TASTING ROOM HOURS
We are open Fridays and Saturdays from 10 to 4 and Sundays from noon to 4, or by appointment. We expect to close for the winter on November 23.
 

PORT FRONTENAC AT DANO'S HEURIGER ON SENECA
Port Frontenac, by the glass, is now featured at the nationally acclaimed restaurant Dano's Heuriger on Seneca, on Rt. 414 just south of Lodi, NY.
 

SENECA WINE BUS
We are delighted to be part of the Seneca (County) Wine Bus Service. Go to the beautiful Village of Seneca Falls at the north end of Seneca County, park your car, board one of their buses and visit six wineries in a day. $10 gets you an all-day ride through wine country and we're on Route #3. Busses loop continuously between 10am and 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Save money and leave the driving to them.
 

"EILAND WHITE"
In our tasting room you can compare Eiland White, a dessert wine with 6% residual sugar, with our 2005 Vignoles, a table wine with 4.5% residual sugar. They are both made from the same grape - Vignoles, a.k.a Ravat - but the wines taste totally different!
 

WHAT'S THIS IN MY GLASS?
Are there small, sparkling crystals on the bottom of the cork and "sediment" in the bottom of the bottle or in your glass of 2003 Proprietor's Reserve wine? The crystals are potassium tartrate, commonly known, after refining, as Cream of Tartar.

Two naturally occurring components in grapes are potassium acid and tartaric acid. They contribute to the fresh, crisp flavor in wine. As wine ages, the potassium and tartaric acids react, resulting in the formation of crystals.

Why are these in the '03 Proprietor's Reserve but not in other wines? Some grapes and thus the wines made from those grapes have lower levels of tartaric acid resulting in few or no crystals. Some wineries use chemistry, such as exchanging sodium for the potassium.

We use a natural process - "cold stabilization" - to chill the wine to temperatures between 28 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit in tanks in the winery before it is bottled. This causes the tartrate crystals to precipitate to the bottom of the tank and thus aren't in the wine when it is bottled. We rely on our Northeastern winters for the chilling process, but if the weather doesn't cooperate by getting cold enough to do this each year, you will find tartrate crystals in some of our wines.

Sediment in the bottom of a bottle of wine is not new. For centuries, premium wineries have used minimalist wine-making techniques and have eschewed the practice of filtration and other manipulation. This reduced filtration, some say, results in better quality wine with deeper, natural fruit flavors. Thus wines, which have not been filtered or processed for "clarification," may have sediment in the bottle.