Wine Tours & Travel: Niagara
The Niagara region boasts many excellent wineries which can be easily
accessed via a day trip from Toronto. However when you throw in the Shaw
Festival, golf and fine dining, you should seriously consider a
weekend excursion from Toronto.
 For detailed information on the wineries, start with Wine
Country Ontario which is managed by The Wine Council of Ontario, a
non-profit trade association for the wine industry in Ontario. The site is
a comprehensive resource for Ontario wine including regional overviews,
specific information for each winery including special events, local
cuisine, route maps, day trip and
vacation information. Vines Magazine is
also a
good source of current Ontario winery information.
 The
Niagara Grape & Wine Festivals is a non-profit
organization that runs a series of seasonal wine festivals in the Niagara region
- The Niagara Icewine Festival in January; The Niagara New Vintage Festival in
June; and the
Niagara Wine Festival in September.
 Niagara-on-the-Lake
makes a great base for your weekend activities. If you like to watch
the dollars, your best bet for accommodation is the Niagara On The-Lake Bed
& Breakfast Association. They have some excellent
properties, often centrally located, and at very reasonable prices.
If an upscale hotel is more to your liking, the Niagara-on-the-Lake
site has useful information on accommodation and restaurants. Try a Vintage
Hotels property for an up market experience. St Catharines can also be used as a base, and their wine tourist site This
is Wine Country has extensive information on hotels and
events.
 If you would like the locals to arrange a wine tour for you, try Niagara
Wine Tours International, located at 92 Picton (the main street), next to the
Shaw festival theatre. They offer daily tours (four wineries plus
lunch) with pick up from Niagara-On-The-Lake, Niagara Falls or St.
Catharines. Alternatively, you can take a leisurely train ride to
Niagara Falls from Union Station, Toronto and spend the day on a private
tour of Niagara wine country.
They
are #10 in Yahoo’s top twenty wine tour sites as of 1/1/11.
 Another
option is Crush
on Niagara Wine Tours who provide guided van tours daily, year round,
to both the Bench wineries of the Niagara Escarpment and the wineries of
Niagara-on- the-Lake, Ontario. Daily
tours are typically half day, four hour excursions - morning and afternoon
departures. They also organize Corporate and Social group
tours as well as overnight package getaways. They
are #14 in Yahoo’s top twenty wine tour sites as of 1/1/11.
  Other operators include Grape and
Wine Tours who do Toronto pickups for groups of six or more or Niagara
Airbus who offer door-to-door winery tours from Niagara or Toronto
Hotels.
Another option if you want to be pampered is the Wine Country
Getaway from weekendtrips.com,
a Toronto based company specializing in weekend travel and leisure ideas.
If you are staying in Niagara-on-the-Lake and if you are a keen golfer, I
strongly recommend the NOTL
Golf Club , a 9 hole course right beside the lake, which was established in 1875.
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