Vineyard View Winery

About Vineyard View Winery

Vineyard View Winery's Seneca Lake tasting room sits on Hall Road in Himrod, on the lake's west shore, at a farm the winery describes as the site of North America's first organic winery. The Folts family, fifth-generation growers whose Keuka Lake farm dates to 1893, revived the property in partnership with Sweet Farm, the animal sanctuary across the road, and the setting is a classic farmhouse, rows of vines and a long view down Seneca Lake. The wines come from the family's home farm on the west side of Keuka Lake, where Adam and Nikki Folts opened their first tasting room in 2013.

The range leans dry. The Dry Riesling from the Home Farm block carries well under half a percent of residual sugar and pairs juicy peach and lemon with real stony minerality. Chardonnay comes both unoaked and oaked, Traminette brings orange-blossom and spice, and the reds are patient: Cabernet Franc and a spontaneously fermented Blaufränkisch each spend three years in American oak, and both feed Parker's Krush, a supple blend rounded out with Noiret and Marquette. Two sparklers show a playful side, a hazy ancestral-method pét-nat built mostly on Delaware and a Rosé Cuvée fermented on Marquette skins for a cranberry tang, while Niagara and Brylee's Blush keep sweet-wine drinkers covered.

Tastings are seated and reserved rather than a stand-up bar: five pre-selected wines and up to forty-five minutes at the table, booked online, with groups as large as 75 taken on request, a scale the smaller Keuka room cannot match. Food is not advertised at this room, so plan meals around the visit and treat it as an unhurried stop on a west-shore run down Route 14.