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Casa Larga celebrates its anniversary and 'ice wine'

www.casalarga.com

Casa Larga Vineyards in Fairport is celebrating its 45th anniversary with its annual Ice Wine Festival this weekend.

The winery started out as a hobby for the family in the 1970s, according to marketing director Andrea Colaruotolo O'Neill.              

``It really started as a labor of love.  My dad started with three wines and he entered them in the State Fair, and they did very well.  He decided after that to make it a small business.  And so it remained a hobby for many years, and has grown into a pretty big hobby now.”

She says Ice Wine really put Casa Larga on the map, and for the 11th year they’ll present the New York Ice Wine and Culinary Festival this Saturday.

The sold-out event features tastings, seminars on food pairings, horse drawn wagon rides through the vineyards and more.

O’Neill says to make the Ice Wine, it needs to be below 17 degrees when the grapes are picked.

The frozen grapes are then pressed, and a very rich, sweet juice is produced to make the wine.

She says even fans of very dry wines can find something to like in an ice wine, which she say is very rich and smooth, and is not like drinking a wine that is just sweet.

``You can’t produce ice wine all over the world, you can only produce it in certain areas of the world. It’s a very unique product, and for the winery it’s given us that extra brand imaging that there’s something special that comes out of New York.”

O’Neill says compared to 1974, there are many more wineries in New York, people recognize them as valuable industries, and she says New York can create world-class wines in this state.

Alex Crichton is host of All Things Considered on WXXI-FM 105.9/AM 1370. Alex delivers local news, weather and traffic reports beginning at 4 p.m. each weekday.