New York State of Wine: Beyond World-Class Rieslings and Catchy Rosés, Bold Visions Take Root

On a crisp late summer day in New York’s Finger Lakes wine region, you’re struck more than anything by light: bright, renewing and sublime. It’s all the more beautiful refracted through the prism of the local wines. Whether pale yellow rieslings, bright deep pink, cold-soaked cabernet franc rosés, or a wide spectrum of lighter purple and ruby-colored vinifera wines, they shout “life” when we need most to hear that – and increasingly offer the consumer super quality and value.

We tasted nearly 100 New York wines in New York and Hong Kong this year, and this report includes more than 250 ratings from the last three years of tasting New York state wines. They are just the tip of a beautiful iceberg, and left us charged up to continue exploring what this state is doing. All but one of the wines was from the Finger Lakes and New York’s other iconic growing region, the consummately maritime Long Island, where slightly warmer weather is contributing to the greater finesse and concentration we see.

The New York wine scene is evolving in so many interesting ways, showcasing resilience, adaptation and thoughtful innovation. It may now be the No. 4 quality wine region in the United States after California, Oregon and Washington.

In the Finger Lakes, or FLX, as it is also known, tasting rooms have adapted to the pandemic by shifting from tasting bars to spaced seating and more food options, making for a calmer and more thoughtful tasting experience that has really caught on. It’s a winning model all around, and looks like it is here to stay, giving you a great way to get to know these wines.

In both FLX and Long Island, many traditional producers still provide vital ballast, quality and scale, but they also drive change. There is a lot of new action, like wine legend Paul Hobbs’ ambitious and beautiful FLX venture Hillick & Hobbs, on Seneca Lake. On Long Island, Roman Roth’s tremendous expansion of Wolffer Estates’ rosé program has riveted the attention and patronage of legions of millennial consumers. Most important, there are just so many wines coming out of New York that are great to drink, especially with food.

The time is now to get some of these awesome wines through your dealer, favorite restaurant or directly from the producers. New York wines are very vintage-driven, and 2019 and 2020 were both great years on Long Island and in the Finger Lakes, in different ways. In fact, Roth thinks 2019 may be “the greatest vintage ever” on Long Island, with elegant and intense reds that are the best he’s ever made.

In the Finger Lakes, Red Newt’s virtuoso young winemaker, James Kelby Russell, describes 2019 as a “wine industry year, with a cool growing season, a storybook autumn, late harvesting with lower brix and higher acid than usual – making for great flavor development and ageworthiness. Some of the top rieslings will last 25 to 30 years.” He sees 2020 as a “counterpoint – a consumer’s year, when a perfect growing season abetted explosive flavor” in ripe, broad wines that customers love.

For years we have been helping tell one of the world’s brightest new wine stories about increasingly quality-driven wines from the East Coast of the United States. From Upstate New York down through North Carolina, consumers can find a greater range than ever of local fine wines that stand proud among their global peers, while expressing very local terroirs.

Finger Lakes and Long Island clearly exemplify this progression. We loved many recent releases detailed in this report. We’ll take the regions in turn, because they are so distinctive. They each have their iconic stars – in the Finger Lakes, these are the world-class rieslings, which are increasingly sophisticated and come in a wide range of expressions, from ultra-dry to richly sweet late harvests. On Long Island, the elegant and restrained red Bordeaux blends have traditionally taken the spotlight.

But the story of each area is quickly becoming much more diverse as a growing ensemble of other white, red, rosé and sparkling wines with real élan beautifully showcase their regions’ and sites’ strengths, characteristics and capacity to grow great vinifera.

Most important, they highlight the bold open-mindedness of winemakers who are unafraid to move beyond the status quo – those that are planting new grapes, grafting old techniques to new technologies and applying new understanding of their terroirs. The results are delicious.

ON THE EDGE

In terms of vinifera, it’s fair to talk about the glacially carved Finger Lakes, home to about 130 producers, as a wine region “on the edge.” The climate is moderated continental, derived from a combination of the effects of two great lakes – Ontario to the immediate north, and to some extent Erie, just west.

With that big relief in place, the three main Finger Lakes on whose well-drained surrounding hillside slopes most vineyards are situated – Cayuga, Seneca and Keuka – have their own microclimates and specific effects on grape-growing. The shale-rich soil has very similar chemistry to slate (as in the Mosel wine region of Germany) but is much more friable. The growing seasons are long and slow. It’s all a natural set-up for good riesling that, in the hands of people like Oskar Bynke and team at FLX stalwart Hermann J. Wiemer, makes a variety of beautiful, world-class wines. Just try his 2016 dry Seneca Lakes version and see what we mean.

Fermentation for some FLX rieslings can easily exceed eight months in cold cellars and with indigenous yeast. That’s part of  the secret to the wonderful nervy tension, energy, texture and weight of so many of its greatest wines – like Red Newt’s The Knoll and Tango Oaks rieslings.

The 2020 vintage of The Knoll blew us away when we tried it a few months ago at the estate with Russell, the winemaker, and assistant winemaker Meagz Goodwin. It was cloudy and nearing the end of fermentation only then. We had earlier rated the spectacular 2016 at 96 points. The Knoll and Tango Oaks bottlings are both true Grand Crus. More than one serious riesling lover has compared Tango Oaks to a Grosses Gewächs, and I agree.

A decade ago there was a reliable sameness to many FLX rieslings, a competent if monotone winemaking tendency often discussed there as “balancing the sugar and acid.” Some of this still exists, given that, as Russell noted, “conditions here are just so right for riesling, to make a bad one you have to try.” But today the picture is infinitely more interesting. The use of cold soaking, which was controversial until a few years ago, and more skin and lees contact – plus more judicious use of wood – are changing the profile of many wines, particularly their mid-palate weight and texture.

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF UNITED STATES 2020

Many top producers now are also focused on the potential of single vineyards and micro sites, and many have intricate arrangements to secure production from very carefully delineated top “lieu dits” in the region. Perhaps no producer embodies this better than Forge Cellars, owned by 14th-generation Rhone winemaker Louis Barruol and managing partner Rick Rainey. They produce over a dozen bone-dry, single-vineyard rieslings that reflect the extraordinary variation of soil types within an eight-mile stretch of territory on the southeast part of Seneca Lake. “My job is to translate place, and I feel like we’re just scratching the surface,” Rainey said.

In truth, there is a lot a project like this has to get right, and wood management can be a challenge. But it is hard not to be excited by what they are achieving. We sampled a slew of Forge wines, both in the cellar and in Hong Kong. A favorite was a 2019 riesling from Caywood vineyard, which contains “some of the greatest old plantings in the Finger Lakes,”  Rainey noted. Our tasting was accompanied by jamón ibérico and manchego cheese. Life hardly gets any better.

FLX may mean riesling to most people, but that’s really just the start, if a brilliant one. Do you fancy vintage-style Champagne? You would be lucky to get your hands on a bottle of Ravines Brut 2013.

This is a blend of pinot noir and chardonnay from the limestone-based Argetsinger vineyard. It has been aged on the lees for over six years. The developed nose is followed by a delightfully creamy palate with lightly spicy, ripe yellow apple and brioche notes and a savory, persistent finish. Ravines is just one great example of the classic, serious and growing sparkling programs in the Finger Lakes.

Keuka Lake’s Dr. Konstantin Frank Rkatsiteli is a beautifully dry, honeyed foray into a grape better known as a standard-bearer in Georgia, in the Caucasus – and we’re also excited to see how FLX plantings of varieties like blaufrankisch and teroldego do over time. Cabernet franc is the most widely planted red vinifera in the region and is on an upswing as a distinctive Finger Lakes style, especially the unoaked variety.

Element’s elegant, structured 2015 syrah shows what a fine, northern-Rhone-style wine this grape can yield in the Finger Lakes – although the weather can be a challenge with this varietal.  We also loved some of the pinot noirs from the region, like the Heart & Hands Mo Chuisle 2017. Rosé programs are expanding too, mostly with cabernet franc, pinot noir and lemberger. And many distinctive chardonnays may tack Burgundian (see the fresh and elegant 2019 HJW Bio), but still retain their unique local style.

All the conditions seem to exist for an increasingly bright future. Bob Madill, co-founder and former partner at Sheldrake Point and an insightful, longtime observer of FLX viticulture, foresees “further quality evolution of riesling and chardonnay, growing sales outside New York as awareness of the region’s excellence expands, and [continuing] investment in vineyards.” We agree. You will, too, as you get to know these wines.

ARTFUL BLENDS AND NEW PATHS

Long Island stretches way, way out into the Atlantic. Main estates like Wolffer are about 100 miles, or 160 kilometers, east into the ocean from the Empire State Building in Manhattan. You can often understand the performance of vineyards by their geographic juxtaposition with bodies of water – in this case, Long Island Sound to the north, the Atlantic to the south, and the Peconic Bay between Long Island’s two main growing areas.

The impact of this is profound for viticulture in the region’s original two AVAs – North Fork of Long Island and The Hamptons, Long Island, and for the larger Long Island AVA, created later, that incorporates both. A few important producers grow or source fruit grown in all three AVAs, and the majority of wineries are on the peninsular North Fork.

Long Island is all about temperate maritime wine production, and it has more potential for sustainability than perhaps any American wine region east of the Rockies. “Growing conditions have become drier and slightly warmer over the last 10 years, and long autumns allow for extra hang time,” noted Christopher Tracy, winemaker at the remarkable Channing Daughters. “Especially with reds, it’s getting easier to grow and ripen grapes now.”

Similarities exist between Long Island’s sandy, gravelly and clay soil composition and Bordeaux’s. There are slight variations between soils and temperatures in the two original Long Island AVAs – and of course even differentiation within specific sites and vineyards. This can offer winemakers rich opportunities to coax different aromatics and textures from grapes and assemble artful blends greater than the sum of their parts. With better drainage than parts of Bordeaux (especially in the North Fork), and sometimes a little more elevation, Long Island has proven to be a hospitable home to an ever-expanding number of varieties.

Structured red merlot and Bordeaux blends may be the holy grail for some local producers among the 50-plus estates in the small region. Over the years we have tasted many well-made, balanced and elegantly restrained examples. But there is so much more bubbling to the surface now.

“Diversity is Long Island’s greatest strength,” Tracy observed. “We are seeing we can grow and ripen a very wide range of different grapes and make wines that cover a truly huge spectrum of styles.”

Channing Daughters’ production illustrates this clearly, with chardonnays that range from distinctive bright, crisp and unoaked wines (like their 2019 Scuttlehole Chardonnay), to much more structured and Burgundian-style barrel-fermented offerings. But some of the real fun at Channing Daughters comes in places like their large pet-nat (“ancestral method”) program – wines fermented in the bottle from varieties like gewurztraminer or a merlot/lagrein blend.

Tracy describes himself as someone who doesn’t “get bogged down in rules.” The whole 1,200 case production of his skin-fermented pinot grigio, once considered an oddity on Long Island, now “flies off the shelves,” he said. Some of his releases are tiny and esoteric. How about his 72-case 2017 orange Ribolla Gialla?

Some large and important producers have bet on big and diverse rosé programs that have proven enormously successful. Wolffer Estate, in Sagaponack in the Hamptons, Long Island AVA, now produces about 100,000 cases of rosé annually, out of up to eight varieties, from a total wine production of about 125,000 cases. Wolffer winemaker and partner Roman Roth sees the decision as partly strategic: the rosés have brought in a vital new customer base in the form of millennial consumers from adjacent New York City, who may also someday be drawn to Roth’s smaller and more traditional red and white offerings, which offer ageability, elegance and structure. See what he means with the layered, flavorful and buttery 2019 Perle chardonnay, over seven months sur lie, with its charming bright acidity.

Look to Long Island, too, for fine traditional-method sparkling wines – like Sparkling Pointe, a 40-acre estate devoted to the production of classic Champagne varieties. The sophisticated 2015 Seduction Blanc de Blancs is a bright, linear and fresh star from the North Fork – a testament to the skill of winemaker Gilles Martin, and of course the land. You should try to find a bottle of their almost full-bodied round and rich 2008 Brut Seduction. We agree with Long Island winemakers who predict a great future for their region’s bubblies, and think it is already unfolding.

One thing is clear: Long Island deserves its growing recognition as a serious and successful region on a roll. As in other relatively young maritime regions headed in great directions  – like Australia’s wonderful Margaret River, where production dates from the same time Long Island got going in the early 1970s – today’s top producers are “standing on the shoulders and passion of early pioneers,” as Roth says.

READ MORE: AMERICAN WINE REVOLUTION

FUTURE FOCUS

New York’s two leading fine wine regions, encompassing six AVAs, are distinct enough that it’s hard to talk about them generically. But producers in both face many similar challenges. And, as we have experienced their wines’ surging quality in recent years, it is clear there are common approaches that augur for success. These may be instructive for some producers now moving more slowly up the quality curve.

We think the biggest issue for some producers may be the need for more careful and proactive vineyard management, which is critical for world-class quality. It is not by coincidence that the best New York wineries seem especially focused on this.

The pandemic accelerated awareness of the need for many producers to diversify and expand their markets beyond the tasting room.

In terms of some specific varieties, for instance, FLX riesling pricing is going to bump up against wines from Alsace, Germany and to some extent Austria. To compete successfully, FLX producers must continue the transition from an emphasis on fruit to one that incorporates weight, texture and substance in order to enhance competitive value. In other words, there is a need for greater strategic planning for conquering a market, style or variety.

It takes energy and money to make these transitions and compete profitably in the bigger wholesale/distribution world, but for New York winemakers the potential market is huge. We would love to see a global market where New York wines have the full acclaim and demand they merit – and we hope producers there make this a reality.

– Willliam McIlhenny, Director and Contributing Writer