Mon Ami - Champagne Experts

Once a year, my girlfriends (including sister Beth and mother Dana) spend a weekend in Lakeside, Ohio's Chautauqua, for the Sharing Our Gifts Retreat.  We treat ourselves to the Saturday night seafood buffet at Mon Ami, where the food is fantastic.  Last time, I started with crab legs, mussels, and shrimp, and moved on to salad, salmon in lobster sauce, stuffed sole, grilled tuna, and buffalo blue cheese shrimp.  Then I had more crab legs followed by bananas foster and tiny baklava and cannoli.  The Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon was rich and deep and fruity but dry, a delectable wine that wore the label “American.”  On the way out I asked the manager which part was the original building, and it’s the building at the entrance, four stories, one above, and two cellars below, with the cellar just below the first floor used as a prison during the Civil War.  The winery was completed in 1870 and the first vines yielded grapes in 1872.  Unfortunately, most of the  wines are made from non-Lake Erie grapes.  The few vineyards on the property are Concord.