We had a long weekend up in the Lehigh Valley just before Thanksgiving for one of Ben's cousin's granddaughter's bat mitzvah. A weekend of lovely parties made even better by an afternoon spent winetasting in the valley. We visited three wineries to search for good hybrid wines. We had been introduced to them in Rhode Island and Québec before and wanted to see what Pennsylvania had to offer.
The Vynecrest Winery, near Allentown, was the favorite of the three. Their Lemberger, not a hybrid, is an Austrian grape that produces a heavy, almost shiraz like, wine. We bought two bottles of it. We did, though taste the chambourcin (the locals pronounce it sham-burr-sin), which we enjoyed and a shiraz, which we bought. At Clover Leaf we tasted another chambourcin, which we enjoyed. it is a sweetish wine, similar in some respects to beaujolais. The third winery left us cold. We did not find a dechaunac to our taste.We also had a jaunt through the Amish country on the way to Allentown. Fine, interesting enough, but one horse and buggy is enough...the farms look prosperous, no electricity of course, but the tourist sites are amazingly prevalent, and let's face it, farm cooking is not grande cuisine.
