Posted by Neil Brody Miller on March 12, 2010
I’ve been thinking this week about two interrelated issues effecting Finger Lakes winemaking. First, I was excited to read James Molesworth’s article in this month’s issue of the Wine Spectator, in which he celebrates the quality of Finger Lakes wines and shines a spotlight on Sam Argetsinger, owner of the celebrated Argetsinger Vineyard on Seneca Lake, Lou Damiani of Damiani Wine Cellars, and Rob Thomas of Shalestone Vineyards. Molesworth rated several Finger Lakes Rieslings 90-91 points, including the Ravines Argetsinger Vineyards Riesling, the first Finger Lakes wine to receive two back-to-back 90+ point ratings. As significantly, Molesworth also rated several Finger Lakes red wines – the Ravines Meritage, Shalestone Cabernet Franc, and Damiani Cabernet Sauvignon, among others – between 88 and 89 points.
All this is a well deserved affirmation of the efforts of Finger Lakes winemakers to produce world-class wines, especially the efforts of dedicated red wine pioneers like Morten Hallgren, Lou Damiani and Rob Thomas. And yet, I’ve also been wondering this week whether Finger Lakes winemakers aren’t being toyed with by a capricious god, or perhaps like Sisyphus, are ill-fated, rolling boulders up a hill for all eternity. Because just as Finger Lakes winemakers achieve the respect and recognition they deserve, American wine drinkers, driven by the bad economy and a flood of cheap imports, have thrown themselves headlong into the abyss of ever-cheaper wines.
Nearly all the wines reviewed in Molesworth’s article are priced between $17.00 and $25.00 per bottle, with the least expensive wine costing $15.00. Aficionados and locavores are certainly willing to pay these prices, and given their quality, top-flight Finger Lakes wines are still comparative bargains. Overall, however, the trend in wine consumption over the past two years has been unmistakeable. American wine drinkers are moving en masse away from wines priced around $15.00, which for years has been the key price point for wine retailers, to wines priced at $10.00 to $12.00 or lower.
My concern is that, with a handful of notable exceptions – Red Newt’s Circle Riesling, for example – Finger Lakes winemakers produce few table wines from vinfera varietals that meet this price point. Another such exception, I am glad to say, is the Lamoreaux Landing Estate Red, a non-vintage red blend made from Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.
In the glass, the wine certainly looks like Pinot Noir, with a bright garnet-orange color. The nose, however, is overwhelmingly Cabernet Franc, with dominant aromas of wet earth and grilled meat and herbs, which were followed by a creamy vanillin note from the oak barrel aging. In the mouth, the Pinot and Cabernet Franc flavors intermingled nicely, so that I got a mouthful of cherry and red and black berries, along with that characteristic herbaceousness often found in Cabernet Franc. I don’t like grassy flavors when they are too pronounced, as they often are with Cab Franc, but when they compliment rather than overwhelm a wine’s fruit, as they do in this wine, the result is added complexity and a more compelling match for grilled or roasted meats.
Overall, this wine was surprisingly good. It is totally dry, with a medium body, good depth of fruit, well balanced acidity, reasonably soft tannins, and persistent length. The wine ended on a salty, minerally note that reminds you this is a Finger Lakes wine.
I can’t recall having previously drank a wine made from Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc, but if this wine is any indication of the blend’s potential, the two grapes were made for each other. Given the choice, I would much rather enjoy a bottle of this wine than a Bourgogne Rouge from Burgundy, which is a crap shoot even in the best vintages, or a Bourgogne Passetoutgrain, an overlooked, often value priced blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay. Indeed, given its price ($10.99 at MacKinnon Liquor in Cazenovia), the Estate Red is one of the best red wine values I have yet found in the Finger Lakes.
I’ve enjoyed other wines from Lamoreaux Landing, especially the 2007 T23 Cabernet Franc (an unoaked, fruit driven wine priced around $15.00). The winery, headed by winemaker Paul Brock, also receives high marks for its Riesling and Chardonnay: the 2008 Riesling Reserve received an 89 point rating in Molesworth’s article But this humble, non-vintage red blend may be the real star of Lamoreaux Landing’s line-up. It’s well structured for serving with food and competitively priced for the current wine market, which makes it an ideal everyday table wine and a good choice for anyone looking to support Finger Lakes wineries and the local economy.
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on August 5, 2009
The wines were great, the participants were friendly, and everyone appeared to have a good time. So what is there to criticize? Not much, actually. The tasting was conceived as an opportunity for winemakers, writers and bloggers, and retailers to assess the quality of the 2007 vintage Finger Lakes Cabernet Francs, compare these wines with Cab Francs from other wine-producing regions, and discuss the potential of the varietal for the Finger Lakes region. While the discussion never got around to this last question, the tasting established that Finger Lakes winemakers produce some very good, even excellent Cabernet Francs, and that their Cab Francs are regionally identifiable in comparison to French, and even to Long Island, Cab Francs. These are fundamentally important issues for anyone interested in the success of Finger Lakes wineries. From the perspective of what we intended to achieve, then, the tasting was largely a success.
That being said, by failing to consider the broader issue of Cabernet Franc’s potential, I think we missed an opportunity to bridge the gap between winemaking and marketing, and to forge a stronger sense of community and common purpose among regional winemakers and retailers. The discussions of balance and overcropping were interesting and important, and indicated, at least for the participating winemakers, that Cabernet Franc’s viticultural and enological potential are settled issues. From this perspective, the key concerns are not whether Cab Franc grows well in their vineyards, or ripens fully by fall crush, but whether individual winemakers are willing to restrict yields, forgoing quantity for quality, and to make the other hard decisions necessary to produce balanced, world-class wines. Retailers are keenly interested in these issues even if they lack a winemaker’s technical knowledge, because in today’s highly competitive market, where wines from well established regions compete for shelf space with up-and-coming regions and varietals, one or two poorly made wines are enough to forever turn off a customer to a particular varietal.
For retailers, accordingly, and perhaps for the writers and bloggers as well, Cabernet Franc’s potential remains an open question. As I noted at the tasting, wine shops are where the aromas meet the road, and where a wine succeeds or fails not simply because of its inherent quality, but also because of pricing, availability, public awareness, and successful marketing – had a good Carménère recently? How about a nice Torrontés? This is why I wish a winemaker had turned to a retailer during the discussion and asked, “So, what do you think? Can you sell this wine?” and why I am disappointed that we failed to consider market-oriented issues. Are Finger Lakes Cab Francs competitively good wines, and are they competitively priced? Is there sufficient public awareness of or interest in Finger Lakes Cabernet Francs for them to compete successfully in the marketplace? These are critically important issues, at least as important as whether winemakers can get away with four or more tons of Cabernet Franc per acre, and it is the retailers and writers who know the answers to these particular questions, not the winemakers.
I am not blaming the winemakers for this missed opportunity. Indeed, there were several moments when retailers could have jumped into the discussion, as when one winemaker denied that overcropping was an issue and asserted that retailers needed simply to sell more wine. This overly simplistic statement, along with the fact that the retailers remained silent even when directly challenged, is an indication that there is at present little sense of community or common purpose among Finger Lakes winemakers and regional retailers. And yet we are bound together not merely by economic interest, but to a degree that we fail to appreciate, by a shared history. This is nowhere more evident than in the controversial subject of sweet table wines, which are both an existential scourge and a financial godsend. The account books of more than a few Finger Lakes wineries end up in the black, I suspect, because of sweet wines, as do the ledgers of many regional wine shops. Even boutique wine shops like The Savvy Wine Cellar, where I work, blow through more cases of Red Cat than we care to admit. More is going on here than economic necessity. Historically, culturally, put it however you want, this region – its consumers, wineries, and retailers – grew up on sweet wines, and we can no more easily escape our past than we can evade death or taxes. We can and should, however, push back harder against this history.
This is why fostering a closer sense of community is so important: everyone has something at stake in the debate over the historically- and culturally-rooted production of sweet wines. One of the biggest surprises of moving to Central New York and getting involved in wine sales was seeing the strength of local demand for sweet wines, and how unapologetic consumers are about their preference for treacle despite the decades-long international trend towards dry table wines. I can’t tell you how many customers have come into the wine shop who tell me they grew up drinking Lake Niagara, switched in early adulthood to Red Cat, and have never moved beyond semi-sweet Rieslings, not even to semi-dry wines. No one at the tasting was shocked, accordingly, when Peter Bell of Fox Run Vineyards acknowledged that his best selling Cab Franc is a back-sweetened red wine blend called Sable. Nor did anyone need to point out the obvious: sweet wines sell well in tasting rooms and at local wine shops, which is why winemakers continue to produce and retailers continue stock these wines
In addition to Peter Bell, a handful of other winemakers who participated in the tasting also produce off-dry red wines. To be fair, these off-dry reds are not the real villains, but are rather reasonably well made, fruit-driven summer wines that compare well with the lower priced dry red blends produced by nearly all Finger Lakes wineries. I myself have enjoyed a chilled glass of Tony’s Red on a hot afternoon, and I neither burst into flames nor have I as yet been tormented by the offended spirits of wine critics past. But we need to be honest and admit a few simple truths. First, despite the progress made over the past 20 years, the Finger Lakes are still awash in sweet wines. More than a few local owners and winemakers suffer from what I call “Red Cat envy,” as evidenced when Dick Reno, the owner of Chateau Lafayette Reneau, told me earlier this summer, and in all seriousness, that Red Cat is the best red wine produced in New York State. Not the most successful red wine, the best red wine. Alternately, one need only visit a warehouse-style discount retailer like Liquor City in Syracuse to see how few fine wines from the Finger Lakes are inventoried in comparison to locally produced plonk.
Second, and of greater import, I believe the region as a whole faces a not-too-distant day of reckoning for this short-sighted pandering to local demand. Here again, we need to be honest. Continued production of so much second-class wine undermines the efforts of forward-thinking winemakers to move the Finger Lakes region beyond its provincial adolescence, to full maturity as a world-class appellation. It may even, eventually damage the reputation of Finger Lakes winemaking beyond repair. All the more reason, then, for the region’s winemakers, retailers, and writers to recognize their interdependence and common purpose, and to find more opportunities to discuss the full range of issues that surround Finger Lakes winemaking, including those market-oriented issues we failed to consider at the tasting, but which profoundly effect us all.
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on July 31, 2009
[Author’s note: Given that this essay is part report and part editorial, I've decided to publish it in two installments. Part Two will be posted in a day or two.]
Winemaking in the Finger Lakes region is at an interesting, if awkward, crossroads, akin to an adolescent caught momentarily between the innocence and exhilaration of a first kiss, and the difficult decisions and delayed gratifications of adulthood. Due largely to the critical and commercial success of Riesling, professional wine writers and local enthusiasts have proclaimed the Finger Lakes a world-class winemaking region capable of competing successfully in the international marketplace, and look expectantly to the production of other fine wines, reds as well as whites, by local wineries. Although I count myself among the region’s most enthusiastic supporters, however, I came away from the Cabernet Franc tasting that took place earlier this week at the New York Wine and Culinary Center, which I helped organize, with mixed feelings, and with a sense that the owners and winemakers of Finger Lake’s wineries face some difficult decisions as the industry continues to mature.
In addition to Riesling, nearly all Finger Lakes wineries produce a range of wines from vinifera varietals. There is a lot of excitement and uncertainty about these varietals: excitement that one of them could emerge as the “next big thing” for Finger Lakes winemakers, comparable to what Pinot Noir has meant for Oregon vintners, Malbec for Argentinian winemakers, or Shiraz (Syrah) for the Australians; and uncertainty about which varietal – specifically which red wine varietal, if any – is best adapted to the Finger Lakes’ soils and microclimates. Some winemakers are zealously devoted to a single varietal, such as Tom Higgins of Heart and Hands Winery, who produces only Pinot Noir (see Jason Feulner’s blog entry on Lenndevours.com for more information about this winery). Other wineries are less willing to bet the farm on a single grape, and produce several dry red table wines, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Bordeaux-style blends or Meritages, Pinot Noir, Lemberger (also known as Blaufrankisch, see Evan Dawson’s video entry on Lenndevours.com for what I see as a meaningless debate about a commercially marginal varietal), as well as a variety of dry and off-dry wines from French-American hybrids.
This is where the idea for the 2007 Cabernet Franc tasting originated. Among winemakers and professional wine writers, there is an emerging consensus that Cabernet Franc may be the red wine varietal best suited to the Finger Lakes region. The 2007 growing season, moreover, was unusually long and hot, and provided growers with some of the best conditions for harvesting fully ripened grapes of the past 20 years. With the 2007 Cab Francs coming to market, it seemed an ideal moment to gather a group of trade professionals – winemakers, food and wine writers and bloggers, and regional wine retailers – to taste the 2007 Cabernet Francs, compare them to Cab Francs from other wine growing regions, and assess and discuss the potential of the varietal for the Finger Lakes region. Evan Dawson, Finger Lakes editor for the New York Cork Report (formerly Lenndevours.com), and Peter Becraft, assistant winemaker at the Anthony Road Wine Company signed on in mid June as co-organizers; Alexa Gifford, Executive Director of the New York Wine and Culinary Center in Canandaigua, generously offered to host the tasting at the NYWCC, and Shannon Brock and Stephanie Wadhams, also of the NYWCC, worked out the details and planned the logistics of the tasting and the follow-up luncheon. By mid-July, an impressive group of winemakers, writers, and retailers had committed to participating in the event.
Winemakers:
Vincent Aliperti, Billsboro
Paul and Shannon Brock, Lamoreaux Landing
Peter Bell, Fox Run
Amy Cheatle and Phil Davis, Damiani
Kim Engle and Debra Bermingham, Bloomer Creek
Morten Hallgren, Ravines
Tom Higgins, Heart and Hands
Bob Madill and Dave Breeden, Sheldrake Point
Fred Merwarth, Hermann J. Wiemer
Johannes Reinhardt and Peter Becraft, Anthony Road
Rob and Kate Thomas, Shalestone
Dave Whiting, Red Newt
Mark Wiltberger, Keuka Spring
Writers and Retailers:
Jennifer Baskerville-Barrows, Cookin’ in the ‘Cuse, Edible Finger Lakes
Andrew Bowman, Andrew’s Wine Cellar, Oswego
Don Cazentre, Syracuse Post-Standard
Matt Christen, The Wine House, Manlius
Evan Dawson, The New York Cork Report
Holly Howell, RIT, Mountain Home Magazine
Rob Lane, Finger Lakes Weekend Wino, Mountain Home Magazine
Tom Mansell, Ithacork
Morgen McLaughlin, Finger Lakes Wine Country
Neil Miller, Stressing the Vine
Thomas Pellechia, VinoFictions
Dale and Allison Record, The Savvy Wine Cellar, Camillus
Gavin Sacks, Cornell University
David Sparrow, Sparrow’s Wines, Ithaca
Tom Tucker, Balloon Juice
Paula Valeri, BDL Wines, Rochester
Jason Wentworth, Northside Wines, Ithaca
As impressive as is this list, it was clear from the beginning that not all winemakers or retailers could participate (the NYWCC Demonstration Room seats 44 people), and that not all of the 2007 Finger Lakes Cab Francs would be sampled and discussed. Several winemakers were suggested who could not be accommodated, and several wines were recommended that were not selected. Altogether, however, I believe that a credible representation was assembled of the region’s trade professionals and 2007 Cab Francs. Evan Dawson, who led the tasting, arranged the tasting in two flights of eight wines each, with an additional flight of six reserve Cab Francs served with lunch.
Flight One.
Red Newt
Lamoreaux Landing
Shalstone
Anthony Road (Cabernet Franc-Lemberger)
Charles Joguet Chinon Clos de la Dioterie (2005)
Sheldrake Point
Ravines
Billsboro
Flight Two.
Weimer
Fox Run
Bloomer Creek
Damiani
Shinn Estate (Long Island)
Dr. Frank
Domaine des Valettes Bourgueil (2005)
Keuka Spring
Luncheon Flight:
Lamoreaux Landing T23
Anthony Road Martini-Reinhardt Selection
Red Newt Glacier Ridge Vineyards
Red Newt Sawmill Creek Vineyards
Charles Joguet Chinon Les Varennes du Grand Clos Franc de Pied (2005)
Sheldrake Point Barrel Reserve
Of the 16 wines poured for the tasting, my personal favorites were, in the order tasted: the Red Newt, Shalestone, Billsboro, Damiani, and Keuka Spring. All of these wines exhibited rich ripe cherry, plum, and berry flavors, with additional aromas and/or flavors of herbs, tobacco and mocha or chocolate. They were all flavorful, well made wines with good balance, concentration, and varietal expression that I would recommend enthusiastically to anyone interested in checking out a good Finger Lakes Cab Franc.
My least favorite wines, to my surprise, turned out to be the Joguet Chinons and the Valettes Bourgueil, which exhibited what the French insist is the unique terroir of their vineyards, but which were simply funky aromas and flavors. And I don’t mean P-Funk, Bootsy Collins, “get down with your bad self” funky, I mean freshly manured farm field, dirty sweat sock funky. Several of the winemakers and the more enologically savvy participants – Gavin Sacks of Cornell University, and Tom Mansell of Ithacork – attributed these off-putting aromas and flavors to “Brett” or brettanomyces, a problematical yeast strain. For my purposes, however, “funky” sufficed. More than I realized, my continued criticism of Parkeresque “fruit bombs,” excessive alcohol levels, and overly ripe wines notwithstanding, my taste has turned decidedly towards clean, fruit-driven, New World winemaking. Here, at least, I found myself in good company, as four of my top rated wines also numbered among the winemakers’ personal favorites (see Evan Dawson’s blog entry on the tasting for a more detailed breakdown of the results).
This is the point with which I want to conclude Part I of my essay. It became clear by the end of the second flight that the Finger Lakes Cab Francs were recognizably distinct from the French wines and the Long Island Cab Franc from Shinn Estates, and possessed general characteristics indicative of an emerging regional identity. In addition to the clean, varietally correct flavors typical of New World winemaking, the Finger Lakes Cab Francs were less deeply extracted (but no less flavorful), a bit lighter in terms of color and weight, tending towards a brilliant ruby garnet and medium body, highly aromatic, and with higher levels of acidity. Several of the wines were overly tannic, but many exhibited surprisingly soft tannins for what are still very young wines, as well as good structure and aging potential. Several participants commented on a lack of balance or overly high acidity in some of the wines, but I didn’t note either of these issues in the better wines. The reserve wines, which I forgot to mention earlier, were also uniformly excellent. The Lamoreaux Landing T23, technically not a reserve bottling but a “Loire style” wine fermented in stainless steel, was deeply fruity, consumer friendly, and very affordable ($14.99). The Red Newt single-vineyard Cab Francs, especially the Sawmill Creek Vineyards bottling, although pricey and a bit hard to find outside of the winery, were world-class wines well worth the effort and expense of tracking them down.
The best Cab Francs from the tasting, accordingly, were outstanding wines, with a weight and texture closer to Pinot Noir than to Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. This may be good news for Finger Lakes winemakers if they can figure out how to educate consumers about Cab Franc’s many attractive qualities, and how better to position and promote their Cab Francs in the marketplace. Pinot Noir consumption has been rising steadily for years, and more and more customers come into the wine shop every week seeking classically structured red wines that pair better with food than over extracted fruit bombs. These are big “ifs,” however, and I found little evidence at the tasting that either issue was being adequately addressed. The idea that consumers need simply to “buy more wine,” which was one winemaker’s off-the-cuff response to the topic of over production, is hardly a plausible or practical business strategy.
Next: Part II: There’s the Rub
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on July 27, 2009
Tomorrow, after a month of planning, winemakers from the Finger Lakes, CNY food and wine writers and bloggers, and regional wine retailers will gather at the New York Wine and Culinary Center in Canandaigua, NY to taste, assess, and discuss 2007 Finger Lakes Cabernet Francs and Cab Francs from several other wine growing regions. The tasting will be led by Evan Dawson, Finger Lakes editor for the New York Cork Report (formerly Lenndevours.com), who along with Peter Becraft, assistant winemaker for the Anthony Road Wine Company, and myself, planned and organized the tasting.
Stay tuned for a full report on the results of the tasting later this week, as well as articles and blog entries from other participating journalists and food and wine writers:
Jennifer Baskerville-Barrows, Cookin’ in the ‘Cuse, Edible Finger Lakes
Don Cazentre, Syracuse Post-Standard
Evan Dawson, New York Cork Report
Holly Howell, RIT, Mountain Home Magazine
Rob Lane, Finger Lakes Weekend Wino, Mountain Home Magazine
Tom Mansell, Ithacork
Thomas Pellechia, VinoFictions
Tom Tucker, Balloon Juice
Many of the 2007 Finger Lakes Cab Francs have been released and are becoming more widely available at wine shops. For the past several months, there also has been a fair amount of buzz about, and a number of good reviews of 2007 Finger Lakes Cab Francs. The 2007 Finger Lakes growing season was unusually long and hot, which allowed the red wine varietals extra hang time to fully ripen. Several winemakers have told me that they consider 2007 the best vintage of their red wine varietals in the past 20 years, or in some cases, since they started making wine.
With all this buzz, it has been hard not to get excited about the 2007 vintage, and especially about the Cabernet Franc, which is generally regarded as the vinifera grape varietal best suited to local growing conditions and most likely to produce world-class red wines. The proof, however, is or will be, in the tasting.