When it comes to travel, I am a planner. The first I thing I do is research all the food and drink options, peruse websites, and scan menus and cocktail lists. I add all the spots I want to go to a virtual map, and try to visit as many as I can. Thus it was when my husband and I joined my friend Molly and her husband on a trip to Scotland in April. Due to a misunderstanding about the date Dave and I were to leave Scotland, we ended up spending far less time in Edinburgh than I would have liked. This, coupled with a bad cold I developed our first day there, meant that we went to very few of the places I had painstakingly researched months before. One of them was this place: 56 North, Scotland’s original gin bar, according to their website, and by all appearances, a veritable gin-lovers paradise.

I had never associated gin with Scotland; one usually thinks of, well, Scotch as the national tipple. But one of my favorite gins, Hendricks, hails from Scotland, and all this time I had no idea. Perusing the 56 North website, I discovered Scottish gins by the dozens. And gins from across the world. All of these broken down into categories: Scottish botanicals, Juniper Led, Classic Dry, Citrus, the list goes on. Tantalizingly close to our Airbnb, yet it was not to be. I’ll have to return to Edinburgh and try this place – I could easily spend hours there. Despite missing out on 56 North, I did get to try some tasty Scottish gins.

The night of the terrible cold, I allowed myself to be dragged out to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant in Edinburgh. I forget the name of it, but our server was very eloquent about the variety of gins and tonics on hand. Despite not feeling great, I knew I had to try a few – I mean, I can’t be the Peregrine Foodie and not try the local offerings. After determining what types of gin we liked, he made recommendations for each of us. For me, he recommended Brockman’s, which he described as fruity. I was skeptical, as fruity usually corresponds to sweet, and I’m not a fan of hugely sweet things. I’ll usually try anything once, though, and besides, how bad could it be? It’s gin, after all. Then he asked about tonic.

This is when I learned something new. In Scotland (and perhaps other places, I don’t know), gin and tonic is served separately. The gin is served over ice, and the tonic is served in its own little bottle. You can add as much or as little as you like. And as an added bonus you can save some tonic for the next G&T, and save on tonic! Win-win. Or, gin-gin? Too much? Anyway. He suggested a tonic I’d never heard of called 1724, where the quinine is plucked at precisely 1724 meters above sea level at a special location in Peru. It was good stuff, and I should have bought some to take home, because it’s hard to find in the US. And the places I did find wouldn’t ship it to New York, for some reason. And the ones that would charged a ton for shipping. But I’ll keep on it and get my hands on some somehow.

The Brockman’s did indeed have a delicate fruity note, but not overwhelming, and not sweet, as I feared. Another gin of Scotland that I found quite tasty is Edinburgh gin. Citrusy, floral, and lightly junipery, it made a delicious G&T. 

The tail end of our trip landed us in Fort Augustus for an evening, and the group ended up at Bothy Restaurant and Bar. The bar had a healthy collection of gin, of course, and I made it a goal to try as many as I could. A dangerous endeavor, to be sure, but I am always up for a challenge. The downside to trying a bunch of gins and tonics without writing anything down is that you forget which ones you liked and why. So unfortunately I can’t give any details on the ones I tried. I do know I had a good time trying them, though. And I met some nice people at the bar. I will strive to do better next time. And there will be a next time!

I have an announcement to make, my dear readers (all eight of you). I am embarking on a new project, which I’m calling (for now) the FLX Wine and Food Exploration Project. I’ll come up with a better, more snappy name for it later, but that’s what I’m working with for now. Over the next few months, I’ll be educating myself on the Finger Lakes region, its climate, geology, soil, and other characteristics that make our locale so well-suited to producing excellent wine. Eventually I think I’ll spin it off into a new blog, but for now I’ll post my adventures here.

For examples, yesterday I just learned that AVA stands for American Viticulture Area, and that the Finger Lakes region is one of them. Yes indeed. I was vaguely aware of this before, but now I know know. You know? I mean, I read it, I put it in my brain, and now I can tell other people this marvelous fact. That’s what I plan to do with other equally (and possibly more) important pieces of knowledge about the Finger Lakes wine and food scene.

I’ve been longing to visit Bordeaux ever since I learned of the place and its wine as an undergrad in Cornell’s famed Wines course. As I soaked up the samples of Bordeaux wine, I absorbed images of picturesque French villages, complete with cobblestone streets, bougainvillea spilling over balconies, and vineyards (of course, vineyards).

So, when nearly 30 years later my best friend, a winemaker in the Finger Lakes, breathlessly told me she’d been asked to represent NYS wines at a trade show in none other than Bordeaux, I had no choice really. “You have to come!” she pleaded.

“But I just got back from Scotland!” I protested. “I can’t just jet off to Bordeaux!” But it was clear I had to go. So, I shuffled some money around, found someone to cover my shifts at the hospital, and bought a steerage class ticket to Bordeaux.

I researched all the things to do in and around Bordeaux. I love speakeasies, and oddly enough, Bordeaux seemed to have these in abundance. We could take a train to a nearby village and rent bikes and explore the narrow roads that wove around the vineyards! We could laze the afternoon away sipping wine in a Bordelaise wine bar! We could while away sunny afternoons wandering adorable French villages, snapping pictures, and…drinking wine.

Reality was different. We visited no speakeasies (they’re not really my friend’s jam). We did not rent any bikes. The sun was elusive, and we spent two afternoons during torrential rain drinking wine and watching “Sneaky Pete” on Amazon Prime in our Airbnb. We did, however, take a train to St. Emilion, where we visited an underground church; and after exhausting all that that village had to offer culturally, we did in fact laze away that afternoon drinking wine in a wine bar.

I drank hardly any red wines. I discovered a new favorite, the crisp, slatey whites of the Entre-deux-Mers region of Bordeaux, so named because the ancient Romans apparently did not realize that the two bodies of water bordering the region to the north and south were actually two rivers, now known as the Garonne and the Dordogne, rather than two seas. Nevertheless, tasty wine is produced there.

So, Bordeaux wasn’t what I imagined all those years ago, but is any place ever what you imagine? If it were, there’d hardly any point in going.