CAC Summer Niagara Region Outing – 2022
By George Dyke…..
Citroën Autoclub Canada has made their summer outing to Niagara an annual event for the past seven years. It has proved to be a summer favourite and this year was the best yet!
From a 10:30 start at McDonalds on Saturday, July 23 in Oakville, the group traveled along the scenic Lakeshore Road on Lake Ontario’s north shore over to Burlington where they continued lakeside along Beach Rd, by-passing Hamilton until they reached Fifty Rd. The route proved to be traffic free and enabled a short jaunt up Fifty Rd to the Upper Niagara Escarpment where the first stop was at Commisso Estate Winery for a brunch that included a large charcuterie (assortment of meats, salmon, cheeses, bread, chutney, olives and nuts) buffet, and oven fired home-made Italian pizzas served to each of the tables.
Commisso Estate Winery decided to promote our Citroën visit on their Facebook page and that managed to attract some visitors who reminisced about being in Citroëns in France. The variety of Citroëns was impressive, especially the Méhari that Ahmad Joulaie and his wife Kathy actually drove all the way from their home in Richmond Hill.
The display also prompted some ladies at a sorority reception that was happening at the winery later in the afternoon, to take a few minutes from their set-up to pose beside Roland Vogele’s Traction Avant for a photo op.
After eating very well and having a great sampling of wines, we headed over to our second destination, Westcott Estate Winery, where we were greeted by co-owner Carolyn Hurst and enjoyed not only a complimentary serving of their sparkling rose wine, but their selection of oak-aged and non oak-aged Chardonnays that the winery was promoting for the weekend. Live music added to the atmosphere as we sat on the lawn and enjoyed the absolutely perfect warm, breezy and just slightly overcast weather that we had for the entire day.
The next portion of the outing was a 45 minute drive through the narrow and hilly back-roads of the Pelham area — some of the best roads one can experience in Southern Ontario, before making our way back to our 3rd winery stop at Vieni Estates, arriving at 4:45 PM — the perfect time to relax as we sat on the patio of their beautiful new wine tasting building and store.
On our way to Vieni Estates we had passed a huge sunflower field in full bloom on Victoria Rd. It so impressed us that we decided to head back for a photo-op there and then pick-up our route to continue along Ridge Rd on the Niagara escarpment stopping at the scenic overlook to Hamilton and Lake Ontario before descending along Centennial Parkway to the Lake Ontario and taking Beach Rd and Lakeshore Rd all the way back to Oakville.
All-in-all — a great day and an outing that couldn’t have gone better!
View a full photo gallery of the day here: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjzZvM1