- Ahhh The Finger Lakes, the perfect destination for fishing, boating, hiking, unless of course, you come in the dead of winter, at which point, your activities may change a bit. But don't panic. The Finger Lakes are just as enjoyable and breathtaking in the winter cold as they are during the hot summer months. More importantly, they're home to one of the most iconic, misunderstood, and versatile grape varieties around and, much like the midwesterner in me, it happens not to mind a little cold weather. I'm talking of course about Riesling. Welcome to The Finger Lakes, and welcome to V is for Vino! Hey, welcome to New York.

- [Cameraman] Vince, don't do that.

- All right. Welcome to the Finger Lakes and welcome to New York; the Empire State that, believe it or not, is third in the country when it comes to wine producing states. Another fun fact, New York grows a lot of Concord grapes, grapes for grape juice and jelly. They're second in the country for that. But I didn't come here to talk PB&J sandwiches. I'm talking about Vitis Vinifera, which are grapes for high quality wines. And the majority of New York's wine grapes are made here, in the Finger Lakes. They make wine in other areas of New York, but the Finger Lakes is by far the most influential. The region is about a five hour drive from New York City, close to Rochester, Syracuse, and Ithaca. It has 11 lakes which all make up the Finger Lakes AVA, but most of the wineries are on the three main lakes; Cayuga, Keuka, and Seneca. On top of that, Cayuga and Seneca Lake both have their very own AVA designations; an added bonus for the two largest lakes. Obviously, the lakes are the big draw here. During summer months, the region is a popular destination for all kinds of outdoor and water activities. Not so obvious is the important role that the lakes play in wine growing. They help retain heat and moderate climate for the vines. But the big story here, and I'm talking glacier sized big, is how these lakes even came to be in the first place. A few million years ago during one of the ice ages, giant glacial ice sheets were slowly moving south, melting and then receding back north. These glaciers carved out U shaped troughs through valleys causing them to deepen, a process known as glacial scouring. This cycle would happen several times due to variations in climate, the most recent occurrence happening about 20,000 years ago when ice covered most of New York. The weight and pressure from the continuous scouring essentially carved out giant valleys into the earth, and the ice melted for the last time about 10,000 years ago. The valleys filled with water and just like that, the Finger Lakes were born, and lucky for us, it doesn't look like there's another ice age in the forecast any time soon. I always like to get my bearings with a local when I travel, so I met my buddy Eric, a western New York native, at Watkins Glen state park, to learn a bit more about what makes the Finger Lakes such a great place call home.

- All right, well we made it to wine country, I guess. That's what's cool about this part of the world though, as part of the country is that they found a way to grow grapes here somehow.

- [Eric] Yeah, I think the perseverance and hard work and the collaborative spirit has made it all happen.

- [Vince] Sure, and you grew up here?

- I did, I did. I grew up about 20 minutes south of Watkins Glen.

- The summer time obviously I have to imagine the Lakes are the big attraction.

- Sure, sure. Between getting out on that boat or just enjoying the water.

- Water activities, fishing, all of that, but then you come in the winter, you can still see these parks are amazing and these are formed essentially by the glazier that came through here.

- Yeah, no absolutely. Talking about perseverance and just slow moving ice through the region that carved out all these valleys and created waterfalls and lakes and rivers.

- Yeah, and that's what's cool is you get these peppered waterfalls all throughout these 11 lakes, the Glen that we have, that we're walking through now and then obviously the lakes themselves which lend themselves to the wine making.

- The summer time, obviously it's lush and green and there's a lot of activity and a lot of people around and then you go into the fall and you have these vibrant colors to then, we get into winter and the ice of the waterfalls, to me, it's majestic all year round, except for when it's spring, that's mud season, maybe not so much.

- [Vince] What do people love so much about this place? You, you can back here, you chose to live here and obviously wine makers are drawn here, what's so special about this place?

- It's just laid back and there is a community spirit here amongst everybody and helping out when needed and it's that blue collar, salt of the earth type of people are right here. Just to go to a little brewery or a winery and there's live music and you just get an incredible amount of artists in the area and again, that creative spirit and that also goes into making the wine.

- People think of wine country and they think of places in California, this makes a completely different style of wine, it's a lot fun.

- Yeah, you're gonna get a lot of cool climate reds from German varietals, whether the Blaufränkisch Lemberger, you got Cabernet Franc's and then obviously the Riesling is what I think put the Finger Lakes on the map.

- He's right, Riesling is definitely the main story here, and the reason for our visit. But to understand how wine grapes found their way to New York, we need to understand a little wine history. Time for a quick wine story. You might not have known this, but in the 1850's, Europe's entire wine scene was almost completely wiped out. And even worse, it was kind of America's fault. In the mid 19th century, a group of botanists decided to experiment. They took American grape vines all the way to Europe, planted them, and watched to see how they'd perform. The American vines that they brought were not Vitis Vinifera, which is what makes 99% of the wine that we know and love to drink. The vines they brought were actually from the species that produces grape juice, jelly, and poor attempts at wine. Little did they know, their American vines had a hitchhiker on them, a microscopic wood louse or bug called Phylloxera, which would prove to be the arch enemy of all things wine. These little bugs suck the sap out of the roots of a vine, and simultaneously destroy the entire vine in the process, preventing it from absorbing water and nutrients. And from 1850 to 1870, these little hitchhiking pests spread all over France and Europe, killing 40% of French vines. French winemakers watched helplessly as their vines were devastated, and had no idea why. Hold my wine, it gets worse. The problem started spreading all across Europe. Businesses were lost, wages stagnated, and no one had a solution. The French government offered the equivalent of a million dollars to anyone who could find the answer. Turns out, to solve an American made problem, you needed an American made solution. French and American scientists eventually figured out that American vines were mostly resistant to phylloxera. But remember, these American vines produced poor grapes that can't really be used for wine, but in that lied the answer. Graft the European vines onto the American rootstock. A graft combines the root of one plant with the upper part of another. A transplant for plants if you will. This way, you have phylloxera resistant roots safely on the bottom, and high quality vitis vinifera grapes growing on top. Today, almost all of the world's vines are planted on American rootstock. A happy ending to an almost disastrous story of how American vines nearly killed, but ultimately saved the wine world. The knowledge of grafting vines that was gained during the phylloxera era has served the wine world well, and one of the best examples of that is right here in New York. While the wine industry is full of amazing people and stories, the tale of Doctor Konstatin Frank is one of my favorites. You see, the Finger Lakes is a wine region that almost didn't exist without the persistence of one man, who happens to be a bit of a local hero in this part of the world. So I met with Meaghan Frank, great granddaughter of Doctor Konstantin Frank, to hear more about his incredible story. This place, this is cool. This cellar is amazing.

- [Meaghan] Yeah, we're in a very historic stone cellar where we produce exclusively sparkling wine. So you can see the bottles stacked six rows back, literally thousands of bottles just resting here, waiting for the process to take hold and they still have many years before release, so really fun but yeah, I'd love to share with you the story of my great grandfather. So Konstantin actually immigrated here from Ukraine. He was a World War Two refugee. He earned a PhD in Viticulture, from the Polytechnic University of Odessa and his thesis was on growing vinifera, the European varieties in cold climates. Something that would perfectly set him up for what he would accomplish in the Finger Lakes. Konstantin arrived here, he was 52 years old, he didn't speak a word of English.

- He was 52 when we arrived?

- Yes.

- I don't know why I thought he was younger, he was 52?

- [Meghan] He was 52-

- [Vince] Yeah he lived a full life.

- He lived a full life, yeah. So at the age where many people would think of retiring, he started a whole new venture. Konstantin realized, okay, there is a booming wine industry here, but there's no vinifera, there's no Riesling, no Chardonnay, no Pinot Noir, where are those varieties?

- Yeah, the ones that were being grown here were what?

- They were Concur, Cataba, Niagra-

- Stuff that makes mediocre to poor wine-

- Sure, sure, sure, sure, yeah. More things we would associate with jams or jellies today and Konstantin was really unsettled by this and he was asking researchers why is this? And they said, oh it's too cold. And he said, that's not true because, in Russia, he would say your spit would freeze before it hit the ground. It was so cold in the winter that there's no way that that's the reason why.

- [Vince] Because he has seen vinifera grown in Russia.

- That's right.

- [Vince] And he's going, I've seen this done, there's a way to do it and everybody here's going, no you can't?

- Exactly, and he knew it wasn't too cold, but the problem that he faced in Russia resurfaced back and he thought, maybe it's phylloxera.

- So everybody essentially, he took that knowledge that he gained from battling phylloxera in Europe and he comes here and everybody's going, we can't grow vinifera because it's too cold and he's going, no, that's not the reason. It's phylloxera and I'm gonna show you, I'm gonna prove it to you.

- Exactly, and the technique that he used, which was common place in Europe, which was grafting American root stack with European vine like a puzzle piece. That was successful to avoiding phylloxera. So he purchased 100 acres of land and began planting every vinifera variety he could think of because he had to prove to everybody that it was possible.

- And essentially, I mean this region doesn't exist without him is the truth of it because nobody believed that you could do it. That's a very American dream story, fleas from World War Two Russia and I think you said Russian Revolution was a part of his life and comes here and starts this and sees it succeed through generations is about the coolest thing that could have happened.

- Ironically he was actually born on the 4th of July and he was really patriotic towards the end of his life and he would say all the time, you American's deserve only excellent, and he truly believed that. He wanted our region to succeed, he wanted his neighbors to succeed and he really created this revolution here.

- [Konstantin] Only America roots can save them from phylloxera.

- [Cameraman] You know what you sound like? you sound like a missionary.

- I am. I am and this is my duty as scientist and this is my duty as American patriot.

- We haven't talked Riesling on the show yet, so lets get up to speed before we start tasting. Riesling vines are cool with cold weather, which is a good thing, clearly. It's an aromatic grape varietal, which means the aromas tend to leap out of the glass, especially floral aromas like white flower, lily, and jasmine. Riesling is also similar to Pinot Noir, in the sense that it really takes on the ground that it comes from, and often has clean, crisp slate or mineral qualities. Depending on the ripeness of the grapes and amount of residual sugar in the wine, the other flavors range from tart citrus and green apple, to stone fruits and pears, to tropical fruits like mango and pineapple. But those are all fairly common white wine flavors, let's talk about what makes Riesling really fun, shall we? I've been saving the Riesling talk with you until you're old enough, and I think you're finally ready. You see, Riesling is one of every sommeliers favorite grapes for three reasons; versatility, pair-ability, and age-ability; those are all words right? Let's start with versatility. If your first thought is that Riesling is a sweet, sticky wine, well, we're gonna to turn that notion on its head. Yes, Riesling can be sweet. But it also can be done completely bone dry, or off-dry, which means a little sweet, or sparkling, or super sweet dessert style. You see, sweetness is a winemaker choice, it has nothing to do with the grape. More importantly, if a wine has enough acid, like good Rieslings do, the acid balances out the sugar and keeps the wine fresh, instead of cloying and syrupy. This means there's a style of Riesling for everybody. Okay, number two, pair-ability. Because Riesling has a crisp, super high acidity, it can pair with salty foods, fatty foods, and acidic foods. When a Riesling has sugar in it, add spicy foods and sweet foods to that list. That's almost all the foods! And number three, age-ability. Wines need two out of three elements to age, acid, sugar or tannin. Because of the sugar and acid content in Riesling, it's one of the few white wines that can age really, really well. Top wines can age 30 plus years. And with age comes tasting notes of beeswax, honey, ginger, dried fruits, hazelnut, and most importantly, gasoline. You heard me right. Diesel, petrol. I know it sounds crazy, but trust me, once you try it, you're gonna be looking for it in all your Rieslings. Alright, gameplan; we've got three lakes to see, three wineries to visit, one on each lake, and a bunch of wine to taste. We're starting on Keauka Lake to taste the legacy of Doctor Konstatin Frank.

- So Keauka's a really special lake. It's actually the exact middle Finger Lake.

- And why was this lake selected to plant?

- So Konstantin, when he moved here, he was really enticed with especially the soil types found here in Keauka because we have really rocky, acidic soils which is perfect for what he wanted. The story is that he picked up a handful of soil and said, good soil and that was all he needed-

- And that was. This was before you took it to a lab and get tested. You just had to, yeah this looks good to me.

- Exactly. So this is our Célèb, so this is 100% sparking Riesling made in the traditional method.

- [Vince] And what do you mean when you say, traditional method?

- Yeah, so same method as if we were in Champagne France, but since we're in the Finger Lakes, we call it traditional method. Essentially, every bottle goes through a secondary fermentation in this same bottle. So this same bottle that you purchase and consume, everything happens in here, which is super unique and interesting-

- [Vince] Which is where the bubbles happen?

- Exactly, so basically the carbon dioxide is trapped after the secondary fermentation and redissolves into the vine, and we like to age the wine with the leaves or the dead yeast cells, this wine for two years, but our other styles, up to 10 years and that's where you get the toasty, nutty-

- Sure, those characteristics we get with champagne.

- Exactly and then we basically, we have to get the sediment out of the bottle, so we riddle. The sediment is then in the neck, we freeze the neck to disgorge out the sediment and top with a little reserved wine.

- I always tell people it's amazing every bottle that's done in the champagne method is not a $300 bottle, because the amount of work and time it takes, two years at least, the year you're aging for some of your lowers, and then all that process that you have to do and a lot of it has to be done manually or, it's a lot of work.

- It is, yeah, and I appreciate you saying that 'cause it's certainly a labor of love.

- And the other thing too is, it tends to produce really fine bubbles. I always say Perrier versus Coca-Cola. Oh wow, so right on the nose, I get the soil right away.

- Mmhmm, nice Granny Smith Apple but you also get some baked apple as well, very citric.

- And I think you're bringing out a little bit of baked apple and more ripe character, 'cause I think there's a little residual sugar in this-

- There is.

- Yeah.

- So it's 3%, 30 grams per liter, so it really rounds out the acidity and we're talking very high acidity, 11 grams per liter, so that's crazy off the charts, so to balance it, that little bit of sweetness really helps.

- Minimal amount of residual sugar to round out the acidity, but it's not sweet.

- Exactly.

- And that's not to say you couldn't make it sweet, there are a lot of sweet wines. So the versatility of Riesling is one of it's best qualities.

- I totally agree, and that's what you certainly find in the Finger Lakes, there's a multitude of different styles, ranging from bone dry to dessert sweet ice wine, Botrytis wines, and then everything in the middle, and sparking wine.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah so next we have a Eugenia. So this is my great grandmothers, so wine paying tribute to her, so Konstantine's wife. So one of the oldest blocks of Riesling in America. Again, very slatey, rocky soil, so you get a very mineral focus with this wine. It's our driest Riesling that we produce. Very in line with her personality. She lived through a lot. The Russian Revolution, World War wars.

- [Vince] Oh cool nose on this.

- Yes.

- Yes, this is poppy. Yeah lots of grapefruit, grapefruit peel. And you know what I get on the palette is a really nice floral component. I don't know if it's white flowers or violets, but really, really nice.

- Sure.

- And bone dry.

- Bone dry.

- Completely bone dry.

- Electric acidity.

- Yeah, you know what Riesling does though, more than I think a lot of other grapes is the acidity, it is high, but it's not a sour acidity. It integrates really well into the wine, I think better than other grapes.

- Agreed, yeah and that's a real hallmark to the variety and I think that's why sounds and people that try to absolutely love Riesling, people tattoo Riesling on their arm, they love it so much. So it really is an exciting variety for sure.

- This has been such a fun intro to the Finger Lakes and learning about your great grandfathers story and how he's helped turn this into what it is today, so thank you so much for having me.

- Thank you Vince, come back soon. Cheers.

- [Vince] Before we left Keuka Lake, a quick pit stop for some unfinished business. If you remember from our Oregon episode, I tried to catch a fish and failed. I've been wanting to redeem myself ever since. Maybe it was a classic case of wrong place, wrong time. My friend Jon seemed to think so, so instead of summer, winter. Instead of a boat, how about a mile out on a frozen lake?

- [Jon] Yeah so last winter, this lake didn't freeze, it's gotta be consistently for a week in the teens and then wind, that also helps the formation of the ice-

- [Vince] Right, to freeze over. Does snow help?

- [Jon] No actually, snow insulates the ice.

- [Vince] So you want cold and no snow and windy?

- [Jon] Yes.

- [Vince] And how thick is it about below us?

- [Jon] Right now it's about 4-5 inches.

- [Vince] And obviously it's fine, but it's a little scary, it's not that much.

- In the winter yeah, the water is obviously cold. Different fish that you target like colder water. So right now we're targeting perch and blue gill, those are a cold water fish, they like cold water. A lot of people in New York that hate it here 'cause it gets cold. The changing of seasons is what really, I love around this area.

- [Vince] Yeah.

- [Jon] So if we get lucky, sometimes we'll, there's an airport right up here, there's a snow plane that comes up and lands out here.

- [Vince] On the ice?

- [Jon] Yeah, it's pretty cool.

- Oh jeez. I cannot believe how many people are out here.

- Yeah. Yeah, there's usually more.

- [Vince] This is cool.

- [Jon] Yeah, it's wild.

- [Vince] It's wild dude to be on the lake like this, absolutely wild. Once we were far enough out, Jon got to work. He told me on clear days you could actually see the fish below the ice. But today, our best bet was just to pick a spot and go for it. We drilled our whole in the ice, set up camp, and dropped in our line, which gave me some time to chat with Jon.

- So most areas around here, they're small towns, small villages, no big cities are out here so most people around here grew up in a small town and that's nice because with all the wineries, all the wineries know each other and they're always helping each other out. All these foreign people come here, they get to experience our wine. Everyone makes bonds and friendships with everybody here.

- I hear that so much in so many of these wine quote unquote communities. It's exactly that, it's a community and they help each other and they can rely on each other for both resources and knowledge and whatever they might be.

- It's not so much a competition, it's more of the community coming together and it's a reason why, I think, why our wine here's so good.

- [Vince] After a few hours, I had to come to grips with the fact that my curse is yet to be lifted and once again, I was gonna leave empty handed. You can blame me, because any time I try and film a fish on this show, they seem to scare off.

- They can hear us. Usually when there's fish associated with wine its uh... it's a nice meal.

- But I appreciate you taking us out either way, this is a blast and this is so unique, I've never done anything like this, I've definitely never been out this far on ice, so this is awesome, thank you so much.

- You're welcome man.

- Cheers.

- Absolutely.

- Time for more tastings and lake number two, Seneca Lake, which has more wineries than any of the other lakes. It's also the deepest and has a lot of the region's hotels and restaurants. Seneca lake is also distinct enough to warrant its own AVA designation. I'm heading to Fox Run Vineyards, to meet with Scott, who's a bit of an expert on the region's lakes and soils.

- [Scott] From Rochester but I learned the wine business in California and I came back to visit family in 1984, decided to go wine tasting, 'cause I wanted to see what was going on here, ended up at Wagner and I tasted their 1982 Chardonnay and it was like an epiphany. I just went, oh my God.

- That was it.

- I didn't know you could make wine like this. And it was refreshing, crisp, it was so food friendly. What it told me is that, I can make wine here and I can make that style of wine. Seneca Lake is one of the deepest lakes in the continental United States and the last time it froze was 1912. So it acts in the winter time like a 40 degree heater. Grapevines can withstand fairly extreme temperatures, Riesling can withstand minus 12.

- Okay.

- Well if it wasn't for the lakes, we might see minus 20. Then you wouldn't be able to grow the grapes here.

- Obviously Riesling, Pinot Noir, both grapes that take on the soil character very well, tell me about the soil, what is a typical soil here in the Finger Lakes?

- Well, there's pretty much not a typical soil in the Finger Lakes because it turned out that 12,000 years ago, we had the shore line of Lake Dana on our property. So you can see up by those trees, is the shore line of Lake Dana and that's sandy loam soil, some schist in there, and then, you can see those trees right over there, that's an old stream that's been here for 12,000 years. Well, that stream deposited all this sand down here which they call a Hanging Delta. That is eight feet of sand with a very cool layer of clay that's pink, and it's fascinating to look at. And then right in here, which you can't see, this is all shale. What is involved is how much water you get.

- Drainage, sure.

- Drainage, how much sunlight you get. There's all these different factors that come into this.

- [Vince] With my primer on soil complete, we head inside to taste, starting with the Fox Run's Silvan Riesling.

- French term for in the woods, this is unusual wine because it's barrel fermented. You get the palette feel that we're looking for so it makes it a little more elegant, but you still retain that incredible fruit character.

- Very good yeah, Riesling is typically not done barrel, it's almost like they've always done stainless, so you find a way to get some of that mouth feel without sacrificing the freshness. What are the typical tasting notes you usually tell people when they're talking about this wine?

- Our philosophy is, we want you to talk about it.

- All right, so I'll go first then. I love that 'cause you do tend to fall into a, oh yeah, I smell that 'cause you told me to smell that, or I taste that 'cause you tell me to taste it. And I know this is normally something we get from a little bit of age and even though this is a young wine, I do get a little bit of the petrol on this nose, for sure, which means as it develops, it's gonna be even more enhanced, which I love.

- And that is fairly typical of good Finger Lakes Rieslings, you're gonna see that petrol quality in it as you do in Germany. Nobody really understands where it comes from, and why our Rieslings have more of it than California does, or than Alsace.

- Got spiced green herb or if it's maybe ginger or something that effect.

- And this is where I have a hard time 'cause I'm like oh, ah, ah.

- I know and I'm kinda get an orange to a little bit, maybe orange blossom or-

- Yeah, orange peel, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, for sure. Very cool, beautiful wine.

- Another one, semi dry. Now this is a house style, this is something we've been making from day one. It's about 2%, 2.1% residual sugar. This is wonderful with Thai food, Indian curry, oh my God. Semi dry Riesling's from the Finger Lakes, from the good producers, age forever. So it should be crisp and refreshing, no matter how sweet it is. If the balance is right, it'll always be refreshing.

- So explain to me how you decide when you go into a cellar, how you decide how sweet you're gonna make, how much sugar you're gonna leave in wine?

- We know, in this particular wine, we've been doing it for almost 30 years and so we know approximately when to stop the fermentation.

- And when you stop the fermentation, you use filtration, or how do you stop the-

- No, turn the jackets on, chill 'em down to 30 degrees and that stops fermentation.

- Oh, so you bring it really cold and the yeast cannot eat.

- It just don't function, yeah.

- Gotcha.

- And then you filter it.

- And then you filter it, very good. We always talk about ripeness in the grapes when we talk about fruit character and what influences it, but you actually get the perception of riper fruit with sugar too. The residual sugar brings it a little more into the ripe land.

- Yep, the tropical, there's a lot of peach and apricot flavors in it.

- Yeah, beautiful stone fruit land.

- So when I left California, I was told I'll never make a red wine again. This is Cabernet Franc, which we think is a nice, cool climate red. They are much lighter in alcohol, they're not the big, ripe alcoholic tannic wines, but to me, they're a lot more fruit friendly.

- Cab Franc, to an extent, can be warm, I've seen it done warm, I prefer this style, 100%. Tasting this right away, Cabernet Franc a lot of the time, you get a rosiness in the floral component, which is really nice and I definitely get another quintessential, what I look for in Cab Franc, I get a cinnamon on the finish, which is really, really lovely. Sour cherry, red fruit land and the other thing I like to do with Cab Franc a lot of the times is chill it down a bit. It's great if you're in summer and you wanna do a red as opposed to a white, you can do a chilled Cab Franc and it works really well. This is our first red I think we've tasted on this trip and it's absolutely stunning.

- People come in and say here, you wanna try a red? Ah no, New York reds suck. And you go well, no, and then the people taste it and go, oh wow.

- Well cheers to that, cheers to new people. Thank you for having us-

- All right, it was wonderful having you come.

- [Vince] Thank you. Our last stop is Cayuga Lake; the longest of the lakes and like Seneca Lake, also has its own AVA. Before our last tasting, I met with Chuck to learn more about his winery, Sheldrake Point, and help him with a bit of outdoors work.

- [Chuck] The property itself has a long history that starts actually with the Cayuga Indians, part of the Algonquin nation.

- [Vince] Hence the name of the lake.

- Yes, that's right. We continue to find native American artifacts in the vineyard. In the 1800's, a large hotel was built adjacent to where we are now. This then became an orchard and dairy farm for most of the 20th century. We came on board in 1987 and it was an abandoned piece of acreage. We dug soil pits to try and understand the capacity of the land to be a host to vinifera wine grapes and this has got some wonderful drainage profiles. These soils are all glacial, as are most of the soils throughout the region. Lots of shales, limestones, lenses of clay and gravel. So we have these two gorges and we're actually gonna follow a little path right here along the way.

- [Vince] Oh look at that. That is really flowing. We've gotten a lot of waterfalls, but half of the have been-

- [Chuck] Pretty iced up.

- [Vince] Yeah.

- We're just gonna tap some trees right here.

- [Vince] Cool.

- So what we're gonna do is set out a few maple buckets. This is the season when maple sugar sap begins to run.

- [Vince] In the winter?

- Well it's in late winter. So in later winter, the nighttime temperatures are dropping down below freezing, but the daytime temperatures are starting to rise up into the 40's, even the 50's. We're gonna tap these trees on the south side, that's the side at which warmth occurs and the sap is being pulled up outta the roots. Essentially it's a two way flow. As the weather warms up in the day, the sap is pulled up from the roots and in the evening as the temperatures cool, the sap retreats and heads back down and we're catching that sap on the way back down. We're gonna, each year we have about 100 buckets that we set up in these two sugar bushes that we have adjacent to the vineyard and we'll pull off about 13 to 1500 gallons of maple sap, divide by 40 and that's the number of gallons of maple syrup we will end up with. It's a 40 to 1 ratio when we evaporate in the sugar house, sap down to pure maple syrup. Mother Nature doing it again.

- [Vince] And people have no idea how much work it takes to get a little bit of syrup for your pancakes. I mean, that's crazy. And they'll fill up how quickly?

- When the sap is really running, they can fill up a two and half gallon bucket can fill up in 24 hours.

- [Vince] With the last of our buckets secure for the time being, we head inside for a bit more warmth and to taste some wines. So what do we have?

- Well we have a selection of couple of semi dry Rieslings, one an aged Riesling from 2010 and another from 2017 which was a, we call it Archival Riesling.

- And so this is the model of, this is the younger wine. This is the one that we can have now no problem.

- That's right, it's a current release. Lot of citrus on the nose, little bit of tangerine.

- Tangerine for sure.

- Yep, you know the magic in Riesling is crisp acidity. My mouth is watering as it should be.

- Okay, so we have the young version here and now we get to try the grandad. What do you need in a Riesling for it to age well?

- What we discovered from a broad standpoint is that a little bit, an extra residual sugar, a hair over 1% coupled with a strong acidity really provides the structure for a Riesling to age well.

- And so you mentioned to, you haven't open a 2010 for quite some time, so this is gonna be fun for both of us.

- I have not.

- Oh my goodness, will you look at the color.

- Whites gain color as they age and that's to be expected.

- Oh man.

- So the fruit characteristics shift to one of, there's an herbaious quality, there's some cloves, honey in there.

- I get a lot of, when you say honey, I mean beeswax, for sure.

- It's a wonderful surprise to open this bottle with you without having practiced. And to have it be-

- Yeah, it's all genuine.

- What's interesting to me about this wine 10 years in is that it does not have some of the petrol-

- I noticed that too.

- Characteristics that I was, frankly, expecting.

- Even without that, like you said, that petrol note, that luscious honey rich, almost like syrupy fruit character, whilst still retaining the freshness. I can't, I'm so happy right now. I love old Riesling more than anything.

- So next up on our game card and talking with you before your visit, you were interested in our Gamay Noir.

- Gamay is one of my favorite grapes just generally and it's obviously the grape of Beaujolais, but outside the Beaujolais, it's only in these little pockets. Always drinks, if you bring it to a blind tasting, it always is one of the favorites of the whole tasting.

- It surprises people, wonderfully food friendly. The nice thing about Gamay, it's a red that has, to me has wonderfully fruity or jammy kind of qualities to it. But if you look at that, it's a light bodied red. If you wanna enjoy wine with food, those red wines of a lighter character are really the ones to enjoy with-

- 100%, I can only do so much with a big, rich Merlot, a big rich Shiraz. Unless I'm having a big rich meal, it doesn't work. This, like you said, look at the color, it's almost translucent, you get that bright cherry pop, Jolly Rancher color. I always say it's the bubblegum character, strawberry bubblegum or cherry bubblegum, but then you put down the palette and it's still dry and it still has that sip.

- Yep, we hate guys like you that use the phrase bubblegum about our wines, but that's okay.

- I know, I use PC terms for wine description. But I think it's what I get.

- It's actually true.

- Oh this is delicious.

- Ice wine is, somebody stumbled on it in Germany in the late 1800's because they harvested grapes after a cold, cold night and discovered to their surprise that the juice that was being pressed off was quite concentrated. Most years, we will set aside blocks, or rows, of Riesling and we won't pick them during the regular harvest. The wine grapes have to be harvested between 12 degrees and 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Between 12 and 18 degrees, the water in the berry freezes as ice and doesn't end up in the wine. The specific gravity of very sweet, sweet liquid has a lower freezing temperature.

- [Vince] Ohh.

- So it doesn't freeze and that is the liquid that we press off. Ice wine harvests are fun. You pick about three tons-

- That's a word for it. 'Cause you gotta get up at three in the morning and do a-

- We arrive here at five, it's dark, everybody has a head lamp on and we trundle up into the vineyard. There's only one, maybe two drops of this concentrated, very, very sweet Riesling juice per berry. It's not a fortified wine, like some other dessert wine. It is enjoyed as a dessert wine, it's very sweet. It's a real delicacy.

- Yeah, let's do it and obviously this is a reason too, you have it in these small bottles, one, it is sweet, you don't need a lot of it per serving, number two, how challenging and expensive it is if you're getting a drop or two of juice per berry, you just can't make full bottles. Oh my goodness, on the nose.

- It's a flavor bomb, it really is.

- This is where we're starting to venture into tropical fruit land. I start to get some of those papaya notes, and those mango flavors, pineapple, coach the mouth, really beautiful, really rich, really dense. And when people say, oh Riesling is sweet, or just generally when they talk about wine and sugar and sweetness and they describe wine as sweet, this is a sweet wine and to describe the other wines that we're having with the same stroke as sweet, it doesn't leave differentiation which is why my big thing is to understand it, these wines are semi dry, off dry, whereas this is when you say you want a sweet wine, this is what that means. Such a treat, you don't get to have these wines often 'cause they are just challenging to make, they're challenging to find, so thank you so much for sharing this with me.

- Well, enjoy.

- Cheers.

- Welcome to the V is for Vino Nerd Lab. We take complicated wine topics and make 'em simple. Today, we're talking about sugar.

- [Voiceover] Sugar.

- Sugar's one of the five essential components of wine and it is by far the most misunderstood. I've been in the industry a long time and we all tend to confuse sugar and sweetness with other things. We'll say, this wine is too sweet, or what wine's on your menu are not sweet? Here's the deal. 95% of wines made on the planet, they're not sweet at all. Though a lot of us are mistakenly describing them as such. So what is sweetness? Well, it's actually pretty simple. It is literal sugar in your wine and it can be measured, usually in grams per liter. Wines fall into one of three categories. First, dry, which means little to no sugar, which is almost every wine ever made. Second is off-dry, which means a little sugar. Wines made off-dry include Lambrusco, Riesling and Chenin Blanc. Then there are sweet wines which means a significant amount of sugar. Think Sauternes from Bordeaux, Port and Madeira from Portugal or Ice Wine from Germany. Now, before we go any further know this, sweetness is a winemaker choice. A winemaker can make any wine with any grape sweet, off-dry or dry. And there's many ways to do this, most of 'em involve stopping the yeast from eating and converting all of the grape sugar into alcohol, leaving behind residual sugar, or RS. They aren't adding sugar to the wine, it's left over wine from the grapes. Wine's that typically lend themself to RS have a high acid content, as sugar balances nicely with acid. Without acid, wines with sugar taste syrupy and thick. Think about if you've ever left out a soda and you get the sugar but no bubbles. It's gross and viscous in your mouth. So which wines are made dry? Well, pretty much all the rest. Rose, Pinot Noir, Champagne, Chardonnay, Cabernet. You get the picture. Most of the wines that we drink regularly are made dry 99.9% of the time. I know what you're thinking, but Vince, I feel like I've had sweet versions of these wines. Usually people feel this way because sweetness is being mistaken for other wine characteristics. So to clear the air once and for all, let's talk about what sweetness is not. Number one, as we mentioned, sweetness is not a grape characteristic, but a winemaker choice. Yes, all grapes start off sweet, but it's up to the winemaker if the final wine will be. Number two, sweetness is not the same as fruitiness, oak influence or ripeness, and this is probably the biggest point of confusion, because a lot of the flavors and aromas we associate with wines are things we normally associate with sweet foods. We might say, oh, this Pinot Noir takes like strawberries, or this Cabernet Sauvignon smells like chocolate. But these are flavor characteristics that come from the wine making and the fermentation. They don't have anything to do with how much sugar is in the wine. It's kinda similar to how some dark chocolate still tastes like chocolate but has almost no sugar in it. And number three, sweetness is not related to tannic. Now tannins are found in bold red wines and they dry your mouth out. So I get why you would be tempted to call these wines dry and wines that don't do that, sweet. But once again, this in fact has nothing to do with the sugar content in the wine. You wouldn't call the opposite of a tannic wine, a sweet wine, it's just a wine without tannic. Cabernet Sauvignon tends to be tannic, while Pinot Noir is not. But neither wine is typically made sweet, they're both almost always made dry, no sugar. Which brings me to my last point, how do we apply this knowledge to get the wines we want? Well instead of describing wines in terms of sweetness, we can use terms like acid driven, lean, crisp, mineral driven and tannic on one side of the spectrum and fruit forward, oaked, rich and ripe on the other side, for instance, I'd like a rich, oaked, fruit forward Chardonnay or I'd like a lean, acid driven Chardonnay. I hope this clarified a bit about sugar and as always, keep geeking out. One of my favorite parts of the Finger Lakes is how easy it is to tuck away in a small, local joint, with a glass of wine and watch the snow fall peacefully outside. Chef Orlando couldn't agree more, which is exactly why he bought Graft, Wine and Cider Bar a few years back. He runs the entire kitchen himself, which means one, he works his face off and two, you know you're always getting the executive chef personally preparing your food. That's hard to beat. Let's pop some bubbles. This place is really cool and I when I was talking to you about it, this is all you, right? You're a one man band in the kitchen.

- [Orlando] Sort of all me.

- Yeah, you got some staff but as far as the kitchen goes, right?

- [Orlando] Yeah-

- And there we go.

- The kitchen is definitely my little baby, I run it, I'm all by myself back there.

- Why did you decide to make this something that was manageable basically on your own in the kitchen?

- So every place I worked at has always been a mass production and I decided when I opened my own place, I just wanna have a little less stress, less employees, something where I can manage it myself and have fun and switch the menu whenever the heck I wanted and that's what I do. So if one day I don't have something, I 86 it and switch it up for the next day.

- Sure and it's not a big deal and like you said, if you have an idea you wanna play with that day, so be it.

- So be it, we just switch it up. That's the good thing about being small.

- And the other thing that's cool is that if you come in here as a guest, you know that the person cooking your food is not a hired gun, it's you.

- [Orlando] It's just me.

- Yeah, you're getting the man, the myth, the legend. Back in the kitchen. Well cheers brother, I appreciate you having us on.

- Thank you for inviting.

- So what's the first course here, what are we doing?

- [Orlando] So we're doing oysters, these are Fisher Island oysters. Obviously they're grown in the ocean, they're farm raised but they still have that sweetness to it and it's not overly salty.

- All right, let me try, what's your oyster philosophy, do you have 'em straight, do you put stuff on 'em? What do you think?

- Personally, sometimes I just squeeze a little lemon and have 'em straight, but most of the time I just have it straight, but I just like the natural flavor. I think it's just all in there.

- And I've heard that from purists they say, all the Tabasco and all the stuff, I don't know how that got started, but you're supposed to have it so you can taste the flavors. What do they say, a brave man on a first ate an oysters? Or a smart one. And you mentioned briney, beautiful brininess to it that's just great, it was clean. We leave all the, what is the juice called? Is there a name for it? Just like that juice that you get when you open it, you leave all that in there because that's where a lot of the flavor is.

- Yeah.

- Some people will dump that.

- Honestly, I don't know the name of it.

- I think it does have an official name, I just can't remember what it is.

- But definitely it's basically the ocean in there, so why take it out?

- [Vince] There's a reason sparkling wine and oysters are often served together. The creamy, plump oysters contrast well with our bubbly, high acid Konstantin Frank sparkler. Plus, the acid cleanses the palette so each new oyster tastes just as good as the first one. Very cool, well cheers man. Well I'm excited, you wanna go try some of these dishes?

- Yeah.

- All right. All right, since you have such a comfortable kitchen, I'm gonna be out here and I'm gonna look in from this window. So what are we cookin'?

- So today, we're gonna make mussels. We're gonna do a curried mussel today. So what we're gonna start off with is a little garlic.

- [Vince] All right, so you're throwing the mussels in just raw, so you have the oil, garlic and then the mussels right in.

- Mussels right in, then we're gonna add a little wine to it. The reason for the wine is just to give it a little bit of flavor, but also to help steam it open.

- Oh those open really quick, here we go, we're already, they're moving. It smells so good, I can't even tell ya. So what did you add, you just added, what is it, cream?

- So there's cream and then there's, it's already a pre-mix of the cream and curry in there.

- Okay cool. Now if I was making it at home, I could just go get maybe like a curry paste, right?

- Just curry, yep, just get a red curry paste, that's all.

- I love that you're doing this dish too because we're doing Riesling Riesling and Thai food's one of those classic combinations and so by bringing that curry in, you're bringing in that little bit of influence to it, which is so cool. Very good, you've just toasted your ciabatta or baguette or what is that?

- [Orlando] Baguette. So we're just gonna do a light little toast on the baguette.

- You gotta have some fresh, crusty bread with mussels.

- Now we're just gonna add a little cilantro, give it that fresh little herbal taste. All right, here you go.

- That's it. I'm gonna go in. The whole trick is once you get one mussel out then you have a built in fork. Oh man, it's perfect, it's perfect. I honestly am just blown away by how simple it is, and I love the addition of the curry. And you're right, it's just a little bit of heat and with this off-dry wine, it's absolutely great. Our semi dry Riesling from Fox Run is the way to go with this dish. The acid cuts through the fat of the cream sauce, while the sugar balances the little bit of spice from the curry. Plus, Riesling and Thai food is a classic pairing.

- So the next course we're gonna do is duck.

- [Vince] Duck breast, right?

- [Orlando] Duck breast, yeah. Duck is one of my favorite dishes.

- [Vince] I love good duck.

- So this duck, what we did is, it has a little dry rub on it. So it has fennel, some lime, some orange, some cumin, some coriander, some black peppercorn. So it's all browned down.

- [Vince] All these kinda warming spices.

- So what we're doing right now is simmering the duck and then we also got polenta. So it's a rosemary polenta. There's cream in there, there's rosemary, salt and pepper, that's pretty much it. So you'll see we start getting the nice-

- [Vince] Look at the criss cross, beautiful too.

- Nice sear off it. At this point what we will do is pop it in the oven and finish it in there.

- Oh so you're gonna leave it skin side down?

- Skin side down, will get crispy on the polenta and the crisp on the duck. While that's in there, we'll start with just a basic, we're gonna steam broccoli today.

- Yeah this is good to know about the duck and how to cook it. You're cooking it almost the majority is on the skin.

- On the skin, yeah. And that's where you get the super crisp skin on it.

- How do you manage it when it's a busy night and it's just you back here?

- Honestly, it's a little easier by myself.

- Yeah you just, you know everything that's happening, sure.

- [Orlando] If there's a mistake, I can only blame one person. Now we're just gonna slice it.

- I like when the chef does the work for me, slicing for me.

- This is a quince chutney that I made and over here what we have is a Gastrique. So Gastrique is just, this one has red wine, vinegar and sugar and just reduce it down.

- And there it is. How beautiful. Cool, let's try it out, I'm gonna try this side, gonna get the skin. Wow. The spice blend in general, you get this really cool warming effect, and then when you combine it with the little bit of sugar that you get from the chutney, it's one of the best polenta's I've ever had. This is a dish for our aged Sheldrake Point Riesling. First off, you always want to go from young wine to older wine in your course progression. Second, the sweetness from the gastique and the chutney pairs with the sugar in the wine. And third, the contrast of the spiced duck with the honeyed Riesling makes each bite more interesting than the last. This is called a what?

- A Russian honey cake.

- [Vince] A Russian honey cake. Okay, I've never even heard of what this is.

- Multiple layers of cake and then it has a dulce de leche topping on it. So in between each layers, there's dulce de leche and it has burnt honey, you burn the honey to make it.

- [Vince] In the dough you're saying?

- [Orlando] Yeah, well it's in the dough and it's in the frosting-

- It's in the frosting too and I like that it's so, it's super thin each layer, almost like a pancake, I don't know how to say-

- [Orlando] Sort of, yeah.

- [Vince] All right cool. Kinda reminds you of the cake version of a Napoleon.

- [Orlando] Yeah, it does.

- Oh man. It is really good. The honey, the burnt honey, definitely makes that dish.

- Yeah the burnt honey, it has a little tang and a little smoke almost to the back of it. Your wine always needs to be sweeter than your food, and our Sheldrake point ice wine checks that box. And the honeyed, lucious character of the wine matches the honey in the cake. Chef, thank you so much, this is such a great cap to my Finger Lakes experience. So cheers to you. We finished our wines, threw on our hats and boots and made the trek to one last destination, Taughannock Falls. These falls, like the lakes and gorges that are peppered throughout the area, were formed from the massive glaciers receding all those 10,000 years ago, about the same time humans were figuring out how to cultivate crops. Here in the Finger Lakes, I felt that resilient atmosphere everywhere, surrounded by history, persevering wine grapes, and warm, hard working people. No matter what I was doing, a fish fry with friends, a day out in the vineyards, or an afternoon at a waterfall, the Finger Lakes reminded me that regardless of what Mother Nature has in store for us, humans adapt, grow, and thrive. I hope you enjoyed the Finger Lakes and we'll see you next time on V is for Vino. ♪ Upbeat music ♪ It's like National Geographic out here.

- Cool?