Posts Written OnJanuary 14, 2014

Boundary Breaks Vineyard 2011 Ovid Line North Riesling

Sometimes, single-vineyard (or I suppose single-clone) wines just aren’t compelling. Sometimes they are nothing more than marketing ploys that attempt to create faux-distinctiveness where there isn’t any. Now that I’ve tasted all of the Boundary Breaks Vineyard‘s first set of single-vineyard and single-vineyard rieslings, I can say that these wines aren’t hollow constructs. They are clearly made with purpose. Boundary Breaks Vineyard 2011 Ovid Line North Riesling ($20) offers an interesting nose of Red Delicious apple, under-ripe strawberry and perfume-y flowers. Light-to-medium bodied in the mouth, it offers flavors of  more apple and under-ripe strawberry but also musk melon. Frothy…

Finger Lakes Growers Begin to Check for Damage to Vines Following Brutal Cold Snap

On Saturday, Steve Shaw of Shaw Vineyard spent about an hour carefully cutting buds from canes he pulled from his vineyard. It had been several days since the coldest weather to hit the region in years had finally lifted. Reports varied from county to county, town to town, vineyard to vineyard. The lowest temperatures had plunged perilously close to ten degrees below zero. Shaw wanted to know how his canes had dealt with it. There is no hard line of temperature that will inevitably cause vine death, but ten below is an unofficial rule of thumb. Growers will say that ten below for three hours…