Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyard’s staff is celebrating a big win they learned about last week. The Dundee Winery’s Riesling Seneca Lake placed 45th on the list of top 100 in Wine Spectator.
“We’re showing up!,” exclaimed co-owner Oskar Bynke. “It’s great!”
Bynke, a Sweden native, studied at Cornell University in the late 90s. He is an agronomist who holds a Master of Science in Agricultural Economics.
“I didn’t come to Cornell to study wine,” Bynke said. “I came to study other things within agriculture. Because of Cornell and ag school there that has a lot of wine classes, I thought this is fascinating and I really enjoyed it.”
Decades later, his team is being recognized. Bynke enthusiastically described the winning wine.
“It’s a wine that is our most important wine,” Bynke added. “Our founder, Hermann Wiemer, experimented with Riesling in the mid-70s. We’ve been maintaining those vines since the 70s. We make a wine called HJW, it’s one of our drier styles of Riesling. It’s a gorgeous wine; it both has weight and maturity and richness to it, but because of the shale, it has a lean minerality and a zing that freshens up the palate. The balance behind the weight and the backbone to it is what makes it a very fascinating wine.”
The vineyard is located on the West side of Seneca Lake.
Rebecca is a veteran multimedia journalist serving as one of our core reporters in the Finger Lakes region. She is responsible for telling stories that matter to every day Upstate New Yorkers. Have a question or lead? Send it to [email protected].