Vineyards

Big, juicy, and bountiful: a sneak peek at the 2021 harvest in upstate New York (photos)


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Remember last summer, when it seemed to be raining everyday?

A booster can be found now in the vineyards of the Finger Lakes and other wine regions of upstate New York, where a hot, humid summer led to a grape harvest full of large, juicy berries.

And there are many.

This represents a change from the past few years in the Finger Lakes. The size of the harvest, which insiders of the vineyard and cellar call “yield”, is increasing for the first time in several years.

“I think we were seeing a 20 or 30 percent increase in yield,” said Dave Pittard, who, along with his wife Melissa, owns the Buttonwood Grove Winery and Six eighty cellars along Highway 89 on the west shore of Cayuga Lake. “It makes the harvest season busy. And we haven’t finished yet.

“I call it a year of recovery,” said Tina Hazlitt of Sawmill Creek Vineyards, a winemaker on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake. Yields have declined in recent years since devastating floods hit the region in 2017, she said.

“So we had some flooding which resulted in poor yields, and this year we have recovered – but with a lot of rain,” Hazlitt said. “It’s the life of a winegrower. My motto is “We are just trying to keep our heads above water this season”. “

One of the reasons for the higher yields this year is that there has been little frost damage to the vines in winter and spring this year, said Tim martinson, a senior extension associate at Cornell University who specializes in vineyard research and education. He also coordinates Veraison at Harvest, a weekly report on the state of the harvest in New York State (veraison in the term used for the late summer period when the grapes change color to signal that they are starting to ripen).

But summer rains have contributed to the larger size of many grapes, which vineyard insiders often refer to as “berries” or “fruits,” he said.

“There was a lot of humidity this year which resulted in the berries being a bit bigger on average,” Martinson said. “This is especially true for Concords, Catawbas and Niagaras,” he said, referring to the grape varieties native to the region. “These were huge. “

Still, Hazlitt calls this year’s reds “gorgeous,” while the whites turned out to be what she called “variable” (some good and some not so good.)

On the red side, she highlighted a grape variety called Syrah, originally from France but now planted around the world.

“The Syrah we just picked is spectacular,” Hazlitt said. His vineyard sent half of the Syrah harvest to the neighbor Hector Wine Company, run by her son, and half at Billsboro Vineyard near Geneva. “We delivered them to Billsboro and Vinny (Billsboro owner and winemaker Aliperti) was just smiling when he saw them.”

Unlike winemakers, winemakers tend not to care too much about volume or size – they focus on the sugar content and acid levels they use to make the wines they desire.

“A winemaker should never say it’s a bad vintage,” said Ian Barry, winemaker at Six Eighty Cellars, which used to be called Toro Run Winery before the Pittards bought it in 2020. “You take what that is. you have and do what you can with it. “

This is why the owner of the estate, Dave Pittard, rejects the “old saying” that high yields lead to poor quality.

“We can make really good wines even when we have a lot of grapes to work with,” he said. “If we do it right, it just means more good wine. “

The Finger Lakes, meanwhile, continues to receive rave reviews from wine critics, as in a recent article by famous oenologist James Suckling.

“On a cool late summer day in New York’s Finger Lakes wine country, you are more than anything struck by the light: brilliant, renewed and sublime,” wrote Suckling, former editor of Wine Spectator. “It’s all the more beautiful refracted through the prism of local wines. Whether it’s pale yellow Rieslings, crisp, deep rosés, cold-soaked Cabernet Franc, or a wide range of clearer crimson and ruby ​​vinifera wines, they scream ‘life’ when we need it most. ‘hear that – and increasingly offer consumers exceptional quality. and value.

Don Cazentre writes about craft beer, wine, spirits and beverages for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach it at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him on NYup.com, to Twitter Where Facebook.


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