Talk to winemakers and grape growers, and they can be quite persnickety when describing the grapes they work with. More often than not, it’s their irritations with the grapes that draw the most attention—late to ripen, susceptible to disease and so forth.
Except when it comes to Cayuga.
“Cayuga is an uber-useful blender and it’s beloved of both grape growers and winemakers,” says Peter Bell, who was the winemaker at Fox Run Vineyards in New York’s Finger Lakes for 27 years, where he made cases and cases and cases (and cases!) of the winery’s Arctic Fox, a semisweet varietal Cayuga. “Cayuga needs little in the way of winemaker elaboration. I love pouring it for people who gravitate to Pinot Grigio, since it has that broad appeal—but way more personality.”
Cayuga, or Cayuga White as it’s sometimes called, is a white Cornell hybrid developed in upstate New York by university researchers in the 1940s but wasn’t released commercially until a couple of decades later. Its history is long and complicated, dating to the mid19th century, when a table grape called Winchell was identified in Vermont. Winchell was later crossed with a grape called Moore’s Diamond (which was itself a Concord cross) and a couple of crosses later, Cayuga showed up. All told, Cayuga’s forebears include native Vitis labrusca varieties, French-American hybrids and even Vitis vinifera.
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As such, says Bell, who now works as a consulting
This Article was originally published on Wine Enthusiast
