So why is it that wines from these two far-flung states have managed to upstage the wines from just a few hours north?

According to Jim Trezise, the president of the New York Wine and Grape Foundation (NYWGF), while New York State does make the second largest quantity of wine in the United States after California, about 80 percent or more of the state's total wine production is through Constellation Brands, and goes into products like Arbor Mist.

The rest of the state's wineries are small-to-medium sized producers who insist that the region's delayed blossoming is a direct consequence of a legislation-fueled game of catch up. There is a palpable sense that the winemakers of the region place much of the blame on the legislation of yesterday for putting them so far behind. They are quick to tell you how prohibition pounded the region's grapegrowers and winemakers into the ground and left only a handful of mega-producers in its wake.

"In general terms, prohibition slowed everything down and we're still working our way out of it," said Bob Madill, chair of the Finger Lakes Wine Alliance. "For example, New York is one of the few large producing and consuming states that doesn't allow the sale of wine in grocery stores and that is a historical vestige of the idea that sales of alcohol needs to be controlled."

Between the end of Prohibition in 1933 and the important passing of the Farm Winery Act in 1976, the state's legislature made it virtually impossible for anyone but producers of cheap bulk wine like Great Western, Gold Seal, and the Taylor Company to operate in the region.

"The Farm Winery Act ... came at a time when there was a crisis in the grape industry," Trezise explained. "Traditionally, there were hundreds of grape growers in the region who were all dependent on a handful of large corporate wineries buying their grapes."

In the 1960's, however, the grape market collapsed through a perfect storm of events, including various corporate takeovers that took many of those large companies out of the region.

The Farm Winery Act was introduced to allow the region's growers to open small wineries and made it legal to sell directly to consumers, said Trezise. After the passing of the Farm Winery Act, the number of wineries in the region went from 19 in 1975 to about 50 in 1985 and has continued to grow steadily since then, according to data supplied by the NYWGF.

Trezise and winemakers of the region are extremely proud of the region's swift growth over the past two decades, and especially because they've done it without any major outside investments. However, news of a big potential investment came in March of 2011, when the world-renowned winemaker Paul Hobbs, a native of Upstate New York, announced, on a Buffalo radio show, that he was interested in making wine in the Finger Lakes.