Stories & guides
Guide · Keuka Lake
Where to start, how to plan your route, and what makes the Keuka Lake wine trail its own quiet corner of the Finger Lakes.
Guide · Finger Lakes
Eleven lakes, hundreds of wineries, and one honest question: where do you actually begin? Here is how we'd choose.
Food & Wine · Pairing
Turkey is lean, cranberry sauce is tart and sweet, and the stuffing is rich with butter. One bottle struggles with all of that. Three can handle it, and the reasoning takes a minute to learn.
Wine 101 · Sparkling
The juice inside a Pinot Noir grape is pale. That's how a white sparkling wine can come from black grapes, as long as the winemaker presses them quickly and gently.
Cabernet Franc has enough tannin for a grilled steak and enough acidity for a tomato sauce. A cool climate like ours is the reason, and it makes this red easy to cook for.
Before you choose a dish for your Chardonnay, check where it was aged. A steel tank keeps it light for shellfish and salads, and an oak barrel rounds it out for butter, cream and roast chicken.
Wine 101 · Storing Wine
That sealed bottle by the stove is changing as you read this. How long unopened wine lasts, how to spot heat damage or a corked bottle, and where to keep it instead.
Wine 101 · Understanding Wine
Two wines can hold the same sugar and feel nothing alike. What decides dry vs sweet wine in the cellar, why acidity hides sugar, and which label clues to check.
Planning your visit
Settle who is driving before the first glass and the rest of the day follows. Four ways to tour Finger Lakes wine country, and how to plan each one.
Pour a big dry red with a spicy curry and the heat gets louder. The reason is structure, and five simple matches between wine and dish let you pair almost anything you cook.
Wine 101 · In the Cellar
The next time you pour a barrel-aged wine, you'll be able to explain it. How grain, stave cutting and a barrel's age separate French oak from American oak.
Gewurztraminer is a full-bodied white with soft acidity, so it welcomes cumin, ginger and a washed-rind cheese. Chili heat is a different matter, and the alcohol in the glass explains why.
One organizer, one booking and a seated table keep a group of friends together. What to plan before a birthday, a reunion or a team day at a winery.
Wine 101 · Hosting
Plan on half a bottle per guest at dinner, then buy one spare. The pour math behind a bottle of wine, with a simple table for dinners and parties.
Wine 101 · Serving
The stem does the job of a coffee mug's handle and keeps your warm hand off the wine. How to hold a glass, swirl it, and touch glasses without chipping a rim.
Hold the cork still and turn the bottle. That small reversal is most of the trick, and it lets the pressure out with a soft sigh while the cork stays in your hand.
An unopened bottle can stand upright, because its own pressure keeps the cork moist. What it needs is steady cool and darkness. Once open, a hinged stopper and the fridge keep the bubbles.
Wine 101 · Tasting
Most of us taste wine asking whether we like it. Ask how it was made instead, and five simple steps start giving you answers you can pass on at dinner.
Pinot Noir is a red you can pour with fish. Two traits in the glass explain why, and the same two send it toward duck, the Thanksgiving turkey and a pan of fall mushrooms.
One grape can carry a whole dinner: dry Riesling with oysters, semi-dry with a hot Thai curry, sweet with blue cheese. Acidity and sugar decide which bottle goes where.
Wine 101 · Grapes
In the cellar we treat these two white grapes almost as opposites. How Riesling and Chardonnay differ, and how to choose between them for tonight's meal.
Your senses work by contrast, so a second glass beside the first shows you what a single pour hides. How to taste a flight in order, one difference at a time.
On a sparkling wine label, Extra Dry holds more sugar than Brut. The reason lies in the dosage, a small pour added just before the final cork, and in names older than the taste for dry wine.
Wine 101 · Sweet Wine
When a grape freezes, the water turns to ice first and the sugar stays liquid. Press it frozen and only that concentrated juice comes out. That is ice wine, and New York's winters are cold enough for it.
Wine 101 · Structure
That dry feeling after a sip of red has a simple cause: tannin grabbing the proteins in your saliva. Where it comes from, and why a steak makes it feel smoother.
Wine 101 · Terroir
Sébastien tasted grapes from more than two hundred parcels before we made wine here, and the fruit changed from one to the next. Terroir is the name for that.
French cheese counters are arranged by how each cheese is made, and that turns out to be the easiest pairing guide we know. Four families, and the wine each one asks for.
Wine Club · Gifts
Six bottles, three times a year, and a seat at our tasting table in between. What a wine club membership gives the person who receives it, and how to arrange one.
Those streaks on the glass come from alcohol evaporating faster than water. They reveal alcohol and sugar, and the swirl that makes them teaches you more.
Your red probably belongs in the fridge for a little while before dinner. The right serving temperature for every style, and one simple habit that gets most bottles there.
Pour a big dry red beside a honey-glazed ham and the wine turns bitter and thin. The glaze is the reason, and once you pair the glaze first, the bottle is easy to choose.
The French pour dry sparkling wine with oysters for a reason: the bubbles lift the salt and the acidity does the lemon's job. The same logic carries over to the rest of the seafood menu.
Around the lake
Penn Yan holds the north-east tip of Keuka Lake. It is a working village first and a destination second, which is exactly what makes it worth the drive.
Most visitors drive the east side of Keuka and go home. The western arm ends at Branchport, and it is the quieter half by some distance.
Outdoors
Water leaves Keuka at Penn Yan and drops toward Seneca. For a century that fall of water ran mills. The towpath beside it is now a walking trail.
Every other Finger Lake is a long finger. Keuka has two arms, and the land between them is a ridge that rises straight out of the water.
The lake
The lake is the reason any of this exists. Understanding its shape and depth explains the vineyards, the villages, and why the drive takes longer than you think.
Glaciers left steep valleys and every side stream had to find its way down. That is why this region has more waterfalls than almost anywhere in the north-east.
The walking here divides into two kinds: down into a gorge, or along a ridge above the water. They ask for different days and different shoes.
Camping here is cheap, close to the water, and colder at night than most visitors expect, even in July.
Hammondsport gets the visitors. Bath, twenty minutes inland, is where the county actually runs from.
Wine came first here by a century and a half. Everything else arrived recently, and the region is better for it.
Where you sleep here decides how much driving you do. That is the whole calculation, and it is worth doing before you book.
The lakes hold heat into November and hold spring back until May. Everything about visiting here follows from that.
The tour buses stop in November. What is left is snow on the vineyard rows and a tasting room where you can hear yourself think.
Children are not the problem people expect them to be here. The lake, the parks and the museums do most of the work.
Twenty minutes separates them and they give you completely different days. Picking the wrong one for your trip is the most common planning mistake here.
There is no way around the car. Once you accept that, the rest of the planning gets much simpler.
The best road here is rarely the fastest one. Around a lake shaped like a Y, that is more true than usual.
The region
The vines are here because of the water, and they have been on these particular slopes longer than almost anywhere else in the country.
There is no best lake. There is a best lake for the trip you are actually taking, and they are genuinely different from one another.
The mistake couples make here is booking too much. The lake rewards doing less, slowly, in one place.
Most of the shoreline is private. Knowing where the public access is changes what a day on this lake can be.
A group of ten is a different proposition from a couple. The lake handles it well, as long as somebody has made the calls in advance.
The orchards predate the vineyards. Cider is the older drink here by a long way, and it is having a second life.
West of Keuka the land rises into a steep valley, and Naples sits at the bottom of it. Grape country, one lake over.
Watkins Glen takes all the attention at the foot of Seneca. Montour Falls is two miles further on, and considerably quieter.
Watkins Glen sits at the foot of Seneca Lake. Keuka is the next lake west, twenty minutes over the hill. The two make very different afternoons.
Dogs are welcome throughout our winery, inside as well as out. Here is what a day around Keuka Lake looks like when you bring yours.
The park sits on the bluff between the two arms of the lake. Here is how we would build a day around it, morning on the water and afternoon above it.
Guide · Hammondsport
Aviation history at the south end of Keuka Lake, five minutes from the village square, and how it fits into an afternoon here.
Nineteen waterfalls in a single mile, a racetrack that shaped American motorsport, and a village at the foot of Seneca Lake. Here is how to fit it into a day.
Twenty minutes south of the vineyards sits a glass museum with a global reputation and a walkable old downtown. The best bad-weather day in the region.
A trail shaped like a Y, which changes how you drive it. What the route is, how many stops to plan, and the mistake most first-timers make.
Guide · Tasting
What happens when you sit down, what it costs, and the questions people are too polite to ask. Written by the people doing the pouring.
Itinéraire · Finger Lakes
Two days, one lake, and enough room to sit down. An itinerary written by people who live at the middle of it.
Saison · Finger Lakes
Six weeks when the whole region works late. What is happening in the cellar while you are on the terrace, and why it is the best time to come.
The village square, the lake, an aviation museum, and a slow afternoon of wine — how we'd spend a day in Hammondsport.
How we'd plan the food side of a day on Keuka Lake — from a lakeside lunch to the village square, food trucks at our events, and pairings on the terrace.
Craft · Sparkling
Champagne is a place in France. Sparkling wine is a whole world. A family with six generations in Champagne explains where the line really falls.
The bubbles come from a second fermentation inside the bottle. Here's the whole method — bottle by bottle, turn by turn — from a family that has worked it for six generations.
Wine 101 · Riesling
Where the grape comes from, why it thrives in a cool climate like Keuka Lake, and how we work it on our slope above the water.
Riesling runs from bone-dry to sweet — and where a bottle lands is a decision we make in the cellar. Here's how it works, and how to read the label.
How many days an open bottle really keeps, by type, and the simple habits that stretch it — reclose, chill, and keep the air out.
The eleven lakes, the wine trails, the waterfalls and State Parks — and how a quiet day on Keuka Lake fits into all of it.
Visit · Finger Lakes
Spring, summer, fall, or winter — a season-by-season look at Keuka Lake from the people who work the vines, and when we'd tell you to come.
The color coming in along the hills, and the harvest happening underneath it — fall around Keuka Lake, told from inside the vineyard and the cellar.
