Winery? Brewery? You pick your stop on this 22-mile Central Jersey loop

A friend wanted to celebrate a birthday with a bike ride. So we put together this 22-mile loop with two possible shade breaks — at a winery and a brewery.

Which would we choose?

The sun was beating down as we headed out. Amazingly, we soon had cloud cover and a much nicer temperature for our ride.

We zip through West Windsor and into the tiny town of Windsor. I keep looking to my left, hoping I’d be able to see that ginormous Hindu temple in Robbinsville peeking above the lush tree line. No luck this time.

Across U.S. 130 and a couple of “hills” — including the Turnpike overpass. Then left onto Allens Road and shade. A slight right halfway through our ride and we are at Working Dog Winery in East Windsor — or is it Hightstown?

Aah, remember the winery stops on the Bon Ton Roulet in the Finger Lakes many years ago? Let’s reprise that!

This place is busy! A full parking lot, people chilling on the grass. Smaller groups can claim a patio spot. We run into someone our friends know from South Jersey — small world! A solo guitarist sings some classic rock. Who’s that singing along to “Sweet Caroline”? And there’s a food truck near the rows of grapes if you need munchies. No birthday cakes allowed. Whatever.

The birthday girl picks the wine: a bottle of rose. Not the sweet version! It’s perhaps the darkest one any of us had seen — I’d call it red, nothing close to pink — but easy to drink. And you have to buy wine glasses or BYO. Two bucks a pop. No plastic, even for those on bikes. Oh well. You think we should use our water bottles? They’re not empty, and we’re not sacrificing water on the road.

The friend of the friends leaves soon after we sit down, before we can polish off the bottle. So much for asking her to take our wine glasses home. Never mind … mine is going into the stretchy back pocket of my Terry bike jersey. I offered to take a second to balance it out but amazingly everyone has figured out a way to carry the others.

Spoiler alert: none break on the way home.

Time to get back on the bikes. We head toward Hightstown. One more Turnpike “hill”. Our route should take us past Old Hights Brewing, a place we first hit during the pandemic, but a road closure means we have a slight detour.

And anyway, after the winery, it’s time to head home for dinner and birthday cake. We’ll have to bike for beer another time.

And we’ll have to explore more of the wineries in Central Jersey.