WAYNE COUNTY, N.Y. (WROC) — The 25th Wayne County Apple Tasting Tour is officially underway. The month-long harvest celebration includes 12 different stops at orchards, farm markets and cideries throughout the county.
“We are the number one apple producer in New York State and it’s over 51,000 apples, so it’s important for us to celebrate the apple,” said Christine Worth, the Director of Wayne County Tourism.
At each stop, there are family-friendly activities like apple picking, corn mazes, cider tastings and hayrides. Participants are also able to learn about the various types of apples grown in New York.
“You can try apples, you can learn about apples, and every year I find a different apple I like, I should say every week I pick a different apple,” Worth said. “You don’t know until you get out there and see what’s there.”
There are various local businesses taking part in the tour, including The Apple Farm Stand in North Rose.
“We do ‘you pick.’ You pick apples as well as pumpkins. We do in-house baking, so we’ve got a lot of great baked goods, like apple cider fried cakes, which are a big win this time of the year,” Owner Kaye Gansz said. “My husband actually is a cider master. He crafts his own hard cider, so we’re one of the unique stops where you can actually get hard cider tastings.”
The Apple Farm Stand also has different entertainment each weekend and animals for children to pet and see.
This year, the tasting tour has a new “passport” feature to make the event more interactive and fun for families.
“This year, we decided to do word jumble. So as you go to each of the stops, there’ll be a sign that posts the letter of the stop, then you fill in the stop, so we’ll give prizes for how many stops you make. And then you get all the letters and solve the word jumble then you’re eligible for the grand prize,” Worth said.
There is also an app on the Google Play and Apple App store that serves as a way to follow along the tour and learn more about each stop.
The weekend of Oct 7-10 is the tour’s Tasting Weekend, which means farms and stops along the tour will have more activities.
“What makes this weekend so unique is the fact that every stop has tastings. So a lot of people come in and they don’t know what different varieties tastes like, so we’ve made sure at our stop, and I know all the other stops as well, you can actually taste a lot of the apples that we sell,” Gansz said. “In my particular stop, I also have pantry items or baked goods, so we have a lot of that out for tasting as well.”
To learn more about the Wayne County Apple Tasting Tour you can click here. You can also call Wayne County Tourism at 800-527-6510.