Finger Lakes Rising

As a former New Yorker, I’ve been excited to watch from afar as an increasing amount of acclaim has been lavished on the Empire State’s wine regions. In particular, the Finger Lakes has undergone an enormous transformation in the past 10–15 years as the quality of the wines has taken a gigantic leap forward. Like any other young appellation, though, pitfalls remain. In the case of Finger Lakes, three of them are anemic reds, imbalanced acidities and the clumsy use of oak. That said, there are so many truly excellent wines coming out of the area these days that consumers should be able to drink extremely well, and for relatively little money. Indeed, with every vintage it is more and more apparent that the Finger Lakes truly is becoming America’s premiere cool climate grape growing region.

Making the Lakes

The Finger Lakes lie roughly five hours northwest of New York City. Like the wines, the scenery tends towards the austere, with miles and miles of farmland and forest interrupted by the occasional small town. The lakes themselves are quite striking, and have been attracting summertime tourists to their shores long before they were ringed with tasting rooms.

The idyll of Seneca Lake

The climate can be described as marginal at best, with brutally cold, extended winters that compress the growing season into a relatively short window. Viticulture is only made possible through the influence of the lakes; being extremely deep, they remain largely unmoved by seasonal temperature fluctuations, providing thermal insulation in the winter and a cooling influence in the summer. Indeed, proximity to the lakes is so essential to quality that the majority of the area’s vineyards are planted within actual sight of the water.

The other element that sets the Finger Lakes apart is the ground itself. While most of the region’s soils are variations on acidic shale, there is a distinct vein of limestone that wends its way down from Lake Ontario, occasionally intersecting with plantable land. Both the shale and the limestone can trace their origins back 550 million years, when much of eastern North America became submerged beneath the ocean. This area remained underwater for roughly 325 million years, slowly accumulating layers and layers of ocean floor on top of the continental plate. This seabed eventually compacted to form sandstone (compressed sand) and shale (compressed mud) in addition to limestone.

Most of the Finger Lakes vineyards are planted within actual sight of the water

Things took a dramatic turn roughly one million years ago, when the ice age descended and monumental glaciers pushed and scraped their way across the land, making permanent impressions that inform our current vistas. The particular glaciers that helped shape the Finger Lakes originated near Labrador and expanded due south, travelling at a rate of 2 – 25 feet per day. The Finger Lakes are, in effect, exactly what they look like-- claw marks, scratched out of the ancient ocean bed by the very ice whose melting filled them.

There are technically eleven Finger Lakes contained within the AVA, but only four are viticulturally significant: Canandaigua, Keuka, Seneca and Cayuga. Of these, Seneca and Keuka possess the greatest number of wineries and vineyards. At 632 feet, Seneca is the deepest, and therefore the most thermally stable; it hasn’t frozen over since the winter of 1912. Keuka is much more shallow (187 feet) and freezes over fairly regularly. While this makes it measurably colder. Keuka also boasts the steepest slopes, which help prevent the cold air from settling among the vines and causing damage.