New York Wines

In this day and age we find that far too many people remain unfamiliar with New York wine; many still do not know the state produces wine. Nearly all fifty states in the union produce wine, and New York happens to be up there in the top three, behind California and Washington.

It began in 1860, in Hammondsport, New York--no, it began well before that, in Brooklyn, NY (1820), but that was a minimal success. In 1860 the Reverend Bostwick planted grapes along Keuka Lake, in the heart of the Finger Lakes region. Within twenty years the Taylor Wine Company, based in Hammondsport, at the south end of Keuka Lake, was in full sway. Taylor got so big it swallowed up another successful winery in the area, the sparkling producer, Pleasant Valley Wine Company, and its Great Western label.

The New York wine industry remained a home-based success for almost a century; then, in the nineteen fifties two incidents took place near Hammondsport that rocked the industry: Gold Seal Winery hired Charles Fournier from France, and Dr. Konstantin Frank settled on the west side of Keuka Lake. The two men conspired to change the wine industry from its reliance on the grapey local plantings of "American" vines to the more respected grape varieties of Old World pedigree.

Fournier and Frank were told it could not be done, that no one could get the sensitive Vitis vinifera grapes to survive the sometimes severe winters of the Finger Lakes region. But in the nineteen sixties the team produced Chardonnay and Riesling wines that proved the naysayers wrong.

At the same time, the Hudson Valley region, another old wine center of New York, began producing wines from French-American hybrid grapes that are more suited to cold climates, but the wines they produced, though good, were not always up to international standards.

In the nineteen seventies the New York legislature created regulations favorable to the establishment of family farm wineries. By the nineteen eighties not only did the Finger Lakes wine region flourish, so did Long Island, the Hudson Valley and the Lake Erie regions of New York. Today many developments in New York bring to market some of the best wines the country produces and they are produced from the standard bearer of great wines: the Vitis vinifera varieties of Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Gewurztraminer, Riesling and Chardonnay; there is more, but right now the best New York wines are produced primarily from these grapes.

In the past decade New York wines have captured many international and national awards as they compete with the rest of the world. The main problem for those who seek New York wine is that there is not a lot to go around and distribution is a problem. At is-wine we carry a broad range of New York wines and we continually rotate or change our offerings. Because we know that New York wine competes with any the world produces we do not segregate them from our list of products; you will find New York wines among all the other wines we list, but if you want a fast way to find the New York wines in our portfolio here is a tip: concentrate on Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc, and Chardonnay--these represent the best the state produces, and by all means, do not forget to look up the sparkling wine category for great New York offerings.