For years, people have been talking about the Finger Lakes as an “up and coming” wine region, but I think that kind of talk is too diminishing. The Finger Lakes may be the best cool-climate wine region in America, full stop. And the quality of wine you can find for $25 to $30 per bottle is incredible.

But more than that, Finger Lakes wine country is simply a gorgeous place to visit, a great long weekend getaway in spring, summer or fall. If you’ve never been, I urge you to go. Seneca Lake, where I am recommending for your wine tour, is roughly a five-hour drive from either New York or Philadelphia. Below are my top 10 (ok, 11) wineries to visit, along with some suggestions for where to eat, drink, and stay.

A Few Places to Eat, Drink, & Stay

I tend to focus on the wineries around Seneca Lake, with some detours over to Keuka Lake, and so for wine travel I usually stay in the town of Geneva.

All great wine regions have a food scene to match, and in the Finger Lakes, it's centered in Geneva. The hardest reservation in town is F.L.X. Table, where chef and master sommelier Christopher Bates serves inventive dishes to just over a dozen people each night. They also have a casual options at F.L.X. Provisions, a wine bar and shop, and a great place to taste the region’s wines. Be sure to taste Bates’s own wines from Element Winery, which are some of the finest in the region.

Another highlight is Kindred Fare, where Brian Butterfield's beverage program is among the best in the region, featuring cocktail ingredients like damson-plum gin and poppy amaro and a wine list dominated by local producers. I like to end my evenings with a house-made cider at Lake Drum Brewing, where the vibe is mellow hippie meets college bar. Or else a cocktail at The Linden Club Social Club or another wine at Microclimate Wine Bar.

At Kemmeter Wines, close to Geneva, there’s a little gem: Sans Dumplings, where Imelda Reinhardt cooks up amazing dumplings on the same property where her husband Johannes makes his well-regarded Riesling. It’s a great stop for lunch.

If you want to stay further down the lake, and closer to wineries such as Forge, Red Newt, and Silver Thread, there are number of Airbnb and rental options, such as the Vineyard Villas, within walking distance of Forge Cellars. Slightly further away, but lovely, is the scenic 24-room Inn at Taughannock Falls, over on Cayuga Lake. There, you can hike to the highest waterfall east of the Rockies.

Nearby Stonecat Café in Hector is a classic spot, with a great local wine list. If you’re looking for a quick, casual lunch or takeout during a day of wine tasting, you can’t beat The Elf in the Oak.

East side of Seneca Lake

Forge Cellars

This is a must visit, either for a reservation-only tasting in their Summer House, or a casual hang, with great snacks, in The Salon. I’ve mentioned Forge in my Everyday Drinking newsletter—it’s among my favorite U.S. producers. The winery is a partnership between American Rick Rainey and Louis Barruol, whose famed Gigondas estate, Château de Saint Cosme, in the Rhône Valley, dates to 1570. (As a 14th generation winegrower, Barruol would be the opposite of a terroir denier.) Forge Cellars’s focus is Riesling, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Franc from single vineyards—or even lieux-dits, small lots within existing vineyards—from around Seneca Lake. There are a dozen site-specific bottlings of Riesling, and three single-vineyard bottlings each of Pinot Noir and Cab Franc.

Boundary Breaks

Located on the east side of Seneca Lake, Boundary Breaks is a great place to taste outside with a beautiful view of the lake. Bruce Murray’s “retirement project” has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade and by now, Boundary Breaks has established itself as an acclaimed producer of high-quality Riesling. Murray insists “too much fruit in the Finger Lakes is harvested underripe” and is maniacal about vineyard management. In the cellar, however, Murray works with a number of different winemakers, including Kelby Russell and Dave Breeden of Sheldrake Point. Besides Riesling, Boundary Breaks is also making some of the best Gewürztraminer in the region.

Red Newt

Red Newt is in a bit of flux since Kelby Russell left last year to start his own winery project. Still, Russell’s legacy at Red Newt Cellars is still apparent, and Red Newt’s Rieslings remains some of the best in the region, particularly from its Tango Oaks and Lahoma vineyards. They’ve focused on weightier, more textured Rieslings using extensive lees contact with regular stirring and are also known to hold back bottles for several years before release. Red Newt remains a solid ambassador for the region, illustrating the value proposition of Finger Lakes wine. Its winery bistro is also a great stop for lunch along the wine trail.

Note: I very much admire Kelby Russell’s wines, including the Kelby James Russell label he always produced as a side project while at Red Newt. I have not yet visited Kelby’s new winery, Apollo’s Praise—news of which was recently announced. But I hope to do so soon, and will report back.

Silver Thread

Lovely, low-key spot for a mellow afternoon tasting. Paul and Shannon Brock acquired Silver Thread in 2011. More than a decade later, the wines here, especially the Rieslings, have truly hit their stride. With 10 acres under vine, the oldest vines date back to 1982. The Rieslings here often ride the line between dry and off-dry, with the off-dry bottlings often being the standouts. “We’re not aspiring to be the Rheingau or Alsace,” says Shannon Brock. “We have a different reality here.”

Osmote

Osmote is an interesting new-wave producer that has a new tasting pavilion in Burdett that’s open seasonally from Thursday through Saturday for tastings. Winemaker Ben Riccardi was born in Ithaca and went to school at Cornell, but has worked all over the world with stops in France, New Zealand, Australia, and Chile. Before he started Osmote, he worked as winemaker at City Winery in Manhattan. Riccardi experiments with hybrids like Cayuga White though he’s among the young winemakers who see great potential in the Finger Lakes’a many old plantings of Chardonnay.

Bloomer Creek

They haven’t been taking visitors regularly since the pandemic, and I can’t guarantee you’ll get a tasting, but at the very least you need to find and buy some Bloomer Creek wines. Kim and Debra Engle’s idiosyncratic winery has become a darling of the natural-wine world, and has a completely different flavor profile than the rest of the Finger Lakes. “We’re always reticent to pour our wines in the context of 80 other Finger Lakes wineries, because they seem flawed,” jokes Debra. They are most certainly not flawed, but exciting and innovative, if pushing the envelope. With less than 10 acres under vine, Bloomer Creek is committed to fermentation with wild yeast, no filtering or fining, and most of their wines are bone dry. The whites, particularly the Rieslings from Moorehouse and Auten vineyards (labeled Tanzen Dame) are fascinating. But the reds, including the Cabernet Franc and White Horse (their Saint-Émilion-esque blend) are stunning.

Shaw Vineyard

Steve Shaw is a local iconoclast in the Finger Lakes. Growing up among the vineyards here, he planted his first vines in 1981. Once a winemaker and partner at Silver Thread, he started his own brand in 2004. Everything here is spontaneously fermented with no filtering or fining. Shaw believes in long aging, both in barrel and in the bottle, and he releases wines years after harvest. At times, his Cab Franc may spend three years in neutral barrels.

West side of Seneca Lake

Nathan K - Hickory Hollow

One of my favorite winemakers in North America is Nathan Kendall, and his winery for me is a Finger Lakes must-visit. A Finger Lakes native, Kendall launched his label in 2011 while working at Ravines and has maintained a slow-growth model for his Old World-style wines, with native fermentation and little intervention. Like other younger FLX producers, Kendall has become increasingly committed to Chardonnay and sees great potential for it in the Finger Lakes. “When I came back to the Finger Lakes, I was bored by a lot of the Riesling,” he says, even though he makes very fine Riesling indeed. Kendall also makes the wine for his family’s label Hickory Hollow, including an excellent Cabernet Franc. The two labels share the same tasting room.

Ravines

Located on the outskirts of Geneva, Ravines is a must-visit if you’re staying there, and continues to produce some of the most ambitious and highly-regarded wines in the Finger Lakes. It was started by Morten Hallgren, a Dane who grew up with a family winery in Provence, and who spent six years working for Dr. Konstantin Frank. Ravines now has 130 acres and produces over 20,000 cases (almost half of it Riesling). Ravines’s key vineyard is the steep, limestone rich Argetsinger, where they grow world-class Riesling, as well as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. They also have a tasting room in Hammondsport on Keuka Lake.

Hermann J. Wiemer

Still among the finest and most important wineries in the Finger Lakes, it was started in the 1970s by its namesake, Hermann Wiemer, who came from a winemaking family in the Mosel. Since 2003, when Wiemer retired, it’s been run by Fred Merwarth, his longtime assistant winemaker, in partnership with Oskar Bynke. Beginning with the 2016 vintage, Merwarth works with only spontaneous fermentation for both whites and reds. Wiemer is a benchmark for Riesling in the U.S., but don’t overlook their Cabernet Franc. Since Merwarth and Bynke took over in the early 2000s, there’s been a focus on single-vineyard offerings from their key plots such as HJW, Josef, and Magdalena. “Twenty years, we used to think there had to be a link to the Old World,” Merwarth said. “Our tasting notes used to say, ‘This is a Rheingau-style Riesling’ or ‘This is an Alsatian-style.’ We’ve moved beyond that now.”

Keuka Lake

Dr. Konstantin Frank

Definitely worth a visit. There’s likely no winery in the Finger Lakes with more name recognition than Dr. Konstantin Frank. The winery was founded in 1962 by Frank, who immigrated from Ukraine. Frank held a Ph.D. in viticulture, and came to New York in the 1950s, eventually taking a teaching position at Cornell University. His lasting legacy was his push to replace the predominant hybrid grapes with vitis vinifera plantings. Now, they grow a wide range of grapes, beyond the usual Riesling and Cabernet Franc—including Austrian varieties such as Grüner Veltliner and Blaufränkisch, and Georgian varieties such as Saperavi and Rkatsiteli. “What we’ve learned here over 60 years is that the northern European varieties do best,” said Fred Frank, Konstantin’s grandson. Each year they also make more than 4,000 cases of sparkling wine from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Riesling. In fact, they were the first producer in the Finger Lakes to make a méthode champenoise sparkling wine. “We’re looking for more boldness,” said Meaghan Frank, the fourth generation to run the winery, with her father. “We are New World. We’re not trying to emulate anyone else.”