Posts Tagged“Lake Champlain”

Adirondack Coast Wine, Cider & Food Festival: Making the Most of the Adirondack Coast

Columbus Day weekend welcomed the first incarnation of the Adirondack Coast Wine, Cider & Food Festival to The Crete Civic Center in Plattsburg, NY.  A small but well designed showing by local vendors of fermented beverages, foods, and handmade crafts was met by a much larger and very enthusiastic North Country crowd of the curious. Foul weather helped to drive folks inside for the event, after a growing season that was drier and warmer than most on record. Apples suffered in some places due to late spring frosts, but for grapes that survived the nip, it was an incredibly good  ripening…

“My” Vineyard on the Adirondack Coast

The Cornell Cooperative Extension cold-hardy cultivar trial vineyard in Willsboro, NY, on the western shore of Lake Champlain, sits in a place of true natural beauty, and is home to a number of grape varieties that have been bred for disease resistance, and tolerance of extreme cold to points well below -25F.  Willsboro is also my own home stomping ground, which is where reporting on this place becomes admittedly a bit challenging.  Objectivity is obscured by my associations with the place, which are as long and deep as the lake itself. I was dipped in Willsboro Bay for the first time…

An Introduction to Wine in New York’s North Country

New York State, like most fine wine regions in the northern hemisphere, lies between the hallowed latitudes of 30 and 50 degrees, where macroclimates that are potentially conducive to the cultivation of wine grapes exist. Though local topological and meteorological factors have traditionally limited the places where fine wine is grown in New York, those boundaries are pushed and re-written by a new revolution in the vineyard. Most consumers of wine made in New York, are familiar with the Finger Lakes, Long Island and the Hudson River Valley areas. Those more in tune with the industry may also know about…