Wine Tasting

On the way back from Fallbright, Jaime and I stopped at a two wineries to do some wine tasting. Neither of us had been to either of the wineries before. The first place we stopped at was Rooster Hill winery, on the eastern shore of Keuka. The wines got mixed reviews from us. My favorite of the bunch was a Traminette. Apparently Jaime has a policy about buying at least one bottle of wine from each winery that we stop and taste at, so we got a bottle of that. I'd heard of that grape, but didn't know much about it. Turns out to be a hybrid of Gewurztraminer and a French-American hybrid grape, Joannes Seyve 23.416. The wiki page on it says that it tastes like Gewurz, but has better cold tolerance. I don't know about the cold tolerance, but it did taste like a yummy Gewurtz. The wiki page also says it has good yields of 12-22lbs per vine. For most wine grapes you need 12-16lbs of grapes to produce a gallon of juice. Each gallon will produce around 5 bottles of wine. So apparently a happy grape vine will produce 4-9 bottles of wine. Good to know!

The other place we stopped was Red Tail Ridge winery on the western shore of Seneca, just south of Geneva. We weren't too impressed by the wines here. The only one that we both enjoyed was the semi-dry riesling, so we got a bottle of that.

One overly general stereotype that I've formed recently is that most of the white wines produced in the finger lakes have more body and flavor than the same grapes grown out west. Conversely, the reds from California and Oregon seem to have much more flavor than the same grapes grown in the finger lakes. For the most part this stereotype has served me well, though there are exceptions. One of these exceptions was the estate grown pino noir at Red Tail Ridge. The description speaks of "outspoken cherry and red raspberry" with "underlying earthy notes, smoke, coffee, and cocoa." I'm pretty sure the cherries and raspberries in my sample got burnt because all I could taste was strong smoke and maybe very darkly roasted coffee if I used my imagination. Full of flavor...yes. Good....no. Also, there was a rather strongly flavored Lemberger wine there, but it is not estate grown, and when I googled the Martini Family Vineyard, Sonoma, CA was what popped up.

I'd always wanted to know how wine grapes tasted compared to the grapes you'd buy in the grocery store. Red Tail Ridge has a driveway that is lined with grape vines that were chock full of grapes that were nearing maturity. Too good to pass up. I stayed in the getaway vehicle with the engine running while Jaime grabbed a handful of grapes.

We got a few chardonnay grapes and a few red grapes (pino noir maybe?). As we sped away and the sound of sirens faded into the distance, we sampled our plundered goods. Not bad, actually. They had big seeds and the skins were very tough, but the juice I was able to get out of them was pretty good. I'd venture to say a better tasting snack than grocery store grapes. Just as sweet with a different flavor. I was expecting to get a strong chardonnay and pino noir taste, but it was rather subtle.