You’d expect ample lime notes here (you do expect those from FLX Riesling, right?) , and you get them. However, you get a whole lot more lime blossom, ginger, roasted green apple, and a heaping helping of brioche — so much so that it should be distracting, but ultimately is not. This is that wants to turn heads. It’s about as FLX Riesling gets; and it’s wonderful to find a Finger Lakes Riesling pop out of the gate in full stride, confident, and fearless in its own worth.
2015 Trestle Thirty One Finger Lakes Riesling (Finger Lakes, $29)
Only 120 cases of this lively beauty were created; the fruit coming out of the Zugibe Vineyard, on the upper northeastern side of of Seneca Lake (a spot where I’ve gazed many a morning from Geneva, and during many a wine-soaked day from Belhurst…). It’s dry (in less than two g/l of residual sugar) and svelte (in 12% abv), but there’s a more-than-respectable quantity of heady richness to this Riesling. Skin contact, Epernay II yeast, and sur lie aging were used each placing layers of texture, during the winemaking process.
Even he seems surprised (image: oscars.org)
Related
For Riesling lovers, the previous four decades in particular are a fantastic time to be alive.
The end result is that the area is both retaining and attracting wine gift; as in today’s highlighted example from the sample pool, which was created by Robert Mondavi Winery alumnus (and Constellation Director of Winemaking) Nova Cadamatre, who (as of the time of this writing) crafts the releases for FLX’s 240 Days Wines…
Now, I don’t envision that Cadamatre has considerable amounts of free time (given that she has also done winemaking stints in Ningxia, China, forwarded her pursuit of the Master of Wine designation, and also blogs often at www.novacadamatre.com). But in what spare time she does have, she made the Trestle Thirty One brand, which just released it’s first FLX Riesling. And it’s a fantastic illustration of why we all should just quietly accept the Finger Lakes as one of the best places on planet Earth to grow and produce Riesling, without needing to debate its merits against its more famous European counterparts.
In the middle of those extremes, we’re seeing the coming of age of what for years were Riesling-producing areas sometimes derided as being in “maybe they’re just also-rans?” category. Finger Lakes, I’m taking a look at you.
You know, like the way that everybody accepted in the mid-1950s that it was okay for Frank Sinatra to be a serious actor, and give him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor…
Thankfully, that table setting appears now to have been flipped, with either more FLX wine manufacturers pulling their weight and meeting their high-quality Riesling possible, tastemakers developing enough open-mindedness and sophistication to entertain the Finger Lakes as a world-class Riesling producing area, wine critics catching their perceptions up to the reality of their excellent wines being crafted in FLX, or (much more likely) a combination of all three.
Cheers!
On one side of the glistening Riesling-fine-wine-world-market coin, Europe’s traditional flag-bearing areas of that grape been doing well; on the opposite side, we’ve seen the emergence of up-and-coming areas that, while far from wine-drinking household names, undoubtedly have possible.
The best of the wines of New York’s Finger Lakes — both red and white — have almost certainly never crafted been better than they are. Which is not to say that FLX Rieslings were bad; we know that is not true, particularly for the standout manufacturers on Seneca Lake. But until recently, there seemed to be wines for many of the wine cognoscenti to believe that FLX deserved the nice wine participation trophy, instead of a European Cup.
Source: Wine
Leave a Reply