#172 Face-Off: France vs. The Finger Lakes

In keeping with the opening of the Olympics, we staged a competition of our own.

It isn’t really a competition. We wanted to see if our Winter Wine Exploration guests could tell the difference—tasting blind—between Finger Lakes wines and comparably-priced wines from France.

The recent growth in popularity of Cab Francs from New York made us think: there are many similarities between the Finger Lakes and France, particularly when it comes to the grape varieties grown in both places. So, we thought it might be fun to pour comparably-priced wines from France side-by-side with ours. Could we tell the difference, and if so, would there be a preference?

In the Finger Lakes, we like Dr. Frank’s traditional method sparkling wine. They have had a program dedicated to making these traditional wines, and we always enjoy them. From France we chose a champagne from Moutard, which is carried by our distributor in New York, Polaner Selections. The people at Polaner really know European wines and try to pick the ones that stand out. Both of these are priced around $40 per bottle.

In 2019, in a conversation with our distributor, Polaner, we asked what variety of wine they thought would become more and more popular in the coming years. They said “Chablis-style, unoaked Chardonnay.” They know the New York City market, so we started making an unoaked Chardonnay in 2020. We have made one every year since. I can’t yet say that we have perfected it, but we are getting closer.

We picked a Riesling from the Alsace region of France. This region has bounced back-and-forth between France and Germany over the centuries, so we felt a Riesling would be a good choice. Our Dry Riesling #239 has been our most consistent style of Riesling. It has been picked as a Top 100 Wine in the World by several different trade publications. It is very recognizable for being slightly-less-than-bone-dry with great fruit qualities.

In the Rosé category, we chose a classic French Rosé from Provence. Peyrassol has been in production for more than 765 years. It is made of red varieties that include Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Vermentino. Alongside of that we chose to pour our Rosé, which is a blend of 60 percent Cabernet Franc and 40 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. Since the climate in the Finger Lakes is very different from the climate in Provence along the Mediterranean, there should be some differences here.

In the Loire Valley, Chinon is considered the benchmark for Cabernet Franc. We chose one that is priced comparably with ours. In my somewhat limited experience with Cab Francs from the Loire, they have a distinct, rustic earthiness. Finger Lakes Cab Francs tend to express more fruit character. That is often cited as a consistent difference between “old world” and “new world” wines. The wines of the New World—North and South America and Australia—are more fruit-driven than those of the Old World of France, Italy and Spain.

For the final pairing, we are pouring a right-bank Bordeaux, which is 80 percent Merlot and 20 percent Cabernet Franc. It is also from 2022, which in the Finger Lakes, at least, was a very warm vintage. We are pouring our 2023 Harmonic, which is a blend of 57 percent Merlot and 43 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. Because it is younger than the French Bordeaux, and because it has such a large percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon, we are expecting that it will not measure up to the right-bank Bordeaux.

We shall see.

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Update from the first two WWE Sessions on Saturday.

Since this post is coming out on Sunday morning, we have finished two sessions that took place yesterday—Saturday. We poured six different pairings of two wines. In five out of the six pairings, our guests preferred the Finger Lakes wine over the French wine.

In the conversations that followed each wine, there were some take-aways.

— The preferences were not extreme, but they clearly were for the Finger Lakes wines. Mostly, they showed more fruit and were less austere.
— One reason for this might have been that this set of guests are enthusiastic consumers of Finger Lakes wines. People, in general, at some point begin to prefer what is familiar. We refer to this as “having a house palate.” You like what you know.
— We made an effort to choose French wines that were comparable in price to those from the Finger Lakes. It just might be a fact that for the same price—dollar-for-dollar—the Finger Lakes wines are better values. In other words, the wines from our region delivered higher quality at the same price.

And, for any skeptics reading this, we did not try to rig this comparison by selecting inferior French wines. We asked the knowledgeable wine buyers at Northside Wines in Ithaca to select them for us.