Situated high on Torrey Ridge overlooking one of the deepest
parts of Seneca Lake in Upstate New York is Fox Run - a winery with fifty-five
acres of vineyards producing a remarkable range of fine wines. Under the
dynamic, forward-looking ownership of Scott Osborn and Andy Hale, Fox Run has
become one of the handful of truly great wine producers in the Finger Lakes
region just south of Rochester, New York.
Native grape varieties put the Finger Lakes on the map a century
and a half ago, and French-American hybrids, bred for cold resistance, still
have an important niche in the region. But Osborn and Hale are convinced
that non-hybrid European Vinifera grapes can yield wine excellent enough to put
the Finger Lakes in the ranks of the world's top fine wine producers.
For more than a century Fox Run was a dairy farm. The first
grapes were not planted until 1984, and the barn, erected shortly after the
Civil War, was restored and converted to an up-to-date winery and tasting room
with a spectacular view of the lake.
In 1993, after a lengthy search, Scott Osborn and Andy Hale
bought the property. Working closely with winemaker Peter Bell and
vineyard manager John Kaiser, they have introduced a program of minimal
intervention winemaking and revitalized the vines by converting to a new trellis
system, which has had excellent results in Germany, France and Australia.
Fox Run now has 60 acres planted with Chardonnay,
Gewrztraminer, Riesling, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Gamay Beaujolais, Cabernet
Sauvignon and Pinot Noir - - plus two proprietaries: Arctic Fox, a blend
of whites, and Ruby Vixen, a semi-dry blush. Planned new releases include
a Bordeaux-style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc and a
ruby-style port.
ANDY HALE - Sailor, adventurer, entrepreneur, philatelist and enophile - these are the many faces of Andy Hale, co-owner with Scott Osborn of Fox Run and like his partner, a Rochester native. After graduating from Rochester's Lakewood Academy, Hale spent seven years in the Air Force, then worked in a Rochester bank, when his adventurous side showed itself. An avid sailor since childhood, he restored a vintage schooner and sailed to Antigua in the Caribbean. A planned three-month visit turned into a stay of ten years.
Upon his return to Rochester, Hale's entrepreneurial side took over. A long-time serious stamp-collector, he teamed up with a local coin collector to found the highly successful McLeod Stamp and Coin Co., in Brighton, NY. (The name came from the Lady McLeod, an 1870's West Indies mail boat.) He still sails regularly to the Caribbean in winter and on Lake Ontario in the summer.
Last but not least, being brought up in lake country, which happens to be one of the country's most important wine producing regions, imparted to Hale a well-developed taste for the wine business.
SCOTT OSBORN - International politics was the first interest of this Rochester, NY native and son of two professors. He attended the Friends World College with campuses around the world, and studied in Kenya, Iin both vineyard ndia, Thailand, Japan and England. After college, in the mid 1970's, he went into real estate development in Lake County, California, where he discovered his passion for wine. In 1980 he took his first job in the industry labeling bottles at Konocti Winery. He soon moved to cellar master positions at Firestone Vineyards, Zaca Mesa and Byron Winery.
Returning east in 1986, Osborne soon realized that the Finger Lakes region was where he wanted to make his mark producing wine, eventually with his own establishment. He worked for a distributor, then became general manager of Long Island's Pindar Vineyards in 1988. After two years he moved back to Rochester and began the search that would lead to the purchase of Fox Run in partnership with Andy Hale in 1993. Since then he has made his home at Fox Run's lovingly renovated century-old farmhouse.
At first Osborn wore both hats as general manager and winemaker of Fox Run, but increasing travel and speaking obligations led to the hiring of Peter Bell as full-time winemaker. Bell, a most gifted Finger Lakes winemaker, shared a vision with Osborn as to what goes into making excellent wines. This importantly has freed Osborn to devote more time to upgrading Fox Run's standards and practices in both vineyard and cellar and to plan for Fox Run's future which he sees as intimately bound to the destiny of the Finger Lakes appellation.
Osborn is a frequent participant in wine judgings, panel discussions and symposia relating to the challenges involved in making the Finger Lakes a world-class wine region. Most recently both Osborn and Bell were asked to go to Hungary to conduct a series of seminars on Wine Tourism and Wine Quality. Sponsored by US AID they gave one-day programs for three different wine regions. Both as advocate and producer Osborn is a formidable force in leading the way for international recognition of the fine wines of the Finger Lakes.
Winemaking at Fox Run - Winemaker Peter Bell.
The philosophy of Fox Run has been neatly summed up by winemaker Peter Bell: "We call it the New Minimal Intervention because it's a technology-based understanding of when not to apply technology." It is the approach pursued by many great European and New World domaines. After hand-harvesting of the grapes at their maximum maturity and sorting, handling is kept to a minimum. After pressing, wines are filtered as little as possible to allow for the true character of each grape variety to shine through. Quality is coaxed, not wrestled, out of the grapes.
PETER BELL - Winemaker at Fox Run since the summer of 1995, Peter Bell shares owners Scott Osborn and Andy Hale's conviction that the Vinifera revolution is still a young one. With proper clone and rootstock selection, trellising systems and cellar refinements, the world will begin to take notice of the superior wines of which the Finger Lakes region is capable.
Born and raised in Canada, Bell began his winemaking career in Australia, where he earned a degree in enology at Charles Stuart University in New South Wales where he also worked in the school's own winery. Upon graduation he became assistant winemaker for Hunter's Wines in New Zealand, producing Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and experimenting with Pinot Noir. Leaving New Zealand he turned down offers from Portugal and British Columbia in favor of the outstanding potential of the Finger Lakes. For five years he was winemaker at Dr. Konstantin Frank's Vinifera Wine Cellars on Keuka Lake where he made a number of award-winning wines.
For Bell the flip side of laissez-faire winemaking is the risk involved. The art is to know when not to do something to the wine, to apply a sort of benign neglect, yet to be ready to intervene when a hands-off approach would be disastrous. He describes himself as "extremely fussy" about hygiene -- "spoilage organisms are invisible and ubiquitous" -- and about minimizing oxygen contact, especially with aromatic wines, during racking, filtration and bottling.
VINIFICATION
Following gentle pressing, the juices of white wine grapes are pumped into stainless steel tanks and chilled to allow solid matter to settle to the bottom. Riesling is racked into clean stainless steel tanks and fermented at carefully controlled temperatures so as to maximize fruit aromas. It is usually bottled in February following the vintage.
Chardonnay on the other hand is racked from the settling tank into 60-gallon barrels of air-dried oak from Kentucky and Missouri, where fermentation takes place. The wine remains sur lie for four to eight months. This used to be regarded as a "dirty" French practice, but winemakers like Bell know that great Chardonnay should be kept cloudy, even slightly funky, in the first months of its life. The technique adds immeasurably to complexity, mouth feel, and integration of flavors in the final product.
As for reds, a one-to-two-day cold maceration takes place prior to fermentation of Pinot Noir with skins in open containers. The "cap" of skins forming at the top of the tank is regularly punched down to facilitate color extraction. When fermentation is almost complete, the must is pressed to separate out the skins and seeds. The wine goes into the barrel while malolactic fermentation is underway. Pinot Noir ages for eight months in 20 percent new French oak. After five consecutive vintages the barrels are replaced.
Cabernet is aged in barrels made from 60 percent American and 40 percent French oak (from the Allier, Troncais and Vosges forests). Cabernet and Merlot spend some eight months in oak, during which time these robust reds are racked several times to "open" them up. The wines undergo only a very light filtration and a cold stabilization before bottling.
VINEYARD MANAGEMENT
The vineyards of Fox Run benefit from a number of factors -- location, soil composition and effective and innovative management. Seneca Lake, if not quite the longest of the Finger Lakes, is the deepest (maximum depth of 678 feet) and largest in terms of volume. This fact provides Fox Run with a favorable microclimate -- the lake moderating the temperature extremes of winter and summer and providing a buffer against spring and fall frosts. The cold winter months require packing soil tightly around vine grafts, followed by careful pruning in spring. But it is the relatively warm winds coming off the lake in the winter that insulate Fox Run from significant frost damage.
The vines -- all planted on slopes leading down to the lake -- are spaced six feet from each other and enjoy excellent air drainage. Spacing and rigorous crop thinning keep yields low, an average of three tons per acre.
The soil composition caries with the individual parcels. The Pinot Noir vines are planted on soil rich in slate, the Chardonnay and Riesling on a mix of silt and sand, while the new plantings of Lemberger, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Gamay Beaujolais are thriving in sandy loam.
JOHN KAISER -- VINEYARD MANAGER
Fox Run's seasoned vineyard manager, John Kaiser, moved to the Finger Lakes region at the age of fourteen and has been working in the grape industry for nearly three decades. Working at several prominent wineries on the shores of Keuka Lake, Kaiser gained the knowledge and expertise which led to his grafting the first Chardonnay and Riesling vines onto American rootstock in 1984 at Fox Run. Most recently he has supervised a major conversion of the vineyards to a new trellising system.
VSP -- the key to richer flavors
When Scott Osborn and Andy Hale took over Fox Run in 1993, the 25 acres of Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Noir, Gewrztraminer and Cabernet Sauvignon suffered from drought stress, competition from weeds and an unsophisticated physical support system. The first order of business for the new owners was an intensive revitalization program.
In the winter of 1994 Kaiser heard a Wineries Unlimited presentation by Joetta Kirk on how she retrofitted Sakonnet Vineyards with a Vertical Shoot Positioned (VSP) trellis system with spectacular results.
Simply defined, VSP is a highly labor-intensive method for increasing the exposure of grapes to air and sunlight. The shoots are maintained in an upright position between pairs of "catch wires". The system is ineffective unless the canopy of leaves is kept scrupulously groomed. Because this means additional hand labor few wineries in the Finger Lakes have adopted the VSP approach which however has produced outstanding results in Germany, France and Australia.
Hired by Osborn to make a study of Fox Run, Larry Perrine recommended the replacement of the existing three-wire trellis system with an eight-wire VSP to be followed up by active hedging, shoot tucking and leaf removal. The conversion would boost labor efficiency, permit greater mechanization, reduce the number of required sprays, increase fruit ripeness and the color intensity of red grapes and stabilize fruit yields.
Fortunately the existing vineyard posts were strong and tall enough to accommodate five new wires, plus catch wire nails and wire clips for each vine. The installation was followed by new procedures carried out during the growing season -- using the catch wires to maintain a vertical wall of foliage, keeping the wires tight, trimming the vines to prevent shading and keeping the fruit zone exposed to light and air.
As early as the summer of 1995 there were tangible results. The foliage was growing in a neat vertical canopy no more than 12 inches wise and virtually all leaves displayed the healthy green of photosynthesis in action. Fruit was close to 100% exposed and disease incidence was extremely low.
Harvest commenced on August 31 with the picking of three tons of Chardonnay for sparkling wine. From the quality standpoint the success if the conversion was striking. A block of the oldest Chardonnay vines had not been converted to VSP. Destined for a reserve bottling these grapes were left to ripen the longest. Their flavors could not compare to those of the yield of the younger converted Chardonnay vines.
Winemaker Peter Bell describes the VSP Chardonnay as having the aroma of figs, peaches and tangerines with an intriguing spiciness he had never before encountered in Finger Lakes fruit. "The implication is that we can produce Chardonnays here with the elegance and structure of white Burgundies as well as the up-front of Chards from, say, Sonoma." Bell is also very pleased with the way his 1995 Pinot Noir developed: "Sunlight on berries translates into great flavors."
For a cost of $500 an acre the conversion more than paid for itself in terms of personal recognition of Fox Run wines by the public and wine professionals. Implementing a modern trellis system has been a big step towards realizing Fox Run's vision of excellence for itself and the Finger Lakes.
Fox Run Vineyards
670 Rt. 14
Penn Yan, NY 14527
1.315.536.4616
1.315.536.1383 (Fax)
1.800.636.9786
E-Mail: foxrun@fltg.net
LINKS:
www.foxrunvineyards.com
Party - Entertaining Supplies Catalog
