The Finger Lakes was named Wine Region of the Year. Here’s what that actually means for your marketing.
Wine Enthusiast named the Finger Lakes the 2025 American Wine Region of the Year. It was well-deserved and widely covered. The question for individual wineries is not whether to celebrate — it is whether to do anything with the elevated attention while it lasts.
What the recognition actually does
A designation like Wine Region of the Year from a publication with Wine Enthusiast’s reach does several things at once. It drives direct search traffic: people who read the coverage search for Finger Lakes wineries, Finger Lakes wine tours, Finger Lakes wine trips. It generates a cascade of secondary coverage in travel publications, food media, and local press that produces backlinks and additional search traffic. And it shifts the consideration set for wine tourists — people who were vaguely aware of the Finger Lakes move it up their list.
None of that traffic flows automatically to any individual winery. It flows to the region, and then is distributed among the businesses best positioned to capture it — meaning the ones with strong local search presence, content that answers the questions the new visitors are asking, and clear positioning that distinguishes them from the dozens of other wineries in the region.
Why most wineries won’t capitalize on it
The pattern with regional recognition events is consistent. A handful of businesses that were already well-positioned see a significant bump and build on it. Most businesses see some incremental traffic that dissipates. A few post about the award on Instagram and call it done.
The gap is not awareness — every winery in the region knows about the designation. The gap is execution. Capitalizing on elevated regional attention requires having the marketing infrastructure in place: a Google Business Profile that is complete and current, a website that loads fast and answers visitor questions, an email list to communicate with, content that surfaces for regional searches, and the presence of mind to connect what’s happening regionally to your specific story.
Most of that infrastructure takes months to build, which means the window for being opportunistic about it is now, not when the next wave of coverage arrives.
The specific things worth doing
Update your Google Business Profile immediately. Your GBP is what new visitors encounter first in most local searches. If your photos are old, your hours are wrong, your description is thin, or you have unanswered reviews, fix it now. The visitors coming in from Wine Region of the Year coverage are research-mode visitors who are comparing options. Your profile is a large part of what they see when they compare.
Write content that connects to the regional moment. A post about what makes Finger Lakes Riesling worth the trip, what a first-time visitor to the region should know, or which varieties you specialize in and why they grow well here is content that will surface for exactly the searches being driven by the recognition. It also earns links from the secondary coverage still being published, which builds lasting authority.
Reach your existing list. Your email subscribers already know you. They may not know about the recognition, and they are a natural audience for a note that contextualizes it and invites them to visit or share. The open rates on genuinely relevant, timely emails are consistently higher than on routine promotional sends.
Think about the new visitors, not just your existing audience. The people who encounter your winery because of Wine Region of the Year coverage are different from your regulars. They may know little about the region, be comparing multiple wineries at once, and be making a trip decision rather than just browsing. Your website and your messaging should be legible to them — not just to someone who already knows why you’re worth visiting.
The longer play
A single regional award produces a surge, not a permanent shift. What it can do is accelerate the authority-building that creates permanent visibility — if the business uses the elevated attention to earn links, generate reviews, grow the email list, and produce content that stays relevant long after the coverage fades.
The Finger Lakes has been building toward this recognition for twenty years. The wineries that have been building their marketing infrastructure alongside their wine programs are the ones positioned to turn the moment into momentum. The ones that haven’t will watch the wave pass and go back to fighting for attention the same way they did before it arrived.