Dan, what a pleasure it is to start off the day with a post on Vergennes - thank you sincerely for it. I know that I'm going to have a great day just thinking about it!
Vergennes, Diamond, Dutchess - all these white labrusca hybrids are truly undervalued grapes today. There was a time when certainly their presence was more seen, but in our times their heirloom status has not been appreciated. I hope that this changes as the varietal names begin to make their way into tasting rooms once again, this time in the most laudable form of carefully crafted, clean and flavourful
estate wines.
Now, as you recall, we tried the Arbor Hill Vergennes at NiagaraCOOL last year. I was most impressed by it and thought that it, along with your Diamond, could be benchmark setters for a new era in white labrusca table wines for New York State and all other Northeastern areas of North America today, where these varieties can be grown.
I'm including my NiagaraCOOL notes and the label picture of that Vergennes here in my post for those who missed them the first time around.
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Vergennes is such a rare grape that I had never heard of it before this year. It is great to see this fine varietal example being crafted in our time at Arbor Hill in the Finger Lakes. I've included a photo of the rear label here because the write-up is really interesting and worth a read.
I think it's fair to say that, served blind, few would guess this to be a labrusca wine. It had subdued fruit with a light spicy overlay that didn't hint at any particular white labrusca variety that I've tried up to now. Delaware and Steuben both have distinct labrusca character. Diamond has this character too, but then it seems to whisper a kind of "guess who I am" from the glass when swirled.
No, Vergennes is certainly unique. It's not "foxy" in the sense that we understand this to mean a grape-jelly aroma. The wine was bright and clear with a crisp and vivid demeanor; the fruit was there and was complemented by a subtle spicy element. The mid-palate was crisp and cleansing with healthy acidity, and the finish was minerally and nearly dry (I think I would have rated this a '1' on the sugar scale, just by taste). Really an excellent wine, but more importantly an excellent initiative - a true breaking out of the trough, as I alluded to above.
