New York State Agricultural Experiment Station

The research station that made the Finger Lakes wine region possible

Ontario County

Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station spent decades insisting European wine grapes could not survive Finger Lakes winters. In 1951, Konstantin Frank, a Ukrainian viticulturalist who had spent his career working in colder conditions, ran the experimental plantings that proved them wrong and changed American wine.

The Geneva Experiment Station, established in 1882 on a hilltop above the north end of Seneca Lake, was the scientific authority on what could and could not grow in the Finger Lakes. Its conclusion, repeated for decades: European vinifera varieties could not survive the winters at this latitude. Konstantin Frank arrived in Geneva in 1951 as a newly immigrated Ukrainian viticulturalist who had spent his career in conditions colder than anything the Finger Lakes could offer. He ran his experimental vinifera plantings at the Station under the supervision of Charles Fournier of Gold Seal Winery. The trial vines survived. The commercial estate he subsequently planted on Keuka Lake's west shore became Dr. Konstantin Frank Winery, and the oldest Riesling vines in the eastern United States are still producing there today. The Station's research campus on West North Street in Geneva is open to visitors year-round; the ornamental grounds include trial plantings representing current research, and the history of the Frank collaboration is documented in the Station's public archives.