The Fizz #56: Meaghan Frank, fourth generation at Dr. Konstantin Frank Winery, believes The Finger Lakes are the future
In this issue, Meaghan Frank and I speak about her family wine journey at Dr. Konstantin Frank, The Finger Lakes wine style, where the region is growing, and why you should care.
Meaghan Frank is the fourth generation at Dr. Konstantin Frank winery in The Finger Lakes. This winery boasts a deep history—Dr. Konstantin Frank is one of the first people to advocate for planting vitis vinifera vines in the New York State in the 1950s, at a time when most people thought vinifera would never take in the cold climate of New York. Dr. Frank, a WWII refugee from Ukraine, had a great impact on the East Coast wine scene as we know it.
I was lucky to meet Meaghan Frank, currently serving as Vice President of the company, at Riesling Camp this year, and got to taste their wines. In this issue, Meaghan and I speak about the history and future of The Finger Lakes, what makes the region special, and what work they need to do to bring the wines to a global stage of recognition.
Margot: Can you tell me a bit about your own personal wine journey and what that has looked like?
Meaghan: My wine journey begins with my family. My great-grandfather started our winery back in 1962, and I never met him. He passed away before I was born. I grew up with my father in the business. I had literally no interest at all in working at the winery until I was in college, I would say about 19 or 20 years old and I began taking some wine classes.
I was bitten by the wine bug, learning about different regions, different cultures, different food and wine pairings, and was very enamored with the wine industry from my exposure in college. It was actually really meant to be my brother to take over the business. I'm one of three and he is the youngest. For four generations, the businesses have been passed on to the male heir, so he was the one that was meant to take over, and right around the time that I was gaining interest, he was actually losing interest.
My dad, Fred, was excited by the fact that I was interested in wine and in the business and urged me to go outside of the region and live in another place and explore the opportunities there. So I moved to Australia, attended school for a master's degree in wine business and had a really wonderful experience for a few years in south Australia. I worked for a winery in the Adelaide Hills, really enjoyed that, met a lot of multi-generational family winery people that I still keep in contact with.
That really solidified my journey to knowing that this was something that I could do for the rest of my life. Moving back, I didn't have that background in technology or in winemaking, so I went back to Cornell for oenology and once I finished that degree, I was full time at the winery, working with my dad and our team.
It's been about nine years now. I'm working at the family business and it's been really a wonderful journey so far, and my dad has been my biggest supporter. We're the first pair of generations that has really gotten along very well. He had a lot of challenges with his father, and my grandfather had a lot of challenges with his father. I feel really fortunate to be in a situation where I've been given a lot of autonomy at a young age when I really had no business having autonomy. I definitely don't want to take that for granted.
Margot: That's awesome. It's pretty rare in the United States to have a multi-generational winery. Do you currently work with any new winemakers coming on, setting up their new projects in the Finger Lakes to offer any guidance or support to those folks?
Meaghan: For sure. It's a very close knit community. People really know each other well and borrow equipment and sell grapes to each other and exchange techniques. We like to have those really close relationships with other winemakers. We've had a long history of also recruiting winemakers from outside the region. The Cornell program is fairly new—it really came together in the last eight years or so.
They have a teaching winery and it's really become a full force program. But prior to that, there weren’t any east coast oenology schools. We would recruit from France, Germany, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and have winemakers come for a short time, typically two years or so. Sometimes they stayed because land was more inexpensive to their home country. Maybe they came from a family winery of 10 generations and their siblings were already taking over the winery in Europe and they decided, well, The Finger Lakes is a new frontier.
We do have that connection to a lot of winemakers, particularly international winemakers in the area, going back to the nineties, actually, which is a great thing. Some of them have worked for other wineries or started their own. That connection and sharing of resources is important. We, like many producers, we have this mentality that building a region is not happening with one producer. We need everybody to work toward this quality goal. The rising tide lifts all boats.
Margot: How have you seen your region change over time?
Meaghan: We've seen a lot more appreciation for the styles of wine that have been made here for a very long time—lower, more moderate alcohol wines, higher acid, aromatic white wines have not always been as appreciated as they are now, particularly recently.
In the 1980s, my grandfather would say you couldn't even give away a bottle of Finger Lakes Riesling on the streets of Manhattan. Today, we have restaurant lists, sometimes Michelin starred wine lists that have a section for The Finger Lakes. While we have a ton of work to do, and I definitely don't want to think that we're anywhere near close to being finished with that brand recognition work, that has changed tremendously over the last 20 years, where Riesling is an accepted variety of being a very high quality grape.
Then also having this affinity for cool climate, higher acid, more moderate alcohol. These are very much styles of wine that are on trend, and these are the wines that we've been making for 60 plus years, so it's a perfect time for us.
Margot: What work would you say the region does have to do?
Meaghan: Yeah, we have a lot of work to do. We're a very close knit region and sometimes it can feel very insular. We have a lot of groups and connections, and as a group of producers, we love to drink or each other's wine. But I think we also have to understand that we are tiny, tiny fish in a very big pond, and we have a lot of work to do with getting our name out as a region.
It's easy to say, you know, people know us for the Riesling and we're on a world stage, and sure. That is true to some extent, but we have to continue to pound the pavement to get out there. It's so much easier to sell a bottle of wine in the tasting room. It's so, so much harder to go out to markets like New Hampshire, Vermont, Texas or California, and talk to the sommelier and build the relationship, get your wine on a wine list. What that does is, obviously it builds the brand, it gets The Finger Lakes name out and it opens doors for other producers as well.
We have to continue to have that long-term vision as a region and not only think of the short term gains of sales, particularly direct sales. I think that's incredibly important. Also putting ourselves out there, whether it be in tastings or international competitions or events to really make our name known on an international scale, particularly as it relates to Riesling, aromatic whites, even traditional method sparkling wines, I think we have a real shot of that quality recognition.
We have a lot of work to do on generally our region—it's a collection of family farms. We have a real authenticity as part of The Finger Lakes region, which is something that's really beautiful and something that I don't think will last forever, because we're sort of a best kept secret. What comes with that, however, is not a lot of investment, not a lot of upfront capital, and that is very challenging.
When it comes to growing grapes and making wine, it's so much easier to make an amazing bottle of wine when you start with a few million dollars to build a winery from scratch. It's that much harder, if you're building it over 30, 40, 50 years. That's what we've been faced with as a region is the slow growth. You have producers here because they're passionate about being here. We don't have millionaires from another city coming in and just investing in the region because they want to put their name on a bottle of wine. It's just not something that's happened.
That is limiting—we just don't have the outside investment. We'll see over the next 10, 15 years, if there are producers from Champagne, from Germany, even from warmer places in Australia or more further south California that decide that they want invest in a true cool climate region. We'll see how that impacts the culture here. Right now, we're all small and then doing it in a slow timeframe, but we're getting there.
Margot: That’s super interesting to think about the region changing as more folks think about relocating due to climate change and differing trends. Can you talk about the values behind the Dr. Frank winery and how you approach winemaking?
Meaghan: Konstantin pioneered vinifera to the Eastern United States and was a real scientist and experimenter. He brought with him 35 years of grape-growing experience from Eastern Europe and was faced with many people telling him it was not possible to plant vinifera in The Finger Lakes.
That mentality of it is possible, and you can make incredible wines here is sort of the driving force of what we've been doing the last 60 years of just continually trying to push the envelope and prove that these styles are possible and we can make very high quality wine. We work today with 17 different grape varieties, which is nowhere near the amount Konstantin had—he had over 66.
For varieties planted, some of them were not viable at all. Pedro Ximenez, Ruby Cabernet, he had others that definitely were viable that were ripped out like Aligote, Gamay Noir. There has been sort of an investigation of what works, but because of marketing challenges maybe didn't work, then what can we look at for the future?
So this idea of experimentation is really important to us and continuing to not just rest and say, we've done all the work. There are continually going to be sites that are super interesting, but the amount of money it would take to remove the trees and prepare the land is high, but the site has a lot of potential. So there's tons of sites like that in the region that have really interesting potential, and there's lots of different grape varieties that need to be experimented with.
That's definitely a core part of our culture. The other part is just this extension of family—we’re four generation family owned. As you mentioned, in America, I think the statistic is 3% of family businesses make it to the next generation. So it's a challenging feat. Working with families is hard in and of itself, but also because of the challenges of succession and the pressure to consolidate. There has been a lot of pressure particularly in California with some of the famous Napa legendary producers that are no longer are in family hands.
That is an important sort of cultural thing. We have an amazing amount of longevity with our team, our head winemaker has been with us for 33 vintages, our sparkling winemaker, 18 years. Retail sales manager, nearly 30 years. We have two vineyard employees who've been with us and worked 45 years across the full vineyard production and sales side. We have really incredible loyalty and to have benefit programs and to have a culture of family is a really important part of it. That's a very important part of who we are. We give team members ownership of feeling like they're part of this too.
Margot: How do you give them that ownership? What does that look like?
Meaghan: I think with both my dad and I, we operate on an approach where we want to give autonomy and we want to give a lot of ownership to different projects. With every department and employee who says, you know, it'd be really fun to try this technique that I heard about in South Africa, where we freeze the juice of an aromatic variety and we say, yeah, let's try it. That's something we tried with Gewurztraminer two years ago—our assistant winemaker was really keen on it and it was super successful. We continue that today because it's a fun thing that really worked. To be open to new ideas and to give that ownership is really key.
Then also, to pay people according to their skills and experience, and we offer generous benefits. We have for many years, my dad started that, where we pay a hundred percent of the premium of the deductible for health insurance, dental, vision, 401k matching. So that our team members in turn feel that they're supported in their role with us. Professional development is something we support as well. If someone wants to go back to school, complete WSET courses, sommelier courses, we have programs in place to reimburse for those.
It's just incredibly important to retain our employees and have a happy team because The Finger Lakes are growing. We have more competition than we've had in the past. It is really critical to keep everyone engaged and to keep these top employees feeling like they're supported on their values.
Margot: Gotcha, it’s great to hear about those employee programs, and your team longevity. How have you seen your winery change? Obviously you've been around through the history of the winery. As you look forward into the future, whether it's climate change related or just practice related, what changes are coming up for you?
Meaghan: Very good question. Something we've really tried to do is understand what we have, if that makes sense. We've done a full cataloging of all of our vineyards. Then some of these vineyards are planted by Konstantin himself, back in the fifties and the sixties. Looking at what rootstock was used, what clonal materials used, what exact varieties we have.
That was a tremendous project to really understand the age of the vine and to understand what diversity we have. We have eight different Riesling clones on the property—that’s a lot of Riesling material that we have to draw from. Also to understand the soils on different sites and to understand what fermenting and looking at specific blocks does for the wine, that is creating interesting single vineyard expressions. There's just so much work internally that we need to continue to do to really understand exactly what we have to go forward with that potential.
I think that's something that's changed, and we're lucky that people are open to that now—maybe 20 years ago, there wasn't as much of a market for single vineyard Riesling. We've invested tremendously in the sparkling side. We've seen the traditional method sparkling program increase threefold from the time I've been at the winery. We have a semiautomatic disgorger now, whereas about five years ago, all of the wines were hand disgorged. We’re making quality and also efficiency improvements. With the sparkling wines, it takes a really long time because we're aging on the lees between two to six years, so anytime to increase that obviously has the ripple effect of taking many years to catch up. That's a longer term project, but we see that the potential is there.
We have a new crossflow filter that we just got last year. We're investigating a new bottling line. These are all small things, but when you look at the big picture of thinking about our investments, it’s important. That's why family is so important for this longevity—we're not answering to a board of directors that are just looking for dividends at the end of the year. We're reinvesting our profits into equipment, into our people, into the vineyards, into additional land. That's how we're growing. It's this really long-term vision of investment.
Margot: That’s awesome. There's been a push recently around consumers being more interested in wines that are biodynamic or fermented with natural yeast. I realize that because of the difficulties of climate that The Finger Lakes has, it can be very tricky to make wines that move in that direction. Have you seen any experimentation, either at your own winery or in The Finger Lakes in general, that move in that direction? Is that something that you're interested in?
Meaghan: Oh, certainly. There definitely has been interest in that, and I think understanding where that interest is coming from is important. Why are people asking these questions? Is it because they're looking for that authenticity? Or is it just because it's a buzzword? Wine is a natural product, right? We're fermenting grape juice, making wine, whether we inoculate or not, it is a fairly natural product at the end of the day, no matter if it's spontaneous or not.
Understanding the farming techniques—biodynamics and organics are very important to look at and to understand what parts can we take from these programs and what parts are going to make sense for our climate. As you pointed out, we do have some challenges occasionally with humidity, which can lead to some disease pressure.
There's a lot more availability of spray material that is organic that we can use. There’s been a lot more conscientiousness about tractors in the vineyard, the inputs in the soil, the soil erosion—all of these questions go far beyond what is the biodynamic or organic program? Who's making the wine, who's growing the grapes? How are they being compensated? Are they earning a living wage? The cultural effect around that is important too. Looking at that holistically is really important and it goes far beyond any certification.
Producers want to do the right thing by and large—especially producers in our region where we're not in it to make millions. This is definitely a passion project for me. I would say pretty much everybody here, we're in it because we love it and we want to support the community and make great wine.
Margot: What should consumers know about The Finger Lakes that they might not know today?
Meaghan: I wish consumers knew the diversity of styles that we've produced and the amount of grape varieties that we have here, and also the price to quality ratio is very good. With the quality in each bottle, the wine is a really good value. Our wines have a real sense of energy, especially with the high acid varieties. These wines have so much personality and they really send a message—they're not high alcohol jammy fruit bombs. These wines have elegance and freshness and energy that I think this is really exciting. There is an inherent vibrancy to the wines here, and it’s the varieties we’re growing, it’s the cool climate difference—it definitely makes us stand apart.
You can support Meaghan and the Dr. Frank Konstantin winery by buying their wines on their website, signing up for their wine club, and following them on Instagram.
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