Greetings From Finger Lakes

The Finger Lakes area of upstate New York is America’s largest wine region outside of California. The steep, rocky hillsides rising up from deep, glacier-sculpted lakes provide protection from weather extremes, allowing area wineries to produce up to 85 million bottles of wine each year. In GREETINGS FROM THE FINGER LAKES, local restaurateur Michael Turback profiles the best wineries, restaurants, farms, and markets surrounding the five largest lakes, and includes interviews with the proprietors, tasting notes, and even a few treasured local recipes. Featuring contact information for each location as well as photographs of the region’s picturesque landscapes, GREETINGS FROM THE FINGER LAKES is the food and wine lover’s companion to this up-and-coming culinary hot spot.

A food and wine guide to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, featuring profiles, tasting notes, contact information, and recipes from the area’s wineries, dairies, organic farms, orchards, cafes, inns, ice cream makers, brewing companies, blueberry farms, honey producers, u-pick farms, taverns, maple syrup companies, tea rooms, cider producers, and more.

Over a million tourists visit the area annually.

The Finger Lakes region is New York’s second-largest tourist destination, behind New York City.

MICHAEL TURBACK is a graduate of Cornell's School of Hotel Administration and a veteran restaurateur of 30 years. He currently works in the gourmet and specialty food products industry and is a founding partner of The New York First Company, an online department store. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

 THE AUTHOR SCOOP

Who would you cast as yourself in a movie of your life?When I ran my restaurant in Ithaca, NY, we would often guess who would play each of the staff if they ever filmed the story of running a restaurant.  The consensus was that Clint Eastwood would have been tapped to play me:  “Go ahead, make my day.”Have you ever met a famous person?Guest speakers and performers who visited Cornell would often be taken out to dinner at my restaurant, so over the years I met people like George McGovern, Geraldine Ferraro, William F. Buckley, John Houseman, Douglas Edwards, Carl Sagan, John F. Kennedy Jr., Betty Freidan, Andre Tschelicheff, Al Unser, Jr., Kim Alexis, Cousin Bruce Morrow, Peter Yarrow, and Neil Sedaka, to name a few.  Favorite cocktail?Smoked-Tomato Bloody Mary (Stonecat Café, Hector, NY)Favorite dessert?Tin Roof Sundae (Tom’s Ice Cream Bowl, Zanesville, OH)Tell me something that people might not know about you.As a long distance runner, I’ve completed 109 races of marathon distance or longer (includes five 50-mile trail races).