pop & pour

I am freshly returned from a five-day trek out to the Finger Lakes wine region in central New York State, so named for the 11 long, thin, appendage-like bodies of water stretching north to south between Rochester on the left and Syracuse on the right.  I travelled with two importers, two retailers, three sommeliers, a restauranteur and a widely published local print journalist.  We ventured up and down both shores of three different lakes, visited 13 wineries, tasted over 150 different local wines (of which I hastily scribbled written notes for about 120) and dined or drank with half a dozen different winemakers.  And we all returned with newfound understanding, appreciation and excitement for a region that is set to explode into the world’s quality wine consciousness, if it hasn’t already.

I didn’t first read about the Finger Lakes until about five years ago; I don’t remember seeing a bottle of FLX wine on a Calgary wine shelf until a couple years after that, and there was certainly no such thing as Finger Lakes selection in Alberta retail until last year.  Chances are that if you haven’t stumbled onto those few rare bottles in the market, the region is still largely a black box to you.  So even though my head is bursting with thoughts, impressions and memories aching to be shared, stories dying to be told, I’m going to pump the brakes a bit and start from the start.  Then, partly because I’m impatient and partly because it will set the stage for the more detail-oriented recaps to come, I’m going to jump ahead to the end and offer up a few conclusions about where the Finger Lakes are right now and where they might be headed. Read the rest of this entry »