When you want to find vineyards in New York, head to the water. Rivers, lakes, oceans, and bays.

Water is one of New York’s greatest viticultural assets, because large bodies of water act as air conditioners, both warming and cooling the air and land around them, and mitigating the extremes that happen in both winter and summer.

Bodies of water also served more practical purposes in the early colonial era of the United States, which indirectly contributed to the evolution of wine culture here.

The Hudson River shaped agriculture by transporting early Dutch settlers, farmers, and merchants, and their goods from the bountiful fields and farms of the Hudson Valley to New York Harbor. Lake Champlain linked Canada to the St. Lawrence river. Those waterways acted as literal and metaphorical conduits of information, products, people, and technology, well before anyone conceived of them as federally recognized wine regions.

Birth of Two American Viticultural Areas

The two New York American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) appear, at first glance, completely different.

The Hudson River Region AVA was established in 1982. It is home to America’s oldest continuously operated winery (Brotherhood Winery), and has more than three centuries of winemaking history behind it. Hemmed in by the Taconic and Berkshire Mountains to the east of the River, the Catskills Mountains and Palisades cliffs to the west, and the Adirondack Mountains to the north, the climate is humid and sunny even amid winter’s harsher cold tempests. There are around 59 commercial wineries in the AVA, with 446 acres under vine, and 79 winegrowing farms.

The Champlain Valley AVA, meanwhile, is one of the youngest and most under-the-radar AVAs in the country.  Established in 2016, the AVA is bordered by the Adirondack Mountains to the west, the Green Mountains of Vermont to the east, the Taconic Mountains to the south, and Canada to the north. Lake Champlain is 435 square miles, 12 miles wide at its broadest point, and flows north to the St. Lawrence River. The climate is cold, with a short but intensely sunny wine-growing season. There are seven wineries operating across 21 farms, with 122 acres of grapes under vine.