Wineries to visit in Finger Lakes & Niagara-on-the-Lake

For a compendium of recommendations for Finger Lake wine tourism made in this group over the years, see Section 3i of the FAQ linked in my sig. To that list, I'd add Wiemer, who make some excellent dry Rieslings. On the avoid list, I might put Silver Springs, whose owner might have some mental health issues. See this Youtube video for details:

HTH Mark Lipton

Thanks for the info. Rusty in MD

Yeah, I saw that. Seriously, I do feel a bit sorry for the guy, and I'd expect that most people visiting Silver Springs would probably have a fine time (well, unless the wines stank -- that's another kettle of fish) but why take the chance that "bad Zuke" turns up? I didn't see the brunt of his effect on WLDG (which is why I can feel any empathy for him), but it's pretty clear that the guy has some major mental health issues. As an aside, I am perplexed that eBob, with such a track record for heavy-handed moderation, hasn't yet banned him -- or have they?

Mark Lipton

I think maybe that was a full wineglass when he started filming....

Hi Rusty, We've been to both places in the last 2 years and really enjoyed the following...

In the Finger Lakes area we found very nice wines at Atwater, Lamoreaux Landing, Sheldrake Point, Red Newt, Dr. Konstantine Frank and Hermann J. Wiemar. We had dinner at Red Newt, which was very nice, and at several restaurants in Ithaca, all of them enjoyable, though none really memorable. Though I expected to find some excellent Rieslings and Chards, I was quite surprised to find some excellent Cab Francs as well.

At Niagara on the Lake we really enjoyed Peller Estate, Stratus and Hildebrandt Estates. The Peller Ice wines were great. We had dinner at Hildebrand which was very elegant and gave us access to wines not for sale in the tasting room. We also found the food and the wine list at the Stone Road Grill to be very nice.

Have a great trip, Jon