Dr. Frank's Vinifera Wine Cellars

The Dr. Konstantin Frank winery has always been the progenitor of cool climate wines in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. After 45 years of toiling in the region, the winery is still ahead of the curve; and at the forefront of what is proving to be the premiere region for Riesling in America.

With this latest edition, the 2006 dry Riesling, one can see the reason for such pronouncements. The wine in the nose immediately portends that its strength is going to be its acidity; then the fruit components weigh in with orange zest aromas that translate to the palate. In the end, the wine is wonderfully balanced.

80-85% of the grapes for this wine came from the winery’s 50-year-old Keuka Lake vineyard – some of the oldest Riesling vines in the country. The wine gets its mineral character due to the steep slopes and high clay content of this vineyard, which produces only about 1½ to 2 tons of grapes per acre. (The remainder of the fruit is sourced from neighboring Seneca Lake.)

The wine finishes very dry (0.8 percent residual sugar), the pH is a wonderfully bracing 3.13, and the stated alcohol percentage is a low 12 percent. There were 3,000 cases produced.

Reviewed July 16, 2007 by Alan Goldfarb.