FLX Invasion: Summer in the Finger Lakes

Class transcript:

Officially being recorded, welcome one and all, welcome, happy Sunday, to you all. Thank you all so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you all in our midst today, of all days, because we are joined by some of my favorite people in the world, from my kind of adopted winemaking home. Nothing against you know the DMV winemaking scene, but you know, in terms of world-class wine, the Finger Lakes is really where it's at on the East Coast and deserves more attention than it gets. It is certainly the premier cool climate winemaking region in the United States, and I had tried to do my small bit to popularize the wines as a you know. Some by here in DC, but and that's where you all can you know certainly lend a hand and continue to celebrate the wines, continue to drink them, continue to enjoy them.

And I am joined today by three of the most talented beings in the region. We have a Nancy Ireland of Red Tail Ridge, and we have Kelly Russell of Red Newt, and we have Lisa and Morton Hallgren participating live from Benal Haven, celebrating their 30 30th anniversary. Well, congratulations to you all, and thank you for taking time to join us today. It's a pleasure to have you all with us. For the sake of provisioning, we were selling a couple of packages through. The restaurant we had Rieslings because it is the summer thereof and we want to, you know, sell all the Riesling we can because Riesling like the Finger Lakes deserves more love than it currently gets from the wine buying community.

We're gonna start with a couple Rieslings for the sake of our tasting adventure and then move on to a couple of summery whites. There is really no rhyme or reason in terms of, you know, how best to enjoy these wines. I know that, you know, you all often ask which, you know, wine A or wine B you know between the two Rieslings that were we're playing off one against the other stylistically they're different. They're not from the same vintage, just doesn't make it a perfect comparison, but I think they're enjoyable each enough you know in their own right, so I wouldn't get too worried about whether you're enjoying Morton's wine or enjoying Fred and Oscar's wine, you know?

Just try them back and forth, and try to get a sense of you know how they are different, and we'll try to give you a better sense of why they taste the way they do. Concurrently, you know, for the sake of Nancy's Pinot and Kelby's Cap Franc, you know just go back and forth those wines; you know pretty similar weight um but you know very different flavor profiles in them. Realm of summery rites, so you know there's no wrong way to drink these just have fun with them all! So, without further ado, we're gonna properly kick off Class I. I've been giving you all a proper buffer to to join us on Sunday, so thank you again for participating and I'll see you in the next class.

Thank you for participating in this virtual meeting, it has been a joy to have you all with us throughout this quarantine process, which is slowly but surely lifting, but it is a pleasure to have you all still locked away in isolation and enjoying wine. I hope you are all safe and sound wherever you are resting your heads, whether you're joining us for the 14th time or the first time, and a special guest to those of you participating a special welcome rather to those of you participating from other time zones, we have a transcontinental reach, and for those of you celebrating at 1 o'clock on the west coast, we are thrilled to have you for your brunch.

I mentioned my esteemed guests, I also have Zoe Nystrom in the mix playing moderator for the sake of the chat room, thank you both so much for filling Sarah's shoes, Zoe's a pleasure to have you here. Wanted to quickly mention that in addition to the recap of today's lesson and the reporting of it tomorrow, I will also have A survey concerning the future of our Sunday fireside wine greetings. I just want to get a sense of you know, as we go forward, as the world reopens, what you all might like to continue doing for the sake of these lessons and, you know, especially for those of you that have been participating religiously. I'll give you some input about what shape or form you would like these lessons to continue to take as we go forward.

We always start with a bit of verse and I'm going to start today with a bit of verse from an underrated American poet, that Finger likes being itself, certainly an underrated wine-making region, so that's kind of the somewhat. tenuous connection between these two works of art, but you know, nonetheless a beautiful poem, you know. I think that's what we're going to start with today. And zoom out here. This is called The Waking from Theda Raka. I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling what is there to know. I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the ground, I shall walk softly there and learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the tree, but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair. I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do to you and me. So take the lively air and lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady, I should know. What falls away is always and is near. I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go. I love that bit of verse, I don't have the best ear for, you know, rhythm or rhyme or meter in poetry and Theodorovka does and I love that about that poem and the form there is kind of based on like these Mediterranean,  kind of songs and it's written in iambic pentameter and, you know, it feels lyrical and beautiful in the way that, you know, Riesling can, just to tie it all back there. Without further ado, I'll give you all a brief history of Riesling's poem. The Finger Lakes wine region, it is at once new and old. So it's come a long way in a short period of time for the sake of its, that it's been in for offerings. But it has a long history of winemaking that I don't think it commonly gets read for. So first we're gonna give you a brief geology lesson on the Finger Lakes. I think sometimes people skip past this when they talk about Finger Lakes.

You know, etymologically, they look like fingers, you know, it's not a, you know, a far jump to understand why and how they got their name. The Iroquois legend is that the Great Spirit, you know, scratched his hand across the earth. In geological parlance, the Great Spirit was the Laurentide Ice Sheet at the tail end of the last ice age, scraped out what are essentially glacial moraines or lakes. The deepest of which is Seneca Lake. The most important lakes of the 11 for winemaking are the central three, those being Cayuga, which these are all Iroquois names, mind you. Cayuga means crooked lake. And again, you know, that's pretty self-explanatory there. Seneca is the deepest, widest, certainly the most important of the lakes for the sake of great growing. Seneca is stony place in Iroquois.

And then Cayuga, which is the longest of the lakes, you know, has some very important vineyards running along its banks, meaning boat landing, or I'm told meaning boat landing in Iroquois. And, you know, something to consider is that these are very deep lakes. You know, they don't look, you know, all that massive, but, you know, they are, you know, pretty significant bodies of water. And that depth is particularly important because the Finger Lakes are in a cooler region and they essentially serve as a bit of an oasis in the midst of Western New York that would otherwise be snowed over. So I love this picture. This is, you know, kind of the the core truth of the Finger Lakes. You have, you know, the snows enveloping the farmland to the East and West, Beach Lake.

And then you can see this thin little band of unfrozen land on each side of the lake. And that's where the bulk of the vineyards are planted here. Most of the bedrock is shale, although there are smatterings of limestone in the mix as well. The shale, prevalence of shale gives you a sense of the presence of natural gas. Which is, you know, contentious in the Finger Lakes now because fracking is very much an issue there. But shale is good for wine. They're bearing depths to the soils. There are some thin, some much deeper, but a kind of a hodgepodge of terroirs. And because, you know, those fingers, those glacial fingers were scraping their way across the earth as they retreated, you get, even within individual vineyards, a mix of soils in a way that's very dynamic and really fun to play with.

For the winemakers in the region. There's been a winemaking industry since the 19th century in the Finger Lakes. The Finger Lakes was a center of sparkling wine production based in Hammondsport, which is at the southern end of the Cayuga Lake, rather. And I don't think people understand some of the most iconic American brands of wine from the previous century hail from the Finger Lakes. Such giant names as Manischewitz, is a Finger Lakes wine. And yes, that is Sammy Davis, Jr. I love that bit of advertising there. Manischewitz is a proud Finger Lakes wine. Some other major labels in the region being Taylor Wines is another one of the giants. And this just goes to show, so in the late 19th and into the 20th century, the brands were codified around these kinds of European, and the wines were made with non-vinifera grapes.

So they would have been made with American hybrids. So grapes that originated on this side of the ocean and that tended to make wines that were typically sweeter and much fruitier in a Welch's kind of artificial grape flavor parlance. But they imitated the wines of the old world. So there were brands like Chablis and Sherry and Champagne, and they really ruled the market. The other kind of major signpost being the Gold Seal Winery, which was a hugely important historical landmark to this day in Finger Lakes. And if you look at wine lists dating from like the 50s and 60s, they are littered with Gold Seal, Burgundy, and Chablis. Those were the major wines that people were drinking up and down the coast in a way that I don't think people fully appreciate.

For the sake of vinifera wines, the two huge figures are Charles Fournier and Constantine Frank. And beginning in the really 40s and into the 50s and 60s, they were two European migrants, Charles Fournier from Champagne, Constantine Frank from Ukraine, who really pushed Vinifera grapes in the Finger Lakes and said that, you know, we should move from these hybrid grapes that make lesser wines toward a future of proper Vinifera wines that can compete with anything that is made in the old world. And there are all sorts of innovations in the vineyard, such as hilling up over the vines during winter, that made it possible for the grape vines that would otherwise have difficulty surviving the harsh Finger Lakes winters, that made it possible for them to not only survive, but to thrive in this environment and make profoundly delicious wines.

And then the other really important thing is that, you know, the grape vines, you know, the important milestone is the 1976 Farm Winery Act, New York State, along with many other states across the East Coast, makes it a lot easier to produce and sell wine under your own name on a small scale throughout New York. And so when Taylor Wine finally folds, when Gold Seal folds, a lot of these former growers that were, you know, growing non-vinifera grapes, they moved to vinifera and they moved from selling their grapes to making their own wine. And you have this wonderfully dynamic wine. And you have this wonderfully dynamic scene now. Needless to say, not all the wines are amazing, you know. Not all the wines, you know, are as good as the ones you will be enjoying today.

But the scene is more dynamic than it ever has been. And it is centered around not larger wineries, although Constellation Brands is based there to this day, it is really centered around, you know, kind of smaller boutique production. And that's very much the future of the industry. We're going to talk Riesling first here with Morten and Lisa. And we're going to try their Rabin's Riesling first. And I'm going to pivot from presenter to moderator for the sake of our dialogue. I'm going to share an image with you all first of Finger Lakes and these wineries so you can get a sense of where these individual wineries sit. Rabin's has a bit of a split personality though. Because the Morten and Lisa's Winery began its life on Cayuga Lake.

And you can see that by my cursor right here, really, you know, at the meeting of the two bones and the wishbone that is Cayuga. And then Morten and Lisa purchased the White Springs Winery on Seneca. And they also work with fruit from the southeastern side of the lake. So it is common, you know. For a lot of these producers to work with vineyard sites throughout the region. And that's particularly true of Rabin's. Now just to kind of orient you all quickly, the other wines we'll be tasting are from Red Tail Ridge Winery, which is up here at one of the widest points on Seneca Lake. They're going to be from Herman J. Beamer for the sake of the Riesling I have here.

And then from Red Newt Cellars, which is right here by Hector, the banana belt of Seneca Lake. And without further ado, Morten and Lisa, pleasure to have you all with us. Thank you for interrupting your anniversary vacation to join us today. Happy to be here. Thanks for having us. You both have had really fascinating biographies for those of you that aren't familiar with the Rabin story. Lisa, you are, as I understand it, a proud daughter of Texas, Morten, you're a Dane-lander, and an aspiring actress. You're an astrophysicist. How did you end up in the Finger Lakes making Riesling? Well, I mean, the wine part started at my family's winery in the heart of Provence and under slightly different growing conditions than what we have in the Finger Lakes.

But between the experience I could gain at the family winery and the formal training over in Montpellier, that's kind of where I got both the practical and the formal training. And then a little detour through West Texas and North Carolina before landing in the Finger Lakes in '99. So that's, that's a, I imagine for someone from, you know, the more storied regions of Europe, that must seem like a very exotic, you know, kind of journey into the wine world. What do you love about the Finger Lakes, having landed there after all those kinds of interim steps? So when we arrived in the Finger Lakes, Lisa and I were there. And I looked around and started tasting, and we saw such incredible opportunities, such great potential in the Finger Lakes.

Yes, you already had an existing wine industry, but there was so much room, so much work to be done, and really kind of a rare opportunity, once in a generation opportunity, to be part of a group of winemakers that helped shape and mold a wine region like it happened in California, say in the late 60s to early 70s. So you felt like there was some of that kind of pioneer spirit there in that sort of rising tide lifts all boats and emerging energy. Yes, I mean the region was going through a fairly rapid expansion; incidentally, I think all of us here today more or less arrived in the region at the same time, and within a pretty short time period, we would form a sort of wine region.

I do have some colleagues whom Prudential calls us, and for example, the working will für 90 years or went from 44 wineries, I think was the count when we got to the Finger Lakes, so now we're pushing 130 plus, wow, so we were we all got there right during this rapid uh rapid rise, yeah, that's really exciting. Now um, we're drinking your you know kind of entry level uh dry Riesling here um, you know what informs you know your style of winemaking for uh the sake of you know your Rieslings in general in this particular wine as well so uh we had when we came to the area we noticed of course we knew already that Riesling can be done in so many different styles in so many different ways our interest was exclusively on the drier side uh partly because that's what we enjoy drinking and we also found that segment kind of lacking a little bit in the Finger Lakes but that's really what we were looking for and then We started looking throughout the whole region, trying to identify vineyard sites that lend itself to this drier style Riesling with with the right profile. And being a new wine region as opposed to an older one, this is done empirically you go out, make wine for different sites, and you see what they have to give. We went through a process where we ended up now being 90 percent state-grown, growing almost 130 acres of our own.

The Riesling here is a balance between our shale stone site and our limestone site. Oh, great! And what do you feel like each of those sites gives to the wine? You know, in tasting this wine, what do you Like about what the shale stone brings to it versus what the limestone brings to it, so our Riesling has actually been a balance of these two components ever since we started in 2002. But the limestone component has been a balance between the Riesling vineyard being the Argotsinger vineyard to now being the White Springs vineyard. And we find that that limestone component is really critical in providing like the citrus, fruit, the strong minerality, and the solid acid backbone, that's really what we look for in the in the limestone component.

And then the shale stone provides a little softness, a little bit of that smokiness. That you get from these shale stone and the little different fruit profile more on the apple pear side, and we find that the two components together make a more complete, a more interesting Riesling. So, that's basically been the foundation all along for this particular wine. And then Morton when you're tasting you know this wine for yourself and kind of evaluating it as it comes into its own, and you know as you're blending different sites for you know the the entry what are you tasting for? What do you look for in the in the dry Riesling so what we all the way from the site selection through the grape growing and winemaking Forward, we go out of our way to keep the Botrytis level to a minimum, which is something that perhaps sets us aside from the Beamer Rieslings a little bit.

All the way from site selection to how we handle the vineyards, and then we also tend to work extensively with these vineyards, which surprisingly enough wasn't done much when we came to the Finger Lakes in the region. And that basically allows us to achieve a different balance on the Riesling side, still having a creamy rich texture to to the wine without it being sharp. But we basically follow what I learned in France, which is what I refer to as transparent winemaking. where my job is to basically take these beautiful lineage sites we work with and translate that the particular vintage into a bottle of wine very cool and uh Lisa I know you're very talented uh chef um what kinds of things do you like to you know eat or cook alongside you know the the dry Rieslings oh well I think it's really fine um for um I mean this Riesling is so um versatile um the thing that I love really like about it is it's got a lot of savory notes and thing with flavors and aromas that are other than fruit which is always really interesting so if you want to let a lot of that Riesling character really shine pairing it with Something very simple and subtle, like broiled fish with just a light dressing on it. And the other day, we had this Riesling with a beautiful roasted tomatillo sauce on top of um, on some broiled, some kind of white fish. Just had it, yeah, delicious. Um, the sushi you have there also in DC, delicious, um, to have with a wine like this and um, for a while.

Momofuku, Momofuku, had it on their list and I had really nice also um, uh dishes there with this with this wine. I think um, a lot of fish with um, also current and cilantro sauces. But then if you also want to pair it with something really fatty, I noticed that somebody um, before was saying that It had, like, acidity, um, and it does, so you can pair it as well with, like, really fatty foods also, um, so you know some people like to get a little bit of fat in their diet. Have you ever been, you know, just kind of like somewhat flabbergasted by pairing? Have you ever tried this with something and thought, you know, I didn't know that would work as well as it did, uh, yeah, well, um, I would, I mean, I love it with pork belly; it's such a great wine with pork belly and more delicate um things like, scallop sashimi with a flash, um, with some micro cilantro which I didn't know tasted so differently than regular cilantro, um, kind of like a little Garnish on top of that, it was, yeah, delicious, any kind of like herby and fennel-y kind of character I think goes really nicely with that Riesling, yeah, I love the Riesling, you know. Um, it brings out these strange bedfellows for the sake of food and wine in a really fun way, so you know, you get this thing that you could easily typecast as, you know, severe and Germanic but it goes really well with these, you know, warmer weather cuisines, you know. It goes really well with, a lot of Latin American cuisine, it goes really well with, you know, a lot of Southeast Asian food, you know, Filipino food, so you have these, you know, really weird juxtapositions that you know wouldn't necessarily cohere and that you know they kind of spit in the face of this old world notion of if it grows together it goes together you know I love the way you know wines like this kind of can color outside the associations and and they really shine outside of their original context you know who who knew that you know something like lechon would go with Finger Lakes Riesling you know nobody you know making you know lechon had any idea that that would be a pairing but you know it works nonetheless and I think you know those happy accidents are always worth celebrating yeah and you know it's funny because so many people think Riesling is all about fruit and all about like the botrytis that also that develops in the Riesling grapes and giving it kind of like that candy character when we started um 20 years ago no one was making a bone dry Riesling with that searing acidity and with more of like a more minerally um almost vegetal character and so to me those wines like that are more minerally and not fruit those are really interesting to pair I think with foods um and so it's been really great getting a wine like this out and kind of making people rethink the idea of Riesling just being like a big fruit bomb it's not it's got so much more to offer yeah it's interesting too so I also I often find that like you know sometimes the the Ravines Rieslings they have the you know kind of like plentiness of like the Austrian Rieslings you know they're kind of uh they they have that like you know energy but you know also a little bit of that you know um you know pickiness and texture in in kind of a in kind of a fun way um we bring um so uh without further ado we're going to move on to kind of stylistically a very different wine um for the sake of uh the Finger Lakes and um Oscar Bink was going to join us um uh the uh one of the uh two owners of uh Herman Beamer but uh sadly he had to prepare uh the the Beamer tasting room for uh the coming week um as they prepare for you know hopefully uh an influx of visitors um and he may or may not be able to join us later but um uh Kelby and I was going to help me uh run the roost for the sake of uh talking through uh the Beamer Riesling so um Beamer is on um the same side of uh the lake as um is um the uh White Springs site um that uh Morton and Lisa um purchased um and Beamer has uh three different uh sites growing sites um along um Seneca Lake and um the winery itself um was founded um by Herman Beamer who um was really after Charles Fournier the pioneers um in the Finger Lakes for the sake of uh popularizing Riesling um as a grape and you can see Herman here um in the middle uh Herman is the son of um viticulturists in Bern Castle which is arguably um the most famous uh small German village for Riesling in the world in the heart of the Mosel Valley um his father uh Herman's father the gentleman in the center uh replanted many of the region's uh vineyards after World War II um and Herman had kind of a contrarian sensibility and wanted to make his own name outside of um Germany and came to um the United States and came to the thriving wine industry cool climate wine industry um In uh, New York, um, and was working at Bully Hill making non-vinifera wines, um, and he worked there for over a decade, um, but was always interested in pushing the envelope for the sake of planting vinifera grapes and began to do so on the western side of Seneca Lake,  when uh, his employers got wind of his experiments they eventually fired him on Christmas Eve, um, and uh, the telegram they sent still lives in the winery uh, to this day as a badge of honor, um, and Herman was, was very much kind of working in the wilderness um, for the better part of the 80s, um, and he you know didn't always make friends with fellow growers in the region um because he was not shy about his expressing his opinions of non-venifera wines um uh for himself he made a name for dry Riesling um and truly dry recently um in in the Finger Lakes evolution of the region and the you know current um you know kind of explosion of uh wineries there and the popularity of dry recently in the region owes much to his efforts um the gentleman who is right and left there um uh the shorter gentleman is Oscar Vink who is a gregarious Swedish agronomist and Cornell grad uh the gentleman to uh Herman's left is the taller gentleman um who looks like a marathon runner is a marathon runner um that is Fred murwath um who's the son of dairy farmers from Pennsylvania um and fell in love with wine and winemaking in Alsace and became Herman's protege and the two of them took over the winery in 2007 and have never really looked back um and their wines stylistically I think are are different um than Morton's um you know they're no um you know kind of like you know um you know better or worse just different stylistically and I think it's kind of fun to get a sense of you know the way you can work in the same region and do different things so um Morton does a few things for the sake of his wines with extended lease contact and you know very often he'll leave the juice on the skins for a bit prior to that initial fermentation that gives you a very different dimension of texture and he ferments his wines um to you know um pool dryness um uh at Beamer the house style is a little lusher and more opulent and you know they're wanting to showcase um you know more of those that you can get out of these wines from warmer uh growing sites and um there's a really cool map they have at the winery of um their uh different sites that Oscar um developed over the years um and you can see here it has all sorts of uh different um you know um codes and so Forth, you really have to lean in to see this at home. I'm hoping somebody in the audience has a laptop that they can lean into, but, um, they're cross-sections of uh, the lake at uh, three sites. These sites they have three main vineyards all on the west side of uh, Seneca Lake, and, um, they source fruit from each of them for the sake of their wines, and very often they will disclose on the back label how much of the fruit came from from each vineyard, but um, they don't give their wines any time on the skins at all, and again there's a lushness and a fullness of the fruit there um especially from um, the the source material uh from their their Northernmost site which is Magdalena, which is um at the widest uh one of the widest spots in the lake um one of the warmest sites on the lake you know talking like one to two degrees Celsius consistently warmer um up here uh than it is uh in other points in the region just because of the warming influence of the lake um and very close to Nancy incidentally um for the sake of our Pino Noir talk um but I think it's fun to try these lines side by side because they kind of embrace this fun duality um that you know Riesling um can encapsulate so you know this is you know a perceptually dry um and it doesn't have that same kind of like bitter pithy character um, that Morton's wine has you know there's more of a lushness and tropicalia um about it in a really fun way. Um, Kelby am I am I missing anything? No, I think I think that's a really good summation of uh the wines and and the the style for women.

I mean they're doing multiple passes through the vineyard for multiple picks uh, and I think you know they're they're doing that to really maximize ripeness and also like an orange fruit expression and that really comes through on I mean all of their wines but like dry Riesling, their house style for dry Riesling really leans into that that lushness and that's I mean it's. Something I'm a big fan of, I think they've done beautifully, and I mean you can count on it year in and year out, and that 18, I mean 18 was a year that none of us would like to remember from a harvest perspective, so the fact that they pulled it off then is admirable.

And you know, they it rained more or less non-stop from August 14th onward, and it would rain on days it was supposed to be sunny, and it would rain, and then it would be 85 degrees and it would get down to like 70 at night, so it was just never-ending humidity through until probably like October 9th or 10th, so it was just brutal. I mean Riesling grows beautifully in the Finger Lakes and we never really have other than Botrytis, we don't usually have too many disease issues with it around harvest but man. That was a disaster. It was a lot of triage in the vineyard so. Zoe do you have any questions from the commentariat about either of these wines? Yeah absolutely.

Some people are wondering if that is vinifera and apples have a correlation and grow together because there's so much cider also made in the Finger Lakes? That's a good question. So, there is a bit of old German German folk wisdom about planting in like former orchard sites. And I don't know if it's like I think, it's cherry trees though, which require a little more ripeness than your average apple orchard. I know apples develop on the steppes of Central Asia and they do really well in the mid-Atlantic. Apples certainly like more water than grape vines do, which the Finger Lakes has in ample quantities; but you know for the sake of grape growing in the Finger Lakes, the water is more of a problem than it is, you know, a boon.

And there are a lot of different ways they work around that, but you know, you know. Kelby spoke to 2018, but the the fear in the Finger Lakes is always that you're gonna get more water than you need, whereas that's less of a problem with, with you know, apples. Although I don't know much about do any of you know anything about working with you know, apples for cider production? I mean, you don't need as good a site to grow apples as you do vinifera. I think where you have some overlaps the Finger Lakes is more with peaches and the cherries so a lot of the better vineyard sites around the Finger Lakes are old peach orchards.

Yeah, yeah, and that's, I mean, and like you know people will ascribe those flavors to Riesling as well and you know they'll do that you know, famously in Germany, they're like Pechstein. I mean there are there are sites that are renowned for being able to cultivate peaches and you know also having you know a stony Riesling you know kind of character. All right what else you got Jeff? Um are there any sweet styles uh from our lovely folks at the Ravines? Uh no we have basically an emphasis on on dry wine the only the only exception is we we have a small planting of a Valvin Muscat which is a Cornell variety but outside of this little Muscat project no we're entirely dry.

Um and then what are the differences and the benefits from either side of the lake from the east side to the west side and how do they differentiate in the vineyards? Uh I mean both Kelpie and I can can answer that. I think we both work with vineyard sites on both lakes, um, I really think it comes down to the meso climate looking at each vineyard site individually as to its characteristics and its benefits. In terms of exposure, soil drainage, I think it's dangerous to make a generalization. You could say that the vineyard sites on the west side get the early morning sun, which dries out a little faster, reducing disease pressure, and on the east side you capture the late afternoon sun, so you should theoretically at least end up with higher sugar levels.

But I find after 20 years that you do have to evaluate each individual site on its own and work out, empirically, what works for you. What do you find, Kelpie, working with sites on both sides of the lake? Yeah, I completely agree, especially for Riesling; uh, Riesling if there's a difference between sides of the lake, maybe five percent of the difference in the wine is because of the side and the sun exposure and 95 percent is like the soil and and these other meso-climate factors, uh, you know it seems; uh, we'll get to it; it seems a little bit more pronounced of a difference with red sometimes or worse but; uh, you know side-to-side for Riesling is; uh, I mean you would lose money if you tried to bet which which side of the lake you were tasting just blind so you couldn't set up an east versus west side blind tasting and you know make meaningful, you know kind of considerations about which came from which yeah, I certainly don't think in a consistent like year-over-year fashion either like maybe one year you see a difference and then the next year it's the opposite or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Great um we've been neglecting Nancy uh, uh, Nancy; you're still out there? Yeah, I'm still here. I'm sorry, reporting live from her lab which is awesome um, I'm upset the dogs didn't make a guest appearance though. Oh Bueller's here he's just uh lounging.

Oh, okay understood, understood, um, so we're going to switch gears now and taste you some red wine, and um, I, I love cool climate red wines in general, um, and you know, uh, being a you know America's premier cool climate region, you know, you all don't have a choice but to make cool climate red wines, um, it is a fascinating choice for you in particular Nancy because you very much um, you know, kind of worked for the wine making establishment uh out west um, in an experimental viticultural station for um, you know, a larger wine concern not to be named, um, how did you um, you know, move um to the Finger Lakes what drew you to you know this region that couldn't Are you more different than Napa?

I think the fact that I'm from the Napa region is because I grew up in a region that's very different from Napa. Um, how did you you know move um to the Finger Lakes? What drew you to you know this region that couldn't be more different than Napa? That it was so different, it had a lot to do with it, you know. We were looking for a place where we could get in with just our own savings and create our own winery and vineyard without bringing in a bunch of investors, because I, frankly, had had enough of that from the West Coast. Um, and 14-15 years ago, as Morton and Lisa were alluding to, um, you could see so much potential here.

I had been coming back every couple of years because I did projects with Cornell, um, so I knew about the the industry here and the history of the industry, and I started seeing people growing vinifera and figuring out how to grow it and how to make the wines, and there was a lot of energy and a lot of passion in this community, and um, it was it was very easy to look at this community and want to be a part of that. And so we felt that you know, we could get in and and partner up with everyone else here who was really trying to raise the bar as far as um wine quality, but not just wine quality also the community itself and actually.

You know, really building a stronger community here, um, and um, making this a destination not just for travel but for uh, other people to live here, um, and I think that 15 years later now you can, you can see it, and it's a great place to live, and it's a great, it's like a, it's like an evolution or a revolution here, there's a, there's a lot of people that have moved to the area, it's not just about wine anymore, it's about beer and cider and distilleries, and um, people farming hops, you know, and uh, chefs and restaurants, and new uh, hotels and Airbnbs that are developed here, and a piggery raising heirloom pigs, um, a domestic rabbit farm, I mean it's Very difficult not to be a part of that, but it's a great place to live, and it's a great place to live.

Not to get fat here now because there's lots of things to eat, so uh, it's just amazing place. It really is. And it's just, you can feel that passion; you can feel that energy, so you fell in love with the totality of it all. It wasn't just about the the wine for a second; I fell in love with the opportunity, yeah, and I fell in love with the community, yeah, because I, I felt um, we felt like we could fit in and be a part of it, um, and we were welcomed with open arms, so um, I'm not saying that the West Coast isn't a very friendly place; I have a lot of friends. In the West Coast, there are still like family to me; I went to school at Davis and I still keep in touch with them.

But this is a very grassroots place, um, and everyone has kind of aligned together to raise the the economy here to raise the standard of living here, um, and I think we're we're on our way. I mean, I defer to some of the other uh finger lakes people, but in my head, I feel like we're on our way. Um, so in the West Coast, it's a very friendly place; I have a lot of friends in the West Coast, so I think we're going to have a lot of fun and I think we're going to have a lot of fun. Nancy, I'm going to share uh just the original image of the lakes. People, get a sense of where you are. Then I'm going to share the beautiful vineyard snapshot that you gave me.

So, um, you see uh Seneca Lake here, um, the middle finger of the Finger Lakes and you can see Red Tail Ridge is at one of the kind of wider uh spots along uh Seneca Lake, you know about a third of the way down um from Geneva which is an adorable uh old mill town, the northern terminus of Seneca Lake. And then um, if you could just walk us through uh this this beautiful shot of uh your your vineyard Nancy and give us a sense of what's planted where and what's so special about this site that you work with on a daily basis, okay, so this Is Red Tail Ridge and 15 years ago, this was a wooded property um, and so we spent the first three years um, clearing the land and picking rocks which is very character building um, and also pulling stumps and and designing and planting the vineyards.

So all the way uh, so we're facing right now we're facing east um, and so to the left is north, to the right is south, and um, coming this way um, is is west. So if you, you can't really tell very well but the the site is sloped so there's at least one percent it is it is crazy on this image like you don't you don't get it it looks flat but it is it is not flat at all you know yeah yeah no we have we have bench Areas at flatter areas and that's actually where we have the buildings because it's no good for growing uh vinifera, we in order to sustain vinifera, we have to have sloped vineyards so that we can have air drainage um, what's not on here or maybe you can see it uh in between the two back blocks there's actually a wind machine um which we use also for moving air to try to keep very cold air from making pockets around the vines and creating damage um, so the back further away higher altitude um is around 700 feet at the back of our property and then the lake itself is around and guys you can help me out here Kelby and Morton and Lisa. I think that the the top of the lake is at 467 feet for Seneca, maybe Nancy. I have a separate image, uh, it's 446 feet, 446 feet, but, but the lake is deep enough that the bottom of the lake you're well below sea level, which is fascinating, yeah, yeah, no, it's it's pretty amazing, um. But the top two blocks, the big blocks, that's about 14 acres of Riesling, um, which is kind of the lion's share of what we grow, um, and then um you see the irrigation pond uh in this back area here, and then when you go forward, you see a little red building that's the tasting room, which is a really tiny like barn, um, which also uh part of it is a barn and houses the the Viticulture equipment, and then you see our um, our winery, and then you see those front blocks and those front, front blocks actually are the first vineyards that we planted. And uh, the two main blocks are Pinot Noir, which relates to bringing it back to the discussion, great segue, um, yes, um, uh, Pinot uh is a very different animal, in uh, climate like the Finger Lakes and it is you know, in California what do you like working about working it with it in in the Finger Lakes, you know.

But by the same token, you know what is maddening about working with, you know, um, Pinot is a problem child, I mean but frankly, it's been a problem child for my entire Career, you know it wasn't easy growing and making Pinot Noir in California either. But a lot of the, a lot of the issues that we used to have viticulturally are diametrically different opposed to what it's like in the Finger Lakes, like over ripeness as opposed to under ripeness right? And the heat would shut vines down, I mean generally speaking, uh from a viticultural perspective once it gets really hot and there's and there's no humidity and it gets it's like a desert, there. What happens is, stops photosynthesis because the vines will actually close up their water and conserve water and that means metabolically they all Slow down, um, and that's something that we really don't usually have a problem with in the Finger Lakes so it's actually kind of cool because neat in, in that um, the growing season is highly variable in the Finger Lakes and it's really neat when you're out there and you're you're watching flowering and blooming because it's sometimes depending on the heat index stuff really moves fast. I mean, I think everyone can say that the past couple of weeks have been crazy. We started out we were pretty pretty late in the game um, we didn't actually have anything pushing until after Mother's Day and now we're looking out and shoots are in the morning and in the afternoon when you go outside there's a market difference in shoot length and shoot growth so things catch up um which is kind of neat and how do you talk about pinot yeah i mean how do you how do you work with this wine so i think you know for for those for those people that you know think they know pinot because they know pinot because they know pinot you know i think you know cool climate pinot has this different like you know lovely like bitter or italian tomorrow like herbaceousness to it that yeah yeah yeah our vineyard yeah so we have we have three acres of pinot seven clones on three acres uh i liked All the different personalities now that the vineyard is fully ripe, they all ripen at a different rate uh and it's not always the same clones that ripen first, second or third that it changes up with each vintage, depending on what kind of uh crop level they had the year before um and the the issue is in the vineyard you cannot turn your back on Pinot ever because it can change overnight in a region that has weather um and in order to counteract the Pinot actually has very soft thin skins and it's a very delicate variety and all those things that make Pinot wine so incredibly interesting but it also makes it incredibly Sensitive to humidity and moisture and heat, um, and so you have to be out there constantly because you can't if you have a humid situation or a rain, uh, after veraison, especially, um, you can get um rot showing up almost overnight, um, so you have to be out there all the time and it's a real pain in the ass, excuse my language, but it is; it's a real pain in the ass.

We're deeply offended, Nancy, but, but the reality is that when you bring it in and it's it's beautifully ripe and you work with it, it's incredible, I mean there's no other; it's there's no, it's like uh, it's like a sibyl, you know, like the multi-personality every vintage; there's a thumbprint. Of the vintage on every single vintage of Pinot Noir um so 26 what is it what is 2016 something okay so 2016 was actually the hottest and driest growing season on record that was incredibly hot which is kind of wild because this wine is still at 12.8% alcohol yeah well I don't believe in hang time, I did enough of that in the 90s in California right?

So I pick based on flavor; I don't have I don't have a lot of instrumentation anymore; I have a refractometer and I have my taste buds, and and I basically pick based on ripeness. Sure, I'll fix it because that is tangy and that's followed up with, you know, acid level and sugar level after it's picked, and pH, those types of things. But it's really based on flavor maturity. And there's no linear correlation between sugar accumulation and ripeness. In fact, once you get to a certain level of sugar, what happens is some of those really interesting nuanced flavors that you really like in your wine start to decompose. And if you leave the fruit on the vine for too long, a lot of those interesting little elegant aspects of Pinot turn into jam.

They turn into strawberry jam. And like every single vineyard of Pinot tastes like strawberry jam. And I'm just not a big fan of that. I think, you know, it's like anything else when grapes ripen, you know, you cease to have, you know, varietal character and you just go to this ubiquitous big fucking red place, you know. It gets very extractive, right? So because the alcohol is higher in the wine and that alcohol extracts more. And then if you do an extended maceration, that extracts even more. And it's not Pinot anymore. It's something else. But anyway, this is Pinot. So this was picked early because it was ripe, but the acid was still fresh. And I like nice acidity in my Pinot Noir. And I like it to be light and delicate.

And I like that kind of umami earthiness. 2016 was hot and dry. So there's more fruit, forward aspects, more red fruit, but there's no jam. It's really fresh red fruit. And there's a little kind of seedier bramble-ness and a little mintiness. There's herbaceousness. And there is a, you know, there is an umami piece that our vineyard tends to promote. So there's a nice little kind of wet forest floor in the background. And there's a lot of different layers to it. But for sure, it's very delicate. And in my mind, that's what Pinot is. And every year it's different. In 2017, it was a much colder, wetter year. And the wine reflects that. It's much more earthy. It's much darker and more brooding.

And it's interesting because some of the cooler years, after bottling that down for, for say, five, six years, those wines, you come back to them, and they're incredible. I think they're much more multidimensional than a hot climate vintage. So just my thoughts. Great. Kelby, for your sake, sir, we have your Capronk in the mix. I think it's really fun to try these two wines side-by-side because they both feel like, you know, they're really varietally correct. You know, it feels like a nerdy kind of psalm thing to say, but I'm a nerdy psalm, so I'm just going to own it. But, you know, they feel like really, you know, kind of pure representation of each grape as such in a cooler region. You are rare amongst our panelists because you are a true son of the region.

And, you know, celebrating. How did you get into winemaking having left Western New York and wanting never to come back? I had the good fortune of falling in love with wine while working on; I was, I got a fellowship to travel in Italy and I decided wisely to stretch my funds by exchanging my labor for room and board at a winery. Just as a, just as a means to basically eat Italian food for longer if I'm being honest. This is between junior and senior year of college for me, and then I just, I just fell hard for wine. My career path for that was orchestra management. Again, I never expected to come back to the Finger Lakes.

I thought I'd be on the East Coast, frankly, for the rest of my life in cities, and I just couldn't shake how much I loved wine and loved the idea of working with it. So, yeah, I came back and I kind of threw myself into it through apprenticeships. It's a fast way to figure out whether you're good at it or not, or maybe not, whether you're good at it or not, but I should say whether you can handle the adrenaline or not to harvest. Yeah, well, it's kind of a you know, it's not unlike the restaurant world in the sense there's a bit of sink or swim, you know. It doesn't really matter sometimes where you came from and more important whether you can you know quickly adapt to the new environment.

Yeah, and in the cellar some of our best hires have been restaurant people for that same reason, like it's a different skill set but the work ethic is the same, like that if you, if you have that work ethic, you'll be well in the cellar. Yeah, so Cab Franc here, and again I think to the extent that people you know know Cab Franc or think they know Cabernet as such because you know they know Cabernet Sauvignon what-have-you, this comes as a bit of a shock because it's it's fresh and it's easy drinking, you know what do you like about Cab Franc as it exists as it you know kind of expresses itself in the Finger Lakes? Yeah, I think Cab Franc in the Finger Lakes it works beautifully and works in a lot of different terroirs.

Pinot Noir is much more finicky, as Nancy mentioned, and we actually, between the four of us, we all make Pinot, and that's relatively rare, or at least to make it well is relatively rare, because it's very site specific. Cab Franc is a little bit more forgiving, I would say, but does have a lot in common with Riesling in that it really expresses the site that it's on, and it seems to really do well across different sites in the Finger Lakes. And it's very cold hardy. Yes, and boy is that key. So it grows well, frankly it kind of grows like a weed, which is a problematic thing, but it also is a sign that it likes the region, I suppose.

So it's, you know, I think as a Riesling winemaker, which is, you know, predominantly what I work on, Riesling winemaking lends itself to multiple bottlings, you almost can't help yourself. And Cab Franc actually, similarly, at least for us at Red Newt, we like doing single vineyard bottlings, we like doing standard bottlings based on the site. So the one that everyone's trying right now would be, I guess we would call it our classic bottling, but it is, it's the goal of this wine is to really showcase how crunchy and fresh and beautiful Finger Lakes Cab Franc is in its purest form. And how do you make this? Is it, you know, kind of Beaujolais-like in the sense of bringing in those whole clusters and promoting some carbonic maceration for the sake of those, like, higher tone, prettier flavors and softer tannins?

Or, you know, are you giving this a little more time on the skins and punching down and so forth? Yeah, I tinkered around with carbonic for a couple of years and thought it kind of like new oak, I found it masked the fruit character of the site and the wine. So we pulled away from that. It is, for this bottling, it is 100% stem inclusion, but we're crushing the fruit. It's usually, we usually have an intern foot stomp it because the interns think that's fun because they've never done it before. One day like that, and then afterwards. So this gets, you know, small ferments, hand punched down. We leave this relatively long on the skins and stems, probably three or four weeks post-ferment, and then basket press it off.

It's a really extractive, probably overly extractive winemaking process, but that's because it then goes into stainless steel. So other Cab Francs from us would go into stainless steel and kind of have that aging process and some chance for the tannins to resolve and build and barrel. This one goes into stainless and you actually see a fair number of the tannins, but the mouthfeel really softens because of the stainless. When your only opportunity to build that texture is on the front end with, you know, the stomping and the, you know, the pressing. Yeah, you say we really kind of overshoot it on that end so that what ends up in the finished bottle or the finished wine is it kind of, kind of coasts in where we want it to be. Cool.

I feel like Cab Franc is enjoying a bit of a moment among, you know, wine nerds in the Finger Lakes. And it's kind of fun to see because, you know, I think in the new world, everyone is seeking to, you know, kind of arrive at a bit of a formula to figure out what grapes work well and, you know, establish a brand. And the Finger Lakes certainly has that for the sake of Riesling. And I think Cab Franc, aside from Concord, kind of lacked that on the red side of the ledger. And I think, you know, Cab Franc is providing that because, you know, Pinot is so fickle. It's just hard to rely on from vintage to vintage, you know, unless you're working with sparkling wine.

You know, it's not, you know, maybe reliable enough, especially in places wet as the Finger Lakes to build an industry around, but you can do that with a Grape Lake Cab Franc. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, this is an 18, right? A hard vintage, really tough vintage. You know, many ways Cab Franc held through the rain just fine for the most part. I mean, we picked this, I think that probably came in early November. It's not because we were, you know, pulling any crazy punches. It's just kind of, it just hung and worked out fine that way. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty remarkable. This is a 2018, you know, so, you know, just to give you all a sense in Virginia, which is not all that far from the Finger Lakes, you know, albeit because it's, it's further south, it's a wetter environment.

You know, there are a lot of producers that couldn't make red wine at all in this vintage because everything got so diluted. So, you know, the mere fact of a wine like this, that tastes as delicious as it does, you know, that has any kind of extraction to it and doesn't taste like crazily tannic is a minor miracle. Yeah. And, you know, I just, I love this style. I think that people, you know, very often when they order red wine, you know, what they, it's shorthand for 'give me a big red wine.' You know, they don't say, 'No, I want a big red wine,' but that's what they mean. And the Finger Lakes doesn't really do that. You know, these are like, you know, gastronomic reds.

These are not, you know, 'you know, impress your client at a steakhouse' red wines. They're, you know, fun, you know, drinkable, you know, like they're like the classic French Bistro wine in a really lovable kind of sense. Yeah, no, they really lean into that – not in the grape, but certainly spirit and style, Beaujolais, right? Like. Yeah, totally. Like this wine, the Cab Franc with a little chill on it. We had some really good takeout Chinese from a spot up in Rochester a week ago. This is the wine that we had with it because it's what we had on hand. And I was kind of like, ah, well, you know, Cab Franc and Chinese work great. Like it's, you know, again, in terms of like things that make surprising pairings, it isn't always what grows together goes together.

I mean, that’s certainly true, but like it’s, it’s any red that you can put a little bit of a chill on and it’s a gastronomic red, like you can have so much fun with it when you’re, when you’re pairing it with food. Do you have any other strange bedfellows you want to share? I know you push, you love to push the envelope for the sake of, uh, you know, pairings with your wines. Well, I can report that the, uh, the unreleased, uh, Concord Port, or like a sherry style Concord, uh, did pair very well with shrimp chips. So a successful attempt. Uh, I’ve had far less successful attempts, uh, especially, uh, anytime you get into things with like heat spice, it gets much trickier to pair with wine with, uh, you know, that’s a, that’s a much finer balance.

But yeah, but I mean, this, this is a bit of a, I think, you know, both of these wines are kind of skeleton cheese. They're both, they're both so fresh and fruity and, you know, they don't have a strong tannic presence. Um, you know, but they're not without texture that, you know, they're, they're wonderfully agreeable across cuisines in a really beautiful way. Uh, Zoe, what do you have for us for the sake of questions from the commentary? Yeah, absolutely. Nancy, what's that machine right behind you? Well, the machine that goes ping? Um, that machine is actually, um, an enzymatic analyzer. Um, so when I do get around to analyzing stuff, I'll use that machine. Um, it's actually part of a commercial lab that I, that I put together that didn't wasn't very successful.

I was doing analytical services for the winemakers around here. Um, and so it doesn't get used very often because, uh, the enzyme, the enzymes and stuff are pretty expensive. Um, and there's really no, no one that uses the service. Does that answer your question? What do you, uh, Nancy, what are you testing for when you use it? Um, malic, malic, like acid. Yeah. That's the meaning. Um, how would you describe the, yeah. For, for, for its, its, its, its, sorry. for malic fermentation. What do you guys have? How do Virginia Cab Francs differ from those that are found in the Finger Lakes? Do you guys have any experience with the VA Cab Franc scene? I've only had a couple and I've had successful versions for sure.

I think ours tend to be a little bit on the fresher side. I think the Finger Lakes, and there's beautiful Virginia wines by all means, but I think the Finger Lakes is a region more learned of a lesson like 10 or 15 years ago, not to like coming out of that growth spurt that every wine region goes through when oak is a way of impressing people. And then you get out, at some point you learn to trust the fruit a lot more. And that's, I think that's where they're coming from. Yeah, I think I was just going to say that I think that in the Finger Lakes, because of the nature of the fruit and how delicate the fruit is, that it's really not a good idea to use heavy oak or new oak.

It's much better to go more neutral. Yeah, I would also say that like, you know, Virginia doesn't have quite the same sense of self that the Finger Lakes does. You know, the Finger Lakes is a like a classic marginal region, like in the best possible way. I don't mean, you know, for the sake of vinifera. And, you know, so they can't help but lean into a cool climate identity. I think in Virginia, you know, there's this weird duality, because we're not quite as, you know, you know, hot and certainly not as dry as California, but, you know, it's not the Finger Lakes either. So, you know, how do you, you know, find that, you know, kind of poor truth of what we can be here?

I think, you know, the people who are working with Cap Bronc well, again, are, you know, to speak to both, you know, Kelby and Nancy's points, using new oak in particular much more judiciously, and are exploring sites that are further west, closer to the Shenandoah Valley, closer to the Appalachians, just because it is much like, in addition to being cooler in the Finger Lakes, it's drier. It's like they get a lot of rain, but we get way, we get more rain here than they do there in most years, and we get the added, you know, kind of threat of, you know, tropical storms and stuff like that, one out every five years, that typically they don't worry about quite as much in the Finger Lakes. So, it's weird.

I think Cap Bronc is a potential grape for us, but, you know, I think locally there are equally interesting grapes that, you know, could do well too, like Petit Verdot and Tannat that might not work as well in the Finger Lakes, because they could never ripen there. So, in as much as we're trying to, like, you know, carve out something unique here, we're also just, like, a decade behind the Finger Lakes, you know, I think in terms of a modern wine infrastructure, you know, and, you know, we're still kind of carving out, you know, a sense of self. Are many of the vineyards in the Finger Lakes either hand-harvested or do you use more machines? Who wants to take that? I mean, I think it's, I think, so I think, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna say this for the group.

So, I think, like, any time you say 'machine' in the context of any human endeavor, you know, people think, you know, that is very evil. You can, in winemaking, you know, winemaking is all about this meeting of nature and nurture, and there are benevolent ways to act and intervene, and then there are less benevolent ways, and, you know, that goes for everything from, you know, you know, mechanical harvesting to, you know, inoculation with these, to oak, to, you know, the work you do in the vineyard, everything, you know, there are, there's, you know, there are responsible interventions, there are thoughtful interventions, you know, and then there are less responsible ones. So, you know, I think we're dealing with three producers that do both universally across the board, and I think they, they do both mindfully, you know, site to site, you know, and in accordance to what their needs are in a particular vineyard.

So that's, I think, is very well-ensconced, if that's the perspective that we're really looking at. You know, me, I talk a lot about I think that the process of gefragt is as I said, it's a crisis of wood working together really well. So, you know, to see IFPs, or, like, I don't know, maybe need troops, but it's fine though — okay, what's going on? We really need Boatist. We need Boat. Okay, just one thing here. Hi, good afternoon. Hello, everybody. mechanical picker that normally wouldn't have been our choice and we have would never have bought it ourselves but it was um we it was there at the winery when we purchased the winery and it works really well um it keeps the berries whole it doesn't break their skin for some varieties yes beasling and some inverts and so long the cabernets um and it it takes them it takes the grapes right down to the cellar they're only um they're pressed i don't know a few hours within the hour but for for all of our remote sites the argot singer the 16 falls and the cuca sites those are all entirely hand harvested so that they wouldn't suffer between The time they're harvested and they get to the winery, we also use an H2 crew. We use an H2A crew out in the vineyards um which is a group of um migrants or from Central America and um I know that right now especially like yesterday um Trump is trying to keep everyone out of the country but we would not be able to operate without our H2A crew, it's a lot of handwork and it shows up in the wines and we're like super grateful that we can have this crew.

I think it's great yeah I think it's really a good a really good point Lisa, like when you're harvesting in the vineyard in the Finger Lakes you're not hearing Justin Bieber, you're just listening to know ranchero songs you're hearing you know people singing in spanish like you know and and nobody wants to talk about who does that work and that is who does that work and you know under trump there you know has been you know various immigration crackdowns but there's a huge immigration crackdown in western new york of all places you know for the sake of a lot of people that do work in the vineyards and you know that has you know this this trickle-down effect for the for the sake of how you all are able to work um and you know that that's a big part of the work that we're doing and i think it's a big part of the work that's equally You know important to you know own and acknowledge, I was just going to add that uh decisions for us about whether we hand harvest or whether we machine harvest are based a lot on the delicacy of the varietal that we're working with and also what we're dealing with for that vintage um for sure all the reds on our property um are harvested by hand, but you know there are times where we have hurricanes coming um and if we have really ripe fruit it's probably better for us to get the fruit in before the hurricane hits than to let it sit out there and go through that process so you know we do have to make we have to be nimble, I mean you never Know what the growing season is going to be like up here, so you have to be nimble and you have to roll with it, pretty much.

Um, and for us, you know some of the things that we make, we make a a very um economic um wine out of unoak chardonnay and also we make the good karma which is the riesling that's the charity wine and those are very low price point and so in those cases we've chosen to do machine picking on those because you know our margins are not very big anyway because uh because of the price points for those wines. Yeah, I think there's the there's the saying of uh don't blame the tool, blame the user, right, which you usually think. I think the same is true on a on the consumer side, right? Like it's uh, I think you need to, uh, I'll give you the way to put it right, but there's a unity in purpose between when there's a disconnect, so you got anything else for us?

Yeah, has anybody um, aged wines and concrete eggs? So you're gonna need some context for this guy, so um, our commentary has a fetish for concrete eggs because uh, we've done um, we did a lesson with uh John House out of uh OVM in Oregon who uses uh concrete eggs with Riesling um, and then we, we did a whole thing on uh Argentine Malbec um, and eggs are very much in vogue there for the sake of uh, uh, the aging. Uh, I haven't seen any eggs in Finger Lake, I don't doubt this so Bill you know how I feel about eggs, I  haven't gotten this I haven't gotten the screed Nancy come on drop I've actually had quite I've actually had a little bit of experience with eggs um and it's really not my favorite vessel for for uh fermenting and aging wine first of all once you get them into your cellar you can't move them um they take up a lot of they're concrete yeah yeah exactly and also you can't you can't stack on them you can't stack anything on top of them um and we don't have a big winery we have a pretty tiny puny little place and it's just not. Space-efficient, but also, you know, over time I've seen and worked with, uh, wineries in my past where, um, once they get older, they start to pit, uh, and once they start pitting, they're practically impossible to clean, um, and so that can be real problematic, and I know after a few decades a lot of people end up, uh, putting beeswax coating the hole inside with beeswax, which if you really think about it kind of negates the whole purpose of it having a clay egg, um, so those are just my thoughts, I i prefer, uh, old barrels, you know, they have their own ecology, you can't, uh, sterilize them, of course, but that's okay, if everything. In that barrel, you're happy with is there, that's that's fine. Um, and you can stack those and they're actually economically much more efficient, I mean you can buy youth barrels at a lot cheaper rate than buying a concrete egg, so that's my feeling. I don't know; I feel like I also feel like it has like less, I mean if you're making a particular style reed sling in a slightly warmer climate, I can see it like working but I feel like in the Finger Lakes the wines are they're a little more delicate in a way that you know concrete might not always you know benefit.

Um, I think I think there's a lot of um, well I won't say a lot but there are a number. of people now that are touching their dry recently with with barrels and i say barrels and not oak because the barrels are very dry and they're very bad and they have a lot of rust and are old, so there's really no tannin extraction, there's no oak extraction, but you get that beautiful time on yeast, which the autolysis or autolytic reaction softens and gives texture. I mean, a lot of people are moving to bigger format barrels. Like I know for myself, I'm moving more and more to older punchins, and I think a few other people are going with older large format barrels as well, or casks.

I know Morton and Lisa are working with casks, so. I want to continue the conversation about vessels, and then Zoe, give you a chance to further enlighten us with questions from commentary, but I want to sign off quickly and do our customary toast before we, and thank Lisa and Morton again for, you know, interrupting their 30-year honeymoon for our sake. You know, such an honor. You guys are such a great team. Thank you. Such pillars for the sake of, you know, the community and the Finger Lakes, and, you know, I feel really honored, you know, to, you know, be able to call upon you all and to have a second, you know, kind of wine family up in the Finger Lakes. It is such a special place.

You guys are all, you know, so lovely, and for those of you that haven't been and, you know, are looking for an escape from, you know, your urban reality and are within, you know, driving distance, it is you know, a truly special place, and I love you all, so thank you so much. Cheers. Alone together, as always. Cheers. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. Cheers. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Happy anniversary, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Zoe, do you have any additional queries for us? Along the similar lines of the concrete eggs and the experimentation with caboveries. So, it's just, again, just saying, just to bring you all into the mix, you know, we're dealing with, you know, people that, you know, are coming into wine through this, like, bizarre lens that I've given them, to some extent, into the wines that I love, and one of those loves is Georgian wine,

and there is a strange connection for the sake of the Finger Lakes through cold weather varietals and through Constantine Frank in particular, because there's quite a bit of Georgian, there are some Georgian varietals planted in the Finger Lakes, chiefly Soporiabi. Which Herman Beamer has extensive plantings of now through the purchase of Standing Stones. I don't know of anybody that's working with Anfora in the Finger Lakes, although Nancy mentioned concrete coated with beeswax, which would not be all that different, think of every, but I can't think of anyone working in Anfora. I'll let you all disabuse me of that notion. Um, I, I, I don't have, um, access to, I mean, there's no one locally working with those, those, uh, vessels. I think they'd be really interesting if you can bury them.

I mean, the whole point of having vessels like that is to, to bury them and that way insulate them and keep them at the same temperature of the earth. That's, that's, I think, why they were designed in the first place, but that's my opinion, and I'll defer to everyone else. I think it'd be fun to see, um, you know, yeah, exactly, Nancy. It's a form of ancient, um, temperature control, um, and, you know, but part of the appeal with working with those vessels is the, um, you know, very often people will work with wine on the skins and, you know, then you get into this, like, you know, different kind of debate about, you know, Riesling on the skins for a long time, which, you know, works better in some vintages than others and some sites better than others in a place like the Finger Lakes.

But, um, you know, I think the cool thing is that, you know, the, the community up there has gotten to a point, has gotten to a critical mass where, um, you know, there are people, um, playing with, you know, different styles of wine in really experimental ways. So, you know, have people like Pascaline Pagier, who's, you know, the Somme at, well, was formerly the Somme at Ruchemont, who, you know, has since gone on to, you know, kind of bigger and better things, so she could grow in consultancy, but you have people playing with, like, really natty, wild styles of wine, and I think anytime, you know, you get a community that's vibrant enough and that's large enough, you know, people will, you know, play around the edges in a way that, like, you know, makes for more interest.

Kelly, can you think of anyone in the, in the region who's doing kind of crazy one-offs that you're fond of, other than yourself, as someone that makes, as someone who makes sherry in the Finger Lakes? Yeah, oh, geez, I don't know, that's a good question. Uh, I mean, you've kind of, you've got a really good cross-section on this, uh, on this class. I mean, Nancy does some really cool things that just, like, pop out of nowhere. I mean, Nancy's sparkling drawl, the bit I always, like, uh, has been a staple in my cellar in the library, uh, and I think we all, we all love tinkering around with these. You can't be a really good winemaker without, uh, loving to experiment, I think is what it comes down to.

Maybe you don't always bottle those experiments, but, uh, but you're doing it on the side one way or another. Yeah, I do feel like, you know, that my favorite moment of visiting, you know, wineries is, you know, the, the lone cask. The, you know, we had this, you know, you should try this. It's just, like, the thing that they break out, you know, for, for visitors, and, you know, that has no commercial purpose, you know, but, you know, drives the conversation in a, in a really interesting way, and I, I do think that the, the Finger Lakes has a lot of that, and, you know, um, that was my favorite things about, you know, Red Tail is that, you know, for all the, you know, for all the Davis, you know, training, you know, Nancy, you do quite a bit of playing around for the sake of, you know, the miscreant, and, you know, the recent pet nap, and, uh, you know, fizzy red wines that you're doing, and all that other stuff.

Yeah, no, I mean, what's the point of having your own winery if you can't play around? I mean, that’s the whole point, right? My whole career before starting Red Tail, I had to work for somebody else, and I used to do some super cool things on the side, but then I had to just basically blend them away into a bigger tank, because they weren’t, you know, sale-worthy, and they didn’t want to create a whole new wine category, so this is the only person I have to convince – my husband – and since I sleep with him, it works out pretty well. Uh, tell me, what are your favorite experiments? Um, oh boy, that’s a good question.

Uh, I've been really loving, uh, we've been doing, uh, an Auschwitz-Trockin style, uh, because we're nerds in my cellar, we call it AT-AT, and, uh, kind of lean into the Star Wars side of it. Ah. Uh, and we, we've actually done, uh, ice wine from that side as well, which is, is a lot of fun, uh, and, you know, a huge amount of work, but, uh, it's actually translated as well, so, you know, we're, we're always doing things like that, uh, there was a little conversation in the chat, uh, about sparkling Riesling, traditional method sparkling Riesling, uh, which is something I think we're, uh, all of us here are working on, or have worked on, uh, and is, might not be a huge thing, but it's a huge thing, and, uh, it's a huge thing, and, uh, it's a huge thing, huge driver for Finger Lake sales, but it's something that, I mean, if you have beautiful Riesling, why not make sparkling out of it, and why not make sparkling, period, right, it's, it's such a great thing to have on hand, it saves me a lot of money buying champagne to, to have some in-house. So, so can I make a pitch, and that pitch is that, you know, sparkling is something that the Finger Lakes can do and knock out the park, we can rock, uh, excuse me, sparkling every year, um, no matter how, you know, how, you know, how, you know, how, you know, how, you know, how difficult and challenging the vintage is, we can always make a really high quality premium sparkling, and I think that many of us, especially the folks on this call from the Finger Lakes, are really putting their heads down, and really starting to focus on that, and put more wines into longer-term tourage, because we can be like the domestic Epernay, um, and we should really go with it.

Our history was all about sparkling before Prohibition, and so there's a lot of justification, and a lot of reasoning for it. And while we're waiting for tourage, we can drink Pit'n'It. Uh, Lisa, do you have any, you know, strange experiments lurking around the cellar of beans that you're particularly fond of? Well, I always find out about them, like, a few years later, because Morshan kind of hides them, because, like, I'm the fiscal side of the business, and I'm like, what? You're making a wine that we can't sell for 10 years? Okay, so, but, um, one of the things that we have recently released was a zero, just, um, zero, um, Dissage, um, wine from our 2006, uh, no, I'm sorry, 2006 vintage, sparkling.

So we had no Dissage in this wine, and we just let it age, and age, and age, and you don't need a Dissage now. Um, um, so it's from 2006, so what, what is that? Help me do the math. How many? Fourteen years, for those of you playing along, yeah. Fourteen years, and, um, in sparkling wine, you can't make up, well, all wine, you can't make up time. You have to leave it in the bottle. It's the only way you're going to get those tiny little bubbles, and that beautiful brooch, brioche-ness, and, um, and minerality that, um, to, you know, to, to really shine through, and so that's kind of fun, you know, to do that, to just, like, leave it for a while.

Yeah, yeah, and it's, it's one of those things, too, I, I love the passion projects that don't make any money, which I'm sure will not surprise my business partners or Zoe, um, but, you know, it just, it feels like the purest art, you know, for me, it feels like, you know, the, the purest form of something, and, you know, it doesn't, you know, maybe it's, it's not something you're able to build a career around, but, you know, it feeds a soul in this, like, really important way. Uh, Zoe, what else you got for us? Um, to Kelby and to Steve, would you recommend decanting your Pinot Noir and your Cab Franc? Recommend what again? Decanting. Decanting. Um, I don't, not necessarily.

Yeah, there's, there's, you know, the wine is reductive, at least my wine is reductive, um, a little bit, so it doesn't see a lot of air until after you pour it into the glass, but I would think it'll open up in your glass pretty well, and if you're serving it with, uh, pairing it with a meal, it'll just simply evolve in the glass, um, and, and change personality in the glass, and for me, that's, that's part of the fun part of the experience, is that evolution that happens. Um, but Kelby, what, what, what are your thoughts? I, I would say the same for the Cab Franc. I actually, I'm far more inclined and much more often to decant one of my Rieslings than I would one of my Wolts.

The Rieslings can really, you know, and that's, that's, uh, it, you know, it's a great party trick, too, because people don't expect to see a white wine go into a decanter, especially Riesling, but, uh, they open up, uh, just a remarkable amount, uh, especially if you're drinking a younger one from, uh, a top finger, like, producer. People, I think, I just think in general, people have, like, a fundamentally flawed notion of what decanting does and what it's useful for. Uh, I, I find, you know, tight, um, you know, white wines, you know, like Riesling from, you know, better sites benefit infinitely more from an aggressive decant than a lot of big, tannic reds. Like, it is, it's hard, it's desperately hard to resolve tannins.

They're just going to be there, but acidity does, you know, get tempered when you give some, something, you know, uh, exposure to air and time in decanter. Um, you know, and, and, and Riesling in particular, the world's greatest, like, forget-in-the-back-of-the-bridge wine. Um, and, you know, forgetting about, you know, forgetting about something in the back of the fridge is just decanting, you know, but, like, the lazy man's. So, um, yeah, there's so many, like, acid-driven wines in general, like Riesling, Shannon in particular, you know, deserve, um, a healthy decant and, and you never get it. What else you got, Jo? Um, just a question to elaborate, uh, something that we were talking about in the chat, Nancy, is that Vitis vinifera is self-pollinating, but that our Native American grapes are not.

And so, you know, we do rely on birds or on bees to help, um, help pollinate our native varietals. Yeah, yeah. So, so, um, native grapes, uh, wild grapes are basically, um, different sexed vines, all right? So, you'll have some vines that are male, and their, their, their flowers are only male parts, and then you'll have other vines that are female, and they're only female parts, um, and that requires wind or bees, insects to do pollination. And that's also why, uh, a lot of times you'll see native grapes where some have clusters and some don't because the male vines never have clusters, right? Because they, they give their, their, their, uh, male flower part to the female, and the female carries the fruit. Um, this, this is hugely gratifying.

Uh, we are 14 weeks into wine school and we have just gotten another season, uh, of so many wine plants. gotten into a conversation about uh the the reproductive habits of vinifera versus non-vinifera vines and there are 86 people uh that may or may not be paying attention right now and i think that is that is so worth toasting to so cheers to you all who are participating in this conversation but this is this is a deep dive into uh wine wine nerdery um sorry i nerded out i'm sorry no that's that's down this is this is the that's where that's where the core truth is you know um the core truths are not you know um you know at the facile you know two minute mark you know the the most interesting things happen you know when when we are you know dealing with the most esoteric questions speaking of which are there any more zoe um this is kind of placating to the crowd but i'm gonna i'm gonna represent um how did everybody meet tonight how did you all meet originally wow i don't even know if i remember my first meeting with lisa and morton i feel like i've known them forever um and kelby i met and that i mean that in a good way um but kelby and i met when he was working as an intern next door at fox run um and that was a while ago huh yeah it was probably it was 2009 2010 yeah it's not a big neighborhood i mean we all know each other um we you have to drive far like it's a it's bigger than i think you know it's not like walking from columbia heights adams morgan it's bigger than that but like it's a small Community, yeah, actually, um, Nancy and Bueller and Mike live right behind our winery, so she's always walking by. She's always walking by, Bueller. Right nearby, and so it's really fun. I'm like, 'Nancy, come sit with me.' I'm like, 'Nancy, come sit with me.' I'm like, 'Nancy, come sit with me.' I'm like, 'Nancy, come sit with me.' She always comes, and I have Lisa, your docs, your docs. People, yes, we are well, I am that's okay. What is what is she wearing today? She's wearing her red, her new red collar, and she was um actually, we were um clam clam digging last night, and so she's really badly injured. I wasn't able to give her a bath um yeah, she was covered with mud, I've discovered. The art of clam clam digging here in Maine, and so I like to shamelessly go and just dive in to collect all these clams they're just so beautiful. Speaking of something that goes well with Weasley's Clams, very lovely, great, I think we should leave it at that. Uh, what better segue than you know? Clams and Riesling and Dachshunds - um, you know. It's been such a pleasure to have you all with us, thank you guys so much uh for joining, thank you Zoe uh as always for moderating, love you all, be safe, cheers! Thank you, thanks, nice to meet everyone.