New Brunswick Week: Enjoying the Whiskey and Craft Brew of Fredericton

Craft Brew in FrederictonWhen I last strolled into the Lunar Rogue Pub in 2014, owner Frank Scot had over 500 types of whiskey for sale. Today, he has close to 950 varieties that include Scotch, Irish Whiskey, Japanese Whiskey, and a whole glass enclosed back cabinet devoted to bourbon, which, of course, I had to partake. If you’re searching for a taste of Killyloch 67 or Glen Flagler 73, no problem. It will only set you back $800 an ounce in Canadian dollars. Or better yet, have a taste of the Mortlach 12 Year Old, one of Frank’s favorites, as he sits down and joins us for dinner.

It’s no surprise that Whiskey Magazine has named the Lunar Rogue one of the great whiskey bars of the world. In 2016, Scotland bestowed on Frank the coveted Keepers of the Quaich title for being such a wonderful ambassador for Scotch. Scott is also founder of the Canada’s oldest whiskey festival, one of the rare joint ventures between the Canadian government which controls the liquor trade, and a private business owner. The 4-day festival takes place each year in November and usually sells over $500,000 worth of whiskey to some 6,000 collectors that come to Fredericton from across the globe. This year’s event might not happen since alcohol sales surged during the pandemic and there’s a shortage of whiskey. That would be a shame because the Feast for the Senses event, where whiskey is paired with the Turner, Sisley, Dali, and Lucian Freud paintings, among others at Fredericton’s renowned Beaverbrook Art Gallery, is one of the signature New Brunswick events of the year, often selling out in minutes. In the meantime, you can download the Lunar Rogue app and read about all those whiskeys Frank has managed to collect.

If you prefer craft beer to whiskey, Fredericton now boasts the largest number of craft brewers per capita in the the Atlantic Maritimes with 26 local breweries, cideries, distilleries, and wineries. Not too shabby for a population a tad over 65,000. While in town, I tried the Yippee IPA from one of the oldest establishments, Picaroons, a pilsner from Graystone, and an Island Red from Gahan House Riverside, set in a former bank. The beers are even tastier if you pedal some of the 120 kilometers of bike trails found in Fredericton, much of which line the shoreline of the wide St. John River. Second Nature Outdoors rents bikes and offers guided rides that feature the best of the local cuisine and beers. It’s the perfect introduction to a city that should not be overlooked on your New Brunswick itinerary.

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Club Med Quebec Charlevoix to Open in December

Club Med Quebec Few industries have been impacted more than travel this past year and a half. Navigating through the dizzying array of restrictions and requirements is no easy feat and can leave this eternal optimist exhausted and disheartened. But then I read about a new hotel opening in an area of the globe I’d like to check out and I’m just as excited as I was 30 years ago when I first entered the travel world, writing a story on the hotel Robert Louis Stevenson stayed when visiting Levuka, Fiji in the late 19th century. This pandemic has been a long slog, yet remarkably hotel groups continue to build and invest in the travel industry. That alone gives me a glimmer of hope.

Opening December 2021 is Club Med’s first foray in Canada and it’s a beauty. Having written about skiing Le Massif for the Boston Globe, I’ve had the good fortune to witness the exquisite views of the St. Lawrence Seaway from the slopes. Located 90 minutes northeast of Québec City in the Le Massif de Charlevoix region, the four-season all-inclusive mountain resort is spread across 300 acres. The new Club Med offers 302 rooms and a private luxury space featuring 25 suites. All-inclusive dining features the main restaurant, Le Marché, the gourmet lounge, Le Chalet, and the family restaurant, Terroir & Co, where kids and parents will enjoy fondue and raclette, local Québec cheeses and charcuteries, freshly baked cookies, and Québec’s famous maple taffy. Aside from ski-in/ski-out access, guest will enjoy ice skating, dogsledding, and sugar shack visits in the winter; biking, guided hiking tours, and whale watching in the warmer months. Let ActiveTravels know your dates and we’ll check availability and package together with Quebec City.

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Visiting Lake Geneva’s Lavaux Wine Region

Lavaux’s majestic vineyards are sculpted into the steep hillside like the rice terraces of Bali. Many of the stone walls that hem in the rows of vineyards were first created by monks. The perfect introduction to the beauty of Lavaux is aboard the circa-1910 paddle steamer, La Suisse, preferably on one of their gourmet cruises for lunch. Heading east from Lausanne to Montreux, the hillside is awash in vines surrounding small villages and centuries-old villas. 

 
After dining on leg of lamb or cod paired with wild mushrooms, washed down with the Lavaux wine, the cruise lets you off at the magical Chateau de Chillon. This impressive castle on the rock dates as far back as the mid-12th century, when it became the home of the Count of Savoy. But it was the British poet, Lord Byron, who made the chateau famous by penning his poem “The Prisoner of Chillon” in 1816. Byron writes about the Geneva monk, Francois de Bonivard, who was imprisoned in the dungeon of the castle for six years from 1530 to 1536. You can still see the pole de Bonivard was chained to as well as Byron’s name, which the poet inscribed into another nearby pole. Byron’s poem was so popular that it inspired a slew of writers and artists to make the trip to Chateau de Chillon, including Henry James and Eugene Delacroix. 
 
Yet, to truly appreciate the Lavaux wine region and realize why it was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site, you have to walk from small village to village in the region. Yesterday, we took the train to Cully, where we met the 5th-generation winemaker Melanie Weber. Remarkably, Melanie creates each of her vintages in the bottom two floors of her 4-story home in the middle of the community. She was just getting ready for the annual harvest when we walked in and tried her 2012 Chenalette, a white wine made from the Lavaux’s most popular grape, Chasselas. The wine was crisp, with hints of apples and pears, perfect for a warm autumn day. 
 
Then we strolled on narrow concrete paths through the vineyards, watching workers cut the grapes off the vines by hand. Within 15 minutes of heading uphill, we were in the charming village of Epesses, at the heart of this winemaking region. Follow the vineyards down the steep slopes and you’re staring in awe at Lake Geneva and the jagged peaks of the Alps that stand on the opposite shores. Your eyes, however, don’t need to drift too far to capture the beauty. Around every bend is another enchanting stone house with terra cotta roof, home to the more than 20 winemakers who live in Epesses. We had one of my favorite meals of the trip at Auberge du Vigneron on an outdoor terrace with glorious views of the Lavaux. Sipping wine made from the surrounding vines and dining on risotto with wild mushrooms is as good as it gets. 
 

Canadian Itineraries to Try This Summer or Fall: First Stop, Quebec

Saint-Benoit-du-Lac AbbeyWith new nonstop service from Boston to Calgary and Vancouver, it’s a great time to explore the Canadian Rockies and British Columbia. Closer to home, you can drive from Boston to St. Andrews, New Brunswick or Montreal in less than 6 hours and not have to be tested for COVID coming back into America. We’ve been fortunate to design over 100 Dream Day Itineraries to Canada this past decade and we have many more on the books this summer. It helps that I wrote more travel stories about Canada than any other country outside of America and continue to add to the collection, like this article on the expansion of the Fundy Trail Parkway last September. These are the Canadian destinations ActiveTravels members have loved the most:

Quebec
Cross over the border from Vermont and the first stop is on the shores of 28-mile-long Lake Memphremagog in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, where an impressive monastery sits high atop the waters. At Saint-Benoit-du-Lac Abbey, some 50 Benedictine monks create homemade cheeses and cider. Head to the store to sample the crumbly blue cheese known as L’Ermite, among Quebec’s most popular. Then it’s on to Montreal, the city of summer festivals, including comedy, jazz, and electronica. Montreal is home to one of the finest botanical gardens in the country and the fascinating Insectarium, which just reopened after a 2-year closure. Walk the cobblestone streets of the Old Quarter to snack on crepes at the outdoor courtyard of Le Jardin Nelson and buy French wares straight out of Paris. Quebec City is a 3-hour drive to the northeast, where you hopefully booked a room at the classic Le Chateau Frontenac, perched high on the hillside above the St. Lawrence Seaway. Walk the narrow streets to sample the patisserie at Paillard and visit the always intriguing Musee de la Civilisation before heading just outside the city to hike or zipline at Montmorency Falls. Most people stop their trip in Quebec City, but you should continue north to stop in the charming town of Baie-Saint-Paul and sea kayak with beluga whales in the Saguenay Fjord.

Sea Kayak with Beluga Whales in Saugenay

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Holiday Stocking Stuffer No. 1, Don Papa Rum

Already a phenomenon in Paris, Don Papa Rum has just arrived in New York and Boston. I went to a rum tasting last week at Shojo in Boston’s Chinatown and was even more enamored with this rum than the last time I tried it in France. The 10-year-old bottle has hints of vanilla which stems not only from the sweeter Noble Cane found in the Philippines, but the result of aging in former bourbon and American oak casks. As the story goes, founder Stephen Carroll was sailing around the volcanic island of Negros, when he learned about the centuries-old Noble Cane and the reason they coined the island Sugarlandia. He went on land and discovered the remains of a small rum distillery. Carroll bought it out and started creating his own “black gold” molasses. In less than a decade, he’s created quite a buzz in the liquor world. Grab your bottle of 7 and 10-year rum at Vinodivino in Boston and Needham, Charles Street Liquor in Boston, Gordon Liquor in Waltham, among many other Boston area liquor stores, and you’ll soon believe the hype. 

 

New Brunswick Week: Fundy Trail Parkway Extends to Fundy National Park

Fundy Trail ParkwayIf you have the good fortune to meet Beverley Franklin at the Long Beach Visitors Center on the Fundy Trail Parkway, as we did this past Sunday, by all means stop and say hello. After all, it was her father, Mitchell Franklin, a hotel and movie theater developer, who had the passion to create a coastal drive that started near his farm in St. Martins and finished at Fundy National Park. 23 years after the Fundy Trail Parkway debuted in 1998 and some 53 years after Beverley Franklin first drew a map of what she thought the 30-kilometer trail could look like, the extension to Fundy National Park will finally have a soft opening in the next two weeks.

We drove some 90 minutes from Saint John, 13 kilometers past Adair’s Wilderness Lodge (which I suggest you type into your GPS) to reach the East Gate of the Fundy Trail Parkway. Within 5 minutes, we were at our first stop, Walton Glen Gorge, where the granite stretches 200 meters high and the gorge spans some 900 meters. Walk the short kilometer walk to the observation tower and you’ll soon be staring in awe at the Little Salmon River as it surges through the Eye of the Needle. Across from you are sheer rock cliffs and to your right the green mountains slope to the Bay of Fundy in the distance.

The waters of the Bay of Fundy will be by your side the rest of the day. Try to arrive at the gate when it opens at 9 am because you’ll need a full day to see all the mesmerizing sights before the trail closes at 5 pm. A series of lookouts soon follow on the left as you peer down at the verdant slopes sliding into sea, not unlike the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton. It only gets better from here. Long Beach is a marvel to behold, stretching about a third of a mile out to sea at low tide, when you can walk some 2 kilometers on a loop. It was honestly hard to tear me away from this spot, as we found colorful green, gray, and granite pebbles, fantastic rock formations, and ripples of sand on the ocean floor that would be awash in water in a matter of hours. Edward Weston would have a field day here and so would any other photographer.

Fundy Trail ParkwayFor lunch, head to the Cookhouse for a fantastic turkey sandwich, where the meat is processed by chef Tracy’s turkey farmer neighbor on bread that was baked that morning. Afterwards, opt for the insanely good molasses cake or a slice of bumbleberry pie as you walk around peering at the century-old photographs of loggers cutting down the cherished white pine to build tall masts at the shipping port of Saint John. Then work off lunch by climbing across the suspension bridge at Salmon River, where one old-timer told me the waters were once teeming with so much salmon you could practically walk across the river. There’s one last requisite stop at Fuller Falls to see the water cascading down the slick rock into the Bay of Fundy before arriving at the West Gate and the seaside town of St. Martins.

Mitchell Franklin had to face much adversity to make his dream a reality, but he’ll be happy to know that it’s finally come to fruition. I can’t wait to return to bike the parkway and then go sea kayaking at Fundy National Park.

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Trillium Beer Garden on Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway Returns Later this Month

My favorite craft brewery in Massachusetts, Trillium, returns the Rose Kennedy Greenway in late May. The beer garden is perfectly situated in front of the Rowes Wharf Arch at the Boston Harbor Hotel. Expect Fort Point Pale Ale, dry double-hopped Melcher Street, and six other beers on tap. Castle Island will also debut their beer garden this summer beneath the Southeast Expressway in a new 8-acre site dubbed Underground at Ink Block. 20 Castle Island beers like the double IPA, Keeper, will be on tap as you check out the street art every Thursday through Sunday. Then there’s Wachusett Brewery, which will be bringing their perfect summertime brew, the Blueberry Ale, to City Hall Plaza daily, serving out of their Airstream trailer. So if you get parched this summer walking the streets of Boston, you’ll have your choice of stellar brew to savor outdoors. 

 

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