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Ripe but nervy and bone dry, with plump peach, apricot, nectarine and Mirabelle plum, Golden Delicious apple and pear, lifted by bergamot and chamomile. A taut spine of fennel, ginger and quinine leads to stony minerality and a long, bitter-orange finish.
Available in store
CloseRiesling
Food pairings: Fresh oysters on the half shell, tinned fish and seafood conservas, pan-seared trout with lemon and herbs, sushi and sashimi, Thai green curry, pork belly with apple slaw, goat cheese and herb salad, and charcuterie.
Winemaking: Classique is Forge's most important wine, an annual celebration of the vintage and of the growers who farm its vineyards. It is built from ten different lieux-dits along southeast Seneca Lake, each vinified separately, and then blended to harmonize these snapshots of terroir into a balanced portrait of the place and the year. As with all Forge wines, the grapes are harvested and sorted by hand and fermented spontaneously with indigenous yeasts in neutral barrels; the slow fermentations run long, and the Riesling is fermented bone dry. The 2023 was harvested from October 11 to 27.
Vineyards and terroir: Forge works an eight-mile stretch of the southeastern shore of Seneca Lake that offers an unusual diversity of soils. The sites behind the 2023 Classique grow on Lansing, Hudson, Angola and Conesus gravelly loams over shale, and the deep lake gives the long, cool ripening season that brings both ripe fruit and the tension and acidity of great dry Riesling.
Family and history: Forge Cellars was founded in 2011 by Louis Barruol, owner of Château de Saint Cosme in Gigondas in the southern Rhône, a family estate for many generations, and his American friend Richard (Rick) Rainey. Barruol had dreamed of building a new winery from scratch in a cool climate, and after travelling the wine world he found what he was looking for in the Finger Lakes. The first vintage, 2011, was a few hundred cases of dry Riesling, and the winery in Burdett is now one of the region's leading names for bone-dry Riesling, alongside cool-climate Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc. Classique is where it all began.
In the pictures: Partner Louis Barruol in the vineyard; co-founder Rick Rainey in the barrel cellar (photo: Chandra Russell); and the Forge Cellars barrel room (photos courtesy of Forge Cellars).
