville Vineyards. I took the scenic route, which included a drive past where we saw the fish head yesterday. The winery is on Rocktown Road where it meets Linvale Road, just off of Wertsville Road. In other words, we pass this place all the damn time on our bikes.
This is the view from the lower vineyard, looking south towards Wertsville Road. On the hill across the road is another of their vineyards, covered in netting to keep birds from eating the grapes:
Little tiny grapes a week or two away from picking:
A vine trained to guide wires:
The tour was neither as long nor as interesting as the one we went to in Rioja, Spain, last year.
Our guide dissed the Sourland Mountain. He mocked its size, as everyone does. I quietly set him straight: "It might be small, but it's our mountain."
Later, inside, as Jack spent his time tasting, I geeked out over the aerial maps of the winery's numerous vineyards. Our guide, and the woman behind the tasting counter, were useless when I asked for details. Eventually I figured out where most of them are. One is at the intersection of Rocktown and Mountain, yet another spot we pass all the damn time on our bikes. A second is somewhere on the south side of the mountain in Hopewell. A third is near Milford. "Mountain Road," our guide said, "Near Frenchtown, in Warren County." I tried Googling the address right then and there, knowing full well that there's no Mountain Road in Milford near Frenchtown (try it and you'll see), and that Milford is in Hunterdon, not Warren, County. So that one's still a mystery.
Jack bought a couple of bottles, because the wine was "not bad. It's more to support the vineyard than anything else." Better bad wine than another housing development.
The couple next to us had driven up from Collingswood (Camden County). I got the chance to wax poetic about our mountain and the efforts to preserve it. The couple has made a point to visit every New Jersey winery. Not for the wine, they explained, but for the scenery. Somehow the conversation got to Vermont. "I see the bikers going up those hills," the woman said, "and I feel so sorry for them!"
I smiled. "Never feel sorry for a biker," I told her. "It's self-inflicted."
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