https://www.facebook.com/EmpireStateCellars

Look down the row to find Empire State Cellars.

Here’s a great way to use my blog.

Tucked away in a corner of Tanger Outlet Mall in Riverhead, amidst stores selling luggage, lingerie, and not-quite-the-latest fashions, is a wonderful place, Empire State Cellars, selling wines, beers, liquors, and a few other products made in New York State.  If you want a selection of local wines but you don’t feel like trekking from winery to winery to get it, this is the place.  Even better, they offer a 10% discount on a case, and many of their prices are less expensive than in the wineries themselves.  I know, I was surprised, too.

The helpful clerks at the desk.

They also offer tastings at a bar in the back of the store.  However, we didn’t have time to do a tasting that day, but we did need to decide which wines to get.  As we scanned the shelves, I Googled Nofowineaux.wordpress.com/ whichever winery we were curious about.  Up popped my blog, and then I just had to scroll down to see if I had reviewed that particular wine.  Of course, since my phone “knows” me, all I had to put in was nofo, and it did the rest.

The tasting bar.

You can also follow the same procedure in a restaurant to decide which wine to order, though sometimes, as we have found, wineries seem to bottle different versions of their wines for restaurants.  Before I started my blog I was recording our tastings in a notebook, which was fine for deciding which winery to visit, but not a lot of help when we were out and about.  Now I have this useful reference always with me—and so do you!