Navigating the Finger Lakes Wine Festival

On Sunday, July 13, I had the opportunity to attend the annual Finger Lakes Wine Festival, held on the grounds of the Watkins Glen International race track in Watkins Glen, NY.

Located at the Southern tip of Seneca Lake, Watkins Glen is the perfect location to host a festival that showcases the best wines the region has to offer. The Finger Lakes region of Upstate NY has seen a massive expansion of wineries both large and small, with quality wines that hold their own with any wine-producing region worldwide. The festival offers an excellent opportunity to sample wines from a variety of producers.

The festival hosted over 90 wineries, plus vendors showing off artisan foods, cheese, honey, arts and crafts...all in all, three giant tents on the grounds plus a number of smaller tents on the perimeter provided plenty to see and do from an almost overwhelming number of vendors.

Along with the opportunity to engage in wine tasting, the festival offers wine seminars, live music, custom "experiences" and even pace car rides on the famed Watkins Glen International road course.

Clearly, one afternoon isn't enough to see everything, so I limited my experience to a visit to the heart of the festival...the giant tents hosting the wine and food vendors. The sheer size of the festival becomes quickly apparent when you walk in the first tent:

Keep in mind...this is just a small section of the wine tents

One lesson I learned in my college Advertising class is that "something for everyone" really means, "nothing for anyone". Or as Ricky Nelson sang, "you can't please everyone...". The sheer magnitude of the selection here seems to make both those aphorisms flat-out lies.

Upstate NY, a region once known for its cheap, sweet "jug wines" has definitely come into its own as a winemaking region. Much of that progress is owed to the efforts of Dr. Konstantin Frank, who planted the first successful vinifera (European wine-style) vines in the Finger Lakes. Dr. Frank successfully grew these vines in the often-brutal cold Upstate NY climate, and his fingerprints are all over the modern region; today, it is almost impossible to find an Upstate NY winery that does not produce some form of Riesling, the white German grape that has become the Finger Lakes' signature wine.

Quite the haul!

In shopping for wines and food at the festival, my goal was to seek out some some new wines that I hadn't been exposed to, and pick up some old favorites if they presented themselves. Since many of the wineries are within an hour's drive or so of where I live, I didn't feel the need to explore their offerings in depth, preferring the joy of the hunt and finding something new. I was quickly rewarded.

My favorite with Tilapia

I stopped by Dr. Frank's booth for a bottle of a completely different wine, my "go-to" wine for pairing with fish, Rkatsiteli, one of the oldest grape varieties known, and rarely grown in the United States. Dr. Frank's version is exceptional, and I often have a hard time finding it outside the winery, and never at this price. Win!

The best red
in the Finger Lakes, IMO

Most wine snobs (and budding wine snobs such as myself) will tell you that the cold Upstate NY climate is terrible for producing great red wines. While that was definitely true 20 (or even ten) years ago, the vintners' craft is changing rapidly, and there's no better example of that than the very fine Meritage from Ravines Wine Cellars on Keuka Lake. The Ravines Meritage is a Bordeaux-style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot...three varietals that don't immediately come to mind when you think of Upstate NY. This small craft winery, however, makes my absolute favorite red wine in the Finger Lakes Region.

Incidentally, "Meritage," (rhymes with "heritage") is trademarked; created to avoid infringing on the legally-protected Bordeaux name. It must be licensed by the winemaker, and must meet specific criteria.

An unexpectedly
tasty Riesling

Rieslings are, of course, everywhere here. After tasting several (mostly very good, with some notable exceptions that shall remain unnamed to protect the guilty...I'm sure you know who you are), I managed to find an unexpectedly nice Riesling in the form of a "North Block"-labeled version from Standing Stone Vineyards. I've enjoyed their wines in the past, but this particular tasting was surprisingly complex; more than I'm accustomed to from this vineyard.

A great bargain at $8

Because I'm always on the lookout for a bargain, I managed to find one in the form of an $8 bottle of "Cayuga White" from Highland Cellars. This crisp white wine is much better than its low-end price would indicate. Can't wait to pop the cork on this one.

Honestly, I was on the hunt for some out-of-region wineries, but they weren't well-represented here. That's probably just as well, since this is at its heart a regional event, but to be honest, many of the newer Finger Lakes wineries that are sprouting up seemed to be shooting for the "new" wine drinker with sweet fruity wines that just don't do it for me. That's fine; to each his own. I will admit to getting weary of cute labels and catchy names that seemed to have more to do with clever marketing on the label than the product inside. But I digress.

Seriously, the best Catfish dish
I've had outside New Orleans

A variety of food rounded out they day's purchases: Amazing Jalapeno and Buffalo Wing cheeses from Yancey's Fancy, delicious wild honey from Hilker Haven Farm in Ithaca, NY, Salsa and Seasoning mix from JD's Salsa, pasta from Northern Farmhouse Pasta in Roscoe, NY, and an unexpectedly fantastic Peanut Butter Fudge topping from "Nana's Topping" out of Syracuse. A bargain at only $2.

All in all it was a pretty great excursion. And it was all topped off with a visit to one of my very favorite regional restaurants, the amazing Wildflower Café, where I enjoyed their amazing Catfish Tacos, with chipotle slaw, roasted corn salsa, and lime sour cream.

But that's another blog post in and of itself.

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Submitted by Rich on Monday, July 14, 2014