PHOTO: Randall Tagg Photography/www.taggphotography.com
A healthy dose of energy and creativity infuse a handful of tasting rooms on the Trail, tucking welcoming details into comfortable spaces that make visitors just want to hang out and dream a little.
At A Gust of Sun Winery & Vineyard, a big brown barn looks unassuming from the street except for the bright yellow and orange sun with wind-swept rays affixed to the front. Inside, the space has an easy feel that’s friendly and fun. A big four-sided central bar is topped with thousands and thousands of wine corks encased under glass frames. The whole back wall of the warm orange room is built to look like a giant wine barrel complete with wooden staves and huge iron bands. In the center, though, is the door to the bathroom. Next to this comic commode is a set of stairs that lead to an upstairs lounge area equipped with a glass mosaic inlaid landing, leather teacup chairs, book cases, and a few tables fashioned from more wine barrels. The exposed beamed space, which was a “woman cave” and dance studio for the property’s previous owners, seats 30 people for special events. A commercial-looking white metal warehouse from the outside, Freedom Run Winery is part winery and part gallery inside. Its tagline, “where we view wine as art,” is evident both in the way wines are produced – by a collaborative wine design team rather than a sole winemaker – and in the tasting room’s
The front door at Arrowhead Spring Vineyards’ tasting room is a heavy wooden California craftsman masterpiece framed by intricate stained-glass panels depicting winding vines and grape clusters. It’s the first step back in time to the tasting room’s reclaimed timber frame interior, which feels like a slightly more modern version of a rural one-roomed schoolhouse. Underneath pegged posts and beams, a simple craftsman desk and chair sit between two large windows overlooking the sloping vineyard outside. Across the smooth pine floors is the tasting bar, a row of wine barrels topped with wooden planks that form a rustic workbench for sampling Arrowhead Spring’s hand-made, small-batch wines. Behind it, an open staircase leads to a storage loft upstairs. In the winter the space is warmed by a wood stove in the corner, which casts a comforting glow from within and reduces energy use – something that is
breathtaking details. The front of a sprawling L-shaped tasting bar is completely covered with backlit blown-glass flowers made by Richard Sean Manning, who co-owns the winery with brothers Larry and Chip and Larry’s wife Sandra. Long, flat stones snake across a bare white wall, mimicking the Niagara Escarpment across the vineyard where the Manning brothers grew up. Low leather sectionals and handmade bar tables that resemble wine barrel skeletons provide plenty of space to park and take in all the details, including voluptuous, free-form ceramic pieces made by Richard. A soaring wall separating the tasting room is made entirely of glass, allowing visitors to see the creative process that goes into every glass. Even the lawn outside acts as a canvas for a collection of “just because” endeavors including outdoor movie screenings, a teepee made of live hop vines, and a smaller vineyard entirely planted, tended, harvested, and made into wine by students from Niagara County Community College’s winemaking program. Seemingly worlds away from the sprawling farmlands by the lake, downtown Lockport’s
Flight of Five Winery is the only urban tasting room on the trail. Located inside the historic stone Old City Hall, which perches on the edge of the Erie Canal, the winery celebrates the creativity of the 1825 engineering achievement – the flight of five canal locks – outside its door. Owned by canal history buffs Jackie and Michael Connelly, the Flight of Five tasting room features framed works of art by Michael, a classically trained artist, depicting various scenes and boats along the canal. One pen and ink piece serves as the label art for the winery’s five selections. The tasting bar is made from hand-hewn lumber that pre-dates the age of the canal and fashioned to resemble the two angled doors of a 1920s canal lock. Blue, green, and clear glass wine bottle bottoms, all of which Jackie cut by hand, form a backlit, undulating “water line” just below the top of the bar. A dim, cavernous space with 20-foot-tall pressed tin ceilings, the Flight of Five tasting room celebrates the area’s craftsmanship by pouring not only its own wines, but also selections from other wineries and juice makers in the area.
The Trail’s agricultural identity is evident in the rustic character of many of its tasting rooms. Roughhewn beams, harvest artifacts, and industrial fixtures define spaces that were built to resemble barns or are actually housed within repurposed farm buildings.
important to environmentalist owners Robin and Duncan Ross. The entire structure is built into the hillside to allow the cellar temperature to be regulated by geothermal cooling. Outside, Ian the border collie gladly chases Frisbees thrown by visitors past a flock of murmuring, free-range chickens.
This summer, Arrowhead Spring will be joined on the trail by another timber frame tasting room at Victorianbourg Wine Estate. The winery’s existing cluttered, barn-like sampling area will be replaced by a 200-yearold hand-hewn Amish structure, which currently lies in unassembled piles outside. continued on page 8 NIAGARA USA WINE • 2014
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