Awesome! The Finger Lakes wine trails are a great way to get to know the region. At Hunt Country, we’re founding members of the Keuka Lake Wine Trail. Check us out at KeukaWineTrail.com. Our 8 wineries make a perfect day or weekend trip: gorgeous scenery, great wines and warm welcomes.
Yes! Ice Wine over Ice Cream is DEADLY delicious! Two professional chefs who visited our winery over the past year fell in love with our Vidal Ice Wine. One was going to experiment with Ice Wine and maple desserts; the other with custardy concoctions.
You described the balance very well. The Late Harvest Vignoles has about 10% residual sugar but this is balanced by 9 grams/liter of natural acidity (lots of flavor!). The ice wine is sweeter, but balanced by 10 grams/liter of acidity!
We really need luck on our side to produce our Late Harvest Vignoles. We need the fungus BOTRYTIS to grow late in the season. Botrytis draws moisture out of the grape, shriveling it into a raisin, and making the flavors more complex and intense. The additional ripening time between normal harvest around Oct. 1st and late harvest around Nov. 1st makes a big difference to the sugars and flavors. The weather and botrytis growth just didn’t come together in 2008, 2009 and 2010. We’re crossing our fingers for 2011, but so far it’s looking doubtful. The 2007 in this Woot is our last successful vintage! I hope you enjoy it!
Jim, how is your regular harvest looking this year? I haven’t been keeping up with the NY Cork Report to see how all of the wineries are doing. I just know that the weather has been incredible tough for most of Ag this year with a huge forage crisis hitting most of the country.
Hope to get out your way some time, I’ve spent most of my time on Cayuga and Seneca but really need to plan out a Keuka trip one of these days.
Hi Matt, thanks for asking. Most Finger Lakes wineries are expecting a very good regular harvest this year, both whites and reds. The incredible spring rains mainly finished by the end of April when buds broke. We had generally favorable weather in May, June and July. At Hunt Country, our grapes have ripened well and are clean. The only disappointment is on one block of our Vignoles whose skins split with recent rains. And botrytis isn’t developing as we had hoped. So we’ll have good quality regular harvest Vignoles but a reduced vintage. We plan to start harvest next week with Seyval Blanc. Yes, if you come out our way, please set aside a day or two for Keuka Lake, and let us know you’ll be coming!..Jim
We received a notification on 9/22 with a tracking number for Fedex. The Fedex website indicates an anticipated ship date of 9/21. As of today, 9/27, there is still no update on the Fedex site to show that anything has shipped. Can you please provide an update on the status?
