2025 will go down as a glorious vintage for Ravines and for the Finger Lakes region as a whole. A long, sunny and dry spell from early August through October allowed us to harvest our grapes under ideal conditions.
Not only did the dry conditions result in small berry weights and excellent concentration both in sugar and in aroma precursors. It also meant a very low disease pressure. For the second year in a row Pinot Noir, in particular, benefited from these ideal conditions. We have not seen two such strong consecutive vintages for Pinot Noir since 2015 and 2016.
All of our grapes were harvested in the low yield range that we had targeted with a range between 2 and 3 tons/acre; yields on par with the most prized vineyard sites in Europe.
Given the very favorable conditions, we pushed the extraction with both the white and red grapes. Additional skin contact for the white grapes prior to and during the press cycle allowed us to extract more aromatic precursors while the phenolic ripeness ensured the astringency would not be an issue.
On the red side, we pushed the total time on the skins to 3 and often 4 weeks. The result was a group of more structured, more intense aromatic wines built for longer aging.
Making traditional sparkling wine takes a long time and is very labor intensive.
While many of our winemaking friends opt for “Pet Nat” sparkling wines with their murky aromas and cloudy finish or rush their sparkling wines out to the market after only a couple of years, Ravines takes a different approach.
All of our sparkling wines go through the combined process of riddling and disgorging but not until it’s time. Riddling consists of turning the bottles until they finish in a vertical upside-down position with all of the sediment “trapped” in the bottle neck.
The disgorging process consists of freezing the bottle necks, disgorging the bottles (which means removing their crowncap closures), inserting a sparkling cork and a wirehood to contain it. After this, the bottles are washed, dried, capsules are applied and labels are attached. This process is long and labor intensive.
Back in the spring of 2024, along with several dozens other finger Lakes wineries and breweries, we qualified for a small grant from New York state. It ended up covering about a third of the cost of bringing in a new disgorging line; custom made in the Champagne region of France. The line consists of a new larger neckfreezer, the disgorging and dosage machine, a corker and wirehooder, a dosage mixing station, a bottle washer and dryer and finally a machine that applies capsules and labels.
Over the next few months we will be assembling this disgorging line and putting it to good use. It will greatly improve our efficiency with the entire disgorging process. This, in turn, will allow us to offer more sparkling wines over the next many years.
We choose to release our Riesling sparkling wines with 4-5 years of aging on the lees prior to disgorging. Our Chardonnay and Pinot Noir based sparkling wines will see 5-6 years of aging on the lees.
By comparison, most of our colleagues in the Finger Lakes work with 2-4 years of aging. Even in the Champagne region, most champagnes will only see 3-4 years of aging on the lees with 5-6 years being reserved for special reserve releases.
The difference is very clear with additional time on the lees resulting in smaller bubbles, a finer foam and more of the delightful “brioche” type aromas in the sparkling wines.