Food & Wine

• Wine Tasting
• The Wing's the Thing

Fruit of the Vine:
A Western New York Wine Lover's Tour

Buffalo Niagara is in the middle of emerging wine regions, the Chautauqua region of western New York and the Niagara Peninsula of southern Ontario. Both make delightful day trips out of Buffalo. Also nearby is the Niagara Wine Trail, between the Niagara escarpment and Lake Ontario.

Roughly 90 scenic minutes along the New York State Thruway (I-90W) from Buffalo is the Chautauqua/Lake Erie Wine Trail. The trail runs about 20 miles, coming to a number of award-winning vineyards along the shores of Lake Erie.

Take the New York State Thruway west from Buffalo to Exit 61 at Ripley. Turn left from exit ramp and left again onto Route 20. You'll find distinctive grape cluster highway signs along Routes 5 and 20. Moving west to east you'll find the following vineyards: Blueberry Sky Farm Winery in South Ripley; Schloss Doepken Winery, Ripley; Johnson Estate Winery, Westfield; Vetter Vineyards, Westfield; Willow Creek Winery, Sheridan; and the Merritt Estate Winery in Forestville. Several of the wineries offer free tours and tastings throughout the summer. Also along the corridor are dozens of farm markets, roadside produce stands and maple producers, adding to the good taste experience in this beautiful section of Western New York. Be sure to check out the Chautauqua Wine Trail for events throughout the year as well.

Come back to the hub of the tour in Buffalo, where you'll find a great dinner option at Bacchus (54 W. Chippewa St.). This innovative downtown restaurant has the largest wine list and full service wine bar in the area. It sits in the heart of the Chippewa Entertainment District, where all kinds of beverages are served to throngs of people most nights of the week.

While in Buffalo visit the Premier Group, whose members include some of New York State's largest wine and spirits retailers. An award-winning selection of wines can be found at Prime Wines, 3445 Delaware Ave., Kenmore; 7980 Transit Road, Williamsville; and 3410 Amelia Road, Orchard Park, in the Quaker Crossing shopping center.

Head across the Peace Bridge connecting Buffalo to Fort Erie, Ontario and take the breathtakingly beautiful Niagara Parkway north to the Niagara Peninsula Viticultural Area, centered around Niagara-on-the-Lake. There are 16 wineries in and around this lovely village that are consistently producing award-winning wines. All of the Niagara-on-the-Lake wineries offer tours and tastings, and there are companies that offer various pre-packaged day tours of the area.

You'll find everything from ice wines and crisp chardonnays to maturing merlots and pinot noirs. Some of the better places to tour and taste at include: Hillebrand Estates Winery, Inniskillin Wines, Jackson-Triggs Niagara Estate Winery, Konzelman Estate Winery, Peller Estates Winery, Stonechurch Vineyards and Strewn Estate Winery. You'll want to learn the limit on wine you can bring back through Customs before you plan your day.

If you can't get to every winery - and you can't in one day - you can visit the tasting bars in the "downtown" area. Niagara-on-the-Lake has charming architecture and elegant shops and restaurants. It is also home to the Shaw Festival, the annual celebration of the works of George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries and one of North America's leading summer theater series.

The Annual Niagara Wine & Food Classic in Niagara Falls, Ontario, features vineyard excursions, grand tastings, chef demonstrations and winemakers' dinners. Delectable regional cuisine is served in a natural, scenic setting by celebrity chefs and food personalities who use the freshest seasonal fruits and produce from Niagara's rich farmland in their tantalizing presentations.

Exquisite Ontario and international wines, from robust reds and elegant whites to sumptuous ice wines, will be sure to enhance the regional food and will make this event a memorable and exciting international celebration.

The culmination of the growing season is the Niagara Grape & Wine Festival. This annual celebration of the fruit of the vine has been voted one of the top 100 events in North America by the American Bus Association and Ontario's Cultural Event of the Year by Attractions Canada.

Just north of Buffalo - a quick half-hour drive away - is the Niagara Wine Trail. pack a lunch and head out to visit the six rural wineries that call the shores of Lake Ontario home.

Red Hot:
The National Chicken Wing Festival Takes Off

Some things are a "no brainer"! Take, for example, the idea of a National Chicken Wing Festival in Buffalo. After all, wings were invented here back in 1964 at the world famous Anchor Bar. The staple is even called a Buffalo Wing on menus all across the country. The National Buffalo Wing Festival was founded in 2002 as a way to celebrate the wing's contribution to culinary history and its close identification with the city of its birth. The festival is an annual Labor Day weekend event.

Inspired by the movie, "Osmosis Jones," starring comedian Bill Murray, which featured a fictional chicken wing festival, local newspaper columnist Donn Esmonde pondered why there wasn't a real Buffalo Wing Festival in the city in which the food was created. He wrote about it, and national food promoter Drew Cerza "plucked" the idea and decided to make it happen.

Nearly 200,000 people flocked to Buffalo for the first three years of the festival with more than 40 tons of chicken wings (approximately 800,000 wings) being consumed.

Dozens of the nation's premiere chicken wing eateries participate each year from as far away as Denver and Houston. Festival attendees get a chance to sample chicken wings from restaurants from all over the country as they bring different styles and flavors that are indigenous to their particular area. The eateries will also get a chance to compete in various categories with the chance to take bragging rights back home with the winning recipes.

Highlights of the 2006 festival included the United States Chicken Wing Eating Championship sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating in which the best competitive eaters from all over the country competed for cash prizes, with the winner taking home the coveted "Chicken Septor." The Frank's Redhot "Wing Sauce Cook Off" for amateurs featured a traditional and creative cooking competition. Other activities included a 0.5K "Running of the Chickens" Chicken Wing Run; "Miss Buffalo Wing" competition; bobbing for wings contest; Mega Car and Truck Show; Baby Wing Competition; and the Wegman's Cooking Stage Demonstrations.

More info is available at www.buffalowing.com.