95 Rating (Exceptional wine) and Gold Medal, 2010 World Wine Championships, Beverage Testing Institute (tastings.com)

Example of American Greatness (Gold), 2010 Jefferson Cup Invitational Wine Competition

Gold Medal, 2011 Big E Northeast Gold Wine Competition

Our marquee wine, featured on NBC's Today Show, Vidal Blanc Ice Wine is a rare and lusciously sweet after-dinner wine with rich honey, apricot and exotic fruit flavors.  Genuine ice wines (picked completely frozen, pressed frozen, never thawed) are rare by their very nature.  Even rarer is this opportunity to enjoy an aged ice wine.  With time, genuine ice wines darken in color, with raisin and honey notes predominating.

Our Vidal Blanc Ice Wine has been served at the United Nations, ordered by the White House and featured on NBC's Today. In the 1980s, Art and Joyce Hunt became the first major producers of genuine ice wine in the United States, and it remains our marquee wine today. Our specially-chosen Vidal Blanc grapes are left on the vine through the normal harvest period, allowing them to develop further complexity of flavors and sweetness. If the grapes are able to survive this period through successive cycles of frost, light freezing and Indian summer, we wait for a cold front that can deliver an extended period of 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, the water molecules that make up most of the grape freeze, but the rest (which provides the flavor) does not. We hand-pick the grapes at this temperature and press them frozen to produce a trickle of golden nectar. Slow fermentation at cool temperatures yields this rare and lusciously sweet wine that bursts with honey, apricot and exotic fruit flavors. Serve well chilled on its own, or with a wide variety of desserts, as a grand finale to a fine meal. A bottle serves approximately six 2-ounce glasses.

                                                     

Notes on this vintage by winemaker Jonathan Hunt.

After an average summer in 2013, we experienced a beautiful warm and dry laste September, nicely ripening our Vignoles grapes. By mid-October, one block had developed beautiful botrytis, and at 31 degrees Brix, the grapes were in great shape for Late Harvest Vignoles. We fermented with CEG (Epernay II) yeast at our usual 50°F to preserve the most delicate flavors. The finished wine exhibits a perfect balance of lively citrus notes (many tasters say “Grapefruit!”), sweetness, and alcohol, with a lovely round mouthfeel and long finish.

Notes by Hunt Country Vineyards owner and founder Art Hunt.

In the 1980s, Governor Mario Cuomo tasted this wine and exclaimed, “It’s seductively sweet!”. In ideal ripening years we gamble by delaying harvest of selected blocks of our Vignoles grapes, hoping for healthy development of the fungus botrytis cinerea, what French vineyardists refer to as the “noble rot”. Botrytis shrivels and desiccates the grapes on the vine, intensifying their natural sugars and flavors. After carefully controlled cold fermentation, the result is a seductively sweet white wine in the Sauternes and Beerenauslese traditions with hints of fresh citrus and exotic fruits.

Accolades. Our Late Harvest Vignoles wines have won 15 Gold medals in prestigious competitions since 2004, have been featured in FOOD&WINE magazine, and on IntoWineTV. They pair beautifully with apple or cherry pies and tarts, and with bleu cheeses.

                                                     

Cream Sherry has been a favorite of our family for generations, a perfect drink for relaxation after a great meal. The foundation of our Cream Sherry is a blend of Riesling, Cayuga White and Cabernet Franc wines. We fortify the wine with pure grape distilled spirits to achieve the perfect balance between the flavors, sweetness and alcohol. We then heat and bubble oxygen through the blend for a month or more to produce the beautiful "darker" flavors of raisin, nut and caramel. Crucial to this step is our condenser coil that traps evaporating alcohol and returns it to the wine. Serve at cool room temperature or lightly chilled. Enjoy a glass by itself, with sharp cheeses and desserts, or as an ingredient in soups, stews and sauces. Cheers! - Winemaker Jonathan Hunt

                                                     

Muscat wines are prized for their fragrant floral character, and this Valvin Muscat from grapes grown on our farm has a gorgeous orange blossom aroma, a hint of sweetness and a long, luxurious finish. We planted one acre of Valvin Muscat in 2000 and another in 2001.

The 2013 growing season was marked by cool weather in June and July, followed by an average August. Luckily, September and early October brought beautiful weather, allowing the ripening process to catch up. Our Valvin Muscat crop was average in size, but clean and ripe, making this vintage particularly delicious.

The Valvin Muscat grape — a complex French-American hybrid bred at Cornell University in the 1960s — has a long and distinguished ancestry. The Muscat (or Moscato) is believed to be one of the oldest families of domesticated grapes in the world, having been cultivated in Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley as long ago as 3000 B.C.