Prejean Winery

About Prejean Winery

Prejean Winery sits on the west bank of Seneca Lake along State Route 14, roughly midway between Geneva and Watkins Glen, with the tasting room and its deck facing the water across the vine rows. Jim and Libby Prejean bought the 53-acre farm in 1978, planted in 1979 and opened in 1986, making this one of the older family-run estates on the lake; Libby kept it going into her nineties, and their son Tom now runs it with his wife Amy and daughter Cassidy, farming roughly 30 acres. Every wine is estate grown.

Riesling and Gewürztraminer (in the ground since 1979) lead the whites alongside an unoaked Chardonnay the house calls lively and fruity; Riesling comes both dry and semi-dry, the latter floral with apple and apricot. The reds are Bordeaux-minded: Merlot, which the family says was among the earliest Merlot plantings in the Finger Lakes, plus Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, blended into the flagship Bosun's Mate, a dry red named for the sailor who kept Jim alive when the USS Cushing sank at Guadalcanal. Cornell hybrids are taken seriously too, with Vignoles, Cayuga, Traminette, Valvin Muscat, Marechal Foch, Noiret and Corot Noir filling out a range that runs from bone dry to dessert-sweet.

Visits are informal: a tasting is any five wines of your choice at the bar, first come for parties of six or fewer, with larger groups asked to call ahead. Local beer and canned sparkling cider are poured for anyone not drinking wine, and guests can carry a bottle out to the gazebo or garden or picnic on the grounds above the lake. Dogs are welcome on-leash inside and out, and a fenced dog park beside the garden gives them somewhere to run while you linger over the view.