Niagara Peninsula Overview

So I've decided to do an overview of the Niagara region, and then proceed with my usual troublesome winery spotlights. Niagara is a beautiful place, natural splendor, gorgeous falls, beaches, and all the other poetic stuff. The fact is, the falls were a big let down for me. Not to say they weren't impressive, but they don't hold a candle to Iguazu. Like, not even a small tealight. The falls are big, and they spray, but they don't have much wonder-inducing qualities to me. We arrived midday and went to see them, walked through the hell hole that is Niagara Falls the city, and checked into the natural wonder. It's really touristy and kitchy, lacks realism and honesty, and was way smaller than I thought. The pictures I've seen show it dwarfing boats on a massive scale. Not so. It's still a great place, but I really do wish it was a bit more true to life. Everyone is a huge American, theres a midway, a bunch of really lame restaurants, movie theatres, candy shops, and burger joints. I was superbly dissappointed, but had to walk around. It was like being inside a car accident. There was no reality here, just hyper-culture gone horribly wrong. The buildings were something a child would envision, the exposure to the main street far too prevalent. It is a city that sold it's soul to the devil that is it's tourist office. Though millions of dollars pour in every year from all over the world, there is no honesty. To walk through the city is to know people are guessing how much money you have and if you are dumb enough to give some to them. It's brutal. Nevertheless, there are some interesting food upsides. Pingue prosciutto would be chief among them. Though he was slow to respond to us, too slow, in fact, for us to visit him, I still appreciate what he's up to. Mario Pingue is one of the only people making old style Italian prosciutto here in Ontario. Him and his brother run their shop out of Niagara falls. They were taught the craft by their dad, and continue doing it to this day. We had the chance to try it a couple times, and it's actually quite tasty. Funny story, though he doesn't anymore, he also used to get his pigs from the same farmer Black Hoof does, who we met at the Slow Food picnic. Small world, especially in food. We stayed in Niagara falls that evening, ate Pingue prosciutto pizza, and relaxed. The following day was going to be a busy one. Winery Madness. After a pile of wineries we went to Lake Erie at Crystal Beach and swam, tossed around the disc, and generally hung out. After that we went to a couple more wineries, ending off with Cave Spring, near closing time. At that point, they shoveled all their bread onto us, and we had three loaves in hand, as well as two t shirts, which they provided us for free. Pretty epic. We decided to make bread bowl soup. So we made a bacon and leek cream soup, and filled it into these dark round loaves we had hollowed out as bowls. It was mindblowingly delicious. I was super satisfied, and after that, we checked into the library to see it's ability to serve our wireless addiction. It had some ability, but not the most I've ever seen. So we slowly phased out, I ended up on a local network of a village there, and progressed on that until bedtime. Dinner was delicious and I got to post on some stuff and realize just how far behind I actually am, so that was nice. The next day we also spent almost entirely at wineries, though also one cheesemonger. Upper Canada Cheese is another pretty soulless place, owned by the same gentleman who owns Hidden Bench, which we were to visit. The cheesemaker apparently supports his winery hobby, which is lame, because it's a pretty lame cheesemaker. They make some decent cheese, but very limited in variety and flavour profiles. They do a good job importing other peoples cheeses and selling them in their Niagara style gift shop. A pretty disappointing place, but they have benches outside, where we made breakfast and prepped our lunch, so not all bad. We continued from there to a variety of wineries around the area. At one we met a gentleman by the name of Mark Walpole, who we had talked to over the phone and agreed to meet at a winery. Mark makes vinifera grape flour, a product that is somewhat interesting to anyone who likes a little colour in their food. He gave us a couple packs to play with, and we've been doing a little experimenting so far, not with tremendous success, but I think that with a little more effort and tweaking a couple of the ideas could work. Mark is a pretty welcoming guy, and introduced to Eric, who runs the tasting bar at the winery we were at, where we received a sweet tour of their gravity fed systems. Mark had to hurry off to dinner engagements, but we gave him our best, and returned to our cooking spot from the night before to make a cabbage and beef stew. Before we had the chance to, however, we both passed out, so no dinner, just sleep, after all the wine, not such a surprise. The next morning we awoke early and made the best out of our last day on the peninsula. Visited a few more wineries and a meadery before heading out back to Toronto.