Finger Lakes International Wine Competition founder Peter Parts has revealed that a number of New York wines have scored major medals in the world renowned expo this year. Have New York wines been an unknown quantity all this time?
When we talk about quality luxury wines, we usually talk about Europe; France, Italy, Spain etc. If we do have to turn our attention to America, we tend to talk about California, the nation’s most popular wine growing region. New York is often left out in the cold.
Cold is the exact reason we don’t tend to consider it a major wine growing region in the U.S. As a state nestled into the lower North-East of the Union, New York tends to experience deeply cold winters that’d stifle a grape on the vine before it ever even got the chance to grow to fruition.
However this may be a short sighted assessment of New York viticulture, as Peter Parts would attest to. According to the competition’s founder, New York wines scored big this year.
Wines from Anthony Road Wine Co led the pack scoring two double gold and gold medals collectively. Swedish Hill Winery followed up in second place, with one double gold and three gold medals. Hazlitt 1852 Vineyard followed up in third place, earning one double gold and two gold medals. In total New York Wines won over 80 medals at the event.
You may think that since the event actually takes place in Finger Lakes, a region of the state of New York, that this is somewhat biased. However even factoring that in, you have to admit that there must be something to New York wines that the rest of the world has missed.
New York State actually has a robust wine growing culture and has four major viticulture regions; Lake Erie, Finger Lakes itself, the Hudson River region and the eastern end of Long Island. New York is actually the country’s third largest wine growing region, behind California and Washington State.
It’s a centuries old tradition that was first introduced to the state by French Huguenot immigrants and Dutch settlers. The result is that the New York wine scene tends to be dominated by French hybrids.
So are New York wines an unknown quantity? Perhaps. They’re not likely to be featured on the Ideal Wine Company product list anytime soon, but it is clear that perhaps they’ve been unfairly eclipsed in the past by their Californian rivals.
