Usonia West! West!! West!!! Red Crackling Wine 2024 750ml

USA : NEW YORK : FINGER LAKES

SUSTAINABLE : Chancellor, Cayuga White, Verdelet, Diamond

LIGHT-MEDIUM BODIED, DARK CHERRY, RED BERRY, DRIED OLIVE, EFFERVESCENT, NEUTRAL OAK

A May 2023 frost devastated much of the Finger Lakes' vinifera crop — some growers lost everything — and Usonia responded the way good producers do: they said yes when friends called with hybrid grapes to sell. The base wine pulls Chancellor, Cayuga White, and Verdelet from the west shores of Cayuga and Seneca Lakes, fermented and aged through the winter in neutral oak and stainless. Then, in 2024, fermenting Diamond juice from the east side of Seneca was added at bottling, the bottle sealed to capture the CO2.

The name riffs on "Est! Est!! Est!!!" — the medieval Italian wine legend where a bishop's scout kept stacking exclamations for wines that earned them. Usonia stacks "West" for the west-facing vineyards that provide the base. The style is rifermentato: bubbles born inside the bottle from an active fermentation, not injected or riddled out. The TTB calls it "crackling wine," which means lower pressure than Champagne — the effervescence is light, the texture creamy, and the character is dark berry fruit with a savory dried-olive edge that reads more Italian than anything else you'll find from New York.

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