What are your favorite Finger Lakes wineries?

none.

seriously, i am glad you are weeding out the good, the bad and the ugly. come next spring, you are my tour guide!

The response has been overwhelming. We'll visit the swill-producers on Long Island also.

Had a Riesling from Foxrun Vineyards a few years ago (2001 or 2002) which was quite nice. We dont get very many Finger Lakes wines here in Ontario.

Wiemer
Standing Stone
Shalestone
Frank
Fox Run

Thanks. They're all on the list of wineries I hope we get to visit. We visited Standing Stone and Fox Run 20 months ago and found their dry unfortified wines uniformly poor, mostly mid 70s. Standing Stone's Vinoble TBA and Fox Run's NV Port were very good, both getting 92 from me.

Re-posted from Vinocellar...

Dr. Frank
Chateau Frank
Standing Stone (esp for their Gewurtzraminer)
Treleaven
Red Newt
Hermann J Weimer
Chateau LaFayette Reneau (though very little experience with this one)

My fav is Sheldrake Pont.

Bob Madill is doing an excellent job with Pinot Noir. Very elegant winery with excellent on-site restaurant.

Thanks. I've visited a lot of these and found their dry unfortified wines pretty poor, but it's been 20 months. I'll go up there to see if they've made any headway.We'll be staying at a beautiful inn and even if the wines are unimproved, we'll enjoy ourselves. We can make a little NY/Ontario comparison.

winepro, are you in the Niagara area?

Wiemer (Herman the German is in a class of his own)
Lamoreaux Landing Wine Cellars
Red Newt

Thanks. I added Lamoreaux and Red Newt to the list.

Some good advice.

I wrote a travel piece on Finger Lakes earlier this year. Here's the link:
http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Archives/Show_Article/0,1275,5093,00.html

Tim Fish
Associate Editor

quote:

Wiemer (Herman the German is in a class of his own)
Lamoreaux Landing Wine Cellars
Red Newt

I agree. I would add Dr. Frank as well.

Thanks, Tim (and OW). I've been to the Finger Lakes several times, most recently in November, 2003. I wasn't impressed at all by the dry wines and bought only one bottle- a 2002 Knapp Barrel Reserve Chardonnay. Some of the sweet and fortified wines were very good to excellent, but the sweetness and/or high alcohol do help to mask some imperfections.

It's going to take me quite a while to get caught up here at home and in my office. In a quick summary, I will say the two regions show some clear improvement in three areas. The Vidal icewines which I (and by the way, virtually every body at the Toronto offline) have trashed for being coarse and syrupy, lacking necessary balancing acidity, were far better balanced The second improvement is in the widening number of varietals being employed in icewine production. In the last three years, many more wineries are making Cabernet Franc icewines, and a few more are making them from Gewurtztraminer, and even Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. The third area of improvement is in the the dry wines. While the vast majority of wineries in these areas are still producing mediocre wines at best, a few are making real strides. Unfortunately, these few are really distancing themselves from the pack.

To put this concisely, Hermann J. Wiemer and Fred and Willy K. Frank at Dr. Konstantin Frank and Chateau Frank are in a class by themselves in the Finger Lakes. Mark J. Wagner at Lamoreaux Landing deserves special mention here. While a notch behind the previous Wiemer and Franks, his wines were far better, in general, than any other of the area's wineries.

The situation in Niagara is analagous, though there are more than two or three wineries producing the region's top tier.

On this trip, we visited fewer wineries than in previous years, opting instead to spend more in-depth time with our past favorites, sampling some of their top wines, and throwing in a few other wineries for scale. Over the next few weeks, I'll go through my notes and try to post my impressions in an organized manner. We stayed at some lovely inns that deserve to be reviewed here also.

Thank-you to Catskill_zinner for the Lamoreaux Landing recommendation.

Some of my favorites are:
Doc Frank
Glenora (makes a nice pinot blanc)
Lamoreaux Landing
Lakewood Estates (Which makes a great port and dry vignoles)
Red Newt

Friends have recommended Sheldrake Point and Salmon Run, but I'm not familiar with them.