What do you do with a bunch of wine judges after two long days of wine judging?

You take them wine tasting.

About 30 of us loaded onto the bus at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning for a day of touring New York's Finger Lakes Wine District.

Living in northern California, sometimes we can get blasé when it comes to wine tasting and touring. No matter where we turn, there are great wineries within easy reach. It's easy to become dismissive of other regions around the country.

That would be wrong.

New York's Finger Lakes region offers one of the largest concentrations of wineries outside of Napa Valley, with more than 100 wineries along Keuka, Seneca, Cayuga and Canandaigua lakes. When I told my mother I was going, there she winced, remembering the overly sweet and odd-smelling wines produced from both native and hybrid varietals the region was known for 40 years ago.

It's come a long way since then.

The passage of the New York Farm Winery Bill in 1976 marked the state's transition into the modern wine era by easing restrictions on wineries selling directly to the public. At least 50 percent of all sales now are direct to the public, providing better margins for small, independent producers.

The result has been an explosion of both wineries and wine quality.

I was there at the end of March and it was cold. Many of the hybrids growing there were bred to survive the cold climate. But a jump in quality came with increased plantings of European fine wine varieties with Riesling being the most notable example.

Something called the "lake effect" plays a pivotal role. According to Finger Lake's winemaker Richard Figiel, the lakes act as radiators. They emit temperatures cooler than the surrounding air in the summer and warmer than surrounding air in winter.

In spring, the cooling influence tends to delay the emergence of tender new vine shoots until the risk of spring frost passes. In fall, it's the reverse: Summer heat stored in the lakes radiates out to postpone frosts until as late as November. The region simply couldn't be the region without the lakes.



Ice wines an unusual taste

We visited five wineries. Most produced a combination of both vinifera, hybrid and native varietals, cabernet franc and marechal foch. Niagara, a white hybrid produced in a sweet style with the pronounced character of native varieties referred to as "foxy," is still quite popular. Sweeter red wines also are common.

My favorite winery was Sheldrake Point, on Cayuga Lake. The wines were outstanding. The rieslings were textbook for the region: Dry, very tart, with lemon-lime and mineral notes. These are wines that need five to 10 years of bottle age to show their best.

The gewurztraminer and the 2007 gamay barrel samples were delicious. The 2005 cabernet franc was floral and spicy, with white pepper. The cab franc reserve offered age-worthy, solid structure, with green peppercorn and herbal tones.

And then there's the ice wine. If you have never tasted one, it is hard to get a handle on what they are. Growers let the grapes hang on the vine until the first frost of the season before picking them. The result is a concentrated, stunningly sweet, yet perfectly balanced nectar that is like nothing you've ever tasted.

Ice wines often win best of show awards because they are so dramatically bold and intensely flavored. If you ever wanted to stop guests dead in their tracks at the end of a long and sumptuous meal, Sheldrake Point's 2007 riesling ice wine will do the job.

The only real problem is that you can't get any of these wines in California. With updated shipping laws, New York can now ship to California. It might be worth the postage.