NYCR-transparent1

Browsing CategoryNorth Country

Adirondack Coast Wine, Cider & Food Festival - 2013 Vintage

ADKCoastHarvestFest2013

Harvest is upon us, and while the North Country vineyards and wineries prepare for the rigors of the season, they are also getting ready for a celebration once most of the field and winery work is done. On Saturday October 12th from 1PM to 8PM the Crete Civic Center in Plattsburgh, NY will be hosting the second annual Adirondack Coast Wine, Cider & Food Festival which has already grown since last year, in the number of vendors and events, as well as the hours of operation. Most of the Adirondack Coast producers, as well as at least one ice cider producer…

Continue Reading

A Toast to the Adirondack Coast Wine Trail and Others

north-country-wine

Reports of veraison are finally beginning to arrive from the North Country, and after such wet weather, both the sunshine and this growth stage are welcome news. It’s not just the grapes that are growing in upstate New York though — so are the wine trails. Recent legislation makes the Adirondack Coast Wine Trail an official part of the New York State Highway map. It’s just a little trail across sixty-six miles of road, linking seven wineries and cider houses, but it is a major development milestone for a new region that adds to the diversity of wine growing in the Empire State.…

Continue Reading

Will Changes in the Cornell Cooperative Extension Program Leave Some Out in the Cold?

cornell1

Questions about the pace of global climate change and its effect on viticulture have been frequent topics of conversations in vineyards and wineries around New York. A less talked about, and even less understood change also taking place with another force that has significance to the industry. The Cornell Cooperative Extension is on a path of reorganization, that while still in the definition phases, might ultimately change the way that folks in the field interface with its services. The Cooperative Extension service of the USDA has for nearly 150 years followed a mission to “help people use research-based knowledge to improve…

Continue Reading

Cape Winery Sprouts in the Thousand Islands

cape-winery

The official opening of the Cape Winery in Cape Vincent, NY is not until Memorial Day, but a recent springtime Saturday “soft opening” saw over a hundred people in the tasting room, more than a dozen cases of wine leave the premises in the hands of happy consumers, and folks joining the infant “case club.” The current version of the New York State Wine Regions map shows expanded areas all around the state, and this latest opening already asks for those boundaries to be expanded even more. Situated on a spit of limestone-based land that has Lake Superior on one…

Continue Reading

Marquette Making its Mark in North Country Wine

marquette

The prospect of growing and making red wine in cool climates meets with some well-known challenges — reaching adequate ripening levels, controlling acidity, getting good color extraction, as well as surviving disease and predators. Until just a few years ago, it might have been considered madness to conceive of, let alone attempt to pursue, the table red in places where the winter snow can get as deep as the high trellis wire, or where there can be bare ground on days with temperatures so cold that cars and equipment won’t start until the morning sun has been on them for…

Continue Reading

Ice Cider: Learning to Love the Cold

Ice-Cider-frozen-apples

Slyboro Cider House lies in Washington County, right on the border of Vermont, and about an hour and a half drive straight north of Albany. Working the land of Hick’s Orchard (New York’s oldest “U-Pick” orchard, operating for more than 100 years), owner Dan Wilson and his team began tinkering with hard cider around 2001. Soon after those first early attempts, they met with the Cornell enology department and began getting serious; by better understanding fermentation, they were able to begin discerning the individual characteristics of the apple varieties on their farm. Not long after, during a fateful, summer trip to Quebec,…

Continue Reading

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

NYCR_ADK_Coast_crowd

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…

Continue Reading

New York Wine, Beer, and Spirits Summit: Focus on Marketing, Not Fracking or WIGS

main

When two dozen invited wine industry professionals take their seats at the head table at the New York Wine, Beer and Spirits Summit later this month, they’ll have specific goals in mind. So will Governor Andrew Cuomo, and that includes his desire to make sure the summit is not bogged down by two recurring debates: wine in grocery stores, and hydrofracking. Several sources confirm that the summit will be geared toward other issues, leaving the volatile hot buttons for another day. Indeed, Governor Cuomo has repeatedly stated his opposition to wine in grocery stores, and his administration continues to review…

Continue Reading

A Real Winery’s Tasting Room is Not a Bar… And Other Advice to Get the Most From a Visit to Wine Country

tastingroom

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this topic. 99% of you know everything I’m about to write. And agree. And act this way. But I still feel compelled to write about it. Why? Maybe it’s because pumpkin-picking season is upon us on Long Island and wine country roads are clogged with local agritourists. Maybe it’s all of the bar-masquerading-as-a-tasting-room stuff I’ve been reading. Or maybe it’s that I’m becoming more and more like my father every day in that I simply expect people to act the right way in every situation — including visiting wine country. Most of the time,…

Continue Reading

“My” Vineyard on the Adirondack Coast

NYCR_Willsboro_Geology

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…

Continue Reading