Ithaca has a college town vibe, with restaurants and bars that are filled with students at night. There are several wonderful towns in the region, but your best bet is to make Ithaca, Watkins Glen, or Geneva your home base. If time is tight, focus on Keuka and Seneca, where the best wine is being produced. A better move is to tackle one lake at a time. ![]() Visiting all three in a day would be quite the undertaking, even though they sit side by side. There are 11 lakes in the Finger Lakes region, but wine production is focused in only three of them: Keuka Lake, where Frank built his winery Cayuga Lake, where Ithaca and Cornell sit at the southern tip and Seneca Lake, the largest lake in the Finger Lakes system and the one that’s now widely considered by winemakers to have the region’s best terroir. Konstantin Frank is credited with putting the Finger Lakes on the global winemaking map. He knew that those varieties were the perfect fit for the climate and warm, short summer. Frank figured that the lake effect - wherein a body of water retains summer heat year-round, warming the surrounding earth even in the winter - would allow for the planting of certain European varieties, including Riesling. They produced drinkable table wine, but nothing worth international attention. They, too, were cold, but grapes like Riesling had thrived.Īt the time, the Finger Lakes region was primarily growing American grape varieties, such as Concord and Catawba. When Frank came to the region to work at Cornell’s Geneva Experiment Station in the 1950s, he saw some similarities among New York’s landscape and the Eastern European regions where he had previously worked. The lakes were a result of their fingers’ impression on the soil. The glacial Finger Lakes region takes its name from early Iroquois mapmakers who, when examining 11 thin and very long lakes in the Southern Region of New York, felt they resembled two hands that had been placed on the earth. The area’s signature wine, combined with a burgeoning food and craft beer scene, makes now the perfect time to visit. Frank’s commitment to the grape, and the region’s wide-scale adoption of its cultivation, has turned the Finger Lakes into one of the greatest Riesling regions of the world. ![]() ![]() Konstantin Frank established his eponymous winery and began growing Riesling in Hammondsport, N.Y. The area didn’t exist as a winemaking destination until the 1960s, when Dr. While the North Fork of Long Island may receive more attention, due to the region’s proximity to NYC, the Finger Lakes consistently produces world-class wine. Located five hours outside New York City, in the Southern Tier region of New York State, sits the most exciting wine region on the East Coast, the Finger Lakes.
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