A small detour onto the Cooperstown Beverage Trail

July 21, 2010
Cooperstown/Milford, NY

After the Baseball Hall of Fame, we made a small detour on the Hall of Fame Tour. One of the tourist guides mentioned the "Cooperstown Beverage Trail": two breweries, a winery, and a cider mill. Well, we did three of four; not too shabby.

Yesterday afternoon, we headed to Brewery Ommegang. We had a nice tour and a comprehensive tasting - all complimentary. Gotta love that! "Ommegang" actually refers to a "walk about" festival held in the Grand-Place in Brussels since 1549. The brewery, created in 1997, focuses on Belgian-style ales, with excellent results. They're definitely doing something right, since they were bought by the firm producing Duvel, one of our favorites.

We had a tour of the facility followed by tastings of five different products. Geri and I each chose our favorites and we headed for home, it being too late for any more tasting. I pulled together some breaded chicken with pan-roasted red potatoes and peas for dinner, and we had a relaxing evening.

Today, we decided to head out for lunch, taking a recommendation from our good friend, Bill, to try the Blue Mingo Grill, located right on Lake Otsego just north of Cooperstown proper. Geri had a fish taco and I had a burger, we each had a pint of Rare Vos Ale from Ommegang, and we shared a key-lime custard for dessert. Great meal!

After lunch, we decided to swing around the Lake on our way back to Milford for the remainder of the Beverage Trail. This is all farm country, with lots of fields and meadows interspersed in the heavily wooded hills. I had a random thought that we hadn't seen any wildlife as we drove along. Well, we no sooner got back into Cooperstown when we saw a doe with two fawns grazing inside a fenced-in compound. We immediately thought of Wayne's garden, all fenced in to keep the deer out. The doe squeezed through a hole in the fence and crossed the road in front of us, and the fawns stayed and ducked into the brush. I'm sure they reunited after we left.

We hadn't traveled 2 minutes up the road when we had another pair of does with a set of fawns cross in front of us. This was all the wildlife we saw, and it was all in the most developed area. Strange.

We made two more stops, at Cooperstown Brewery (OK but not as comprehensive or tasty as Ommegang) and Bear Pond Winery (gotta love local wineries for their effort; at least they had wines made from grapes).

Click here for some photos...

Given that we had a big lunch, we just had a nice salad for dinner. I see the last piece of Geri's "Harvest Pie Tartlet" waiting for me to clean it up, so I'll do that after we finish doing our travel preparations. Tomorrow, we head for Ohio.