The Prince Edward County Taste Trail is the County's long-running invitation to graze your way across the island: a designated, self-guided route linking wineries, breweries, cideries, cheese makers, farm stands, and food shops, roughly following the Loyalist Parkway (Highway 33) from one end of the peninsula to the other. Born from the County's culinary and agritourism community and recently revitalized, it's less a fixed itinerary than a permission slip — everything on it is worth stopping for. Here's how to actually follow it.
What the Taste Trail is (and isn't)
The Taste Trail is coordinated by the County's tourism community as a marketing route: look for the signage along Highway 33 and the connecting county roads. It isn't a single path with a start and finish line — it's a corridor of taste. That's its charm and its problem: with dozens of eligible stops spanning 37 wineries, 21 craft-drink producers, and 15 culinary makers, "just drive it and stop when hungry" produces either three stops or thirty, depending on your discipline.
Our approach: treat the Taste Trail as the menu and our tour planner as the reservation. Pick your stops from the map, set your starting point and month, and get a scheduled day with drive times — the trail's serendipity, minus the 6 pm realization that you missed the cheese.
The trail, west to east
Consecon & Hillier: the wine spine
Entering from Trenton on the Loyalist Parkway, the trail's western stretch is wine country proper: Redtail near Consecon, then the Closson Road cluster — Closson Chase, The Grange, Hinterland — with PEC Lavender blooming right on the wine route in early July.
Wellington: bakeries and benchmarks
Wellington compresses the trail's whole idea into one village: butter tarts and Italian pastries on Main Street, a brewpub two doors down, and Norman Hardie, Rosehall Run, and Karlo Estates minutes away. Saturday mornings add the farmers' market.
Bloomfield: sweets and spirits
The middle of the trail leans indulgent: Slickers ice cream, Belgian truffles, farm beer, and the Gilead Road pair of Kinsip's whisky barn and Stock & Row's orchard cidery.
Picton & east: cider, cheese, and the lake
Past Picton the trail earns its views: Black River Cheese (curds since 1901), Fifth Town's goat and sheep cheeses, Waupoos Estates, County Cider's hilltop orchard, and small-batch mustard at Cressy. Farm stands like Vicki's Veggies (a hundred-plus heirloom tomato varieties) and Hagerman Farms fill the cooler on the way home.
Three ways to ride it
- By car, one region deep: pick a stretch (west wine, mid-county sweets, east cheese-and-cider) and do it thoroughly. Our complete wine tours guide has ready-made loops.
- By bike: the Millennium Trail rail-trail parallels much of the route, and Bloomfield Bicycle Company rents e-bikes mid-trail. Tasting rooms + e-bike is a very County afternoon.
- Chauffeured: several tour operators — County VIP Tours, The Local Tour Co., Sandbanks Tours — will happily run a mixed wine-beer-cheese day, which is the Taste Trail with a designated driver.
Taste Trail rules of thumb
- Bring a cooler. Cheese, curds, tomatoes, and pie do not enjoy an August back seat.
- Cash-ish: a few farm stands are self-serve on the honour system — small bills help.
- Check What's On for your dates: maple season, lavender bloom, and harvest each change what the trail tastes like.
- Cap the drinking stops at three or four and let food fill the rest — that's the trail working as designed.