Brad Hickey's Wine Odyssey

Racing Acidity in the Finger Lakes

North of Manhattan by 5 hours in upstate New York is a fascinating geological wine region called the Finger Lakes. Glaciers, like sharp fingernails, scratched out eleven slender, very deep lakes that maintain enough heat through the Summer to help this otherwise nordic climate ripen grapes. I'd been there a couple times in the warmer months, a beautiful time to visit, looking for wines for Bouley Restaurant and, in more leisurely moments, to go swimming. I was eager to return on a recent trip to NY. A wine shop in Soho called Vintage New York, which showcases NY State wines, was the first place I tried a Finger Lake wine in 2002. I was especially impressed with a dry gewurztraminer from Standing Stone Vineyards. The wine was varietally correct with a typical nose of lychee and hybrid tea roses, except it was much drier than many of the overly exotic gewurztes you find from the grape's homeland of Alsace. Sourcing this particular wine was a challenge, which made me all the hungrier to have it. After spending weeks trying to procure it, I actually poured the wine by the glass for a while once I got it. This decision surprised many people, since Bouley was a 4 star French restaurant and, therefore, was expected to serve French wine. But it was a good wine, that gewurzt, certainly esoteric, and turned a lot of my guests on to the Fingers. Like Long Island, here was a semi-local wine region doing admittedly sporadic, but interesting work. The fairly hefty drive limited my visits. A former girlfriend whose folks live near Buffalo was probably the only reason I even made it up there, since the Finger Lakes were on the way to their home. Fortunately, I did. I came out of my first trip there with mouthwatering rieslings wound tighter than a magnet's coil from Hermann Wiemer, Red Newt, Heron Hill, and Dr.Frank, musky Vidal Blanc from Atwater, and an elegant pinot noir from Chateau Lafayette Reneau. That pinot noir was later served blind to serious wine drinkers at Bouley who absolutely loved it. The look of astonishment on their faces when the wine's identity was revealed was priceless. They still talk to me about that wine and having the nerve to serve it to them. It was one of my proudest moments. Unfortunately, the wine was a one-off due to the erratic weather conditions vintage to vintage. The region is pretty far North, near to the Canadian border, and it gets hammered by frosts, both early and late winter damage, as well as lower daylight hours. The vines closest to the moderating influences of the lakes do best, or, at least have a chance of surviving a bad winter. Every year there are issues - drought, disease or cold damage. As Rob Thomas of Shalestone, a veteran of the area and one time winemaker at Lafayette Reneau says, "One of the essences of the Finger Lakes is that it is never the same year to year". Some reds are good, like Shalestone's and McGregor's "Black Russian Red" made from old Russian clones of Sereksiya Charni and Saperavi. But it's better to stay with the aromatic whites and the late harvest gear. Botrytis, the fungus that grows on grapes in damp conditions and is responsible for luscious sweet wines, grows on your shoes in this moisture laden environment if you stand around long enough. Most of these wines have a highly attractive racing acidity that cuts through rich sauces and fish dishes like a blow torch through butter. The best restaurants to drink local wines with good local food, if they're open, are Dano's Heuriger, The Stone Cat Cafe, both on Seneca's eastside, and nestled in the cozy booths at the Hazelnut Kitchen in Trumansburg. Ithaca can boast a quintessential American-icon greasy spoon called the Lincoln Street Diner: one woman cooking eggs behind a bar. They don't have diners like this in Australia. With over 90 wineries in the area, it's hard to sort through it all, so let me help. The best wineries are found along the east and west shores of Seneca and on the westside of Keuka Lake. Do your best to avoid the sickly sweet wines from the French-American hybrids like Cayuga and Concord that still linger from the nearby production of that Kosher favorite Manishewitz in Widmer. The most consistent of the wineries in the district have been the ones already mentioned. The grouping of lakes, aptly called "Finger" due to their long narrowness and paralleling North/South aspects resembling the fingers of a hand to early mapmakers, are time consuming to travel around. There are no bridges. On a recent snowy Spring visit with Katie Marks, Atwater's general manager and a great champion of the region, we covered hundreds of miles in a day. This wasn't a problem, however, since the land between the lakes rises dramatically like the corrugated piped Choux pastry of a chocolate eclair. The higher altitudes offer a variety of pleasing vistas from which to view the attenuated, tapering blue lakes.

Katie and I had a thoughtful visit with Rob Thomas, the soulful pioneering, quiet spoken winemaker behind Shalestone. This visit was in stark contrast to a raving Thomas Laszlo at Heron Hill, arguably the appellation's most talented and passionate dry riesling and sweet wine producer. Legend has it he hunts and butchers his own meat. I think he's great. By the time I left we met many more lovely people; all striving hard to be recognized, and, hopefully, to help put their quirky, emerging wine region on the international map. As appealing as the wealthy Napa model of wine tourism looks on the surface, however, be careful what you wish for. Or as my green grocer says, "beware of beautiful fruit".

Incoming

Normally this space is not for birth announcements, however, this time I have an excuse, since my name is part of the equation. Welcome Janeke Bradley June Matthews to the planet. She was born on the 4th of July, 17:31 at a healthy 7lbs 5oz to Sean and Meike Matthews. If Sean and Meikes' names ring a bell it's because they were pictured osculating at the top of my Rendezvous in Paris post after sharing news of her conception. The recent epic battle at Wimbledon b/w Federer and Nadal, which kept me happily awake here in OZ until 630am, led me to reread the following bit of advice in its entirety from Kipling. Above the players' entrance on Center Court is a snippet of this instructional poem, "IF":  "If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters the same". Maybe it was the late hour at which I received news of her arrival, but it's at the beginning of Janeke's new adventure that I seem to be taking stock of my own successes and failures. 

If 

If you can keep your head when all about you 

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; 

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 

But make allowance for their doubting too; 

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 

Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, 

Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating, 

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; 

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; 

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; 

If you can meet with triumph and disaster 

And treat those two imposters just the same; 

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken 

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, 

And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 

And lose, and start again at your beginnings 

And never breath a word about your loss; 

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 

To serve your turn long after they are gone, 

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 

Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; 

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; 

If all men count with you, but none too much; 

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run - 

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, 

And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son! 

-Rudyard Kipling