Tucked into a hill overlooking Keuka Lake, Heron Hill Winery offers not only a marvelous vista of the Finger Lakes, but also a substantial range of Rieslings that goes beyond the Dry/Semi-Dry bottlings usually offered by Finger Lakes wineries. The wine making focus at Heron Hill clearly lies on Riesling and Chardonnay, despite the recent hype in the press about Heron Hill's Blaufränkisch Reserve (which I have not had a chance yet to taste).
Riesling was amongst the varieties that Heron Hill owners John and Josephine Ingle planted in 1972, when they cleared 20 acres of land near Keuka Lake to build their winery. Their first crop in 1977 was hand-harvested and mechanical harvesting is still absent at Heron Hill thirty-two years later. Chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides are also banned from all of Heron Hill's vineyards. This respect for nature seems to translate into the Rieslings, which, even at the entry level, all display a fine balance of fruit and minerality.
Stylistically the Rieslings of Heron Hill range from bone dry to lusciously sweet and Heron Hill is one of the few wineries in the Finger Lakes to offer a single vineyard and an "Old vines" Riesling. Heron Hill's Rieslings show a magnificent balance of acidity and residual sugar. Wine maker Thomas Laszlo, before joining Heron Hill in 2002, oversaw the production of Tokaji wines at two estates in Hungary and no doubt it is this experience with Tokaj's dessert wines that let him handle sugar levels so elegantly.
Heron Hill's regular Rieslings (the ones showing the winery residing atop of rolling green vineyards) are great values. At $13 they offer an exciting mineral character along the fruit which is not found very often in Rieslings from this price category. At the next step up - single vineyard and Reserve wines - the Rieslings become leaner, less fruit-forward and show even more elegance.
Tasting notes
Heron Hill 2004 Late Harvest Riesling