Mrs.Yuck is a Wine person, and I've probably visited 30 Wineries with her over the years. I have noticed that most Wineries have guestbooks. So I finally decided I should start listing some guestbook caches at OCNA for Wineries! The first in this series is at Victorianbourgh Wine Estate in Wilson, N.Y., near the shores of Lake Ontario. Here's a little bit about them from their website: 

"Victorianbourg is the culmination of a life’s dream to make fine wines, and to create a life as a wine grower. After selling our previous business in 2005, we (that is Victoria and Dan Hogue) decided to pursue our lifetime dream of a vineyard and winery.  We considered several areas on the West Coast, but finally decided that the Niagara region of New York State was the best place to produce fine wines from the classic European wine grapes of Germany and Northern France.  We found a 50 acre nursery and shrub farm that was available on the south shore of Lake Ontario, and purchased it in 2005.

Our farm was covered with thousands of nursery plants, so we went to work to dig those and sell them, freeing up space to plant our vineyards.  We planted our first few acres in the spring of 2006, and finally in the fall of 2009 harvested our first substantial quantity of grapes.

We also started work in 2006 on a building to become our home and eventually the winery.  We modeled the building on a French wine chateau.  It remains a work in process, but the house part of the building was finally ready for occupancy in the winter of 2008/2009, and we moved out of the trailer that we had been living in since 2006 into our new vineyard-themed home.  Since we are doing as much of the work ourselves as we can, it is a slow process, but progress continues to be made!

Since we had grapes to harvest and no winery, we converted one of the old nursery buildings into a winery and tasting room, and opened for business in the winter of 2009/2010 with our first three wines.

About the name Victorianbourg

Sometimes people ask us about the name. . .

Of course the winery is named after Victoria—Dan says he has two real passions in life,“my wife and my wine,” and Victorianbourg combines them both in one place.

The bourg, and its German version “burg” is a suffix found often in place names in France and Germany.  We added it to Victoria’s name to indicate the type of wines we strive to make—wines modeled on the very best of Germany and France."

The posted coordinates are for the main entrance. The guestbook itself is located just inside the door, near the cache register (pun intended). You can't miss it! A photo of your guestbook entry is not mandatory, but you really should post one to verify your visit. Sorry for the "narrow" picture, there was a drunken wine trail tour bus in the way at the time. Perhaps I'll snap another next time I'm in the neighborhood.

Hours of operation (year round):

• Monday

  12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• Tuesday

  12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• Wednesday

  12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• Thursday

  12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• Friday

  12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• Saturday

  12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• Sunday

  12:00 pm - 5:00 pm