Finger Lakes wines are becoming a thing, going from under-the-radar token-local option to something people are talking about across the country. A mere handful of winemakers are leading the charge, and Keuka Lake Winery is... Read More

Finger Lakes wines are becoming a thing, going from under-the-radar token-local option to something people are talking about across the country. A mere handful of winemakers are leading the charge, and Keuka Lake Winery is out in front.

One of America's few actually cool-climate wine regions, the Finger Lakes can produce seriously mineral-driven, terroir-specific wines with laser-sharp acidity and crystalline purity. This is largely thanks to the glaciers. Around 2 million years ago, glacial flows carved deep trenches and formed these thin, seriously deep lakes (Seneca lake goes over 630 feet down!). Those deep waters moderate what would otherwise be too extreme a climate.

The name of the game at at Keuka Lake Winery is Riesling, which is the perfect grape to transmit the winery's varied terroirs. And the vineyards could not be more diverse, again thanks to the glaciers, which churned a mixture of slate, clay, and innumerable other rock types to the surface of the earth millions of years ago. On the western side of the lake you have predominately clay, giving the Rieslings excellent texture and plushness redolent of Vouvray, while on the eastern slopes you have rockier soils, producing razor-sharp wines with precise minerality.