Last week, we described a monthly event where members of the grape community get together to discuss a current topic in vineyard management. In this case, the group reviewed a test we conducted that compared two sections of our Cab Franc vineyard. We did a trial to see if a combination of biological and conventional fungicides could be just as effective as a program using conventional synthetic fungicides.

For us, the hardest part of growing grapes is keeping our plants healthy and free of disease. This is especially challenging in climates like we have in the Finger Lakes. We have periods of high temperature and high humidity which create ideal conditions for molds and mildew.

Weeds and insects can also be a problem. But we can see the weeds and bugs, and we know how to suppress them. Controlling mildew is a far more complex undertaking.

Know Your Microbiology and Plant Physiology

You can’t see mold spores, but you can see how they infect a plant. At that point, there are ways to suppress further infection, but it is to late to repair the damage that has been done. To fully understand mold spores and their interactions with plants like grapevines, you need to be both a microbiologist and a plant physiologist. And you can’t simply have a degree in these disciplines, you need to have direct, hands-on experience over many years with specific varieties of grapevines.

Have Years of Experience in One Location

It helps if you have many years of such experience in the same location, so you can track both your use of fungicides and the behavior of molds and plants over many growing seasons. Every growing season is different, so you can’t assume that the experience you may have had in one growing season will be repeatable in the next.

Know Your Environmental Science

It also helps if you are an environmental scientist, so that you can assess the interaction between any materials that you may be applying to your grapevines and the surrounding environment. Copper, for instance, which has been widely used in France for several hundred years, accumulates in the vineyard and never disappears. Too much copper in the soil becomes very problematic.

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Do Your Maths

If you are in charge of the pesticide program it helps to have some financial sense. The costs of different fungicides can vary substantially. It is not always the expensive ones that work.

Follow the Weather Forecast

You consider familiarizing yourself with a little knowledge of meteorology. Some materials wash off easily if it rains, and some do not. You don’t want to apply an expensive material when a sudden rain will wash it off.

Respect Your Own and the Public’s Health

An appreciation of public health also comes in handy. Although we do not apply any materials that are extremely toxic to humans, some require you to stay out of the vineyard for as few as four hours or as many at 72 hours following an application. Some vineyard operations have to be done by hand, so you need to schedule fungicide applications around times when you know no one will need to be in the vineyard touching the vines.

Read Up on Evolutionary Biology

A basic understanding of evolutionary biology is highly recommended. Fungal populations can develop immunities to certain fungicides if you use the same fungicide repeatedly over several years. A fungicide that has worked fine for five years can become ineffective in year six. Every year a small population of spores is able to survive the application of your preferred material. After multiple generations of replication, the entire population of that strain of mold spores can survive the fungicide that was over-used.

Don’t Forget Basic Chemistry

Finally, you can’t forget chemistry. It is time-consuming and costly for a person to operate a tractor and spray fungicide on a large vineyard. In an ideal world, you can combine two or three types of fungicides in the same spray tank to make that spray cycle more efficient. However, because of the chemical composition of the two or three materials, combining them into the same tank can neutralize their ability to combat their target pathogen. How do you know whether you can combine them or not?

Does Anybody Know All of This?

The knowledge and required to maintain a disease-free vineyard rarely exists in one person. And that is why the Cornell academic faculty (the “professors”) and the Cornell Extension (the “communicators”) are so important to the grape growers and winemakers (the “practitioners”).

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Every fungicide is also required to carry a “label” that describes what it is used for and how it works. Before a fungicide is approved for use the the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The approval process requires the manufacturer to undergo extensive testing before the material is approved for use. At a minimum, you should always read the label, but there are times when what the label says and your own experience do not match.

That is when it is very helpful to have partners from Cornell in both the academic and extension areas. The academics do the research, and the extension disseminates that information into the field.

It is not a Perfect Partnership

There are times when we practitioners think the professors are working on questions that do not directly address our immediate concerns. And I am sure the professors often think we practitioners are not willing to take the time to fully understand the information they are conveying.

But it Works Way More Often Than Not

It is a long-term partnership between professors and practitioners. The body of research and practical experience accumulates over time.

The fungicide development and manufacturing industry is also consistently trying to introduce new products into the market. This is why the work of managing fungal populations is never over.

The the crab-shell-based fungicides that has recently emerged on the market is a good example of a promising fungicide. It is a “biological” material; it is not harmful to the environment or humans. So far, it is relatively inexpensive. But it is too soon to say we understand how it works under different conditions and in combination with other materials. That is why Cornell asked us to conduct a trial in one of our Cab Franc vineyards.

Next week, I will share the preliminary results of that trial.

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Who are these people? Where are they? And why are they there? This is PART I of a series on how we collaborate with Cornell University.

The Morrill Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, gave federal land to states to fund public colleges. Each state received 30,000 acres for every member of Congress. The states sold this land to build schools focused on agriculture and mechanics, making higher education open to working classes. These colleges and universities, also known as “land grant colleges” still exist today. They are often called “state universities”—ie, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Arizona State University.

Cornell University, in nearby Ithaca, is the land grant college for the State of New York. It has an extensive academic program serving the agricultural community. This includes professors and staff teaching about livestock, row crops and “specialty crops”—a category that includes “grapes,” which is the category most important to us.

More than three years ago in Substack #18 I described how often there is a difference of opinion between farmers who tend to think of themselves as “practical” people; and professors, who farmers may sometimes view as “impractical” and overly “theoretical.”

In the picture above we are seeing a meeting of representatives of the grape growing industry—the “practioners”—and representatives of the academic community—or the “professors.” From the left to the right in the photo, these are the players.

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Hans Walter-Peterson is the Viticultural Extension Specialist for the Cornell Cooperative Extension. The “Extension” is the organization that bridges the gap between the academic faculty at Cornell and the community of grape growers, wine makers and owners. He and his colleagues have a foot in each camp, and they are responsible for organizing events like the one held this past week that brings together the “professors” and the “practioners.”

Kees Stapel has been the Vineyard Manager at Boundary Breaks since the beginning in 2008. He is in contact with Hans Walter-Peterson and his staff throughout the year on topics related to pest management, particularly the Spotted Lantern Fly. Kees is is in charge of controlling pests in the vineyard— all of them—including animals, weeds, insects, molds and mildew. That is why he knows the Cornell Extension people and relies on their guidance.

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David Combs, is Research Support Specialist I, at Cornell AgriTech. Earlier this year, he approached Kees and asked if Boundary Breaks would participate in a trial of biological pesticides in our Cab Franc vineyard. Biological pesticides are generally environmentally friendlier than conventional, chemically-manufactured pesticides. Sometimes the biological pesticides work; sometimes they do not.

Cab Franc is important to us. Do we want to jeopardize the quality of a portion of our harvest by using pesticides that are “experimental?” Kees and I discussed it, and agreed that we should learn what works and what doesn’t. By participating in the trial, we could learn, and Cornell could learn, too, and share that knowledge with the rest of the industry.

Katie Gold is Assistant Professor and Susan Eckert Lynch Faculty Fellow, School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell AgriTech. She and Dave Coombs work together to design and oversee research into pest management. After Dave and Kees spoke, she and Dave designed the program that we undertook earlier this year.

The plan called for us to treat a portion of our vineyard with conventional pesticides. Then we would treat an experimental portion with a rotation of conventional and biological pesticides. The plan was to meet in August and compare the condition of our fruit in the two, separate sections of this Cab Franc vineyard.

This is part of the audience of grape growers, winemakers and owners who attended the session where Hans, Kees, Dave and Katie were describing their research.

In next week’s Substack #199, we will describe the results of the trial that we are conducting with Cornell AgriTech and why it matters.

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The stream bed adjacent to one of our Cab Franc blocks was slowly eroding and getting deeper. Two years ago we worked with the Seneca County Soil & Water department to limit erosion in another stream bed. We described that in Substack #109. Above, the county Soil and Water team is directing the placement of the log structure in a second such project that we undertook this week.

The Finger Lakes were formed when glaciers melted. This melting water cut deep gorges along the shore of all of the eleven Finger Lakes. That was 10,000 years ago.

But the process has never stopped. Heavy rains continue to fall and cut streambeds deeper and deeper. The erosion also sends valuable soil and sediment into the lakes. The run-off from a heavy rain disrupts fields, vineyards, roads and, actually, anything that gets in its way.

The primary way to reduce erosion is to find a way to slow the water down. In some instances, we have built retention ponds that collect excess water and then slowly release it. In narrow streambeds, we are using natural material like logs and stones to build structures called “log vanes.”

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Log vanes are designed to slow excess water enough so that silt builds up on one side of the structure. This week, we built a series of four such vanes. Over time, as the sediment fills in behind each of the four structures, the slope of the stream becomes a series of “stair-steps.” Below each step the water forms a small plunge pool that acts like a retention pond, holding water and releasing more slowly.

At least, that is the idea.

The kind of control structure that is designed to minimize erosion is often done with concrete blocks. We use logs and stone primarily because they keep the environment as natural as possible. It takes a large excavator to move the logs and place them in a V-pattern facing upstream to oppose the force of a heavy flow of water.

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Vineyard Manager Kees Stapel operates the excavator that we rent for the week to construct the vanes. It can be a little tricky to place the logs exactly in place so that the structure remains stable even under heavy water flows.

On the left, above, is the stream bed before we began the log vane project. On the right, is the completed project. The stones at the outlet to the culvert gradually slow the flow of water before it reaches the series of four, log vanes downstream.

It took two days to build the four logs vanes with the assistance of the county Soil and Water team.

We had rented the excavator for a week, so Kees had some time to clean up some of the piles of wood that accumulated when we cleared the slope below the vineyard. We don’t often have a piece of equipment this size, and there are some jobs that can only be done with equipment this size.

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The Seneca Summer Music Festival Orchestra, with local composer Shade Zajac conducting, played a concert of Patriotic Pops and Light Classical Music at Boundary Breaks, Aug. 1, 2026.

In my 30’s and 40’s I lived in New York City. On occasion I was given tickets to attend performances by the Metropolitan Opera or the New York Philharmonic. None of those performances in $100 million auditoriums moved me in the same way that a small orchestra did, playing at Boundary Breaks last weekend.

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The orchestra included many professional players performing for free on our lawn above the vineyard, surrounded by friends, family, neighbors and guests.

The guests stretched from one end of our lawn to the other. The sound carried all the way to the seats at the far end.

The occasion was a series of anniversaries: the patriotic music was marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence; the Town of Lodi, where we are located, was founded in 1826 and was celebrating its 200th anniversary. And our Tasting Room opened in 2016, which makes this our 10th anniversary.

We are not far from Rochester, NY where the Eastman School of music has trained thousands of instrumental music students since it was founded in 1921. They created a rich musical environment for this region.

But, live, orchestral music is in decline all over the United States. It has been that way for years. The audience for this kind of music has aged. Full-time orchestras have gone out of business.

Above, sheet music accidentally left behind by one of the first violins. Some of this music was not music for beginner musicians.

We are in a time when people are worried that all music we hear will be generated by artificial intelligence. And at the same time, people are not gathering like they used to in taverns and clubs. Too many people are bowling alone. Everywhere you look, there is something to worry about.

But that was not the way it was here that night. The music was live. The players were people dedicated to their instruments. The audience came out specifically because it was not generated by AI and not only available on your phone.

Saturday, Aug, 1, was a night without worries. A clear summer night. Live music from a bandstand. People you knew in the audience talking and laughing with each other before the concert started and at intermission. Some of the tunes were familiar, like “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” or “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Others were favorites from the classical canon.

Near the end of the program the orchestra played a medley of theme songs from each of the US Military branches. Shade Zajac, the conductor asked members of the audience who served in the armed forces to stand when they heard their branch’s theme song. There was applause when—one song after another—some members of the audience stood.

“Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors away…

“From the Halls of Montezuma to the shore of Tripoli…

“First to fight for the right, and to build the nations might…”

“Off we go, into the wild, blue yonder, climbing high, into the sun…

The event was also a fund-raiser for the effort to recover from the fire that destroyed a block in downtown Ovid in January, 2025. The newly-formed Ovid Local Development Corporation raised $3,000 that night from the people in the audience.

It was a memorable night. Everyone cleaned up after themselves. The last stragglers left around 10 PM, having sat in the Adirondack chairs, long after the orchestra members had packed up their instruments and made their way home.

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That is me on the left, and Scott Osborn, co-owner of Fox Run Vineyards on the right.

In the summer of 2011, as we approached our first harvest, we needed to find a winery that would agree to make our wines. At the time, I was not living in the region full-time, and I didn’t know that many people.

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I began searching for an experienced winemaker. I discovered that Fox Run’s winemaker, Peter Bell, was highly-respected. I reached out to him to see if he would agree to make wines for us.

Fox Run winemaker, Peter Bell, in 2013.

Peter said he was willing, but first, I would need to speak with his boss, Fox Run owner Scott Osborn.

I gave Scott a call, and he agreed to meet. I brought Kees Stapel, our Vineyard Manager with me to see Scott. His office is upstairs at Fox Run. We sat down in front of his large desk. Scott looked us over. “Okay,” he said, we will make your wine this year.

Fast-forward fifteen years and Scott and I are colleagues and good friends. He and his wife, Ruth, were incredibly hospitable that first year as we made multiple trips to their facility. There was a memorable dinner one night as we worked late on the press deck

On Saturday, July 25, we hosted the first of the two East-West wine dinners with Scott and Ruth Osborn. Our vineyards are on the east side of Seneca Lake and Fox Run Vineyards are on the west side of the lake. Chef Brud Holland prepared an exceptional meal.

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Today, we each have very competent Marketing Managers, Fox Run’s Garrison Kuhl and Boundary Breaks’ Mary-Kate Badalamenti. They are also friends, and last year they suggested we do two wine dinners in the summer. They proposed that Fox Run chef, Brud Holland, could develop a menu to pair with each of our white wines and then another meal to pair with each of our red wines. Eight wines to pair with each meal.

From left above; Diana, me, Ruth and Scott Osborn. Photo credit: Garrison Kuhl.

This year we held the first dinner here at Boundary Breaks. Scott and Ruth joined beforehand for a glass of our Bubbly Rosé.

Scott started Fox Run in 1994, and he and Ruth have been pillars of the Finger Lakes wine community since then. They have helped new wineries like ours get started, and they have served on boards and committees to promote the region. In their winery, they have mentored many young winemakers. They are a model for winery owners in the Finger Lakes.

The next East-West wine dinner will be at Fox Run on August 29. It was a success last year, and we look forward to it being the same this year.

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Photographer Noah Kalina was at Boundary Breaks this week taking pictures of the staff. Above, he is photographing Jesse Kovnat in the portion of the vineyard where we are adding organic matter by planting dense cover crops in the middle of the rows.

In 2013, we found a website designer in New Zealand who recommended a photographer in Brooklyn. That summer, Noah Kalina made his first visit Boundary Breaks. Many more would follow.

Noah spent two days with us this week. His photos will be forthcoming. Below are samples of some of the work he has done for us in the past.

Noah’s first photos, like this one of a Riesling vine, were unlike anything we had seen before.

Vineyard Associate John Swick joined us in 2010. He still works here. Noah took this picture of John in 2013. He took more this week, that included his daughter, Laila, and their new German Shepherd puppy, Kira.

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Thirteen years ago, Vineyard Manager Kees Stapel was responsible for only twelve acres of grapes. Today he manages more than 70 acres on our farm and others that have contracted with us for vineyard management services.

My father, David Murray, was an integral part of the founding of Boundary Breaks. He worked weekends with us for the first five years of our development. Failing eyesight forced him to curtail his work with us. He passed in October, 2024.

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The name, “Boundary Breaks” is a reference to the deep gorges, or “breaks'“ in the landscape at our northern and southern boundaries. Above, Kees Stapel and I are standing in front of a waterfall in the “break” on our northern boundary.

In 2017, we planted 14 new acres of vineyard. That was an ambitious undertaking. You can see Kees Stapel pounding in posts on the left in the photo, while one of our contractors ties a growing vine to a pencil rod to keep it off the ground.

We also asked Noah to take photographs of members of the Finger Lakes community who has assisted us or offered services that we felt were exemplary. Below are some of those people.

Christina McKeough was a renowned chef in the area, first at the Hazelnut Kitchen in Trumansburg and then at a restaurant Graft in Watkins Glen. She has since moved to Philadelphia. We miss her magnificent meals in the area.

The Golden Buck Restaurant was a fixture in Ovid until Covid. The owners decided not to continue. Today, it is looking for a new owner/operator to bring it back into operation.

Neighbor Alan Mandigo was a welder by profession, and an avid horseman on the side. He has been enormously helpful to Boundary Breaks as we have grown and diversified.

The Ovid Big-M grocery was known for its meat department. They have had many meat cutters over the years until January, 2025, when a fire destroyed a central village block in Ovid, taking the Big-M and five other businesses with it.

Coming soon are photographs that Noah took this past week. They include many of our employees. In the coming weeks, we will share many of them here and on our website. For a look at other portraits Noah has done in his career, you can visit https://noahkalina.com. He has an extensive collection of portraits, as well as other images. He has also collected some of his favorites from Boundary Breaks on his website here.

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Looking over the vineyard toward Seneca Lake, you see row-after-row of vines hedged to a uniform height. We “hedge” the vines to remove excessive shoot growth which consumes vine energy that is better spent ripening fruit.

If you have ever taken a longer airline flight, at some point early in the trip, the captain will come on the intercom and make an announcement. Something like, “This is your captain speaking, we are now cruising at 35,000 feet. I have turned the seat belt sign off, and you are now free to move about the cabin.”

What that means is that the “climb”—the part of the flight when the engines are working the hardest—is over.

Around this time of the season, it is like that for us in the vineyard. The “climb” is mostly over until harvest.

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By mid-July, the majority of our labor-intensive operations are nearly complete. By “labor-intensive” operations, we mean those that can only be done by hand. Pruning, which starts in December, is the first of these manually-intensive operations. The last pass of “leaf-removal,” usually in July, is the last of these manually-intensive operations.

On the vines above, we first ran a mechanical leaf-mover along the fruiting wires where the majority of the clusters are positioned (otherwise know as the “fruit zone.”) We came through a second time by hand to make sure that all clusters were exposed. Cab Franc, in particular, responds well to early exposure to direct sunlight.

During one of our early years, a veteran vineyard manager told us that his second-most-valuable piece of equipment was his leaf-remover. (The first was his mechanical harvester.) In a cold climate, fruit needs every bit of assistance to ripen. Direct sunlight particularly helps Cab Franc grapes from developing the green, herbaceous flavors that some people find objectionable.

July is often typically a drier month. That allows us to go through the vineyard with mechanical cultivators to remove weeds under the vines. Weeds compete with the vines for both water and nutrients. Mechanical cultivation is the more expensive, but environmentally responsible alternative to using herbicides to control weed growth.

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Our H2A visa guest workers return home to Mexico at the end of July. They have been responsible for the majority of the handwork since March. The same guys return every year. They are extremely knowledgeable and hard-working. They are seasonal employees, and like our Tasting Room staff, we could not run our business without them.

Miguel Angel has been working for us since we started with the H2A visa program in 2019.

The vineyard team has about eight weeks before harvest begins. The team’s primary obligation during the balance of the growing season is to prevent molds and mildew from affecting the grapes. We are also anticipating the possibility of an infestation of the Spotted Lantern, so we need to be prepared for that.

But there is time for other projects, too. We have another streambed that is eroding too quickly, and we need to install another set of erosion control structures like the ones we installed in 2024.

The vineyard team is also participating in a field trial testing the efficacy of biological fungicides when they are sprayed in combination with conventional fungicides. There will be more on that test in a upcoming Substack post.

And we are also continuing to invest in two, separate soil health initiatives. On the left vegetation planted into row middle which will be “crimped” and incorporated back into the soil. On the right are large fields that we have planted with regenerative vegetation. We will be simply mowing these once or twice a year and allowing the organic material to incorporate back into the earth. Eventually we will be planting these fields with grapevines, and we hope the soil will be sufficiently recovered from decades of row crops.

So we take the month of August to plan and begin to implement long-term initiatives. When we are caught up with all the existing vineyard tasks, we get to take steps that will bear fruit in the future.

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We installed four EV Charging stations in August, 2022. This past weekend, for the first time, all four were in use at the same time. We knew this day would come, but were not sure when.

Patience never came naturally. Why things took so long frustrated and troubled me. What I have learned from my time at Boundary Breaks is that with a little patience can come a little peace of mind.

We purchased 118 acres in 2008 to grow Riesling grapes and to make and sell wine. In 2013, we realized that we needed a facility that would allow us to host visitors and provide tastings on-site. Three years later, in 2016, we opened the tasting room that we operate out of today.

Five years after purchasing bare farmland and planting vines, we concluded that the original plan I had for Boundary Breaks was not going to work. We did not have a serviceable tasting room, and we needed one. I had to face another very substantial investment. We depleted our savings further, borrowed a lot of money and built a facility that serves today as our tasting room and center of operations.

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That was 2016, and this year, 2026, is the tenth anniversary of that investment. We don’t regret making it, but there were many intervening years of elevated anxiety. Most of that is behind us. Had I known then what I know now—that all of this just takes time—I could have avoided sleep many less nights.

In the summer of 2024, along with the Seneca County Soil and Water District staff, we noticed that a streambed on the border of our property was eroding very rapidly. This was jeopardizing an edge of one of our Cab Franc vineyards. It was also sending valuable topsoil and sediment downstream and into the lake.

Our Soil and Water colleagues suggested we construct a series of “erosion control structures.” These are also known as “log vanes.” These structures slow the flow of water enough to allow sediment to build up behind them. Over time, as the sediment accumulates behind the log vanes, the series of structures interrupt flow and reduce the scouring action that causes further erosion. (See Substack #110.)

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But it takes time for the sediment to build up. Some of the vanes have more sediment behind them than others. We have some repair and modification to do. But, the concept appears to be working and we will be constructing more of these this month in another eroding streambed.

They log vanes work. But it takes time.

On the subject of things that take time, one such thing is wine. Some wines are better if you wait for them to evolve in the bottle. One of them is pictured here.

We purchased adjacent farmland in 2023 and included in that purchase were two acres of Cabernet Sauvignon, originally planted in 1998. Cabernet Sauvignon is not known to be very successful in the cool climate of the Finger Lakes.

Back in 2016, which was a very warm vintage, we had an opportunity to make a Cab Sauv from an nearby vineyard. Earlier this year, during one of our Winter Wine Explorations, we tasted that 2016 Cab Sauv along with several other reds that were also at least ten years old. Most of us agreed that the 2016 Cab Sauv was a very, very drinkable wine. (See Substack #169.)

We have tasted the 2023 Cab Sauv, and it is still young. But we plant to make it available later this year around the holidays. We believe it will be a great wine some day. It will just take a little time and a little patience. And a little peace-of-mind.

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Around now, each vine has progressed to the stage of “fruit set.” We can see how many clusters it has produced and how many berries are fully-formed in each cluster. By simply inspecting each vine visually and based on our experience, we can estimate whether the amount of fruit is typical for each variety.

We have a rough idea each year of how much fruit we need to produce the wine that we are likely to sell in the next twelve months. But that is not enough. We have to break it down further into: “How much Riesling?” “How much Cab Franc?” “How much Rosé?”

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That is just the start.

Then you have to ask, “How much inventory do I have on hand for each product from prior vintages?” For each one of the wines we sell, we have to estimate, “Just how much fruit from the 2026 harvest do we need?” Do we have too much inventory? Not enough. Or just right.

This is why the “fruit estimate” that we make around this time of the year matters. (See Substack #93).

This year, though, the fruit estimate is especially difficult. The frost on April 21 damaged some vines and left others unscathed. The effects seemed random. In the picture below, on the left a Riesling vine has a typical number of clusters. On the right, the vine adjacent to it has produced very few clusters.

The clusters that we count are typically near to the “fruiting cane,” which is wrapped around the “fruiting wire.” You can see them on the vine to the left. If you look at the fruiting cane on the vine to the , right it is very hard to find any clusters. The two vines are adjacent to each other. There does not seem to be any logic to it. That is what makes the crop estimate difficult.

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The number of clusters that you may find on the fruiting cane also depends upon the variety. Below, is a Cabernet Sauvignon vine. It is considered a later ripening variety, and it also gets a later start in the spring. At the time of the April 21 frost, its buds had barely emerged and were less susceptible to the cold. Below, you can see that the Cab Sauv has a very healthy set of clusters. Most of the Cab Sauv vines look just like this one, with plenty of fruit.

This photo of the Cabernet Sauvignon clusters was taken on the same day at the photos of the Riesling clusters. The two varieties are at quite a different stage of growth.

Cabernet Sauvignon is a later-starting and late-ripening grape variety. On the other hand, Gewürztraminer is the opposite. It is also very cold-sensitive. The vine in the photo below has maybe one or two clusters—in total—on it. Fortunately, it is still very healthy and will be very productive next year. Just not this year.

We have three acres of Gewürztraminer vines. They have produced as much as a total of 20 tons in a given year. This year, they may produce five tons. In this situation, we will purchase additional Gewürztraminer fruit from Sheldrake Point Vineyards as we have in the past.

So, the question still remains; how much fruit will we really have? Particularly, how much Riesling and Cab Franc. These are our two most popular wines. We don’t want to run out, but we also do not want to sacrifice quality by buying grapes from a grower we haven’t worked with before. Because of the frost, certain varieties will be in short supply this year.

We are all still waiting to see what we will need after we have finished the busy summer tasting season. When we start harvesting, it will be come clearer just how much fruit we have. It is way too difficult to estimate it precisely right now.

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His name is Bill Stobie. And you would want him with you in a foxhole if you were in a firefight. Meet Bill in this video.

In 2018, on the weekends during the winter, we introduced a “blind-tasting” challenge. We invited guests to come in and sit with a flight of six wines. They were wines made from six different grapes, either six white or six red. We told the guests what the typical flavor characteristics of each variety was, but we did not tell them which wine was which. It was their task to see if they could match the wine to the descriptions we provided

This is an example of the information we provided to each guest. They had six white wines in front of them, and they had to figure out which was which.

We blind-tasted a different set of six wines over several weeks. One guy and his wife—Bill and Jane—came to almost all of these tastings. Bill took his time tasting each wine and reading the descriptors. He was very methodical. Of all our guests that season, by far, he identified the most number of wines accurately. That was Bill Stobie.

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Bill clearly had an interest in wine. We needed people like that to work in our Tasting Room. We asked him and his wife if they would come to work for us in the tasting room. Anyone who was this careful about understanding the wine in the glass would surely make a great member of our tasting room staff. Both Bill and Jane said yes.

We soon learned more about Bill. He taught carpentry at BOCES for 43 years. He was also a member of the volunteer fire department and also was a Boy Scout leader. Needless to say, he is a very capable guy.

In 2020, Covid rules required us to serve guests seated and also serve them something to eat. We built patio seating for groups of two and four, and we left plenty of space between them across our large lawn overlooking the lake. For shade, we bought umbrellas—lots of them.

Our tasting staff became servers and bussers, taking orders, delivering wine and food and picking up dishes. It was not uncommon for a server to have more than 25,000 steps during a normal shift.

We have an expansive set of patios on our lawn for guests, each with one or two umbrellas (above left); it can get windy, and many umbrella poles have broken and needed to be replaced (above center); and over the winter, we need a way to store and move the umbrellas around in the warehouse.

When any of the more than 30 umbrellas tipped over in wind and the posts broke, we asked Bill if he could fabricate new poles. He replaced a lot of poles. He also designed and built the umbrella storage rack that we could move around the warehouse with a pallet jack.

Once the Covid rules were lifted, we offered seated service under a covered pavilion. We needed tables for our guests. We had several large oak trees on our farm that needed to come down. Bill mentioned that he and one of his sons can take down large trees. Bill was our guy.

After a local sawmill cut the oak into planks, we dried and gave them to Bill to turn into tables. Which he did.

There are any number of things that come up that need solutions of one kind or another. Our Tasting Room service staff told us we needed to let our guests know what our tipping policy was. We needed some kind of sign that we could place discreetly on our tasting bars and outdoor tables.

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It can get windy when we do our tasting outside. Ordinary table-tops signs would blow away. So that was a problem, and we asked Bill what he would recommend as a solution.

He made a prototype out of a piece of heavy granite. We glued our small sign to the granite base. Bill made 25 of them for us. They are durable, and they don’t blow away.

No job is too large or too small for Bill. There are at least another dozen enhancements or modifications that he has made for us since the days when he identified all those wines in those blind-tastings. We are very fortunate that he and his wife Jane have been part of our team.

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Russ Johnson whose review of our Cab Franc on Instagram is a example of a young person with a passion for wine who can develop a point-of-view and convey it with confidence and clarity. When I met Russ eight years ago, for some reason, I took note of his interest in wine.

I remember meeting Russ Johnson at an event in Philadelphia in 2018-19. A group of wineries from the Finger Lakes held a tasting at a restaurant/wine bar in a hip neighborhood in that city. We set up our wines at small tables and interested guests came in to taste and learn about Finger Lakes wines.

One of these guests was a tall young man, Russ Johnson, who introduced himself as a new employee at one of the state-run, Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) stores. It happened to be one of the “Fine Wine and Good Spirits” stores in the PLCB family. He seemed enthusiastic and interested in our wine.

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Over the years, we have met several thousand people at tastings like these—and it is hard to remember all of them. But I did remember Russ. He seemed to be paying attention to the wine that I poured for him and when I described it.

I believe he has stayed with the PLCB as one of its “wine educators.” The young person I met has stayed committed to learning about wine. His Instagram feed is full of knowledgeable and thoughtful reviews of wine. You can find more of his wine reviews on Instagram.

I met Emily Capiello at the first tasting event held by the Cab Franc Forward group in December, 2024. (See Substack #112.) Already, she had loads of experience writing about wine and food.

Her list of 13 American Cab Franc wines appeared this past week in Forbes. The list includes several Cab Francs from New York, along with Cab Francs from Virginia, Washington, Texas and California. Her description of ours seems spot on.

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Trends come and go in the wine world, as they do in food, music and fashion. But people still eat, listen to music and wear fashionable clothes. With people like Russ and Emily writing with distinction about wines, I am not the least bit concerned about the future of wine among their generation or the next and the next.

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Boundary Breaks Vineyard Associate John Swick, who built the frame for the sign, hangs the new Darcy Boys Winegrowers sign at the entrance to the new vineyard.

In 2020, a couple sat on our Adirondack chairs overlooking the lake. I stopped by to say hello. The couple had questions about Boundary Breaks, and one question led to another and another. Theirs was genuine curiosity.

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They had ordered a bottle of our Riesling Reserve #198. It was their first experience with a wine like that. More questions followed. We exchanged contact information. More questions ensued. In time, Bill and Kristy Darcy were owners of a 20-acre parcel not far from Boundary Breaks. They asked, and we said we would help them get a vineyard established.

We wrote about establishing the Darcy Boys Vineyard in Substack #100 and in Substack #136.

Four years after that first conversation, in 2024, Bill and Kristy Darcy and their sons, Billy, Jake and Harrison (the Darcy Boys) had five new acres of Riesling planted. Many people inquire about what it takes to start a vineyard. Very few actually actually follow through on the idea. Bill and Kristy were different.

Many people who have been successful in one field assume that they automatically know what it takes to be successful in another field—like managing a vineyard. Not Bill and Kristy. They were methodical in soliciting advice and counsel from many of the same people that we learned from. They were not in a hurry. They wanted to do it right.

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What impressed us was they understood that “doing it right” meant getting started long before you plant vines. Prepping the site was critical.

Much of what makes a vineyard successful starts a year before you plant. In 2023, The Darcy Boys began by installing extensive drainage tile and removing tons of rocks. We covered this in Substack #85.

After doing the prep work in 2023, the Darcy Boys planted in 2024. The vineyard team from Boundary Breaks has been managing the vineyard for them since then. Bill has a day job (as I did during the first years at Boundary Breaks). He is in touch with our Vineyard Manager, Kees Stapel, by text and by phone. Bill, Kristy and their family visit multiple times during the year.

Based on our experience with our own vineyard, we expect that the quality of the fruit from the Darcy Boys vineyard to be exceptional. The vineyard is in a very good location. It was prepped properly. We manage it exactly the way we manage our own vineyards. It is off to a great start. We expect some great fruit from the Darcy Boys Winegrowers for many years to come.

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More than 10 million people worldwide have downloaded the Merlin Bird App from from our neighbors at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

Here is what it sounded like yesterday morning at 5 AM, courtesy of the Merlin App on my phone.

At Boundary Breaks, we live closer to the natural world than ever before.

It is our livelihood, our environment, our challenge and there is no way to know everything about what is happening. Weather. Plant Disease. Wildlife. Invasive species. Mammals. Birds. Fish. Amphibians.

There are birds everywhere, and they are most noticeable early in the morning and in the evening at dusk. We see many of them, but we hear far more than we see.

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For nearly 20 years, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has been developing the ability to identify birds based on more than 800 million submissions from birders around the world.

Using the Merlin App software (that now qualifies as a kind of artificial intelligence), users can submit either a photograph of a bird or a recording of a bird song, and the app will identify the bird.

I am by no means a “birder.” But I use the Merlin App. I have identified probably 30-40 bird species. I rarely see the birds. Typically, Diana and I are sitting on the porch after we have closed the Tasting Room. I open Merlin and start recording the ambient noise around us. The microphone on the phone picks ups the birds and differentiates among them. If you simply leave the app open, it can identify a long list of birds.

Many people have sat and listened to the birds. But how many of us can identify any of them?

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Birders can be notoriously fanatic about sightings and identifications. Part of the genius of this app is that its data is “crowd-sourced”. That is, it is based on submissions from more than 5,000 birders, many of whom, presumably, are fanatical about their work.

The Merlin App incorporates each new submission and compares it to all previous submissions in the database. The database incorporates the analysis and experience of thousands of birders who have validated the contents.

And we get the benefit. For free. It is truly amazing.

You can download the app for iOS and Android here.

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May was a month of unusually heavy rain. It turned everything green. Made the grass grow. And thanks to chlorophyll, gave all of our vines a great start.

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Chlorophyll absorbs the energy from the sun and converts water and carbon dioxide into sugars and oxygen. This “chemical process” is also known as “photosynthesis.”

No photosynthesis? No plants. No animals and no food for herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. No grapevines. No wine. No us.

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The photosynthetic process in the foliage of our grapevines builds leaves, roots, wood, fruit and seeds.

Most importantly, photosynthetic activity supports vine vigor, shoot growth, root growth, fruit ripening, sugar accumulation in the berries, flavor and aroma development.

All of this is responsible for what you find in your glass. As Galileo said:

“Wine is sunlight held together by water.”

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A freeze on April 21 damaged some young shoots and buds in our vineyard. Fortunately, grapevines have “secondary” buds that will develop into a new shoot when the primary bud has been damaged. In the foreground above, is a younger shoot from a “secondary” bud. The shoots in the background are much larger, and are from “primary” buds that were not damaged in the freeze.

Back in 2020, we had a severe hailstorm during the first week of June. At the time the shoots were 8-10 inches in length, and the hail tore many of shoots completely in half. The damage was severe, as you can see in the picture below.

This was the first time we had damage like this. I had heard of another vineyard which had experienced similar damage a few years earlier. I called the manager of that vineyard at the time and asked what our options might be, given how much damage there was. In other words, I was asking, “Is here anything we can do to help these vines recover?”

“No,” he said. “Just let the vine recover on its own. Let the vine do what it is going to do.”

It has been a month since the late April freeze of 2026, and most of our vines are fine. In cases where there was damage, we are seeing signs of recovery. It depends upon how severe the injury was in the first place. We see new growth from secondary buds; we are also seeing modest growth from “tertiary” buds.

And if both the “primary” and “secondary” buds have damage, there is actually a third, or “tertiary” bud, which will produce foliage, but not any fruit. What we see above is likely a tertiary. Vines have evolved to produce foliage at the expense of fruit. That is what we are seeing in this instance. The vine needs foliage to survive.

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If the primary, secondary, and tertiary buds on the canes have been damaged, then the plant will generate new growth from the trunk. The most cold-sensitive variety we grow is Gewürztraminer, and it absorbed the most damage during the freeze. On the vines below, most of the buds on the canes froze, and now the plants are generating new growth from the base of the vine and from the trunks.

The new growth coming from the top of the trunk will grow long enough to tie down as fruiting canes for next year. But this year, these vines will produce very little fruit, if any at all.

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We manage more than 60,000 vines, and every year we lose a few, whether to cold or to other adverse conditions. For the vine in the picture below, the freeze was the final straw. Nothing growing on the canes. Nothing growing from the trunks. We will pull that one up and re-plant a new vine.

Fortunately, the vast majority of the vines were very healthy, with either primary or secondary buds that survived intact from the freeze. The harvest will be lighter than in previous years, but we will still have plenty of fruit to support our production.

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Members of the wine trade from the UK recently visited Boundary Breaks. We tasted wine, of course, but it was hard to tell the whole story of what we do here in one hour.

We often have wine writers and critics visit the Finger Lakes. Sometime they stop here at Boundary Breaks, and sometimes they do not.

There is an independent journalist coming to visit us in about two weeks. He is an experienced wine writer. He told me he wants to taste wines, but he prefers to write a “story” that is more than just what the wines taste like. I respect this.

Nonetheless, I will pour at least ten wines for him. He can taste them, and he can like them or not. But, as he told me, he has to find the “story” some other way.

So, if I want him to go away with a story, it is somewhat up to me to try to convey enough raw material for him to find the story in it.

I will supply some background as briefly as possible.

The Finger Lakes wine industry here started in the 1850’s. Because of the cooler climate, the majority of wines made in the region had always been made with native and hybrid grapes. This was fine until the 1960s and 1970s when California wineries began making better wines from European grapes. Wines from New York were suddenly inferior to those from California.

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A few Finger Lakes wineries in the 1960s and 1970s were also making wines from European grapes that could tolerate the cooler climate here. But the wines that these few wineries made were a mere fraction of the total volume produced in the region. In New York City, where the majority of the wine influencers were, wines from New York still struggled to find a footing.

We arrived in the early 2000s with an idea of only making wines from European grapes. We had no idea what any of this entailed. But, nevertheless, year-in, year-out, we persisted.

In the picture above, I am explained how our vineyard location on a slope, on the east side of Seneca Lake, gives us an opportunity to make great wines. But that alone is not enough. So much more goes into it.

We sell a modest of amount of wine in New York City, and also up and down the East Coast. But if there is a story to be found, it is by visiting our vineyard on the east side of Seneca Lake. It is very hard to get the story of our wine simply from tasting it outside of the context of our site.

And quite honestly, you get only a fraction of the story from me. You really have to talk with my wife, Diana, the members of our vineyard team, Kees, John and Jesse, our winemakers, Dave, Michael, Chris, Ben and Abby and to the hospitality staff that serves our guests, Catherine, Rich, Joyce, Carol, Laurenda, Bill, Jane, Allie, Amie, Amy, Brianna and Ciera.

The vineyard team has three members. On average they have each been with us for ten years. We meet every morning, Monday through Friday, at 7 AM and talk for an hour. What changed from yesterday? What is new? Will the weather get any better?

Once our vineyard is through with harvest, the winemakers take over. We make wine in three different facilities in the area. The winemakers have on average 20 years of experience making Finger Lakes wines. We don’t micro-manage them. We bring the ripest, cleanest fruit from our vineyards and give them to freedom to make each style of wine as delicious as it was last year.

We need to sell wine to restaurants and wine shops. We sell directly and through distributors. Mary-Kate does this.

Who counts the money that comes in and the checks that go out? Denley.

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We have a hospitality team made up of people, some of whom have retired from different careers and who moved to the Finger Lakes from someplace else. Some of our other hospitality team members are young and are former Honor Roll students from the local high school.

On the busy weekends during the summer, we see 500 guests. Each deserves great service. When it is really, really busy, everyone on the team is moving, mostly silently, except when talking to our guests; no one has to tell anyone else what to do. They know what good service is. Everyone is paying attention and will do what will make the other member of the team’s job easier.

If there is a story that the writer is looking for, it can’t only come from me. It will have to come from conversations with the people who have touched the vines, the grapes, the wines, the tasting cards and glass washers and the temperature dial on the oven that warms the bread. That is where the actual story would come from .

So when this writer arrives, I will make many introductions to our people. Because it will be a much better story when he has a chance to talk to Kees or Jesse about the vineyard or Catherine or Brianna or Rich about the wines they pour, or Diana, who has her own point-of-view. Or Mary-Kate.

I hope to get the people who are all part of the story to offer their version. And from their versions, will come the story that the writer chooses to tell, which starts with what the people who grow the grapes, make the wine, sell the wine, and create the guest’s experience.

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As you approach Boundary Breaks, you make a turn at the bottom of a hill, and at this corner is a fenced-in vineyard, accessible by this gate pictured above.

The are iconic wines from Europe that have the word, “clos” in their name. Among them are Clos de Vougeot, Clos Rougeard and Clos Sainte Hune. In the United States, you also will find the word “clos” on the label; California’s Clos du Val, for instance,.

The word, “clos,” refers to an “enclosure” or “walled vineyard.” The word, reportedly, originated in Burgundy with Cistercian monks who built walls around their vineyards to protect them from thieves, animals and weather.

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Today, the word is used to refer to a unique vineyard site that is notable for producing exceptional wines. You can’t just slap the name on the label and assume the wine will be exceptional. If you are being honest, there has to be something about the site where the grapes are grown that earns the name, “clos.” The wines made from the grapes grown on that site must be memorable.

We installed a fence around the nine-acre parcel that we first planted in 2019. From the beginning these vines have prospered. But they are surrounding by woods, and the deer and other animals were eating up to 30 percent of the fruit. In 2022, much like the Cistercians, we installed a fence to protect the vineyard from wildlife. It became, sort of, an enclosure, but not yet a “clos.”

Not only in the site now protected by a fence, it may also be uniquely positioned in a way that makes it less prone to frost. The frost event on April 21 of this year, which affected our older Cab Franc planting, did hardly any damage to the vines in the block inside the fence. The vines in the lower end of the block at the western end show very little damage.

We have planted these nine acres with six acres of Cab Franc and three acres of Merlot. To find out if there is anything special about the wines from this “enclosed” block of vines, we will need to make wines specifically from these acres. They will receive the same care that we give all of our vines. To the extent possible, we will pick them at an optimal degree of ripeness.

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But, at the time of harvest, we will separate them from the rest and manage them during the fermentation process as a separate and unique batch. We will need to choose the barrels that they go into and keep track of those barrels as the wines mature. And we will take them out of the barrels and bottle them when we think they are ready.

Once they have spent enough time in the bottle, we will taste them and decide if they taste any different from the other wines we made from that same year. And if, after four or five years of this process, if we are convinced that, yes, the grapes from this site produce a superior wine, then we will find a name to go on the bottle that designates it as special.

So even though these grapes are in an “enclosure,” the name won’t be a “clos.” That name is taken. But we will certainly think of something suitable.

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We had nearly finished pruning and tying down canes when the frost occurred. After a frost like this one, we had to assess the condition of each “node,” or “bud,” on each cane. Had the bud pushed any green material out? If it has, does the exposed foliage look healthy. If there is no foliage, does that mean the bud has suffered terminal damage?

We have been examining our vines since the frost on the morning of April 21. Temperatures were 24 degrees for six hours. Our consensus the day after was that we would have to wait for several weeks before we could confirm the effects of the cold.

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So far, the assessment is “mixed.”

We have canes where the buds had either burst or were swollen with moisture, but not yet burst. These were at a stage that made them vulnerable to the freezing temperatures. Some were damaged. Some were not. We also had canes where the buds had pushed out foliage; maybe 70 percent of those survived.

On the left in the picture above is a young Riesling vine planted in 2024. It is looking unscathed, with bud break at every node on the cane. On the right is an older Riesling vine planted in 2010. Buds were just beginning to swell. Many of them were at a stage where they are not likely to have survived.

Overall, we are seeing that the older Riesling, Cab Franc and Gewürztraminer vines lost more buds. Our guess is the loss is around 30 percent on the older Riesling and Cab Franc; 80 percent on the Gewurztraminer.

On the left above is a Cab Franc cane planted in 2022 that has all live buds. On the right, is a Cab Franc cane planted in 2013 that looks like it may have no live buds. There is great variability throughout the vineyard depending upon location, age and varietal.

Our Vineyard Manager, Kees Stapel, says that when he began working in the vineyard at Sheldrake Point, he learned the pruning practice of always leaving two extra canes on each vine. Those two extra canes are there in case frost damages some percentage of the buds on the canes that are tied down. He and his team can tie down these extra canes with live buds to supplement or replace the canes where buds were lost.

In years where we have no frost damage, we simply cut the extra canes off once the risk of frost is behind us. It is a good thing, though, that we have these extras.

We expect temperatures to be in the 40’s to 60’s in the coming two weeks, which is just what we like to see. We all remember that we had a hard frost on May 18 in 2023, so we are not in any hurry to see any more growth. We want to be well past the “last frost” date before it gets warm enough for the vines’ growth to accelerate.

Above is a young Cab Franc vine planted in 2024. Most of its buds appear to have survived. buds look fine. The younger vines seemed to have survived the frost better than the older ones.

In the final analysis, no matter how you get there, the point is to have all LIVE buds on the wire, all the way across, with 4-inch spacing between them.

The vineyard team has a lot of work ahead to assess every vine. Each original, tied-down cane will be in better or worse condition and each of the extra canes will be better or worse condition. It is up to the judgment of member of the vineyard team to re-configure each vine so that we achieve a successful harvest in spite of this frost event.

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Vineyard Manager Kees Stapel inspecting Cabernet Franc buds following the overnight frost of April 21, 2026.

We have few historical references for events like the one this past week. We call them “unprecedented,” because we have not seen anything quite like it before.

We had the beginnings of an early bud-break this year. We had a cold winter, with temperatures that declined steadily and stayed low, but not too low, for weeks. That meant the vines were safely dormant. Maybe that was an indicator of a later bud-break.

We then had one week of average temperatures in the mid-60’s from April 12-16. The buds began to swell rapidly, and a few began to burst. This early and rapid onset of bud-break—especially after the cold winter—seemed to be what was unprecedented.

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Then came the still, cold night of April 21.

We put out temperature loggers on the night of April 20. These take temperature readings every hour. That way we know for sure exactly how low the temperatures got in each particular location in our vineyard.

We checked the readings the next morning.

What made this more severe was that there was no wind during that same six-hour period. Winds mix the air and keeps the cold, stagnant air from sitting on the vines. Below are the wind readings from our weather station during the lowest temperatures that morning. Pretty still. Pretty ugly. Not pretty.

The wind speed dropped to “zero” just after 12:35 AM and barely moved until about 4:15 AM.

So, yes, it could have been worse, but not by much.

To assess the possible damage, we look at the buds to see how much tissue has pushed out from the base of the bud on the cane. Some pushed maybe 1/4-inch at most. A few at 1/2-inch, but there were not too many of these. Many had not pushed at all.

Above is an example of a bud pushed to about 3/4-inch from the cane. We had very, very few of these.

Our assessment actually is inconclusive at this point. The small number of buds that pushed to 1/2-inch from the cane have sustained damage. Those that had pushed only 1/4-inch, appeared to have less noticeable damage, at least not yet.

But, in fact, it is too early to tell how much damage occurred. We will really know in a month after all the early shoots have emerged.

And provided we do not see temperatures again that we saw this week, we should be okay. We are proceeding, as usual, with cautious optimism.

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On the left is the Riesling #110 Grand; the last time we made this wine was 2016. On the right is the Riesling Extra Dry #90 which we made last in 2021. This #90 Extra Dry is back by popular demand. And there is a resourceful story behind the #110 Grand.

We are cautious about introducing new wines. It is easy to have too many wines on your tasting list; too many wines confuse people.

We also believe that once we have made a style of wine that a large share of our audience likes, then we want to keep making that wine.

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But then there are exceptions to this rule. For instance, the Riesling #110 Grand.

The wine-tasting team at JamesSuckling.com tasted our 2024 Riesling #110 Grand and rated it at 94 pts. That’s pretty good. We only made 70 cases of this wine. It will age and improve from many years.

The grapes that we used for this wine were picked during the first week of January, 2024. (Normally, harvest is October.) This particular fruit was intended for Riesling Ice Wine, but the deer population had a different idea. Even though we had covered the vines with nets, the deer were so aggressive, they tore through the nets to get to the grapes. Not all the grapes. There were still some left on the vine.

Rather that watch all the fruit disappear, we picked the remaining fruit at a stage that was too early for Ice Wine, but too late for the other styles of Riesling we make. The fruit was semi-de-hydrated and had developed a subtle, honey-like flavor that you find in Ice Wine. We decided to make make a medium-dry wine (much like our Ovid Line North Riesling) but the flavor profile would be radically different and distinctly its own.

In 2016 we made a similar wine from fruit that we harvested very late, but not late enough to make either an Ice Wine or a “Late Harvest” dessert wine. We also called that wine “110 Grand,” and it was extremely popular. That wine aged in a spectacular manner, and we expect the same with this one.

This is the fourth time in fifteen years that we have made the Riesling #90 Extra Dry. We have now decided that we will make it every year.

When we decided to begin making Riesling in the Finger Lakes, starting in 2007, we tasted many of the Dry Rieslings available at the time. We found some of them “out-of-balance;” that is, they were overly-acidic with not enough “fruit” to balance the acidity.

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We made our first Dry Riesling #239 in 2011. It was disappointing. Not knowing any better, we had picked the fruit too early (my fault). It was under-ripe; it lacked fruit and was, to be honest, out-of-balance, just like wines we had tasted and didn’t want to make.

Then, in 2012, we had a very warm and dry growing season. The fruit got very ripe and developed very distinctive flavors. We made the 2012 Dry Riesling #239 that year with a hint of residual sugar. That wine was picked by one of the industry’s trade magazine’s as a Top 100 Wine in the World. We thought we were onto something.

We were onto something, and the Dry Riesling #239 has been a very popular wine ever since.

However, we have learned that there are wine drinkers who prefer a drier, more austere style of Riesling—provided that it is not overly acidic and out-of-balance. Many of these same wine consumers enjoy Sauvignon Blanc. And we have made this style of Riesling in the past and called it “#90 Extra Dry.”

Since we made the last Extra Dry in 2021, we have had enough requests for this style of Riesling that we have decided it deserves a place among the wines we make every year. Like many of our wines, it improves with age and is best when it has spent two years in the bottle. The 2024 Riesling #90 Extra Dry was bottled in May of 2025. It is now released and is very tasty. But like some red wines, it is not yet at its peak; it will start to show its true character around May, 2027.

We urge you to try both of these wines. They might surprise you.

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