New York’s FINEST : Despite infighting and an anti-New York bias, the state’s vintners are again making remarkable wines

There are as many opinions about New York’s wine as there are observers of it.

Jim Trezise says “viticultural racism” is the New York wine industry’s major problem. He refers to the fact that some of the state’s best wines are made from non-classical hybrid grapes such as Seyval and Cayuga, which once were the only grapes used to make wine here. It wasn’t great wine.

Josh Wesson speaks of an anti-New York wine bias among restaurateurs and retailers as the greatest problem facing New York wines. Despite recent improvements in the quality of the state’s wines, the image of New York’s industry was formed in past years when some rather mawkish “yuck” was being made here. See related “About Wine” column on Page 19.

Robert Palmer says that infighting between the different wine-growing regions of the state exists and that some New York winery owners--notably he and his neighbors on Long Island--”pretend we’re not even in New York.”

All this confusion facing the New York wine industry is a continuation of longstanding problems for this divergent wine-growing region and leads to the fact that New York wine gets no respect in its own land.

Yet everyone agrees that New York wines have improved dramatically in the past few years and that the disparate elements in the New York wine industry, strident though they may be today, may yet coalesce for one rousing charge into the headlines.

As wine quality soars, as the number of wineries increases and as enthusiasm moves to an all-time high, one element makes New York a wine region to watch in the coming years: The New York Wine and Grape Foundation.

Headed by Trezise, its energetic president, the foundation sends out reams of promotional copy touting the four major wine-growing regions of the state; it uses attractive brochures showing how New York wines go with food and how New York wine fits the current upscale life style of Americans who are drinking less but better.

Trezise’s press kit, using the slogan “Uncork New York,” alone weighs 1 pound, 6 ounces.

Sitting on his porch overlooking Lake Keuka, Trezise sips a glass of Hunt Country Chardonnay and admits that consumers can’t yet find a bottle of New York wine in many of the better restaurants in New York City, or in many of the better wine shops.

“But that’s changing,” he says. “People are becoming more aware of what we’re doing here. The funny thing is, the word is getting to the rest of the world faster than it is right here, in the Finger Lakes.”

The Finger Lakes region in Upstate New York west of New York City is the state’s largest wine region, and one that for decades was home to French-American hybrid grapes--grapes developed to withstand the rigors of bitter winters but that did not have the potent, grapey smell and taste of native American varieties such as Concord, which had been the base of sweet, kosher wine for decades.

The late Dr. Konstantin Frank, a viticultural pioneer, encouraged the use of the French vitis vinifera varieties such as Chardonnay, Riesling and Pinot Noir in New York, arguing that they could be grown to withstand the harsh winters and that they could ripen properly, even in the hottest and most humid days of a New York summer.

Frank won a number of growers over to his beliefs, and today the Finger Lakes is a region with no single identity. Chardonnay grows side by side with Seyval.

In fact, the Finger Lakes region still has some of the old native American varieties such as Concord and Niagara that give such an intense aroma that they bother even some jelly and grape juice users. The region also has many of the hybrid varieties such as Seyval, Baco and Cayuga that dominated through the 1970s.

But it also has more vinifera varieties than ever before, and plantings are growing. And its Chardonnay and Riesling are opening eyes around the world, as did a 1988 Wagner Riesling at a recent Riesling conference in Seattle.

The fact that the Finger Lakes has a three-grape image and a past replete with mediocre wine has given Long Island, east of New York City, the impetus it needs to make its presence felt as the East Coast version of the Napa Valley. And Long Island has risen rapidly in the image department.

Long Island’s vinifera tradition, with Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon and the other traditional grape varieties, began in 1973 when Alex Hargrave pioneered the region, planting the classic French varieties amid potato farms and undeveloped land. In the years since, a dozen others have joined Hargrave on Long Island, and the area has slowly added more and more acreage, almost all of it in the traditional French varieties.

“I’m a native Long Islander,” said Palmer, a broadcast advertising executive and the owner of Palmer Vineyards. “I love wine, and I thought we could make great wine out here.” But when he bought his land a decade ago, he was one of few to have such a dream; it was then still considered a remote prospect.

“But I figured, if it can’t be done, I’ll still be sitting on a lot of land that will be worth a lot of money some day,” Palmer added.

Thus did Long Island become home to a number of wealthy men determined to garner plaudits for traditional varieties. “Long Island is a rich man’s toy,” said one wine maker from the Hudson Valley, without batting an eye.

Yet even in Long Island, a new region, infighting is already apparent. When one local grower decided to plant one of the hybrid varieties, he was cursed by his neighbors as being a heretic.

Also, in their zeal to remove themselves emotionally from New York, Long Islanders have alienated some in the Finger Lakes region. “We are not in New York, this is Long Island,” one islander said. Trezise, hearing that, shuddered. “That sure doesn’t help statewide unity,” he said.

One of Oldest Wine Regions

In the middle of all this sits the Hudson Valley, a peaceful region tucked into rolling hills midway between Albany and New York City. It is one of the oldest wine-growing regions in America (it has the oldest continuing vineyard and oldest winery), and it has found its niche with the French-American hybrid grapes.

It’s also the wine district closest to New York City, so it has the greatest potential as a tourist spot--when New Yorkers discover they have their own wine country close at hand.

Mark Miller is the true symbol of the entire wine industry in New York. He is 71, an artist of world fame and for the last 18 years a wine maker here. He says there’s no confusion among most Hudson Valley wineries about which wines to make. The hybrid grapes are best because they make fine wines that offer a refreshing alternative to the wines of France and California, he feels.

“I’m not sure we should say we’re ‘stuck with’ the hybrid varieties,” Miller said. “Every region of the world has a distinct characteristic, and I think the differences are a great virtue.”

Some of his neighbors are experimenting with vinifera grapes, but Hudson Valley’s main contribution is in making, with the hybrids, wines with a degree of style as impressive as any in the state.

Miller is a voice of moderation and reason in an industry filled with turmoil and conflict; he has strong ties in Albany, the state capital, and with Gov. Mario Cuomo’s office, and Miller could be the catalyst that will help heal any superficial cuts.

Sitting out west, by its lonesome, is the Lake Erie district, where wine making has just begun to take hold. Half a dozen wineries are headed by Woodbury Vineyards, which has made some of the better vinifera wines in the region and also is making viticultural advances that will help the entire industry.

“When you taste the wines, I think you’ll see something,” said Trezise, an evenhanded man who nevertheless is intense and effusive about New York’s improving wine quality. “Everyone, from Lakewood to Taylor, has improved, and that’s because we understand the grapes better than we ever did.”

The small of it is Lakewood, owned by Monty Stamp and his family. It is the newest winery in the state, having opened its doors (to an unpaved parking lot) on Lake Keuka a month ago.

“We produce 350 tons of grapes and we used to sell to Taylor,” said Stamp, whose family has grown wine grapes here since 1951. “They paid top dollar, but in the last few years we’ve seen an erosion of market prices. And we had hoped for a better return. So we opened the winery.”

This year, Lakewood will produce about 2,000 cases of wine.

The largest winery in the state, and the oldest in the Finger Lakes (founded 1880), is Taylor-Great Western (which also markets wine under the Gold Seal label). The long heritage here has been with native grapes, mostly in jug wines and more recently with the hybrids. Only in the last few years has this giant switched to vinifera.

“For years and years we’ve been paying the electric bill with non-vinifera,” said Steve Coon, Taylor’s senior wine maker who has been at the huge (28 acres under roof) Hammondsport winery for 19 years.

“By adding vinifera, we’re opening up our line to another type of consumer,” one looking for more traditional tastes, he said. Still, just 1% of the firm’s 2-million-case production is in vinifera.

However, when a Great Western dessert wine won a sweepstakes award at a recent major wine competition, it gained more publicity for the property than it could have gotten for a carload of Niagara.

Still, in New York City, a potentially huge market for the state’s wines: “No matter how good they are--and they’re getting better all the time--they get no respect here,” said Wesson, a master sommelier and executive editor of “Wine and Food Companion.”

“The New York restaurant scene is dominated by Frenchmen who are still rather loathe to use any American wine, let alone a New York wine,” he said.

Kevin Zraly, head of the hugely successful wine program at Windows on the World at the World Trade Center, carries four New York wines. All are vinifera. “It’s hard to sell a Seyval, no matter how great it is,” he said.

Most of the newer wineries in the state are family owned; there’s little corporate interest in New York, at least not for start-up operations. The reasons are clear: image and the viticultural problems of the weather.

Yet Bill Wagner, a longtime grower whose vineyard sits just off Lake Seneca, points out that only in the last 20 years or so “have (growers) figured out the keys to growing (vinifera) grapes here, and one thing we’ve learned is that we have to be close enough to the lakes.

“We’re right off Seneca, the deepest of all the Finger Lakes, and it has never frozen in the winter,” the white-haired Wagner said. “Also, this vineyard is (near) the deepest part of the lake.”

Wagner’s 350 acres of land, much of it wooded, has 130 acres planted to grapes and a large percentage in vinifera.

Wagner had a dairy in the area in the 1950s, then began to grow hybrid grapes in 1965. Encouraged by Frank, Wagner was one of the first to plant vinifera on a large-scale basis, and today his winery makes more than a dozen wines, all of character.

Waiting for the Tourists

Visitors haven’t found the Finger Lakes region yet. Glenora, a new, modern winery, stages concerts on the lawn outside its tasting room, overlooking Seneca to the east, and Gene Pierce, general manager, said the winery had 31,000 visitors to its tasting room last year.

This is a far cry from the hundreds of thousands that visit wineries in the Napa Valley each year.

“The number of visitors is rising, and I’m seeing a lot more enthusiasm from folks coming from New York City,” Piere said.

Trezise points out, however, that whereas Napa is a 90-minute drive from San Francisco, the Finger Lakes district is more than five hours from Manhattan. And when you get to little Penn Yan at the north end of Lake Keuka, home of the world’s record buckwheat pancake, the culinary excitement is a Pizza Hut.

As for the drive to Long Island, from New York City it’s at least two hours (without traffic) and there there’s little more than small cafes when you get there.

“No, we haven’t developed real wine country tourist traffic yet,” said Trezise, but he adds that perhaps in a few years, when recognition for the wines grows, folks will discover what New York’s wine country regions have to offer.

He said the Hudson Valley, just 90 minutes north of Manhattan, offers the closest thing to a wine touring area that’s convenient to most locals. With more than a dozen wineries, including Benmarl & Brotherhood, which bills itself as “The Nation’s Oldest Winery” (founded 1839), Hudson also has two of what Mark Miller says are the most warming elements about the New York State wine industry.

One is Millbrook winery, owned by John Dyson, a wealthy former New York commissioner of agriculture. The other is Gary Gross’ Walker Valley Vineyards. “He’s one of the most outstanding wine makers in the state. Wait till you see what he can do.”

Vines, Not Tract Homes

Miller sat in his office recently, looking down the slope over his vines toward the Hudson River, and said he would never let the winery be sold for housing. “I could get $50,000 an acre for this place,” he said, “but I’ll never let it go for that.”

He said he has looked around for buyers who will agree to keep the place operating as a winery, but he has had few takers. Now, he says, he’s looking to donate the winery and vineyards to a major university, if it will commit to keeping the winery operating, if it will agree to give his old vines the tender care they require.

“This property is a symbol of my life, but it also represents the New York wine industry and its heritage. I never want to see housing where the vines are,” he says.