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.

Share

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Visit Us in Person

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.

Subscribe now

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?

Share

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.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Visit Us in Person

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.

Share

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.

Subscribe now

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.”

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Visit Us in Person

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Share

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.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Visit Us in Person

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.

Share

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Visit Us in Person

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.

Share

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Visit Us in Person

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Visit Us in Person

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.

Share

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.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Visit Us in Person

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.

Share

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.

Subscribe now

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.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

Ellen Smith, who is a friend, a colleague and a neighbor has just opened “Hearth and Harvest” in downtown Ovid. Since I arrived here 18 years ago, hers is only the second new business to open on Main St. in the Village. (The first one has since closed.) It takes courage to renovate an old building and start from scratch as she has. But, there is also a method to her madness. It’s called the “Neighborhood Effect.”

Ellen Smith and I are also both on the Ovid Local Development Corporation, which was formed following the fire last year to re-vitalize the downtown corridor in Ovid. In her case, she felt that someone had to take the first step and make an investment in turning things around. After years of decline, the building she purchased was one of several vacant properties on Main St.

Ellen’s store is on the left, and on the right is a similar space that needs a new owner like Ellen

Subscribe now

Among her motivations is to encourage others in the community to make a similar investment in the downtown. Ellen’s family, the Eastmans, have been in the area since 1836. They remember when Ovid was a much more vibrant community.

An un-dated photo, maybe from the 1930s or 1940s, based on the makes of the cars.

But like so many other rural towns and villages, it has lost employment and population. And since it has been so long since anyone has made a significant investment in the community, no one remembers what that looks like.

However, there is an argument that says when one person makes an improvement to their home or business, it encourages others in the vicinity to do the same. This is sometimes called the “Neighborhood Effect.”

For many years, Ovid benefited from having large, public institutions like the Willard State Hospital and the Seneca Army Dept supporting its economy. At their peak, Willard and the Army Depot employed a total of nearly 2,000 people. The Army Depot closed in the 1990’s and the Willard Facility finally closed in 2022.

Share

Because those two facilities generated so much economic activity for Ovid, the community did not need to make an effort to attract new businesses and encourage existing businesses to grow. It wasn’t necessary. So when those large employers closed, no one had experience in re-starting the economy. There was no “muscle memory” to fall back on.

The tourism industry, fueled by outdoor recreation and wineries, has been responsible for some economic growth. But tourism is seasonal and not enough to re-invigorate the town.

What Ellen Smith is doing with Hearth and Harvest is exactly what we need. We just need more of it. We need the “Neighborhood Effect” to kick in. Everywhere.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

Readers who may want to know where Diana and I were for the last two weeks of March. You can find a very brief summary at the end of this piece for the answer.

During the winter months, we pick five weekends and offer guests a chance to take a deeper dive into some of the more interesting topics related to wine. We have been doing this for more than five years, and it has been an education for us, too.

Below is a re-cap of what we covered in this round of “explorations.”

WWE #1: How Much Do the Red Wines We Make Improve With Age?

What The Plan Was: We decided to taste our youngest wines—barrel samples from the 2025 vintage of Cab Franc, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Then we would taste older vintages of Cab Franc and Cab Sauv. How much difference is detectable between very young and much older wines?

What We Learned: The 2025 vintage was one of the warmest on record, and we expected the barrel samples to reflect how ripe the fruit was when we picked it. Sure, enough, the samples were great, especially the Merlot (which we blend into our Bordeaux-style blend, The Harmonic.

More importantly, the older vintages back to 2015 proved that reds from the Finger Lakes change and mostly improve with age. Only one vintage of our reds has fallen off since we bottled it. That was the 2018 Harmonic. We knew 2018 was not a great year in the vineyard, and this wine confirmed that.

How We Will Use the Information: We will continue to accelerate our production of red wines, with a particular focus on Cabernet Franc and some more Merlot. We have three acres of Cab Sauv, and we don’t plans to plant more. We would consider planting more when there is a clear signal that a warming climate will make it possible to ripen this variety consistently.

In the next session, we stayed with the topic of older wines, and, in particular, the reds.

Share

WWE #2 How Much Will Most People Pay for Older, “Library Wines?”

What The Plan Was: We decided to pour both red and white wines from our “library” of older vintages. We wanted honest feedback from our the guests on the quality and potential price points for the aged wines.

What We Learned: Guests clearly recognized how the older reds, Rieslings and Gewürztraminers tasted much different than the younger vintages.

However, in spite of the quality, there is a reluctance to pay too much more for these wines. With a few exceptions, only a few customers said they would ever pay more than $40 for any bottle of wine. In other words, $40 is the upper limit that this samples of guests felt they would pay for ANY wine.

How We Will Use the Information: What we learned in the session has led us to change direction in a major way when it comes to offering our older wines for sale.

In order to come to appreciate the different character of older wines, either white or red, you have to taste them. If they are priced too high, no one will be willing to buy them, so they won’t get to know what older wines taste like. And if that is the case, no one will get a chance to discover what they like, or do not like, in an older wine.

So, in light of this, the Library Wine section of our website, now offers our older wines at a much more affordable price. Generally, we add one dollar more to the price for every year it has been in our library. For a wine that sold for $20 in 2015, it will be $30 in 2025.

WWE #3 Finger Lakes vs. France Blind Tasting

What The Plan Was: Here in the Finger Lakes, we grow many of the same grape varieties that are grown in France. What if we poured blind a Finger Lakes wine and a similarly-priced French wine side-by-side? Which one would our guests prefer? We poured unoaked Chardonnay, Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Sparkling wine, Cabernet Franc and a Bordeaux-style red blend.

What We Learned: We compared Finger Lakes to French wines sold at the same price points. For example, we compared a $22 Finger Lakes Riesling, with a $22 Riesling from Alsace.

In five-out-of-six comparisons, with both wines tasted blind, the vast majority of the guests preferred the Finger Lakes wine. The only French wine preferred was the Bordeaux-style red blend.

In order to drink French wines that are comparable or superior to the Finger Lakes wines, it seems like you simply have to pay more. This is good news for the Finger Lakes. But we hope more people will discover that for the same price, Finger Lakes can be superior to many of the counterparts from France.

How We Will Use the Information: Finger Lakes wines are very affordably-priced compared to French wines at the same price point. Until enough people get to know Finger Lakes wines, we have to keep our wines as affordable as possible. We simply have to keep offering high quality wines at an affordable price. It is going to take a while.

Subscribe now

WWE #4 Cab Franc Around the World

What The Plan Was: Many of us are promoting Cab Franc as the signature red wine grape for the State of New York. We took five Cab Francs from New York and compared them to six Cab Francs from around the world. How would our New York wines compare?

What We Learned: Unsurprisingly, the growing conditions—warmer or cooler—seemed to have the most influence on the wines we tasted. Warm climate Cab Francs are weightier, by virtue of their higher alcohol content. Cooler climate Cab Francs, like those from New York are lower in alcohol and possibly more appropriate to a wider variety of food pairings.

How We Will Use the Information: Not that long ago, wineries in the Finger Lakes were obsessed about making bigger, bolder red wines. As we have focused in the vineyard and in the winemaking process on Cab Franc, we have come to believe that we should not be attempting to make bigger, bolder red wines. As we have tasted more and more Cab Franc from the Finger Lakes, we have come to prefer the lower alcohol versions of this wine. It is a matter of personal taste, of course. But we like the wines we are making and believe in them.

WWE #5 Identifying Red, White, Rosé and Orange Wines When Tasted Blind

What The Plan Was: We would pour red, white, rosé and orange wines for our guests, and explain how they are made, and describe the distinct characteristics that should be recognizable in each style. We would then pour an example of each into an opaque black glass and see if our guests can identify which is the white, the red, the rosé and the orange wine.

What We Learned: It is very difficult to tell them apart, but if you practice, you can get better at this.

There is also a lot of variation in styles within each category. You can get very light rosé wines which may be hard to differentiate from a white wine. If you try to focus on very specific characteristics—like its tannic character— you can develop a more discriminating palate. But you have to pay attention when you are tasting a wine.

How We Will Use the Information: This is a fun exercise that makes you think about what you are tasting. The point was not so much to correctly identify the wines, but to practice “tasting.” That is, to take your time and pay attention to all stages of the experience with wine.

Pictured above is Diana holding up Hadrian’s Wall in the northern part of England near the border with Scotland. We spent our two weeks away visiting sites in the northern and southern parts of that England. In most of the places visited, it seemed like we spent a lot of time around stones—abbeys, cathedrals, walls, houses and streets. No vineyards on this trip. We took a break.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

Boundary Breaks Sales and Marketing Manager, Mary-Kate Badalamenti (left) shares her thoughts on what makes our wines unique to a member of the wine trade.

Many wineries sell wine only to customers who come to their tasting rooms. This is, actually, the best way for people interested in wine to get to know the wine from each producer. However, there are only so many people who are going to visit your winery. And if it is winter in the Finger Lakes, the number of visitors falls off dramatically.

There are two other ways we sell wine. We can call on wine shops and restaurants and sell to them directly. But there are too many of those to call on. Once we sell the wine, then we have to deliver it and later collect the money from the buyer. Both “delivery” and “collections” can be a challenge.

Subscribe now

So, there is a “middle-man,” a wine distributor who buys our wine from us at a significant discount, marks it up 40 percent, then sells it to the wine shop. Then the wine shops marks it up again and sells it to the consumer.

Many small wineries choose not to work with distributors, because the price the distributor pays for a bottle of wine is so much lower than the price a consumer pays who buys in the tasting room. Distributors pay the lower “wholesale price,” because they are doing the sales, delivery and collections; and they have to make some money on the sale of that bottle to the retailer. And the retailers have rent and employees to pay so they have to make some money when they sell the wine to consumers.

This chain of buying and selling a bottle of wine is referred to in the wine trade as the “three-tier-system.”

Because only so many people will visit the winery, if a winery wants to sell more than a few thousand cases a year, it needs to work within the “three-tier-system.” Unfortunately, in the three-tier-system, it is very difficult for small wineries like ours to influence the sale of its wine.

There are too many larger wineries with larger marketing budgets and staff working to gain sales in the same stores where the smaller wineries want to be on the shelves. Sales people for both the distributor and the wine shops often work on commission, and they make more money with well-known brands that sell in higher volumes. Store owners also don’t want to devote shelf space to wines that sell only infrequently.

So the deck is somewhat stacked against the smaller wineries who want to grow beyond selling a few thousand cases from their tasting room.

There are not too many alternatives if you want to increase sales outside your tasting room. We have been selling our wine in the three-tier-system since 2013, and has been slow going. We have learned what works and what does not. And there is one thing that works best when you are trying to sell wine to wine shops and restaurants.

Share

Our distributor in New York holds an annual “portfolio tasting” for all of its buyers to come in to taste all the wines that they represent. And if the distributor carries very exclusive, high-end wines, as our distributor does, wine buyers from stores and restaurants will come to taste wines that rarely are available to taste. And since we are in the room, too, those buyers will also taste our wines.

The most effective wine distributors hold annual “portfolio tastings.” They rent a large space and invite all their wine suppliers (that’s us) and all their customers to get together in one place to taste wine. These events are efficient for both the buyer and the seller. The “portfolio tasting” is what a “trade show” is in other industries.

Mary-Kate (pictured above) and I attended this portfolio tasting with our distributor in New York City this past week. There is so much great wine in the world, and buyers can be fickle. It is not enough to make perfectly fine wine at a fair price. You have to always show up at these portfolio tastings so that buyers taste consecutive vintages of your wine that are consistently of high quality. You can make progress this way. It is slow. But it is still progress.

We are doing another portfolio show in Ohio at the end of the month. At this stage of our growth, there are still lots of buyers who have never tasted our wines, so we have to show up as often as possible. It is just one more essential part of the process.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

We will be exploring differences in red, white, rosé and orange wines Then we will do a blind tasting of each wine in a black glass, so you can taste without seeing the color of the wine. Can you identify the wine without seeing the color? Tickets for this seminar are still available on the “Events” page on our website.

Next weekend, March 14-15, our final Winter Wine Exploration for the 2026 season will focus on how we produce wines that present themselves in different colors. That is, red, white, rosé and orange wines. The grapes may start in the vineyard as one color, but the color of the finished wine is up to the winemaker.

The grape “skin,” or “outer peel,” can range in color from light yellow to dark red. These are pigments that either end up in the wine or not. Once the grapes are picked and crushed, the length of time the juice and skins remain in contact with each other influences the look and flavor profile of the wine.

But there is more than color in the skin that makes the wine what it is. All the components of the grape and the choices the winemaker makes end up influencing the chemistry of the wine.

We will cover all of this in next week’s Winter Wine Exploration sessions.

But then, there is also going to be a test.

Share

After you have sampled two versions of each color of wine, we will pour a red, a white, a rosé and an orange wine into opaque, black wine glasses.

We will then ask you if you can tell which is which. If you can’t see the color, can you identify the wine?

We think you should be able to tell the difference, but you really have to pay attention as you are tasting the wine. And you have to know what to look for.

The point of this exercise is not a parlor trick. The point is to give you a chance to focus on the more subtle characteristics of the wine in the glass. How does it smell; what are its first impressions as you take a sip; what do you sense after you have swallowed the wine.

And, if you focus on these characteristics when you are trying to determine if it is red or white, you realize you can do the same thing every time you pick up a glass of wine.

Subscribe now

We have held a session like this before. And it is very difficult for everyone to identify correctly each of the wines. No matter hard hard you try, or how experienced you are, it is just really hard to identify all four correctly.

Two sessions will be held on Saturday at 11 AM and 2 PM; on Sunday, there is one session at 12 Noon. Make at Saturday reservation here; or make a Sunday reservation here.

This set of Winter Wine Explorations on March 14-15 will be our last for the season. Over the coming weeks, I will be summarizing what we have learned when we have tasted close to 70 different wines over five sessions. We are very grateful to all the guests who join us and share their opinions about the wines they are tasting. We learn from these seminars, and we hope that the wines we make will be better because of them.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

The Cab Franc Forward initiative in New York has raised the profiles of this grape. You might ask, “So, what’s the big deal with Cab Franc.?”

With that question in mind, we arranged a tasting for our fourth Winter Wine Exploration. We decided to taste eleven Cab Franc from around the world: Old World and New World; warm climate and cool climate.

We plan is to start off tasting an example of what passes for the most popular style of red wine in the United States. This would be Black Box Cabernet Sauvignon produced by E&J Gallo. It is made from grapes grown in Chile and sells the equivalent of approximately 7.5 million cases annually.

In order to have the wines in each one of these boxes taste the same, the manufacturing process needs to be consistent, not only in any one year, but also from year-to-year. This requires an industrial-level chemical process to ensure uniformity.

Share

And, theoretically, you should be able to tell the difference between a wine that has undergone this level of manipulation from one that has not. You might like the wine that comes from the Black Box, which is fine. But, we think it is also important to be able to tell the difference between a wine that has been heavily manipulated and one that has not.

We will be tasting eight wines from different regions, and we will attempt to explain what makes the wines different. At the end we will then taste three wines blind. The guests in the tasting will be asked to judge whether the wines are from the Old World or New World; and whether they are from a warm climate or a cool climate.

The other focus will be the degree to which these wines are distinctly “Cabernet Franc.” As we noted in Substack #123, the trend in red wine production is gravitation toward a uniform, “international” style of wine. These are reds that are jammy, higher in alcohol and full of fruit. What drove this was the popularity of California Cabernet Sauvignon.

We discovered this phenomenon a year ago during a previous Winter Wine Exploration. When picked ten different wines, each made from a different variety of red grape. We tasted them all blind.

Half of them were indistinguishable from each other. What we hoped we would find was enough distinct varietal character in each one, so that we could tell them apart. What we found instead, was a blandness that was pleasant, but not that interesting. It was hard to find substantial difference among five out of ten wines.

So, one of our goals in this tasting is to see how much these wines taste distinctly like Cabernet Franc. In our own efforts producing Cabernet Franc, we are moving toward a style that is unmistakably Cab Franc. We will see how many of these other wines are aiming for the same thing.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

Sixteen years ago, in 2010, Lettie Teague began writing the Saturday Wine column for the Wall Street Journal. In January of this year, through no fault of her own, as part of an editorial re-structuring at the Journal, she was let go. She is now writing on Substack.

It is hard to walk into a wine shop and try to decide which wine to pick out. It is also hard to find a wine writer who recommends a wine that you can actually find in the place you buy wine.

Years ago, Lettie Teague solved this problem for me with her book, Educating Peter (see Substack #41.) To become more comfortable with wine, she recommends you pick a grape variety and only taste wines from that grape variety over a period of many months. Pay attention to the region where it is from, the year it was made, the producer and the price. After months of tasting wines and paying attention, you will get to know the wines made from that grape. And if you have been paying attention, you will retain that knowledge for the rest of your life.

Subscribe now

The traditional print publishing industry has been in decline since the advent of the Internet, and now like many other great journalists, Lettie is writing on Substack. I recommend her post this week, titled, Coach Class Wines. Here is a quote:

I’ve been a budget traveler my entire professional life. Since the publications I’ve worked for over the past several decades had limited resources, I learned to travel as cheaply as possible. The business and first-class airline tickets I’ve purchased could be counted on two hands- perhaps just one.

I’m a coach class wine drinker too. While my wine expenditures may have included more grand crus than my travel expenditures featured first-class plane tickets, they’re still far outnumbered by their coach class peers. My wine choices commonly include basic Chablis, non vintage Champagne and Rosso di Montalcino over its Brunello peer.

Over the years, Lettie Teague has been kind and generous to Boundary Breaks. She visited our vineyard in 2014, and then she visited our table at a large, wine-tasting event in New York City in 2017. After that tasting in New York, she mentioned our Dry Riesling #239 in one of her Wall Street Journal columns as a reliable representative of dry Rieslings from the US.

That mention of Boundary Breaks in the Wall Street Journal Wine column made a big difference for us.

Then, seven years later, in 2024, she mentioned our Cabernet Franc as one of seven, affordable wines that she would buy again and again.

She didn’t say we were a “coach class” wine in that column, but I think that is what she meant; that is, our Cab Franc is an authentic, non-manufactured wine made at a consistently high level and sells at retail between $25 and $30.

I don’t follow Lettie because she has been kind to our wines. I follow her, because I think her tastes and mine align. And in a world of so many wine writers and Top Ten Lists of wines, what you need is a writer whose tastes align with yours.

Share

It may take some trial and error to find that writer. But the process is like getting to know a grape variety. The best way to consume wine reviews is to sample one writer’s opinion and then look for wines like the ones that writer recommends.

And, the best way to get to taste the wines that a particular wine writer recommends is to develop a relationship with someone in a local wine shop. The wine shop to look for is one where the owner is behind the counter and the owner is the person who buys the wine.

If you are looking for a particular wine that your wine writer of choice has recommended, ask the wine shop owner if he or she would be willing to bring it into the store. Wine shop owners want to have wines on the shelves that they believe will sell. If you tell them what you want to buy, they are likely to want to sell those wines to you. It makes for a big, virtuous circle that includes the wine producer, the wine critic, the wine store owner and you.

So I am a paid subscriber to Lettie Teague’s Substack, because she has earned my trust in her taste for Coach Class wines. I urge everyone to choose their own wine writers, too. Someone has to be tasting all the wine out there and sharing their opinion. And because the newspapers are not willing to pay journalists what they used to, it helps if the people who value what they do pay them directly.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

The low temperatures have been with us for weeks. Temps have fallen gradually and smoothly, without gyrating between unseasonable warmth and then sudden cold. This steady, smooth trajectory into colder weather has enabled the vines to acclimate to the cold gracefully. And the acclimation process is important.

After several years of mild winters, this one has been unusually cold and persistent. You might think that this might be hard on our vines. But the pattern of temperatures has allowed the vines to acclimate predictably. Different varieties tolerate extreme cold better than others. So not all of our varieties are equally cold tolerant.

Subscribe now

Fortunately, there is abundant research on the “cold-hardiness” of a large number of varieties of wine grapes. Some of the best and most-timely research comes from Cornell professor, Jason Londo. He is part of a team at Cornell that publishes an interactive, near-real-time chart of “bud hardiness,” based on data collected just north of us in Geneva, NY. The chart below shows hardiness for Cabernet Franc to date during the current growing season.

There are two sets of lines on this chart. The red and blue lines show the daily high and low temperatures. The purple, blue, gray and black lines in the lower portion of the chart predict the temperature at which 10 percent, 50 percent or 90 percent of the buds are likely to die. These lines are labelled at LT10, LT50 and LT90. The “LT” stands for “Lethal Temperature.”

The Cornell team’s interactive chart allows you to pick different grape varieties, each of which have different Lethal Temperature ranges. (You won’t find many warm climate grape varieties in Cornell’s set of varieties they track. These include varieties like Tempranillo, Grenache and Syrah. It is likely that someone in the past tried to plant these, but found that they did not survive the Finger Lakes’ winters.)

The vineyard team spends most of the winter pruning, except on the days when the temperatures are in the single digits and the wind is blowing at 15-20 miles per hour.

Even though we have seen temperatures in the single digits over the past three weeks, we are not concerned. You can see from the chart that the temperatures have fallen consistently and smoothly ever since November. This has allowed the vines to acclimate gracefully to the increasingly cold temperature.

Share

If, on the other hand, the temperatures were to have fluctuated widely, as is sometimes the case, the vines would not have acclimated so successfully. Vines respond to external conditions. Unusual rising temperatures in January could signal the onset of spring; in that instance, plants would begin to de-acclimate and prepare for warming weather.

As they de-acclimate, significant bud damage could occur at temperatures well above zero. An acclimated vine might tolerate five degrees Fahrenheit. But a vine in the process of de-acclimating after a series of days in the 40-50 degree range might lose a large percentage of its buds if temperatures suddenly falls to near zero. And, this can happen.

So, the reason that we are not concerned about our vines so far is that chart shows the LT10 for Cabernet Franc in late January at -5.6 degrees, and our temperatures have not gotten that low. (Cornell’s data is coming from Geneva, about 20 miles north of us, where temperatures can be four-six degrees colder.) At our own weather station, temperatures have fallen only briefly to -2.0.

Above, you can see the hardiness chart for Riesling. We don’t see our low temps falling into the LT10 range. So we assume that our Riesling vines are OK.

It might be a slightly different story for our Gewürztraminer. This grape variety is not as cold-tolerant as either Riesling or Cab Franc. Even though we have only seen -2.0 briefly, it may have affected some of the Gewürztraminer buds.

Overall, we are not overly concerned. The pattern of cold temperatures this season has not “confused” the vines into responding as if spring is on the way. It has not always been like this, so we are grateful, in some ways, for the weather we are having this season.

Anyone who wants to investigate cold-hardiness for themselves can visit the Cornell website at: https://cornell-tree-fruit-physiology.shinyapps.io/North_America_Grape_Freezing_Tolerance/

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

It isn’t really a competition. We wanted to see if our Winter Wine Exploration guests could tell the difference—tasting blind—between Finger Lakes wines and comparably-priced wines from France.

The recent growth in popularity of Cab Francs from New York made us think: there are many similarities between the Finger Lakes and France, particularly when it comes to the grape varieties grown in both places. So, we thought it might be fun to pour comparably-priced wines from France side-by-side with ours. Could we tell the difference, and if so, would there be a preference?

In the Finger Lakes, we like Dr. Frank’s traditional method sparkling wine. They have had a program dedicated to making these traditional wines, and we always enjoy them. From France we chose a champagne from Moutard, which is carried by our distributor in New York, Polaner Selections. The people at Polaner really know European wines and try to pick the ones that stand out. Both of these are priced around $40 per bottle.

Share

In 2019, in a conversation with our distributor, Polaner, we asked what variety of wine they thought would become more and more popular in the coming years. They said “Chablis-style, unoaked Chardonnay.” They know the New York City market, so we started making an unoaked Chardonnay in 2020. We have made one every year since. I can’t yet say that we have perfected it, but we are getting closer.

We picked a Riesling from the Alsace region of France. This region has bounced back-and-forth between France and Germany over the centuries, so we felt a Riesling would be a good choice. Our Dry Riesling #239 has been our most consistent style of Riesling. It has been picked as a Top 100 Wine in the World by several different trade publications. It is very recognizable for being slightly-less-than-bone-dry with great fruit qualities.

In the Rosé category, we chose a classic French Rosé from Provence. Peyrassol has been in production for more than 765 years. It is made of red varieties that include Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Vermentino. Alongside of that we chose to pour our Rosé, which is a blend of 60 percent Cabernet Franc and 40 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. Since the climate in the Finger Lakes is very different from the climate in Provence along the Mediterranean, there should be some differences here.

Subscribe now

In the Loire Valley, Chinon is considered the benchmark for Cabernet Franc. We chose one that is priced comparably with ours. In my somewhat limited experience with Cab Francs from the Loire, they have a distinct, rustic earthiness. Finger Lakes Cab Francs tend to express more fruit character. That is often cited as a consistent difference between “old world” and “new world” wines. The wines of the New World—North and South America and Australia—are more fruit-driven than those of the Old World of France, Italy and Spain.

For the final pairing, we are pouring a right-bank Bordeaux, which is 80 percent Merlot and 20 percent Cabernet Franc. It is also from 2022, which in the Finger Lakes, at least, was a very warm vintage. We are pouring our 2023 Harmonic, which is a blend of 57 percent Merlot and 43 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. Because it is younger than the French Bordeaux, and because it has such a large percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon, we are expecting that it will not measure up to the right-bank Bordeaux.

We shall see.

Update from the first two WWE Sessions on Saturday.

Since this post is coming out on Sunday morning, we have finished two sessions that took place yesterday—Saturday. We poured six different pairings of two wines. In five out of the six pairings, our guests preferred the Finger Lakes wine over the French wine.

In the conversations that followed each wine, there were some take-aways.

— The preferences were not extreme, but they clearly were for the Finger Lakes wines. Mostly, they showed more fruit and were less austere.
— One reason for this might have been that this set of guests are enthusiastic consumers of Finger Lakes wines. People, in general, at some point begin to prefer what is familiar. We refer to this as “having a house palate.” You like what you know.
— We made an effort to choose French wines that were comparable in price to those from the Finger Lakes. It just might be a fact that for the same price—dollar-for-dollar—the Finger Lakes wines are better values. In other words, the wines from our region delivered higher quality at the same price.

And, for any skeptics reading this, we did not try to rig this comparison by selecting inferior French wines. We asked the knowledgeable wine buyers at Northside Wines in Ithaca to select them for us.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

In January, 2025, a fire destroyed an entire block in the center of the Village of Ovid. Lost in the flames were: a grocery store; a laundromat; a take-out Italian restaurant; and multiple, second-floor apartments.

The Village of Ovid is the center of the southern part of Seneca County. Boundary Breaks is located in this part of the county. And so are many other wineries. The high school is in Ovid. So is the drugstore, gas station, library, barber shop, urgent care and fire department. In the 1800’s, it was the county seat. Cornell University was founded in Ovid.

The loss of the grocery means that not only the people who live here year round have to drive 16 miles to the nearest supermarket. It also means the thousands of people who visit during the tourist season between May and October also have a long way to go to for provisions.

We described this fire back in Substack #120.

The day after the fire, tens of thousands of dollars were donated to assist the business owners and families that were displaced. Immediately many people got together and agreed that the block needed to be re-built.

But how?

Some of the buildings were nearly 100 years old. At current construction costs, replacing them could cost as much as $15 million. None of the owners had that kind of money, nor were they insured at that level. No developers were coming forward ready to break ground.

Share

Multiple groups of people meeting informally realized that there needed to be a a more formal, organized effort to re-build the block. We needed an official, authorized entity set up to do this. It took nine months to put that group together. It’s called a Local Development Corporation. I agreed to be one of the members that Board.

It would have been great to be able to do what Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro did back in 2023

A fully-loaded tanker truck crashed and caught fire under an overpass on Interstate 95 in Northeast Philadelphia. The road collapsed and interrupted traffic in both directions.

Within a day, Gov. Shapiro declared a state of emergency for Philadelphia County. That freed up $7 million in state funds to begin reconstruction. He authorized the Pennsylvania Dept of Transportation to waive normal bidding, contracting and other procedural requirements in order to speed up the repair process.

And then all six lanes of I-95 re-opened twelve days later. The Governor made it happen.

So this can be done, but it takes assertive, top-down command-and-control from a chief executive, with an extensive staff and access to plentiful sources of money.

A small, rural village in upstate New York rarely has all those pieces in place. Finding the money is just the beginning.

Subscribe now

So that is the task for the Ovid Local Development Corporation and its Board. Some of the seven Board members knew each other before, but had never worked together. The rest of us had to get acquainted.

Rather quickly, we came to the same conclusion.

No developer ready to spend $15 million will agree to re-build unless it has the ability to develop the entire block. That means five different property owners will need to work with the community to re-build.

And that is where we are now.

Can we find the right arrangement of incentives and rewards for the existing owners to join with the community to get to the next stage? Whatever that arrangement is, it has to be fair.

Once the five property owners are on board, the next step is to find a developer to build essentially what was there before: a village center with stores on the street-level and apartments above. That is, a welcoming, walkable spot. A place to shop, buy groceries and catch up on the news.

This block was the village center.

It can be again.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

The official end of the 2025 harvest season ends when our vineyard team delivers the Riesling Ice Wine grapes to the press. This year, it occurred on Jan. 19 and the team doing the delivering included above, from left: Aaron Youngs (a volunteer) and vineyard team members John Swick, Kees Stapel and Jesse Kovnat.

Even though the Riesling grapes for this Ice Wine were grown during the 2025 season, we picked them in January of 2026, so the vintage on the label will be 2026. We had a large Ice Wine harvest last season, so we will probably not release this 2026 Ice Wine until late 2027 or 2028. That should not be a problem, because Riesling Ice Wine can improve with age for many decades. (Yes, it can. Keep reading.)

Subscribe now

Not everyone realizes that white wines made with certain grape varieties evolve with time in the bottle. These tend to be aromatic white varieties like Riesling and Gewürztraminer which have a more complex chemical structure than other whites like Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio.

In our Winter Wine Exploration two weeks ago, we explored the age-ability of red wines. We showed the evolution of reds is largely related to their tannic structure and to the gradual exposure to oxygen while in the bottle. Over time, in the presence of small amounts of oxygen, the shorter tannin molecules merge with each other into longer ones which “softens” the texture of the wine.

In the case of white wine, oxygen plays a similar role in changing the chemistry of the wine. But, equally important is the sugar content of the wine. Basically, the increased sugar content of sweeter Rieslings slows the effects that oxygen has on the wine. The graph below shows how the “complexity and interest” of aged Riesling varies over time based on the sugar levels.

As Riesling ages secondary and tertiary flavors like honey, beeswax, toast, dried citrus and sometime “petrol” replace the primary fresh fruit flavors when the wines are young.

The wines do not necessarily “degrade,” as they age, they “change.” With dry Rieslings, the secondary and tertiary flavor emerge more quickly, largely because there is not enough sugar to slow aging process. Sugar “buffers” the oxygen, or ties it up so that it lacks the ability to affect the other chemical components of the wine. This is one of the reasons that Riesling Ice Wines, with their very high sugar content, age so gracefully.

For this weekend’s Winter Wine Exploration, we tasted recent vintages of our Rieslings, Gewürztraminers, Chardonnay and Rosé side-by-side with older vintages. We poured Rieslings from some of the best vintages like 2012, 2014 and 2016. What a great way to see how these wines change with age.

The type of closure—either cork or screw-cap—also can influence the wine’s exposure to oxygen. For instance, screw-cap closures reduce the exposure to oxygen—which along with the sugar in the wine—slows down the flavor transformations from fresh fruit flavors to dried fruit, honey or beeswax.

Share

Another one of the unique characteristics of older Riesling can be the presence of the petrol or kerosene flavor. This source of this character is a chemical compound referred to at TDN—or trimethyl-dihydronaphthalene. It can be found in Rieslings from warm climates or in Finger Lakes Rieslings grown during particularly warm seasons.

We poured the 2025 Ice Wine and the 2018 Ice Wine for this weekend’s Winter Wine Exploration. The 2025 explodes with fruit aromas and flavor, while the 2018 is more subdued with caramel and honey flavors.

This brings us back to the Ice Wine fruit we picked this week. The berries have de-hydrated as they have been left out in the vineyard, so the juice is concentrated and very sweet. As the chart above shows, Ice Wines can reach a peak after 30 years in the bottle. At that point the fruit character that is present in a young Ice Wine has transformed into a nutty, caramel quality that is unlike anything else in the world.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person

We had a widespread consensus that the 2015 Harmonic Red, our first vintage of a red blend, was one of the favorites of the seminar focused on the quality of older Finger Lakes red wines.

During last weekend’s Winter Wine Exploration we tasted three barrel samples of our current, 2025 reds; and then we tasted seven older reds from our library. The library wines were reds from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019. The 2016 vintage was very warm and dry; the others I would consider “typical”— neither too warm or too cold, with a long comfortable ripening into late October.

We have never done this kind of comparison between barrel samples and older wines, so we did not exactly know what to expect. But we did have two goals in mind:

— How much different are the aged reds compared to the extremely young barrel samples? (We expected the differences to be striking, and they were.)

And more importantly.

— How well have these older reds held up? Or, in other words, are the reds we make here significantly improving with age? And should we be saving them?

This is the most important question.

Share

Of the two types of reds we were sampling, three were “Bordeaux blends,” that is, each made with a combinations of Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon; and three were Cabernet Francs, each with a slightly different amount of Merlot blended in. We also tasted a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from 2016, which was a great year for reds in the Finger Lakes. We have tasted this wine over the years, and it has always been in great shape.

A total of 37 guests tasted during three sessions, two on Saturday and one on Sunday. Diana and I traded off narrating some of the history of how red wine evolved from goat-skin bags at to barrels to bottles and finally to bags-in-boxes.

The most significant change with reds as they age is their “tannic” character. Wines made from the Bordeaux varieties that we grow tend to become softer, or less tannic, with age. And this turned out to be true for all of the wines we tasted, certainly when compared to the barrel samples. (Older wines can also go “bad;” fortunately, all of these were fine.)

I will spare you all the details of the tasting and jump right to the conclusions.

— Everyone could tell the difference between the barrel samples and the older wines. The barrel samples were from 2025, and the barrel samples all tasted great, especially the Merlot. So there is a lot of optimism for the 2025 reds.
— All of the library wines also were very pleasing. Not a bad wine in the bunch. Some a little more pleasing than others. All in all, a very encouraging sign for the quality of reds from the the Finger Lakes.
— The 2015 Harmonic and the 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon were the favorites. We expected that for the Cab Sauv; the 2015 Harmonic was a pleasant surprise.

Subscribe now

But then, we got serious

We then asked how much our guests might pay for these wines.

And that is where it got interesting.

The people who join us for our Wine Explorations are “wine enthusiasts,” and we trust their opinions. They have tasted lots of wine, and are not shy about saying that they rarely, if ever, pay more than $40 for a bottle of wine. There are simply plenty of good wines available for less than $40.

What that means for us—and for our library of wines—is that we should be making nearly all of them available for less than $40. Any higher, and most people will be reluctant to buy them. Which isn’t the point for any of us. The point is to enjoy enough older wines (without breaking the bank) to become familiar with their character.

If the majority of wine consumers tend to enjoy wines that they are familiar with, then the only way to become familiar with older wines is to make them affordable. There will always be a few exceptions, but there is no reason to let older wines sit in a library, when they should be in someone’s glass.

So stay tuned. If you want to become familiar with some of our older wines, we will be bringing them out at affordable prices and let you be the judge.

And, on that topic, the next Winter Wine Exploration on Jan. 24-25 will focus on white wines from our library. We have older Rieslings, Gewürztraminers, Chardonnays, Rosés and sparkling wines to sample. Tickets are $35/person and you can make reservations on our Events page.

Visit boundarybreaks.com

Buy Some Wine

Come See Us in Person