Chautauqua Wine Trail - Chautauqua - TravBuddy

Leaving Niagara Falls we headed southwest along the shore of Lake Erie to tour Chautauqua County wine country in Western New York State.

United States Custom Agent: Where are you coming from?
JohnnyK: The Marriott Hotel.

United States Custom Agent: Do you have anything purchased in Canada?
JohnnyK: We have four bottles of Smirnoff Ice and a bobble-head moose.

United States Custom Agent: Have a nice day.

Stopped for breakfast in Derby NY.

Of all the wife's considerable talents the most finely honed skill may be her ability to uncover a quality dining opportunity. After we had passed the unpretentious Cala's Kitchen and Catering, Jody proclaims herself hungry, that place busy, and we should turn around and have breakfast. I meet Vinny running across route 5 with a newly purchased toaster oven on his shoulder as the wife gives me the old "don't I always know where the food is good" look. The locals are swarming in and I cede to her superior instincts.

If you are ever passing through Derby NY on a Sunday morning be sure to stop at Cala's where raisin toast is the preferred option with breakfast.

On to the Wine trail that is Route 20 from Silver Creek, south to Erie Pennsylvania. Grab a map at the first winery you come along and spend all day tasting, buying and looking for the next winery. Good clean fun for wine snobs and pretenders (like us) alike. We hit Willow Creek, Woodbury, Vitter and Mazza. With the wife's car trunk stuffed with as many cases of wine as would send a Customs Officer into homicidal rage, we called it a day. We left with most of the area left to be discovered another time.

Frenchmen and Californians forgive me while brag on the extraordinarily delicious quality of Western New York wines.

Good clean fun within an hours drive from Buffalo NY.