Finger Lakes Skaneateles Lake, New York
Skaneateles Lake wineries
Skaneateles is the Finger Lake that Syracuse drinks unfiltered: 16 miles of exceptionally clear water, 300 feet deep, its surface higher than every Finger Lake but the two small ones south of Rochester. It has one winery, Anyela's Vineyards, above the west shore, where the vines are buried each winter to survive. This guide explains what that estate makes and why the lake has no others, then shapes a day around one tasting, one of the region's most polished villages, and the Cayuga Lake wineries within an hour to the west.
The roof garden of the lakes
The name means 'long lake' in the Onondaga language, and it runs 16 miles from the village of Skaneateles at its head to the hamlet of Glen Haven at its foot. Its surface lies 863 feet above sea level, an old nickname calls it the Roof Garden of the Lakes, and only Canadice and Hemlock, the two small lakes south of Rochester, sit higher. The water is clear enough that Syracuse has piped it to the city since the 1890s and still does without a filtration plant, and more than 165,000 people drink from it.
For a wine traveller that is a puzzle. A deep lake ought to shelter vines from frost, and this one does; but its hillsides start higher and colder than any on Seneca or Cayuga, and the watershed is run for the water first. The result is one winery, Anyela's Vineyards, where the Nocek family planted its first vines in 2001 and buries them every winter, and a scatter of small plantings: Lot 10 Vineyard at Borodino, with no tasting room, and Eibert Vineyard, which pours on Saturday afternoons and is not yet listed here.
So a visit takes a different shape from the trail lakes: one tasting done well; a village with a pier, an inn from 1807 and two old shopping streets; a waterfall walk down the west shore; and, for a second and third glass, Cayuga's east shore, where Heart & Hands Wine Company and Treleaven Wines lie 35 to 50 minutes west along Route 20. The trip-planning guide compares bases across the region; here the answer is the village.
Skaneateles Lake and its nearest wineries on the map
- On Skaneateles Lake
- Nearby, not on Skaneateles Lake
Each pin sits on the winery's street address. The chips show only what a winery states on its own website, and they narrow the lists below as well. Muted pins are the nearby wineries that are not on Skaneateles Lake.
Every winery on all eleven lakes, with wine-style filters, saved favourites and suggested stops between one tasting room and the next.
The winery on Skaneateles Lake, and the nearest others
The lake's only tasting room stands above the west shore, about 4.5 miles south of the village on Route 41A, West Lake Road. The east shore has none, though two small growers work above it: Lot 10 Vineyard at Borodino, planted in 2015 and made into wine elsewhere under the Smallholdings label, and Eibert Vineyard, three acres on a fourth-generation dairy farm that pours its own wine on Saturday afternoons and is not yet listed here.
The lake list runs north to south, the order you would drive it, and the nearby list runs nearest first. Each name opens the winery's own page, with hours, wines and places to stay close by.
On the lake 1 winery
Route 41A, West Lake Road, leaves Genesee Street in the village and follows the western hillside south; Anyela's Vineyards is 4.5 miles along it, its vines high above the water with a view down the lake. Route 41 on the east shore has no tasting room, and the two roads meet only at Homer.
| Winery | Town | Dogs | Kids | Food | Book online |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anyela's Vineyards | Skaneateles | Yes | Yes |
Nearest wineries 6 wineries
The six wineries below are the nearest, all on the north end or east shore of Cayuga Lake and reached from Skaneateles along Route 20 through Auburn without crossing any lake. Drive times are approximate and assume the village as the starting point. Heart & Hands Wine Company and Treleaven Wines are the two to plan around: the first for Pinot Noir and Riesling by reservation, the second for a kitchen and a long afternoon.
| Winery | Town | Drive | Dogs | Kids | Food | Book online |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Apple Station Winery | Cayuga | Cayuga Lakeabout 30 to 35 minutes via Route 20 through Auburn, then Route 90 | ||||
| Heart & Hands Wine Company | Union Springs | Cayuga Lakeabout 35 minutes via Route 20 through Auburn, then Route 90 south | Yes | |||
| Montezuma Winery Finger Lakes | Seneca Falls | Cayuga Lakeabout 35 minutes west along Route 20 through Auburn | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Constantia Wine Company | Aurora | Cayuga Lakeabout 40 to 45 minutes via Auburn and Route 90 south | ||||
| Treleaven Wines | King Ferry | Cayuga Lakeabout 45 to 50 minutes via Auburn and Route 90 south | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bright Leaf Vineyard | King Ferry | Cayuga Lakeabout 45 to 50 minutes via Auburn and Route 90 south | Yes |
The one winery, and the vines it buries each winter
Anyela's Vineyards is named for a grandmother. Anyela Nocek came to the United States from eastern Europe around 1918; her grandson Jim Nocek, a third-generation viticulturist, bought 100 acres above the western shore in 1995, planted his first vines in 2001 and opened in 2008. The old barn is now an events space called Tract 66, after the lot number the land carried in the military survey for Revolutionary War veterans.
What sets the vineyard apart is winter. Once the crop is in, the vines are pruned, taken down from the trellis, fixed to a wire at ground level and ploughed over by the end of November; in the second or third week of March they are pulled up with hooks and tied back on. The soil insulates the primary buds through nights when the family says a vine can crack at five to ten degrees below zero Fahrenheit. No vineyard on the neighbouring lakes goes to that trouble.
The wines are the region's cool-climate set with additions: Riesling dry, off-dry and late harvest; an oaked Chardonnay; a light, red-fruited Pinot Noir with a 2012 reserve still on the list; and Cabernet Franc, earthy and peppery in the medium-bodied register the Finger Lakes does well. Around them sit Pinot Gris, Albariño, Cayuga White and Vidal Blanc, a rosé of Pinot Noir and a sparkling wine, plus Merlot and Shiraz, so ask at the bar which bottles come from the hillside vines.
The tasting room looks down the lake and doubles as a stage: live music on Friday evenings and weekend afternoons, and the Skaneateles Festival's Saturday concerts in its Robinson Pavilion from late July into August. There is no kitchen, but the Sherwood Inn caters private events in the wine cellar, and the estate lets its Austin House to guests.
Why a 300-foot lake has so few vines
Deep water delays the first autumn frost and holds the vines back in spring, and Skaneateles, 300 feet deep and cold enough for lake trout and landlocked Atlantic salmon, does that job as well as any Finger Lake. The difference is where the water sits. Its surface is 863 feet above sea level, more than 400 feet higher than Seneca's, and a vineyard must sit higher still. Higher ground is colder ground: a shorter season, more winter nights near the mark at which the Noceks say a vine cracks, and a smaller lake, a fifth of Seneca's surface, to take the edge off them. Anyela's Vineyards answers the cold with a plough, and nobody else has followed on any scale.
The second reason is the water itself. Syracuse has drawn from the lake since the 1890s, and today does so under a state waiver that spares it a filtration plant, made indefinite in 2004 on the strength of a clean watershed. Almost half the land that drains to the lake is farmed, so in 1994 the city set up a voluntary programme with the county soil and water district that writes whole-farm plans for the watershed's dairies and crop farms, and it has bought conservation easements on 858 acres, in perpetuity. None of that forbids a vineyard. It does make for a shoreline of cottages, working farms, steep woods and state forest, where the pull that turned Seneca's slopes into a wine road never took hold.
What remains is a handful of small plantings, and for a wine traveller that is the point of the place rather than a shortcoming: one tasting, taken seriously, on a lake that has kept the rest of its shore for other things.
The village, the shore roads and the falls
The village of Skaneateles sits at the head of the lake, where Route 20 becomes Genesee Street and runs along the water, with its shops on Genesee and Jordan Streets and three lakeside parks. Clift Park is the one to know: a gazebo for summer concerts, a swimming area with concrete steps straight into clear water, and a pier. Mid-Lakes Navigation's boats leave from the foot of West Genesee Street, and on summer mornings the company still delivers the US Mail to lakeside cottages by boat.
Facing the lake from West Genesee Street stands the Sherwood Inn, built in 1807 as the tavern at the head of Isaac Sherwood's stagecoach line. Mirbeau, a 34-room inn and spa with a garden modelled on Monet's, is further out the same road, and Doug's Fish Fry has fried fish at 8 Jordan Street since 1982. The Skaneateles Festival, begun in 1980, now fills four weeks from late July, weekday evenings at the First Presbyterian Church and Saturday nights at the winery's pavilion; and from Thanksgiving weekend to Christmas Eve, characters out of Dickens walk Genesee and Jordan Streets on weekend afternoons, a tradition of more than 30 years.
Two state roads run the length of the lake and meet only at Homer: Route 41A, West Lake Road, past the winery, and Route 41, East Lake Road, through Borodino. The west road is also the walking road: 10.5 miles south of the village, Appletree Point Road leads to the Finger Lakes Land Trust's Bahar Preserve and the state's Carpenter Falls Unique Area, where a 1.1-mile trail climbs from the lakeshore past a 90-foot waterfall. Bear Swamp State Forest, with 14 miles of trails, lies above the south-west shore, and Glen Haven at the foot of the lake, once a steamboat resort, keeps a marina, a restaurant and rooms.
A day that adds Cayuga's east shore
One tasting does not fill a day, and the nearest second tasting is on Cayuga Lake, reached along Route 20 through Auburn. Cayuga has had its own appellation since 1988, and its quieter east shore holds a run of producers between Union Springs and King Ferry.
The first call is Heart & Hands Wine Company near Union Springs, about 35 minutes away, where Tom and Susan Higgins make around 2,000 cases a year with Pinot Noir and Riesling at the centre and a list that stretches to Aligoté and Lagrein; it opens Friday to Sunday and asks for a reservation. Nearby, The Apple Station Winery is an orchard first, planted in 1986, with apple wines, ciders and a Riesling. South along Route 90, Constantia Wine Company opened a tasting room and bottle shop on Main Street in Aurora in the summer of 2025, pouring Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc.
At King Ferry, 45 to 50 minutes from Skaneateles, Treleaven Wines is the oldest winery on this shore: the Saltonstall family planted its first vines in 1984 and now runs 27 acres, a bistro called Farm in the Willows and the Hangtime, an open-air pavilion with free summer music. Bright Leaf Vineyard farms 14 acres split by a quarry of Tully limestone into a cool hillside block for Riesling and Chardonnay and a warmer lakeside block for reds. On the way home, Montezuma Winery Finger Lakes on Route 20 at Seneca Falls grew out of a beekeeping family that took a farm winery licence in 1999, and pairs fruit and honey wines and a Riesling with a distillery and a kitchen.
Three tastings with lunch in Aurora or King Ferry make a comfortable day; each winery's own page here lists current hours and places to stay.
Making the most of a visit to Skaneateles Lake
One tasting on the lake, then the village and the falls; if you want more glasses, Cayuga's east shore is 35 to 50 minutes west and deserves a day of its own.
- Reserve the one tasting. Anyela's Vineyards takes bookings and is the only tasting room on the lake open through the week, so reserve for weekends and the harvest weeks of September and October; its page here carries current hours. Eibert Vineyard, not yet listed, pours on Saturday afternoons without bookings.
- Taste the Riesling three ways. Ask for the dry, the off-dry and the late-harvest Riesling side by side; the acidity of a high, cold site runs through all three and lets the sweeter wines finish clean. Then set the Pinot Noir against the Cabernet Franc, and take home the bottles from the buried vines.
- Walk in the morning, eat in the village. Carpenter Falls, 10.5 miles down Route 41A, is an easy hour on foot before tasting rooms open, or swim from the steps at Clift Park. The winery has no kitchen: Doug's Fish Fry on Jordan Street, the Sherwood Inn's dining room and Mirbeau's bistro cover lunch and dinner in the village.
- Pick your season, and a driver. Late July and August bring the festival and the swimming; September and October the harvest, after which the vines go underground until mid-March, so a winter visit finds bare hills but a lively village. The two shore roads meet only at Homer, so nominate a driver who is not tasting.
Common questions
How many wineries are on Skaneateles Lake?
One appears in this guide: Anyela's Vineyards, on West Lake Road above the west shore, the only tasting room on the lake open through the week. Eibert Vineyard, three acres on a dairy farm above the east shore, pours on Saturday afternoons and is not yet listed here; Lot 10 Vineyard at Borodino grows grapes without a tasting room. The nearest others are on Cayuga Lake.
What does the one winery on Skaneateles Lake make?
Anyela's Vineyards makes Riesling in dry, off-dry and late-harvest styles, an oaked Chardonnay, a light red-fruited Pinot Noir with a reserve bottling, and a peppery, medium-bodied Cabernet Franc. The list widens to Pinot Gris, Albariño, Cayuga White and Vidal Blanc, a rosé of Pinot Noir, a sparkling and a dessert wine, and Merlot, Shiraz and blends among the reds.
When is the best time to visit Skaneateles Lake?
Late July to late August, when the Skaneateles Festival plays Saturday nights at the winery and the swimming steps at Clift Park are open. September and October bring the harvest and the colour on the hills, and by the end of November the vines are under the soil until mid-March. Winter is bare on the hillside but not in the village, where the Dickens weekends run from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve.
Is there a Skaneateles Lake wine trail, and where should I start?
There is no trail. Start in the village, where Route 20 meets both shore roads, and take Route 41A, West Lake Road, south to the winery. The east shore road, Route 41, has no tasting room, and the two meet only at Homer, so a full circuit is a scenic commitment rather than a wine route. For more tastings, Route 20 west through Auburn reaches Cayuga's east shore.
Do I need a reservation to taste on Skaneateles Lake?
Anyela's Vineyards takes bookings, and with one tasting room serving the whole lake it is wise to use them at weekends, during the festival and through harvest. On Cayuga, Heart & Hands Wine Company suggests a reservation and keeps only a few walk-in places; Bright Leaf Vineyard and Treleaven Wines take bookings; the rest take walk-ins. Check the day too: several open only Thursday or Friday to Sunday.
Where should I stay for a Skaneateles Lake wine tour?
The village, without much debate. The Sherwood Inn has faced the lake since 1807, Mirbeau has 34 rooms and a spa further out West Genesee Street, and Anyela's Vineyards offers its own lodging, the Austin House. For a second night nearer Cayuga's east shore, Aurora has the Inns of Aurora beside Constantia Wine Company. The trip-planning guide compares bases across the region.
More Finger Lakes wine guides
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Every Finger Lakes winery
The whole region in one directory, lake by lake, with a note on how each listing is checked.
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Planning a Finger Lakes trip
When to go, where to base yourself, how to pace a tasting day, and sample itineraries shore by shore.
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The interactive map
All eleven lakes on one map, with favourites, sharing and suggested nearby stops for building a route.