Dr. Konstantin Frank

This month we are proud to feature the wines of Dr. Konstantin Frank, one of the iconic pioneers in our region. In the early 50’s, at the age of 52, with no knowledge of English and a PhD in Viticulture from the Ukraine, he immigrated to New York with his family in search of a new start. He planted roots - literally and figuratively - in 1958, becoming the very first to plant European grape varietals [Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Riesling, etc] in this part of the country.

His winery, originally named ‘Vinifera Wine Cellars’, was operational by 1962. And over the decades since, the Frank family has helped transform the Finger Lakes from a region known primarily for farming grapes into one appreciated for crafting wines. It’s a truly inspirational story.

We invite you to watch their excellent video to meet the family and and hear in Konstantin’s own voice how excited he is for the future of the Finger Lakes.

Three subsequent generations of Franks have continued to take the winery to new levels, and we’re inspired by the work that Meaghan Frank is doing. Our recent interview with her, recorded as a Spotify podcast, is below.

Dr. Frank is located on the scenic western slopes of Keuka Lake and continues to innovate and experiment. They are traditionalists when it comes to sparkling wines, however, and release extraordinary cuvées that bring to mind vintage Champagne styles.

The featured wines!

2019 Hilda Chardonnay I 2016 Blanc de Blancs I 2018 Saperavi

Discover why we love these wines, what’s inside the bottle, and try a few easy food & wine pairings!

Champagne & “méthode champenoise”

Some insight, adapted from a shorter piece written for Edible Finger Lakes

[ 4 minute read ]

Champagne is not just a wine… but it is also a wine region in France about the same distance from Paris as Rochester is from Buffalo. It is known to be one of the most regulated wine regions in the world… where (for example) every grape must be harvested by hand… and the growers and producers have countless rules and regulations about yields, techniques, and timing.

All Champagne is sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is Champagne.

In fact, the vast majority of sparkling wine sold around the world is quite different from the traditional Champagne style. One can, however, produce exceptional sparkling wines outside of Champagne… using the same grapes, the same techniques, and abiding by similar maturation requirements. You still cannot call it ‘Champagne’, but often you see it named traditional method, méthode traditionnelle, or méthode Champenoise. It can be great wine, but due to the unique terroir of the Champagne region - the deep limestone soil and the dual oceanic + continental climate - it is seemingly impossible to recreate the Champagne style elsewhere.

Famously, top French Champagne maisons have themselves been expanding their knowhow to other parts of the world… starting in Argentina (1959, Chandon), Napa Valley (1973, Chandon), Brazil (1973, Chandon), Australia (1986, Chandon), China (2013, Chandon), India (2014, Chandon), and the UK (2017, Taittinger, Pommery). For the most part, sparkling wines made by French maisons in other countries are meant for local consumption, as a way to introduce folks to ‘bubbles’. It is, in my opinion, a very (very) strategically clever long-term marketing campaign to create and maintain the aspirational aspect of Champagne as something that folks can eventually graduate to. Only in the UK are we starting to see perhaps an approach where French houses are producing sparkling wines for a worldwide audience.

Here in the Finger Lakes, starting in 1985, Willy Frank (Konstantin’s son) was the first to craft sparkling wines in the traditional method. And today, we have several other excellent méthode Champenoise producers worth noting, including Hermann J. Wiemer and Fox Run. I don’t think we have a ‘Finger Lakes’ style yet, but I am optimistic and impressed by the precision of the wines. It will be very interesting to see what additional years of maturation, riper harvests, and continued innovation and experimentation will yield.

The key grape varietals are the same as in Champagne: Chardonnay provides minerality and floral notes of green apple and citrus. Pinot Noir adds red fruit, weight, structure, and complexity, or what I call the ooomph of the wine. And Meunier (formerly called Pinot Meunier in Champagne) is a red grape that often behaves more like a white grape, bringing stone fruit flavors to the party. A ‘blanc de noirs’ contains no Chardonnay, while a ‘blanc de blancs’ is exclusively made from Chardonnay.

The ‘blanc’ refers to the color of the wine. When you press Chardonnay grapes (which have a green/golden-yellow skin) or Pinot Noir/Meunier (which have dark red skins), the color of the juice that flows out is white. Only when you extract the color from their skins (of the red grapes) do you get a red wine. So a blanc de noirs means that you have a white wine from red Pinot Noir and/or Meunier grapes (the ‘noir’ refers to the very dark red - almost black - color of the grapes).

To make a Rosé, one usually adds a small percentage of vinified red wine (from Pinot Noir and/or Meunier) to the blend. Though it is much more complicated than this, generally speaking the more red wine you add, the richer in color and style the final blend becomes. By definition, a Blanc de Blancs cannot also be a rosé, because the color of the wine comes from the skin of the grapes, and there are no red grapes used.

The assemblage, or the blend, must be recreated each year. It is then bottled, and with a little help from magic (i.e. sugar and yeast), a secondary fermentation occurs inside each individual bottle. This is perhaps the most important part of the process that differentiates the traditional method from much simpler - and less expensive - ‘bubbly wine’ that has CO2 added to it in a large tank.

It is not efficient at all to age wine in individual bottles, but having thousands of bottles resting in your cellar for years makes for a great photo op! And the result is a textural wine elevated by little dancing bubbles that give it a creamy mouthfeel.

If we were in the Champagne region of France, their highly regulated rules mandate a minimum of 15 months for maturation in the bottle for a non-vintage wine, and 36 months for a vintage. Most houses, however, do go much longer and allow the necessary time to mature until the desired style is reached before disgorging and removing the lees.

This complex process requires precise attention to detail, a lot of experience, and a ton of time. And a few extra steps that I skipped over. But that’s for another column!

It is safe to say that a well-crafted Blanc de Blancs becomes a serious wine that is best enjoyed in a wine glass (not in a flute) and can be an excellent pairing in lieu of a fine ‘traditional’ Chardonnay. This Dr. Frank recently-disgorged wine needs to open up a bit, and a larger glass is the perfect accessory.

Cheers! - RP