2002 Mad Fish Western Australian Chardonnay

[Innkeeper]

Enjoyed a delightful week starting on Father’s Day and getting back last night. We went to Grand Manan Island (actually an archipelago with two inhabited islands, Grand Manan and the much smaller Whitehead Island. It lies in the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, and as you may guess has 22 foot tides. It is nine miles off the coast of Maine, and about 60 from here as the crow flies. To get there, though, you have to drive three and half hours to a place called Blacks Harbor, NB (just east of St George) in-between St Stephen and St John. Then you take a one and half hour ferry ride. The main island, Grand Manan, is composed of two sections just about half and half. The east side of the island is strata, and the left side is volcanic. Therefore the east side is flat like most of the elongated islands along the American northeast coast, and the west side ends in 300 to 600’ foot shear cliffs.

There is nothing to do there except kayaking, whale watching, and hiking. There no night life except for a dive called Harry’s Bar. In the winter, Harry’s is only licensed establishment left open, and it barely survives. If it were not for the marginal wine situation there, I would retire for the fourth time there.

We went there first four years ago, camping with friends in a 31’ motor home. The camping is terrific there, but it is hard to get around in a large RV. For the past three years we have celebrated our anniversary up there in a lovely inn called the Compass Rose. “Our Room” overlooks a busy, working harbor, with views of beaches and off shore islands. We will be going back again in August for our 40th.

This time we took one of our daughters, her husband, and three kids. We stayed in a cottage at a place called Whale Cove. It overlooks a drop dead gorgeous body of water with only one house visible to the far right and nothing in the water to the left except fishing weirs and lobster buoys (the later come up this Sunday, the last day of their lobster season, and wooded cliffs on the far shore. I’ll send some pictures to Jackie when we get them back. The cabin was used by Willa Cather for several years back in twenties, before she built her own nearby in the same area. It cost $700 C for the week or $511 U.S. There was a whopping $105 C tax, but we can get most of that back. We were able to bring seven bottles of wine with us, and enjoyed them with meals or just sitting on the porch sipping. There was a gas grill where we fixed all our meals except for one night when we got take out lobster. On the one rainy day we had, we had reservations on a sailboat that went about halfway around the island and back. The weather broke just enough to make the trip enjoyable and photogenic.

The island package store has improved markedly since I last visited it about three years ago (we usually bring our own hooch). Now they have a nice selection of mostly Canadian, US, Australian, and French wines. We picked up an Ontarian Cabernet Franc (missed the details on it before the maid removed the returnable bottle). It went fine with a butterflied leg of lamb that we grilled, but did not hold a candle to a Chinon we brought we us with steaks on our last night. They were both about the same price.




[This message has been edited by Innkeeper (edited 06-24-2003).]