Seneca Lake vineyards eastern shore
— — the slope that holds the lake's warmth into October.
Not only on a wall.
“The east side of Seneca Lake, where vinifera vines run down to the water in long parallel rows and the lake holds its summer warmth deep into the fall. Riesling country. Hermann J. Wiemer, Wagner, Lamoreaux Landing, Atwater: a string of small estates along Route 414 above shale cliffs. The lake below is six hundred feet deep and rarely freezes. The air smells of cool fruit and turned ground in October. from the studio
Seneca Lake vineyards eastern shore, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Seneca Lake is the largest and deepest of the eleven Finger Lakes, thirty-eight miles long and roughly six hundred and eighteen feet deep at its maximum. The eastern shore rises sharply through layered shale into vineyard slopes above Route 414, between the villages of Geneva at the north end and Watkins Glen at the south. The Seneca Lake Wine Trail organizes more than thirty wineries around the lake, the densest concentration of cool-climate vinifera production in the eastern United States.
The lake moderates the climate of its shoreline by holding heat into the fall: surface temperatures stay above sixty degrees through October, which extends the ripening window for Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Cabernet Franc. Bud break runs in early May, harvest from mid-September through late October. The lake almost never freezes, even in the cold winters of the 1970s and 1990s, which is why vinifera survives where it cannot a few miles inland.
Route 414 along the eastern shore is the spine of the tasting route, with most cellars open daily from late spring through November. Hermann J. Wiemer, founded in 1979, is widely credited with proving Riesling on the lake. Wagner Vineyards runs a brewery and a restaurant alongside the winery. Tasting fees are typically modest, by reservation in summer, and most estates pour flights of four to six. Watkins Glen State Park, with its nineteen waterfalls, sits at the south end.