New York Sparkling, Dessert and Table Wines Receive Accolades

Several New York wines have received impressive accolades in recent weeks. So, just in case you missed it:

• Sparkling Pointe's 2000 Brut Seduction ($55/review coming soon) was named Best Sparkling Wine at the San Francisco Chronicle's 2009 Wine Competition. Winemaker Gilles Martin is well known for his bubbly and this is an impressive win given the CA-dominated category. Martin's 2004 Brut and two bubblies from Chateau Frank in the Finger Lakes also did well.
• Casa Larga's 2006 Fiori Vidal Ice Wine ($35/review coming soon) was recently chosen as the "World's Best Dessert Wine" at the 2008 International Wine & Spirits Competition in London. I hate any competition that names anything the "World's Best" but this is a great win for Casa Larga. I just received a bottle and will be trying it soon.
• I, and many in the Finger Lakes wine community, complain about a perceived 90-point ceiling for the region's wines. Well, that ceiling has been met, but not exceeded, by three Finger Lakes wines as tasted by James Molesworth. The three 90-point wines are Dr. Konstantin Frank 2007 Reserve Gewurztraminer ($25 ), Red Newt Cellars 2007 Sawmill Creek Vineyards Gewurztraminer ($36) and Standing Stone Vineyards 2007 Vidal Ice Wine ($25). I've long been a promponent of Finger Lakes gewurzt, so I'm not surprised that these wines scored so high. But, it is a bit surprising that the highest-rated currently available Finger Lakes wines aren't riesling.

Comments

[Jason Feulner]

I was musing a bit about the gewurtztraminer scores. Hardly worth a post on its own, but here are my thoughts:

I simply think it's much "safer" to break out of the 89 ceiling with gewurtztraminer rather than riesling. It seems that gewurtz is produced in few places in the U.S. and is hardly produced in mass quantities. In addition, it does not completely define the Finger Lakes as a region. The wine is still very much a small production speciality product.

The wines deserve the score, of course, but more importantly these scores don't threaten the greater editorial balance of the FL being a "second-tier" region. The staple wine of the FL, riesling, is still very much stuck in the sub-90 range because that wine both defines the region and is available in abundance from places like Washington.

It all sounds a bit conspiratorial, but it also fits the pattern. I find it hard to believe that dozens of sampled rieslings crowd into the 88-89 range with no standouts, but out of only a handful of sampled gewurtztraminers a few are annointed as slightly better than the others. In the latter case, it just makes sense. In the former, one can only wonder why at least a few rieslings cannot be seen as standouts amidst a very successful group.