This month’s wine club is all about a single winery. We do that rarely, and only when a winery has earned it. Ravines Wine Cellars has. The estate sits above Seneca and Keuka Lakes in upstate New York, and what we love about it starts with a choice. Its founder could have made wine almost anywhere — he had the training and the pedigree to go wherever he wanted. Instead, he chose the Finger Lakes, a region most of the wine world had barely heard of. Why he did is worth telling.
Morten Hallgren grew up at his family’s estate in France’s beautiful Provence, with vineyards documented back to the 1300s. He trained in the south of France, worked harvests from Bordeaux to Texas, and in 1998 came to the Finger Lakes to make wine for Dr. Konstantin Frank — the man who, decades earlier, had proven that great European grapes could survive this cold corner of New York. It was a long way from Provence. But Morten saw what the region could be, and in 2000 he and his wife Lisa bought seventeen acres on Keuka Lake, tucked between two steep ravines, and made their first wines in a rented barn. The ravines gave the winery its name.
Here was his conviction: the Finger Lakes could make world-class Riesling, and the way to show it was to go fully dry. At the time most of the region’s Riesling carried some sweetness — even bottles labeled dry. Morten went the other way: bone-dry, mineral-driven, the fruit left to speak for the place it came from. It was the road less traveled then. It’s now the style the region is known for, and Ravines was built around it from the first vintage. Today Ravines farms 130 acres of certified-sustainable vineyards across both limestone and shale soils, classical to the core — patient in the cellar, low-intervention, every wine made for the table. Twenty-five years on, the bet looks less like a gamble than like vision.
We chose three wines that tell the whole story. The Dry Riesling is the wine that made the reputation. The Cerise is the easy summer red they’ve poured for the better part of twenty years. And the Cabernet Franc is the newer argument — proof that the reds here have grown up too.
Cheers,
P. + E. Mullins
2022 Ravines Dry Riesling
Finger Lakes, NY
This is the wine that made the reputation, and the 2022 is a standout even by its own measure. It came out of a polar-vortex winter that cut the crop hard — less fruit, but what survived arrived concentrated and intense. It went on to land at #36 on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 of 2025, rare air for a Finger Lakes white. The blend is two estate sites on Seneca Lake: about three-quarters from Limestone Springs, the rest from the shale of 16 Falls. Hand-harvested, whole-cluster pressed, fermented cool and slow in stainless, then six months on the lees for a little extra weight. And it is properly dry — finished at around three grams of sugar, so the word on the label means what it says.
In the glass it’s a polished gold. The nose is unmistakably Finger Lakes and quietly generous — white peach, Asian pear and lemon first, then honeycomb and orchard blossom, with a flicker of flint and wet stone underneath. The palate is rounder and plumper than the nose lets on, all yellow apple and a squeeze of lime, before a bitter-herb snap — verbena, a touch of something almost quinine — pulls it straight and carries a long, bright finish. That’s the trick good Riesling pulls: weight and cut at the same time.
Riesling this precise is one of the most food-friendly wines we stock. Reach for it with oysters and anything off the raw bar, with sushi, or with the Thai and Vietnamese takeout you already love — the acidity cuts heat and chili beautifully. It’s just as happy beside roast chicken, pork loin, smoked trout, or a wedge of fresh chèvre on the patio. Serve it well-chilled.
2024 Ravines Cerise Red Wine
Finger Lakes, NY
“Cerise” is just the French word for cherry, and the name tells you the wine’s whole intention. This is Ravines’ summer red, first made in 2006 and a house favorite ever since — a bright, easygoing blend of Pinot Noir and Blaufränkisch (the grape you may know as Lemberger), all estate fruit from their Seneca Lake vineyards. It’s what we reach for when it’s too warm for something heavy and a chilled white won’t quite do. Twenty minutes in the fridge before you pour; it likes a light chill.
It’s a pretty thing in the glass — a translucent, lit-from-within ruby. The nose is wild strawberry and just-picked cherry, with plum, a little raspberry and cranberry, a lift of violet, and the faintest fleck of pepper and spice to keep it from reading as merely sweet. The palate keeps the promise: juicy red fruit, a whisper of garden herb, tannins so light they barely register, and a clean, mouthwatering acidity that pulls you straight to the next sip. Soft, lively, and honest.
This is your warm-evening, no-fuss bottle. Set out charcuterie and softer cheeses, or pour it with grilled salmon, roast chicken, blistered summer vegetables, or a Friday-night pizza. It’s a generous partner for picnic food and porch suppers, and it asks nothing of you but a light chill.
2023 Ravines Cabernet Franc
Finger Lakes, NY
If the Riesling is the bet that paid off, this is the one still paying out. Finger Lakes reds carry a reputation — too lean, too green — and this is the wine that argues the other side. It’s all estate fruit from the same two Seneca Lake sites, mostly White Springs with the balance from 16 Falls, off vines about twenty years old. The winemaking is slow and hands-on: hand-harvested, fully destemmed, two to three weeks on the skins with gentle manual punch-downs and pump-overs, a wild malolactic in barrel, then fourteen months in large, older Austrian oak casks. That older oak is the whole point — it rounds the wine without ever painting it with vanilla, so the fruit and the site stay out front. Ravines holds it back for a little bottle age before release, and you can tell.
It pours a deep crimson, brighter at the rim. The nose really is floral — violets first — over black cherry, redcurrant and cranberry, with a savory undercurrent of sage, dried herb, a little tobacco and turned earth. The palate is medium-bodied and supple, plump dark fruit and a note of fig folding into fine, chalky, lightly gripping tannins and that bright Finger Lakes acidity. The finish is long and holds its shape. It drinks beautifully now, but a few years in the cellar will only add to it — this is a wine that rewards a little patience.
This one wants the table. Think lamb chops, duck, a slow Sunday braise, or anything mushroom-forward; it’s also a natural with hard aged cheeses and with herb-rubbed everything off the grill. Cabernet Franc and a green-herb sauce — chimichurri, salsa verde — is a pairing worth remembering.
