TRANSPARENT, CLASSICAL WINEMAKING
The tradition of winemaking at Ravines is built on a combination on many years of experience, working in wine regions as diverse as Provence, Bordeaux, West Texas and North Carolina and 25 years of experience working in the Finger Lakes, working- largely- with the same vineyard sites.
Our general approach to winemaking combines a classic winemaking philosophy, favoring a transparent approach to winemaking with a deep understanding of the specifics of making wine in the Finger lakes region.
The Finger Lakes present a rare opportunity in the “New World” to make exciting cool climate wines. Few, if any, regions present similar potential for producing wines of similar balance and elegance. The goal remains to produce exciting wines that reflect their vineyard origins and vintages.
Ravines is, perhaps, the only Finger Lakes winery with substantial acreage in both limestone and shalestone sites. This offers us a unique opportunity to craft complex, layered wines with grape varieties ideally suited to our sites.
Having now worked with our various vineyard sites for up to 25 years, we have an excellent understanding of what they can offer as well as their challenges. Every year, during the months leading up to harvest and right through the fermentations, we evaluate the potential of each lot and decide on the best practices: skin contact, destemming, extraction, lees contact, use of oak etc.
One of the joys and challenges of making wine in a climate such as the Finger Lakes is reacting to the variable vintage conditions and determining the best practices to follow. In a world of wine today dominated, quantitatively, by regions showing little to no vintage variations and with mostly arid to semi-arid conditions, the Finger Lakes region brings a breath of fresh air. Both in balance and in terms of vintage variations, we share these characteristics with the classic northern regions of Europe.
Throughout history, the finest wines were always considered those from the cool climate regions, even if this term wasn’t yet used. The Finger Lakes has emerged as the most prominent such region in North America, capable of producing wines of uncommon balance, elegance and liveliness.
What has historically set cool climate wines apart from the rest and made them the most prized is the fact that they provide vibrant and intense aromas with underlying acidity providing tension in the wines; all with moderate alcohol levels. It is precisely this balance that gives the wines their age worthiness. Coarser wines, with less aromatic intensity and higher alcohol levels- as you would find in the Mediterranean climate- were the everyday wines for common consumption.
When made traditionally, as it’s the case at Ravines, they will improve for many years in the cellar. This remains one of the defining aspects of fine wine; the ability to improve significantly over time.
At Ravines, after 22 vintages, we’re now able to offer many of our wines with several years of bottle age, bringing them closer to their opportune window for consumption. Today, there are very few wineries across the World willing to make this commitment, as most wines are rapidly released.