Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Late Harvest Riesling No. 90 is an unoaked wine from the Neustadt Riesling clone. It comes with 192 grams per liter of residual sugar and under 11% alcohol. Says Owner Bruce Murray: "It could have easily been considered an 'ice wine' since much of the fruit was frozen on the vine at the time of harvest." Well, you can guess what this is about. With concentrated flavors on opening, it is amazingly delicious and hard to resist. This is the Finger Lakes, though, not a warm climate. That's what makes this sing and changes the equation. There is plenty of balancing acidity and it continues to drink well as it airs, not only quite tasty and laced with apricots and pears, but rather refreshing. It actually shows some hints of minerality eventually as it warms. This is anything but cloying. Overall, it is another remarkable success from this very young winery.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Increasingly garnering widespread and well-deserved attention, New York ranks third in wine production in the United States (after California and Washington). Divided into six AVAs—the Finger Lakes, Lake Erie, Hudson River, Long Island, Champlain Valley of New York and the Niagara Escarpment, which crosses over into Michigan as well as Ontario, Canada—the state experiences varied climates, but in general summers are warm and humid while winters are very cold and can carry the risk of frost well into the growing season.
The Finger Lakes region has long been responsible for some of the country’s finest Riesling, and is gaining traction with elegant, light-bodied Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc. Experimentation with cold-hardy European varieties is common, and recent years have seen the successful planting of grapes like Grüner Veltliner and Saperavi (from the Eastern European country of Georgia). Long Island, on the other hand, has a more maritime climate influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, and shares some viticultural characteristics with Bordeaux. Accordingly, the best wines here are made from Merlot and Cabernet Franc. The Niagara Escarpment is responsible for excellent ice wines, usually made from the hybrid variety, Vidal.