Trip to the Finger Lakes, August 2023

Now on to the following weekend. My wife D and I drove up to other D’s house in upstate New York which I last visited in 2017. G and H were already there, having taken the train from New York City a couple of days earlier.

D shared many amazing bottles from his cellar with us as can be seen from the photos.

He also introduced me to Zaya 16 year old rum, which it turns out I can get in the local booze store at a very advantageous price, hurrah!

My wife isn't really into wine, so on the Saturday she and I went for a hike on the Finger Lakes trail, starting at Sugar Hill State Forest. We got slightly lost but otherwise it was an enjoyable trail, not too muddy and with the occasional mushroom and some little frogs.

On Saturday evening, we had a wonderful dinner party with the five of us, and D’s friends Bob, David and Charlene. This included a trio of wonderful Californian cabernets from 1973: Beaulieu Vineyard, Freemark Abbey and Sterling Vineyards, followed by a pair of Sauternes from 1983 - Chateau Lafaurie-Peyraguey and Rieussec. The hardship! I don't think my wife had ever seen a dining table laden with so many wine glasses and antique silver cutlery.

On the Sunday, we went out to a few wineries for tastings. Things seem to have changed a lot in the six years since I was there last, and everything seemed more touristy and commercial. Where previously the tastings were around $5 if memory serves, now the standard charge seemed to be $15.

We started off at Domaine LeSeurre, where I particularly enjoyed the semi-dry Riesling from 2020 and had visions of sipping it on our deck. Since our deck is currently under construction, that’s unlikely to happen this year, but I did buy three bottles and have consumed two of them already, so can confirm it’s a lovely wine to drink well-chilled in hot weather, and only 12% alcohol. I was hoping to buy a bottle of their sparkling wine too, but was told that I’d have to join the wine club, which was a little offputting, so that didn’t happen.

Next up was a winery I hadn’t visited before, called Weis. As the name suggests, this is run by somebody from Germany. I really enjoyed this tasting. They had an interesting white called “Heart of the Lake” which is made from a new grape variety called aravelle. There was also a nice light fizz which contained this grape. The pinot noir was light and pretty, and the cabernet franc was also in the lighter style. I seriously thought about joining the wine club, but have since discovered that I can order some of their wines from the booze store here in PA, so may just do that some time!

Then it was on to Ravines. As in 2017, the wines here continue to impress and though they’re perhaps a bit more expensive than the local competition, they are built to last. I absolutely loved the pinot noir which was really interesting and a little wild, and the late harvest vignoles was a must.

We had lunch at the café/pub in Hammondsport and in the afternoon attempted to visit Dr Konstantin Frank, but it turned out that the tasting offerings here were too touristy and/or outdoors for our liking, so in the end we abandoned them and moved on to McGregor. This was nice because we got to sit at a table inside and our flights of wines were brought to us, along with a few nibbles, so we could sit and discuss amongst ourselves more easily without having someone hanging around waiting to pour the next glass. As on my previous visit, the star of the show was the Russian River Red, which has now been renamed Saperavi Grand Reserve. We tasted the 2017 vintage which was quite a tannic monster and needs at least another ten years, I’d say.

Enormous thanks to D for driving us around, having us to stay over the weekend and sharing so many treasures from the cellar. We had a wonderful time!

International Pinot Noir Celebration, part VI

After a brief pause, we attended the second of the large tastings. It was another hot afternoon and I’d made the strategic decision to only taste things that G recommended, but fortunately there were quite a few. I’m sorry that this list doesn’t go into any detail. I’d naively assumed that we’d be given some sort of list of wines/wineries which I’d be able to annotate, but no such thing was provided. Fortunately, G was better prepared than me and had brought along a notebook, so the best I could do was ask him to make a note whenever we encountered something I particularly enjoyed.

Ken Wright Tanager Vineyard 2019 - I'm currently looking after a case of the Guadalupe for G, as this was unavailable

Bryn Mawr Vineyards 2021

Belle Pente Kiona’s Block 2019

Fiddlehead Cellars Lollapaloosa Barrel Select 2015

Division Pinot Noir “Deux” 2021

Chosen Family Wine Co 2021

Sokol Blosser Orchard Block 2021

Greywing Farsing Vineyard 2019 - I'm currently looking after a six pack of this for G

Talley Vineyards 2021

Cobb – not sure which wine or vintage this was, but it was an unexpectedly pretty pinot from California. It turns out that California has a lot of micro climates with its mountains and sea.

Then it was off to the long-awaited Salmon Bake! This is a big dinner where they serve wild salmon which has been cooked over an open fire on wooden stakes. There was also roast pork, and a wide selection of salads, cheeses and sweet things. We sat at a table with a few other people and again someone came round pouring us nice things from time to time. The woman next to me also contributed a bottle of wine which she’d bought from a winery earlier in the day, which was very kind. A band played jazzy music in the distance and the atmosphere was very festive. At one point a man went round some tables with a salmanazar of red wine which was clearly quite difficult to pour from, but was one of our wines of the evening.

Finally, on the Sunday morning, there was an extra-special champagne brunch which included additional food such as sushi, and someone came round pouring glasses of fizz from time to time. We sat with some Americans and it turned out that they had spent some time living in England not far from where G and I went to school, which was a fun coincidence.

Then it was back to the apartment to pack up and get a car back to Portland. An honourable mention should be made to “Famous Dave’s BBQ” near the airport where we had a meal later in the day. Their ribs and burnt ends were very tasty and it was quite a relief to drink a pint of cold pineapple cider after all the fine wine over the past few days.

In conclusion: I’m very glad I went - I learned a lot about Oregon pinot noir, ate some fantastic food and met some nice people. It was a great way to celebrate our 50th birthdays!

International Pinot Noir Celebration, part V

In the afternoon, we’d all signed up for a session with the title “Sparking Wine: The Art of Blending” which turned out to be something of a misnomer, as nobody really talked about blending. Instead, five producers of fizz talked about their wines.

I appear to have had nothing to say about the first one from CHO Wines except that it was quite expensive – I've written down $95 but can’t find this wine on their website. I found the 2014 Fiddlehead Cellars “728 Bubbles” blanc de noirs more interesting and quite winey for a fizz, and it was only $65. They're based in the Santa Rita Hills area of California. 

Next was a wine from Nautilus Estate in Marlborough, NZ. This was only $40 and very bubbly. It reminded me strongly of the kinds of New World fizz that were around when I was an undergraduate – stuff like Yalumba Angas Brut. For me, it was clean but completely lacking any character. 

Then we moved on to two champagnes. The first was Laurent-Perrier which was perfectly nice but nothing out of the ordinary. The second, from Henri Giraud, was much more my cup of tea. This was the Hommage au Pinot Noir NV. It was a much more golden colour than the others and had a lot of mushrooms, yeastiness and richness. Someone mentioned salinity, which wasn’t a word I’d ever heard used to describe champagne but fitted the bill. This retails at around $100 which seems like a fair price for it.

Incidentally, the first three wines had been poured before everyone entered the seminar room, and the last two were poured halfway through the seminar, which meant that they were significantly colder. I've probably already said this but if there’s one thing I learned from the IPNC, it's that serving wine at the proper temperature makes a huge difference.

International Pinot Noir Celebration, part IV

On the Saturday morning, we had another fantastic breakfast and this time I located the proper coffee stand which was worth the wait. Then it was time for the “grand seminar” which was a series of panel discussions and tastings held in the theatre at Linfield University. This fell into three parts and I believe the presenters rotated between three different venues due to capacity constraints, so it must have been a bit strange for them to be giving the same talk three times in rapid succession. The format for each session was that the chairman spoke for a few minutes and then each representative from a winery spoke for a few minutes. It wasn’t at all clear when we were supposed to be tasting the wines, so I found myself surreptitiously doing it while they were talking.

The theme for this particular IPNC was sustainability, a tricky subject. Climate change is clearly a big issue for the wine industry, and there are steps that can be taken to reduce emissions such as using lighter glass bottles or even other forms of packaging, cutting back on capsules etc. I enjoyed hearing about permaculture, electric tractors, regenerative agriculture and phytotherapy, the building up of natural defences.

But some speakers took it a little too far, in my opinion. The representative of one winery in New Zealand informed us that they ask their visitors where they have come from and where they are going afterwards, and include this travel in their records of carbon emissions. Another speaker made a reference to Black Lives Matter and it all started getting a little political. Quite honestly, I didn’t attend the IPNC in order to receive a lecture on social justice from someone much, much richer than me… One was also aware of the vast number of bottles of San Pellegrino lying around all over the place which presumably were imported from Italy!  

Moving swiftly on… Of the wines that we tasted during these sessions, I particularly enjoyed:

- the Blanc de Noirs Extra Brut Reserve 2016 from Brundlmayer in Austria which was very champagne-like

- the Savigny 1er cru Aux Vergelesses from Domaine Simon Bize et Fils. Chisa Bize gave a very good talk. She’s from Japan and took over running the domaine after her husband died ten years ago. It was interesting hearing how she had questioned their approach to winemaking and gradually modernised it. Santenay has never been one of my favourite villages in Burgundy, but she is producing some very pure, delightful wines which thankfully lack the offputting gravy/meatiness that one sometimes encounters. I see they are represented by Jeroboams in the UK

- Sunday’s Child 2021, a pinot noir produced by Hope Well in the Eola-Amity Hills region of Oregon, which had some agreeable complexity to it.

We returned to one of the lawns where we found a table for another excellent lunch. The wine people at this table were from Coline Clemens and we’d actually chatted to them in the queue for dinner the previous evening. They were good company and they had chilled their wines, which made them very drinkable despite the relatively high alcohol level. A good time was had by all!