Living Roots Wine & Co. is a winery in both the Finger Lakes Region of New York (Hammondsport, Keuka Lake, Steuben County) and the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia. “Sixth generation winemaker and Adelaide native Sebastian and Rochester native Colleen Hardy make wines with regional and varietal expression, minimal inputs, and maximum quality.”
A new Tasting Room debuted one year ago with an incredible view of Keuka Lake and is located on the family’s Shale Creek Vineyard with an urban Tasting Room in Rochester.
“Some wines are made year-to-year while others are one-offs. Each vintage is an opportunity to explore new vineyards and varieties, and to highlight the terroir and natural strengths of these diverse regions.”
“The new Winery and Tasting Room in Hammondsport is located on the family’s Shale Creek Vineyard and features a large tasting bar, retail area, spacious indoor and outdoor seating, indoor fireplace and outdoor fire pits. The site is run on geothermal energy, solar panels and also offers functioning EV chargers.”
“The estate wines include Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Cabernet Franc. Vinifera and hybrid varieties are sourced from other growers around the region. Their most popular wines from Australia are McLaren Valley Grenache, Adelaide Hills Shiraz and Red Blend.”
“Living Roots also offers a range of lower alcohol “Sessions” wines (7 to 10 % ABV), made with natural techniques and spanning from Session Sparkling White to Session Red.”
Proprietress Colleen Hardy continues with us uncorking all that is Living Roots Wine & Co.
and welcome back. It is the SoCal Restaurant Show and we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10 a.m. until 12 noon right here on AM830 KLA the home of Angels Baseball 2024. It can also catch us on the AM830 Angels app. I'm Andy Harris the executive producer and co-host to the show and we're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety Produce. We are journeying back to the Finger Lakes region of New York specifically in and around Cucalake and we are speaking with the co-owner of Living Roots Wine and Company that being Colleen Hardy. Colleen welcome back. You have just celebrated the year anniversary of this magnificent new tasting room which is also your new production facility on you know this wonderful vineyard property that you have there in Cucalake and as you said and I can definitely agree the view that you have looking through the vineyards down to Cucalake it's nothing short of spectacular but Colleen if your wines weren't worthy you know it would be all well and good but it's the combination of everything that really impresses and we should let our listeners know in terms of the history the modern history of the wine business in the Finger Lakes the some of the pioneers the major pioneers of the Finger Lakes started with vineyards in and around Cucalake so your parents did very well I think buying that fixer upper and of course it's quite something now yeah absolutely it's it's been amazing to see it sort of I mean I had so much potential and was beautiful to begin with but I feel like it's really yeah come to life over the last 10 years tell us a little bit about the guest experience in your tasting room what are the options for the guest and also you you should mention you know you're very much trying to be green and sustainable and I believe your winery and tasting room if I got this correctly this is all powered by renewable energy am I am I remembering correctly yeah I we haven't measured how much of it is actually coming from renewable versus what is having to pull from the grid but we we have solar panels and it is geothermal powered so now that we've actually had you know been open for a year we have some data we can look at but but yeah that was definitely our intention was to use at least as much renewable energy as possible and definitely you know try to use natural materials and building and just make it yeah as sustainable as we could well definitely an admirable goal and you have is part of the tasting room experience on certain days and certain nights you have specialty foods that are offered tell us about the Friday afternoon hamburger experience because I witnessed that and it's obviously very popular yes we just last week was the last one for the season which we were very sad about because we've become quite used to having our Friday burgers but they'll definitely be back again next year so yeah couple a couple that worked for us in the tasting room last season and they also started their own cidery but they had I guess always been really big fans of smash burgers and especially when traveling I think they met actually out in California and had spent time in New Mexico and anyway they they were just disappointed there wasn't a good mashed burger here in the Finger Lakes region and so yeah they had come up with the idea to start you know a pop-up so it's called yummy burger and so you know there is basically Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday they would be you know popping up a different wineries around the region and so they were at our place every Friday afternoon and so it was really fun because you know people would just come and grab a bottle of wine grab some smash burgers and it just made for I don't know we loved that idea people kind of hanging out on the patio and just sitting back and relaxing and you know we love the tasting experiences and being able to tell people more about our wines and our wine making but we also you know love to see people just taking in the view and and relaxing so the Friday Friday burger nights have been a lot of fun for that absolutely and I must tell our audience that it is a very relaxed and welcoming tasting experience when you make it to the the winery at living roots now let's talk about some of your classic wines the estate wines that you're particularly known for of course Finger Lakes prominently is known for reselling tell us about the current release of your bone dry reselling because I felt it was one of the best representations of a dry reselling that I experienced during the time I was in Finger Lakes and Colleen I probably tasted a dozen oh well thank you yes I that's one that we're definitely proud of it's one that we love to drink we love to make it um and for us it's just kind of our expression of Finger Lakes dry rezling but we let it finish ferment completely so whereas you know a lot of dry rezling might have you know five six grams per liter of residual sugar we let ours ferment completely so all of our wines are you know definitely a minimal input ethos they're really carefully made so we never really say hands off just because my making is inherently hands on but we're definitely trying to minimize any additions and so everything is you know wild ferment just with the kind of native yeast on the grapes and in this case you know we because we let it finish ferment completely it is own dry as the name suggests we also don't need to filter it or anything so it is you know nice in that way and we try to pick on the later side so really looking to get some nice fruit intensity um and you know a little bit of richness to it but obviously still that classic kind of driving acidity so it's just a really nice balance um and you know I think rezling still has that stigma where people come in and they'll say oh no I don't like rezling it's too sweet so it's really nice to be able to show this one and and change that perception for people and kind of open their eyes to you know how many different styles of rezling there are out there no I think you succeeded there now Finger Lakes is not necessarily known for the red so we want to give them some equal do uh tell us about your cabernet frank which I really enjoyed I think the release I tried was 2021 is that right yeah yeah that would be and I that's a one that I again like consistently am really proud of and excited to show people because that's another one where yeah people will come in and say oh no I don't really like Finger Lakes red but I think there's some really beautiful examples out there and then I do think that ours is one of them and so um with the cabernet frank we you know again we're trying to keep the the grapes on the vine as long as we can kind of pending the season and the weather but um it's definitely more of an elegant style we are a cool climate and so I think as long as people expect that and you know aren't asking us to be California then you know if you embrace that kind of lighter more a little more delicate but still really characterful you know the cabernet is a really beautiful balance between kind of these juicy red fruits that we get from some partial um whole berry fermentation so we don't do full carbonic maturation with that one but we do you know we don't crush the grapes we just de-stem them and so you know it starts kind of fermenting as whole berries which kind of pushes out this really vibrant sort of fruit spectrum and so yeah you have this balance a really pretty juicy fruit but then it's also got this you know savory side that the you know that family of grapes is kind of known for and so you get a little bit of like a herbal backbone and it's just a really nice balance very smooth I think it's a great food line and then you know we're fortunate with making wine in Australia because we do still go back for harvest every year and make wine over there you know that's where we can get into more of our medium to full-bodied red so we're lucky with the two climates we're kind of able to do it all again with minimal input what we'll get there but before we make the transition to Adelaide Hills many of the younger wine drinkers now are looking for lighter lower alcohol wines and Colleen I gotta tell you I've tasted some low alcohol wines that are absolutely terrible you have your sessions program particularly the sparkling sessions white that I enjoyed tell us a little bit about the sessions program because what you're doing under that label really impresses thank you yeah that that is I think 2019 was the first vintage we so 2016 was our first vintage for living roots in general and then 2019 was the first year we started making our session range and the idea was basically just to have a little bit lower alcohol but still drink like a you know full flavored character full wine because we also have been kind of underwhelmed by some of the lower alcohol wines on the market I think it feels like you know beer and some other you know beverages have nailed it a little bit better whereas wine wine is a little more challenging and so you know we we felt like whereas you know non-alcoholic which is something we also you know are pursuing but that's definitely tougher to do we felt like especially in the Finger Lakes you know our climate's really well suited to lower alcohol styles anyways and so achieving you know seven eight nine percent alcohol we can do fairly easily and so that was that was the idea with these is just keeping them really fresh picking on the earlier side so whereas with the classic we're kind of hanging on hanging them on the vine and bungee and these ones were intentionally picking early to keep that alcohol lower and yeah just you know want them to still be you know delicious and still a wine but just a little bit lighter a little bit more you know restrained in terms of alcohol sure now unfortunately in our remaining moment and that's all we have I you know we don't have time to do justice to the Aussie Reds but in particular in particular the Pinot Noir from Adelaide Hills the 2020 I really liked can you give us just kind of a minute summation of that and for our listeners when you get two living roots they're a number of Aussie Reds to taste and they're all worth your consideration but we're talking about Pinot Noir right now yes the Adelaide Hills is a little bit where we are it's a little bit cooler compared to the Brock's Valley or McLaren Valley that people may be more familiar with but because it is on the cooler side it's great for these you know more elegant styles and so the Pinot Noir we sourced grapes from my in-laws vineyard as well as steps uncles vineyards and you know we always do a mix of a couple different clones for complexity but kind of similar to the cab trunk lots of whole berries in the ferment keeping it really fresh we don't really use new oak in any of our wine because we want kind of want them to be fruit driven and and you know just let that kind of shine through and so I think the Pinot is a good example of that absolutely now Colleen unfortunately we need to say goodbye what is the website for living roots so for our audience when they are in the Finger Lakes Finger Lakes area they can find you and find their way to Cuca Lake absolutely so it's livingrootswine.com and we are updating our website very soon so going that's up there now I built in 2015 thinking it was going to be a temporary holding page and somehow it's lasted all these years but we have a new one coming that'll be a lot more interesting but also Instagram we post a lot too so that's just @livingrootswine and yeah you can definitely see the view of the new spot on there ladies and gentlemen the co-owner of Living Roots Wine and Company with a magnificent new tasting room and their new winery in Cuca Lake near Hammond sport again one to definitely watch when you're in the area you are listening to the SoCal restaurant show when you return Love and Salt and Manhattan Beach we're proudly presented by Melissa's world variety produce we'll be right back
