Finger Lakes Wineries

Well, we're unpacking after our long-anticipated week of vacation time down in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. The cottage was well-suited to our needs, being well off the beaten track — in fact the road that led to the cottage was steep, twisty, and (in places) dirt and dust with only a bit of gravel (the Quotemobile was very dusty after every trip in and out of the cottage). If nothing else, it made sure we were not going to be bothered by the coming-and-going of through traffic.

The dogs seemed to enjoy the change of location . . . eventually. The first couple of days were a bit tense for Xander, while Buffy had issues with stairs in unexpected locations (she's partly blind and navigates more by memory, I suspect); by the middle of the week, she'd gotten comfortable with the new configuration of furniture and rooms. Xander loved the idea of a house with so many doors; his favourite routine was to ask to go out one door into the back yard and zoom around the property at top speed and come back in through a different door. He did it so often that Victor got into the habit of opening the second door immediately after closing the first one.

Aside from the whole "get away from it all" urge (or as the SF fans used to say "to GAFIAte"), part of the idea was to do a bit of wine tasting, as the Finger Lakes region hosts dozens of wineries. Things didn't go exactly to plan, as I only managed to get in to visit a small number on this trip, but it largely confirmed the things I'd discovered on our first visit to the region last year. (Which I now notice never got blogged . . . because I started the new job immediately after getting back, and had fewer opportunities to blog for a few weeks.)

Anyway, the area is lovely, the wineries are plentiful, and it's far enough off the interstate that the traffic is rarely a huge problem. It struck me though that even though the wine business has been growing rapidly in that region, they're still several years behind the Niagara region as a whole. There are some very good individual wineries, and what appears to be an increasing determination to use vinifera grapes, but a lot of what is produced is the kind of sweet or semi-sweet wine from hybrid or native grape varieties that Niagara used to produce by the tanker-load in the 1960s and 70s.

We sampled some very good cabernet and pinot noir, some adequate reislings and chardonnays, and some sickly sweet vidal, catawba, and concord. At least one winery in the area is still selling one of their sparkling wines as "Champagne". Of course, if what sells is the sweet wine, they're well advised to produce it . . .

Last year, we'd managed to visit Glenora, Earle Estates Meadery, and Dr. Konstantin Frank (on Keuka Lake), plus a few others whose names I don't recall. This year, we tasted wines from the just-longer-than-walking-distance Silver Thread Vineyard (biodynamic, mostly vinifera), Standing Stone (mostly vinifera, including one of the best Cabernet Sauvignon wines we tasted), Poplar Ridge "Wine without bull" Vineyards (mostly hybrid and native grape varieties), Shalestone (red vinifera wines exclusively), and Penguin Bay (sparkling wines made from vinifera and non-vinifera grapes). I also visited Lamoreaux Landing, but they were dealing with a couple of large groups and it was so busy that I couldn't get served at the tasting bar, and we arrived at Hermann Wiemer just as they were closing up for the day. I was sorry to have missed getting in to Wiemer, as they specialize in Riesling . . . much of what I'd tasted on this trip was underwhelming. I have heard that the Finger Lakes can produce excellent quality Riesling, but I hadn't found much to back up that hope (but there are still dozens of wineries I've not yet visited). Most of the smaller wineries are only open on weekends, and with us arriving late on Saturday and leaving early the following Saturday, the timing was just off.

Overall, I most enjoyed the visits to Shalestone and Standing Stone, both for the quality of the wine and the conversation. Rob, the winemaker at Shalestone, was a very interesting man to meet, and we'd still have been talking an hour later if more visitors hadn't arrived to save him from being bored to death. I especially enjoyed his 2005 "Synergy", a blend of Syrah, Merlot, and Cab Sauv. At Standing Stone, I enjoyed the 2006 Pinot Noir and their 2005 "Pinnacle", a Bordeaux-style blend of Merlot, Cab Franc, and Cab Sauv.

Poplar Ridge was, um, unique among the wineries I've ever visited, in that it had the look and feel of a western tavern or wild-west saloon. While I was there, there was what appeared to be a wedding party — the girl wearing the tiara-and-veil was the clue — getting sozzled on sweet wines (fortunately, there was a stretch limo in the parking lot with the driver not partaking). I don't know how many wineries they'd already visited, but the noise level was rising steadily by the time I left.