Finger Lakes
"The land here is scored deep, as if something enormous dragged its fingers through it."
We’d come to the Finger Lakes for the wine, if I’m honest — Lia had read about the Rieslings and I’ll follow her anywhere there’s a cellar door. But on the first morning, jet-lagged and impatient, we drove into the little town of Watkins Glen at the foot of Seneca Lake and walked into the gorge behind it, and the wine plans quietly rearranged themselves. Within a few hundred metres the path led us under a waterfall, actually behind the falling water, the stone slick and dripping and the whole chasm booming with sound. Lia turned to me with her hair already soaked and shouted something I couldn’t hear over the roar. I’m fairly sure it was a good word.
Walking through the gorge
Watkins Glen State Park is a gorge trail unlike any I’ve walked — nineteen waterfalls in under two miles, the stream having sawed down through layer after layer of grey rock over ten thousand years since the glaciers left. The path is carved right into the walls, stone steps worn smooth, bridges arcing across the chasm, and in places you pass through tunnels dripping with spring water and ferns. It’s cool down there even in high summer, the air green and wet. We took it slowly, Lia stopping at every pool to peer in, and by the top we’d climbed 800-odd steps without noticing, delivered up into ordinary sunny woodland as though the whole underworld had been a dream.
The wine road along Seneca
Then, yes, the wine. The lakes are deep and cold and moderate the climate just enough for grapes, and Seneca Lake in particular is ringed by dozens of small family wineries strung along the shore road. We spent an unhurried afternoon working our way up the east side, tasting Rieslings that ranged from bone-dry to honeyed, poured by people who’d made them and wanted to talk. From the tasting-room terraces the lake stretched away below, dark blue and improbably long — you can’t see the far end — with vineyard rows combing down to the water. Lia bought a bottle at a place near Hector where the winemaker’s dog fell asleep on her feet, and we drank it that night watching the light go off the lake.
Ithaca and its waterfalls
At the southern tip of Cayuga Lake sits Ithaca, a college town that seems almost embarrassed by how many waterfalls it has — “Ithaca is Gorges,” the bumper stickers insist, and they’re not wrong. We hiked up to Taughannock Falls, which drops 215 feet in a single unbroken plume, taller than Niagara, into a great stone amphitheatre where we stood craning our necks like fools. Later we wandered Ithaca’s farmers’ market on the lake edge, ate a lunch of things we couldn’t identify from a dozen small stalls, and watched rowers pull out onto Cayuga in the late light. Lia said it was the kind of town she could imagine living in, which is her highest compliment, and one she gives out roughly once a country.
Getting There
The Finger Lakes sprawl across central New York, easiest reached by car. The nearest sizeable airports are Rochester and Syracuse, each about an hour from the heart of the region; Ithaca has a small airport too. You’ll want a car regardless — the whole appeal is meandering the lake roads between wineries, gorges, and farm stands, and there’s no public transport worth the name. Come between late spring and October, when the gorge trails are open and the vines are green; autumn brings blazing colour and the grape harvest. Wear proper shoes for the gorges — the stone is genuinely slippery — and don’t try to drive the wine roads and taste seriously on the same day. We learned to alternate.