Trip to Finger Lakes part III - Domaine LeSeurre

Our next stop was Domaine LeSeurre, run by Céline and Sébastien Leseurre. As the name suggests, they are French and in fact there is a French flag waving outside the winery. We'd had one of their chardonnays before as mentioned here and been impressed with it, so I was looking forward to this visit. We chatted with the girl behind the counter who told us that Sébastien is from Champagne and Céline is from Toulouse, and they met in New Zealand.

First up was a dry riesling from 2014, which was a mere 12% alcohol. This is aged in stainless steel tanks and was actually dry, unlike some. It had good minerality and I found it elegant but the next wine, the 2015 riesling barrel select, was even better. This is aged in French barrels for 11 months, which is unusual for riesling, and was bigger and more concentrated.

Then we moved on to a couple of chardonnays. First the barrel select 2015 which is also aged for 11 months, and was very fine, more classic chardonnay. But the chardonnay barrel select "no 2" 2014 won hands down. It's aged for 22 months and only 24 cases were produced. This is the wine D shared with us in September and it still had the same limey quality and was altogether very fine.

Finally, we tried a couple of reds. Apparently the cabernet franc 2014 is from one particular vineyard, and this is the first year it was bottled separately. This was light and pretty, and generally rather lovely. It went down easily. G made another reference to a charcuterie plate. Then we tried the cabernet franc 2013 which was made from grapes from two different vineyards. This was bigger, spicier, and had a great finish.

Sébastien actually dropped by while we were having the tasting which was nice, although we missed our opportunity to ask him about clones, which is something we'd wondered about with the chardonnay. This winery opened relatively recently and I would certainly say they are one to watch, bringing a French approach to the Finger Lakes vineyards and producing serious, elegant wines.

The view from the winery wasn't too shabby either