Wineries and breweries....or "how we spent 3 days of vacation"

Guys - let me let you in a little secret.  If you want to travel to about 100 wineries within a 50 mile radius and you live closer to Chicago than you do Napa Valley, seriously consider going to the Niagara region.  I'm not joking....so many wineries!  Now, if you're an astute beer drinker like Ryan and I are, you might wonder why the first picture in my "winery" post is of hops, well, it's because you can take the beer drinker out of beer country, but you can't stop her from trying to find it!

Our first day in Canada we decided that we'd check out NOTL and some of the local wineries.  We stumbled on a great recommendation from a friend (thanks Dan) called Five Rows and we were all smitten.  It was the cutest winery all run by one family.  The wife and daughter in law were running the tastings while the husband and son were out working the fields.  It's so named because they started out with only 5 rows of grapes.  And though they've grown in the 7 years since they started, it still had this cute family owned feel that we just couldn't resist.  It was the 4th winery of the day and nobody had purchased any bottles yet, but something about that cute little barn and the cute family that owned it, they had us.  We walked out with 3 bottles.  The most expensive bottle I've ever purchased to be exact.

Now back to the hops picture.  So after going to the wineries on day 1 and then hitting up the Falls on day 2, we had two days left to wander and explore so on day 3 we decided we'd try to find the local breweries.  Let's just say, when in wine country, don't fight it.  Just stick with the wine and call it a day.  We eventually found three local breweries and though the beer was always good it wasn't quite the experience we were looking for.  We did however haul back a few local beers that we've been savoring and are hiding in the back of our beer fridge.

Day 4 we spent visiting a few other wineries we had on our list.  We saw some beautiful places and drank wine overlooking some of the prettiest landscaping and grape rows I've ever seen.  If you're a wine-o or have any interest in trying wines you should definitely add Niagara to your list of places to visit.  Even Abby loved it!  Well - to be fair, she liked it when we'd find rock gardens for her to dig through and a bucket to carry her rocks in...otherwise, she thought wineries and breweries were for the birds!