My surprise birthday weekend took us to the Finger Lakes for two days of wine tasting, fine dining, and generally relaxing. It was a lot of fun, a total surprise – and surprisingly close to home. We stayed at Glenora Wine Cellars, in Dundee, at the southern end of Seneca Lake, and spent all day Saturday tasting wines, seeing the sights, and wandering around Watkins Glen.

The wineries were each a little different: most charged for tastings, some didn’t; some limited the amount of wine with a little pourer, others were more liberal; some featured plain popcorn as a palate cleanser, some gave flavored (not really a cleaners, then, is it?) popcorn, and some these weird vanilla-ish pillow crackers. We visited Wagner Vineyards, Hazlitt 1852, Chateau Lafayette Reneau, Lakewood Vineyards, and our home vineyard at Glenora, over the course of the morning and afternoon. We picked up a couple of bottles of wine that piqued our interest, and generally enjoyed comparing the answers we got as to why so many vineyards had popped up around Seneca Lake, including “Lots of sun…,” “A wind-tunnel effect,” and others.

One of the more memorable moments of the weekend came when we ducked in a bookstore in downtown Watkins Glen. We thought we could find out something about the history of auto racing in the town, and it had started to rain, so despite the fact that it looked somewhat unpromising and paperback-romance-centered, we popped in. Behind the counter, where the owner was negotiating a deal on some old coins, were shelves and shelves of DVDs for sale, which was sort of interesting. I started glancing through them, and spotted some that looked worth closer inspection. The sign on the wall said “All DVDs $5,” and I continued looking. I saw a shelf of DVDs stacked on top of one another with a post-it underneath saying “West.” Hmm, I though, I wonder what that’s about. Then I looked at the titles. And they all had the word “West” in them. And as I went to tell Aimee the funny little thing I spotted, I saw more. And more, and more, and more.

Here are some of the finest selections: SUN (Sunshine, Sunshine State, A Walk in the Sun, and Under the Tuscan Sun), MAN (When a Man Loves a Woman, The Man in the Iron Mask, Repo Man, The Thin Man, and Hollow Man), and MISC. COLORS (Charlotte Gray, Single White Female, and Gray Lady Down). RED and BLUE had their own sections, as did WILD, HARD, BAD, HOT, and COLD. Then there were more abstract categories, like ARMED SERVICES, FIRST & LAST NAMES, FRUITS & VEGGIES, and our two favorites, ONE WORD and THE. Yes, THE. That means The Rookie, The Tigress, The Blob, The Forgotten, and The Grudge. And ONE WORD? Well, it’s just what it sounds like: Flawless. Singles. Heavy. How you might decide that Pumpkin goes in FRUITS & VEGGIES rather than ONE WORD, I can’t say. And Millions, though it is one word, ended up in NUMBERS, along with Formula 51, 8 Mile, Nine Months, and The Whole Nine Yards. From a library science and film archiving standpoint, it was like discovering some new vernacular organization system, fun for browsing but ultimately riddled with problems. Needless to say, it was a fascinating afternoon. We ended up with Fitzcarraldo (uncategorized), Adaptation (ONE WORD), and The Maltese Falcon (BIRDS), for a whopping $15. I think we’ll be planning a class trip to the shop sometime soon.

Some photos of the weekend.