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The Coolest Hot Spots
For a day trip or a weekend, some of Connecticut's lesser known but unusual attractions beckon
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Business New Haven
6/24/2002
By: Nancy Barnes
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Summer in what has been termed the “drive-through” state is upon us, so why not pump up the state's economy - and diminish that burgeoning state deficit - by taking trips within the borders of Connecticut itself?
When the pleasures of the backyard barbecue begin to pale, and the lawn mower, or its well-intentioned owner, is out of sorts, Connecticut offers a host of hot spots that consistently sizzle. What follows is just a sampling.
The Grape Escape
“We've made every mistake, but hopefully we don't make them twice,” says Sherman Haight, founder and president of the Haight Vineyard of Litchfield Hills, offering one reason for the vineyard's success. The Haight Vineyard, open daily, is now 27 years old.
A native of Litchfield County who had farmed in the region before turning his attention to grapes, Haight says he was “greatly challenged” by growing the fine wine grape, vitis vinisera, in the harsh climate of northwestern Connecticut.
The cultural practices he employs to produce his Chardonnay, Riesling and Covertside Blanc (“just off-dry with a trace of sweetness,” is how he describes it) come from Central Europe, where grapes are cultivated in a similar climate.
Although Haight once sold his selection of wines, which also includes a Merlot, up and down the East Coast, he has had to limit his distribution because the wines sold so briskly. Today, Haight wines can be found in 50 package stores in Connecticut and at the Vineyard's two locations. A second Haight winery, where the company produces only apple wine with apples from local growers, is located in Mystic.
The Litchfield Hills winery permits self-guided tours throughout its 25-acre vineyard and offers guided tours that leave every hour on the hour within the winery itself. Tours last roughly 30 minutes. Contact the Haight Vineyard in Litchfield Hills at 860-567-4045. Information on all Connecticut wineries and three wine trails is available at www.ct.wine.com.
Circus Atmosphere
Allegedly, said P. T. Barnum of suckers, “There's one born every minute,” but the legendary impresario was no fool himself.
Founder of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” Barnum was born in Bridgeport, where the Barnum Museum greets visitors today. The museum showcases the fact and fiction surrounding some of Barnum's discoveries, such as the very small character, Tom Thumb.
In reality, “Tom Thumb” was another Bridgeport native named Charles Sherwood Stratton. Barnum marketed “Tom Thumb,” who was a dwarf, as an 11-year-old European wonder who could sing, dance, mime and act.
Over the course of their association, Barnum and Stratton traveled throughout the world, meeting royalty such as Queen Victoria and, in this country, President Abraham Lincoln.
Directions to and the hours of the Barnum Museum, which is located at 820 Main St., can be found by calling 203-331-1104 or on the museum's Web site, www.barnummuseum.org.
Summer means beaches, and beaches mean reading - so a visit to Whitlock Farm Booksellers at 20 Sperry Rd. in Bethany (203-393-1240) is well worth the shaded, back-road drive. Thousands of books, postcards and magazines gleaned mainly from estate sales or from book owners who are downsizing their libraries fill two barns that have operated as a book mart since 1948. The current owner, Gilbert Whitlock, is the son of Clifford Whitlock, who opened a bookstore in downtown New Haven in 1900.
On a recent trip, one customer purchased a packet of 25 cards beautifully illustrating Russian lilacs, an uncorrected proof of Umberto Eco's Five Moral Pieces and an unused, 395-page hardcover of artist Camille Pissarro's Letters to His Son Lucien, with a $10 bill - and received change.
Books on all subjects find their way to the book mart, as do postcards from around the globe. If you can't quite manage that trip to the tropical haven that you had planned for the summer, you can find a bevy of very handsome cards from tropical locales in Whitlock's card box - and send them to friends as mementos of your summer instead. If you have small children, there are two chairs - one yellow and one pink - on a grassy hillside outside one barn to accommodate them when they tire but you have not.
If a bookstore seems somehow lacking in vigor, then East Rock State Park in New Haven (203-946-6086, at the corner of Cold Spring and Orange streets) may be the place for you. The park is open for self-guided tours.
Before the Europeans arrived in 1658, the area was a gathering place for the Quinnipiac Indians. During the day, tribal members fished, hunted and dug for clams in the surrounding salt marsh which, once filled, allowed the growth of the residential neighborhood that surrounds Whitney Avenue now.
Thirty thousand years ago the park was a large sheet of ice, part of a glacier that began in Canada and extended southward across New England. Today, the park features the Trowbridge Environmental Center, which offers special events, and, on occasion, offers canoe rides on the park's Mill River.
New England Patriots
Should New York City beckon, but not the heat rising from the sidewalks, the oh-so-fragrant stench of the subways and those lingering, post-9/11 concerns, why not visit Brooklyn? The town of Brooklyn, Connecticut, that is, in the northeastern corner of the state.
A weekend dinner that begins with a hayride at the Golden Lamb Buttery (499 Wolf Den Road, 860-774-4423), a rustic restaurant in a converted barn on a 1,000-acre farm, will set you back $65 per person. But a view of the bronze equestrian statue of Israel Putnam, a Revolutionary War general, will cost you nothing.
There's history in Connecticut's northeastern hills (pegged “the quiet corner” by tourism officials), and Brooklyn is just part of it. The Nathan Hale Homestead (2299 South Street, 860-742-6917) in nearby Coventry, for instance, celebrates the Yale University graduate, schoolteacher and young hero of the Revolutionary War.
Whether Hale ever uttered those defiant words regretting that he had “but one life to give for my country” just before he was executed at what is today the Northwestern corner of 66th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan, remains a matter of debate. But so does the quotation attributed to Israel Putnam: “Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.” The staffs at the state's northeastern town historical societies will doubtless help you sort fact from romanticized fiction.
A far more see-and-be-seen location than rural Brooklyn is Scoozzi Trattoria & Wine Bar at 1104 Chapel Street (203-776-8268) in downtown New Haven. In summer, the lushly landscaped courtyard with its bright yellow umbrellas thrives, yet the noise from the street (Scoozzi is directly opposite the Yale University Art Gallery and next to the Yale Repertory Theatre) never quite subverts civil conversation. Although items on the menu, like the intriguing “pizzettes,” are Italian, the bar is not.
The bartender there makes an agreeable Cosmopolitan martini, whose pink hue derives from cranberry juice. A blue martini, however, is not on his list. For that bit of anti-temperance, whose blue color derives from curacao, a patron must visit Zinc, another of New Haven's hot, hot spots. Zinc (203-624-0507) is located at 964 Chapel Street, directly opposite the upper New Haven Green, and it offers live jazz on Saturday nights. Outdoor seating on Chapel Street is available during summer months. (Note to New England patriots: The blue martini is especially appropriate for adults around the fourth of July.)
As always, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (203-776-1444 or access ) offers a schedule of summer events. This summer, the orchestra is offering its Picnic in the Park Series at Edgerton Park on the Hamden line, with programs ranging from Strauss waltzes to the “Best of Broadway.”
In Good Stead
A lesser-known cultural attraction is the Hill-Stead Museum, a National Historic Landmark, in Farmington. Designed by Theodate Pope, one of the first licensed female architects in United States, for her parents, the Colonial revival-style building sits on 152 acres.
It houses the Popes' collection of Impressionist paintings, Chinese porcelains and magnificent Russian rugs. The museum's telephone number is 860-677-4787, and its Web site is www.hillstead.org. The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival at the museum, which is a festival of music and poetry, runs through August.
For those who would prefer not to dwell on the state's deficit but, rather, savor their own investment savvy, Newington and Milford will, toward summer's end, definitely qualify as “hot.” Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. the North Carolina company that makes those artery-clogging delectables, made stock market history with a record IPO in 2001, and sales of its products continue to soar. (In the first quarter of this year, the company's sales increased by 56 percent over the first quarter of last year.) Krispy Kreme is expanding from its Southeastern base, and two of its stores are scheduled to open in Connecticut.
Unlike the open air tables outside the green, double-drive-through structures that inhabit the Southeast, the “Krispy Kreme experience,” as one company executive puts it, will take place indoors. For those who did not invest in the company, the glazed doughnuts, which seem especially appealing when eaten in the chill of early fall, may provide a moment of guilty solace.
Those without jobs - or, perhaps, the parents of them - should know that the two doughnut “hot spots” are now looking for managers. For some, an empty nest can be the most pleasurable spot of all.
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