No, I am not thinking about all of the rainwater we received, but the seductive aromas of juicy ripe fruit. Strawberries, peaches, apples, raspberries, cherries, you name it a surprising number of dedicated winemakers struggle trying to bottle the best. While most of us equate wine with grapes, it’s amazing to discover how many farm-based fruit wineries exist. They are spread across the province, from the Niagara Peninsula to the heart of Muskoka. It means that wherever you live, there’s bound to be a fruit winery worth exploring nearby. The challenge for fruit wine producers is reaching the public.

The selection at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario is almost nonexistent. Unlike other provinces, in Ontario you can’t taste or buy them at local farmers’ markets. As for sales to restaurants, the provincial government imposes an extra provincial markup of approximately 40 per cent on fruit wine prices. This is in spite of the QC Quality Certified seal, which means that they have passed identical quality taste standards as VQA wines. Restaurants do not pay this higher markup on a VQA wine but do when it comes to fruit wines. Sadly, it means that it’s hard to find a fruit wine in a restaurant.

Richmond, the elegant and historic capital of this closer-than-you-think East Coast state, is a fine place to begin your tour. If you arrive in time for lunch, catch a cab to Cary town, the city’s nineblock shopping district known as the Mile of Style. Lively Can Can, at the end of a plaza, feels like a Paris brasserie with its spacious red leather and woodtrimmed banquettes, terrazzo floor and impossibly high ceiling. Locals stop by for a morning café au lait and freshly baked croissants at one of the bistro tables by the windows overlooking chic restaurants and boutiques.  Can Can’s lunch menu veers from sumptuously rich French onion soup smothered in melted cheese to warm charred Gulf shrimp on a nest of licorice-scented fennel ribbons, splashed with a lemony vinaigrette. Or share a platter of fresh local oysters along with a beer from the lengthy list.

Spend the afternoon visiting the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden or wandering through The Fan, the trendy fan-shaped residential district anchored by Monroe Park. In the midst of graceful Victorian homes, dating from the 1880s to 1920s, sits Bruce and Virginia Rowland’s simple 44-seat restaurant Rowland with its black awning. From late May to September, Chef Bruce serves soft-shell crab, plucked from nearby Chesapeake Bay in that vulnerable moment between the time it bursts from its too-small shell and grows a fancy new one. Served whole, legs and all it’s best not to think too much about it before you bite its sweet, fresh flavour needs no seasoning, says the friendly chef, who dusts it lightly in flour before a quick pan-fry.

The yummy baked good is one of America’s first and finest contributions to world cuisine. ike many acts of pure genius, the invention of the cupcake is lost in the creamy fillings of history. According to food historian Andrew Smith, the first known recipe using the term “cupcake” appeared in an American cookbook in 1826. The “cup” referred not to the shape of the cake but to the quantity of ingredients; it was simply a downsized English pound cake. Lynne Olver, who maintains a Web site called the Food Timeline, has tracked down a recipe for cakes baked in cups from 1796. But we will probably never know the name of the first cook to take the innovative leap or whether it had anything to do with a six-year-old’s birthday party. “Just like other popular foods the brownie comes to mind it’s impossible to pinpoint a date of origin for the cupcake,” I have frequently found mention of cup-cake, a dainty unknown, I think, in this country. Will some friendly reader, on the other side of the Atlantic kindly answer this query, and initiate an English lover of New England folks and ways into the mysteries of cup cake?” Even to this day true cupcakes as opposed to muffins or cakes cut up into cup-size portions are sadly uncommon in Europe. In recent years the U.S. has had something of a great cupcake awakening, as blogs and bakeries have devoted themselves to its pleasures. Some attribute this renewed popularity to the cupcake-indulging characters of HBO’s Sex and the City, and food historian Susan Purdy also credits dietary awareness: you can have your low-calorie cake and eat it too.