Established in 2011, Forge Cellars has made it its mission to showcase the compelling diversity of terroirs around Seneca Lake, in the heart of New York’s Finger Lakes region. It began with Riesling and Pinot Noir from a handful of top vineyards. Come the 2019 vintage, it was time for Cabernet Franc to get a bit of the Forge Cellars treatment. The team’s obsession with “collecting sites” and exploring the potential of site-expressive wines now extends to Cabernet Franc, with several single-vineyard bottlings, each crafted with the same approach in the cellar to let the site and terroir shine through. On a recent visit to the winery, I sat down with Rick Rainey and winemaker Léana Godard to discuss their love of the Finger Lakes, their Cabernet Franc journey, and the pleasure of a wine that makes you smile.
CFC: What I love about Forge Cellars and your journey is that you came to the Cabernet Franc revelation a little later than some other Finger Lakes wineries, which immediately saw Cabernet Franc as part of their winemaking program. So Rick, walk me through it. What was that moment, or was there a certain wine, that flipped the switch and told you Cabernet Franc needed to be part of what Forge is all about?
RR: I grew up drinking Charles Joguet, Clos Rougeard, Thierry Germain… for me, all of the greats. I knew those wines well because of my background. I was spending a lot of time in France, and I was fortunate to spend a lot of time at Charles Joguet and others. These were wines I absolutely adored. But when we first started Forge, our focus was on Pinot Noir and Riesling, and we had half an eye on Cabernet Franc. I was looking around, and I didn’t find any vineyards I was really excited about. Then I stumbled across one: Willow, John Wagner’s vineyard, down close to the lake on sand, super well farmed. I said, let’s try it. Let’s take the same attention to detail, the same passion, the same idea, and just apply it to Cabernet Franc. That was the 2019 vintage, a sandy-soil Cabernet Franc. It turned out super good, and we were really happy. Now, in typical Forge fashion, we make four different Cabernet Francs from four different soils, all with the same approach.
CFC: Léana, for you in the cellar, as you approach the four Cabernet Francs you now make, has anything really jumped out at you since you began in 2019? Has the way you work with Cabernet Franc, or the way you think about it, shifted or evolved over the last five or six years?
LG: Yes, absolutely. We started with a more Burgundian style of winemaking, with a lot of punch-downs. They were gentle, but it was more this approach, with up to 30% whole cluster. Then, as we went along, we realized that some sites show better with no stem inclusion, and that was thanks to the 2023 vintage. In 2023, we decided to leave out the stems entirely so we could really understand each terroir and the tannin potential of each soil, and see where the wines landed. That helped us in 2024 to reintroduce stems in some of them. So that was one big thing. The other is that I now work more with pumpovers than punch-downs. We still do some punch-downs, but not as many as we do for the Pinot Noir.
CFC: Rick, when you’re travelling and presenting Forge Cabernet Franc, whether to sommeliers or to consumers at events, how do you frame the Forge style for the grape, or what someone can expect in the glass?
RR: It’s about joy. We want the wines to give pleasure. I guess there’s a house style. I’m not even sure what the house style is, other than good purity and good site expression. We try to get out of the way of the site and tell the story of the place. So frankly, I talk more about place than I talk about Forge, with everything. For us, that is the house style. We’re very enamoured with this region and enamoured by the sites, and my job is to do everything we can to tell the story of the place. The terroir here is worth exploring and should have a seat at the table. That’s the job. That’s what we ramble on about.
LG: Because the winemaking is the same across all of the sites, you really feel the influence of each one in the wine. With Willow, you feel the impact the sandy soil has on the texture. Railroad is more on gravel, with older vines, and that adds a lot of depth. Arlo is more on clay and has more of a Bordeaux style. Our home vineyard, Bellows, is a mix of sand and rock, which gives the wine nice framing. It’s very joyful, but with a lot of depth too. All of the sites have so much to say. That’s why they’re so much more interesting than what we do.
RR: It’s evolution. That’s in our second breath here. Everything we say is about: let’s keep evolving, let’s keep pushing, let’s keep understanding.
LG: Let’s raise the bar.
RR: Exactly. Let’s just keep pushing. And at the end of the day, let’s give pleasure, bring joy, bring happiness. That’s what our job is.
LG: You know the joke you always like to make when people drink Willow. When we taste it and present it to people, Rick always likes to say, if you don’t smile when you’re drinking this wine…
RR: …I’m calling an ambulance, because you’re dead or dying. That’s what we’re here to do: stimulate people and give them insight into the region. And yeah, that’s the fun.
CFC: Last question for both of you, and I’ll start with Rick. If you could describe Cabernet Franc in three words, what would those three words be?
RR: I think Cabernet Franc is fun, it’s mystifying, and it’s full of potential.
CFC: I love it. Léana, same question. Three words to describe Cabernet Franc for you.
LG: For me, it’s joy. Really, it’s joy in a glass, and a big smile. And the potential is huge, for sure. We can obviously make something very easy, but in fact, the wine has a lot to say.
RR: There’s one way to go about it, where we make very fun, joyful, fruit-forward wines. Or… we believe there’s more to it than that. So we’re also making some wines where we draw a lot of inspiration from Bordeaux: the tannic structure, the ageability, the texture. So… we don’t know. There are so many ways to go, and we’re still exploring it.
CFC: Thank you both for your time today, and for your passion for Cabernet Franc.
LG: Thank you.
RR: Right on.
For more on the wines from Forge Cellars, check out some of the below posts:
