Winemaker Willy Frank, who rescued his father’s Finger Lakes winery and preserved some of the most critically-acclaimed wine on the East Coast, died Tuesday in Naples, Fla. He was 80.

Frank’s father, Konstantin, a Ukrainian refugee of World War II who initially found work as a janitor, ushered in the vinifera revolution in the eastern United States by proving in the 1960s that the delicate European grapes could be grown in a cool climate.

Frank died during a business trip aimed at expanding sales of his family’s highly rated wines, said his son, Frederick Frank, president of Dr. Konstantin Frank Vinifera Wine Cellars.

After waiting in the wings for 22 years, commuting from New York City on weekends to help with planting and harvesting and repairs, Frank quit his career as a manufacturer’s representative in 1984 to take charge of his father’s celebrated winery high above Keuka Lake.

Konstantin Frank transformed viniculture in the the Finger Lakes by successfully cultivating vinifera grapes in a region where winter temperatures commonly drop to 15 below zero. As a business, however, his winery was failing.

“He never considered this a business,” Willy Frank said in an interview with The Associated Press in 1995. “I said,’Papa, even the Catholic Church is a business – if there is no income, there is no church!'”

While his father’s scientific genius in the vineyard was undisputed, and his wines had often vanquished the French in blind tastings, Frank quickly set about transforming the vineyard from an experimental station into a profitable winery – one he could pass down to his children. He maintained the quality of his father’s whites while introducing highly-rated reds and sparkling wines.

“Willy felt there’d be more converts (to vinifera) if he could show business success,” his son said. “He was great in marketing and sales and spreading the vinifera gospel. For Riesling, gewurztraminer, chardonnay, all those cool-climate grape varieties, our climate here became an asset rather than a liability.”

The winery claims distribution in 30 states.

Of New York’s 212 wineries,more than half now grow viniferas and many others have begun to replace the native labrusca and French-American hybrids that, for a century, branded the region as a producer of cheap, simple, sweet wines.

About one-third of the state’s 31,000 acres of vineyard encircle four of the 11 Finger Lakes, where a grape-friendly micro-climate is created by the deep, slender, hill-framed waters.