New York State

The oldest winery in the United States is located in upstate New York.  It is also the very first winery I ever visited – back in the 70’s.  My son lives not far from the winery, so he took us there as an anniversary present, and it gives me an opportunity to do a little national comparison.
​Brotherhood Winery was founded in 1839.  It produced wine for churches, so did not have to close down during Prohibition.  The first thing I noticed on driving into their grounds is the lack of grape vines.  Turns out they grow their grapes much farther north, in the Finger Lakes region of New York.  You can see their facility in the pictures below.

New York state is substantially wetter and colder than Southern California, so they don’t grow the same grapes.  The winery specializes in German whites, sweet, sparkling, and fruit wines (see rating page below).  Well, at least that’s what they grow and bottle.  They also import wines from Chile and even California to allow them to offer a very wide variety of wines

Their tasting is a bit unique, completely different from anywhere else.  We tasted in a group from the menu shown below.  As you can see, there are three lists. For each tasting you had your choice of one of the three wines nicely explained by the server.  At the end, everyone tasted their Riesling.  Six tastings per person.  By the way, the Pinot Noir was their product, grapes grown in New York state.  Dreadful.  The Riesling was great, though.  Oh, and please note that, as shown in the last picture, they keep all of their wines in a cooler for tasting….

We also stopped at a winery/distillery/hard cider mill not far from Brotherhood, the Warwick Valley Winery, Distillery & Café.  The grapes again were grown in the Finger Lakes region, but the cider came from locally grown apples.  Nice facility, as shown below.

For the tasting, you marked a menu, as shown below.  Some interesting wines, including a red made from Baco Noir, some sort of French-American hybrid.  I'm going to add that to my list of reds.   Note the prices.  Bottom line:  you get what  you pay for....