Harvest 2026: A Worthy Gamble

With the last of the grapes coming off the vines just yesterday, Harvest 2026 is officially in the books, but Vintage 2026 is just beginning. The fruit is picked and now we move into the cellar to care for it: pressing and pumping, tasting and planning, punching down and racking, and cleaning – mostly cleaning. So how was harvest ‘26? It was a gamble, but we think it’s paid off…

This harvest was tricky. It was a relatively cloudy and cool ripening season, and while it thankfully stayed quite dry, we didn’t have many of those hot and sunny fall days to push the fruit over the finish line. So we had to be patient. We had to give the vines time to care for their fruit. We carefully made picking plans, and then, when the forecast changed slightly, we carefully made new picking plans. We did that a lot.

We had to be defiant. Most of the growing season, we’re at Mother Nature’s mercy, responding frantically to her whims. Come harvest time we get gutsy, standing our ground, betting on our vines and their ability to handle whatever she throws at them, risking our fruit through rain or cold for the hope of just one more good day of ripening on the other side.

Contending with imperfect weather is one of the exciting challenges of making wine in a climate like ours. At this point in the season, we think often of a little piece of wisdom we learned from our favorite winemaker while working in New Zealand: “If you pick before a rain when the fruit isn’t ripe, you’re guaranteed to make a mediocre wine. But if you hang it, there’s still a possibility of making something great.” This year, more than any other since we’ve been at Lincoln Peak, we put this philosophy to the test.

So, in search of extra ripening days and with a healthy dose of courage, we decided to hang about 50% of the vineyard into the second week of October when most everyone else in the state had finished picking. The risk, we believe, has paid off. This year’s fruit is intensely flavorful, complex, vivid, and full of energy.

We chose what to pick and what to let hang on a vine-by-vine basis, doing multiple passes through each vineyard block at specific times. It’s labor intensive and time consuming, but carefully evaluating the condition of each vine is truly the greatest tool a winegrower has for ensuring ripeness. This multi-pass strategy is something often seen in cooler wine-growing areas known for white wine, like Austria and Germany, and we already have really high hopes for the 2026 wines.

Now comes the fun part: making the wine! You’ll find us in the cellar keeping track of more than 30 different fermentations, each one unique and demanding. Fermentation is dynamic, so we taste the rapidly changing wines every day, watching carefully to see how flavors evolve, discussing maceration and temperature, and making sure nothing goes wrong. There is no formula or standard recipe. Rather than make a wine that tastes identical year after year, our focus is on finding the best expression of each individual vintage. That is, to us, the beauty of wine driven by its terroir.

Stay tuned for more from us as the 2026 wines settle in for the winter. In the meantime, read on for a bunch of exciting events to come, and we hope to see you in the tasting room soon!  

Musings from the Great Lull

The arrival of early and eager Adalmiina means harvest is officially underway at Lincoln Peak, yet we still have a week or two before our next pick. We’re in the Great Lull, the stretchy interlude between the activities of summer and fall. We worked tirelessly with our wonderful team all year to tend the vines, laying canes and wrapping shoots, clipping and combing and thinning, walking the long rows again and again, all with one goal in mind: to raise resilient vines able to ripen fruit that bears the unforgeable signature of place.

Our job is, momentarily, done. Now we get to sit back and watch the vines work, converting the last photons of summer to sugar and flavor. We are waiting for the Goldilocks moment when the vine has reached its reproductive acme. Achieving fruit ripeness is a vine’s sole evolutionary task; it lives to pass on its DNA, guarded in the seed of its fruit, but its roots keep it firmly in place. So the vine produces colorful and delicious berries to attract seed dispersers like birds and deer, who will eat the fruit and drop the seeds elsewhere. When the grapes are ready to be nature’s dessert, they are ready to make wine.

The vines will tell us when we have reached this moment. Monitoring concentrations of sugar and acid is helpful, but the real tell comes from our intuition, and from lots and lots of tasting. We walk the vines, plucking berries from all sides of the cluster, in all parts of the canopy. We taste from the morning side, then the evening side, then the morning side again. We think about the flavor, the complexity, the balance, the richness. We chew on skins and crunch through seeds, noticing textures on our tongues, evaluating bitterness and astringency. We feel how the seeds separate from the pulp, whether they slide away with ease, ready for dispersal, or stay trapped inside, protected and continuing to ripen. We spit out the seeds to check for lignification, pressing a fingernail through to see whether any green remains, or if it’s ripe, brown and impenetrable. Berry analytics serve as a gut check, a little nudge in the right direction. But the most revealing indicators are the ones you can’t measure. After all, making wine, just like drinking it, is more about feeling than anything else.

More than any other moment during the year, the ripening period after veraison is the greatest informant for our winemaking decisions in the cellar. It will indicate how much time we let the juice soak with the skins, how gently we press our whites, whether to include stems or whole clusters in our ferments. This is the human side of vintage variation, entirely predicated on what we taste off the vine. Over time spent in our vineyards, we learn to read our fruit like sheet music, letting it reveal to us the unique sound and color of the season, the melody and the harmony, the dynamics and the timbre. It is humbling, this admission, knowing it is not really up to us to decide. We are merely the musicians playing nature’s score.

With very little left to do in the vines, the ripening period is a time of mixed emotions for us. We diligently scrub the winery, preparing tanks for fresh juice. We feel pride and joy, satisfaction and relief for all that we accomplished during the season, but our minds fall prey to the anxious anticipation of the upcoming rush. After months of proverbial sprinting, we come to a screeching halt, and it takes some time before our cortisol drops, before we can take some deep breaths and prepare ourselves for the marathon of harvest.

For now, as always, the power lies with Mother Nature. In the words of the late Wendell Berry, our early September pursuit is only to “come into the peace of wild things.” There will be more work very soon, when the secrets of the season are revealed as we steadily unload small yellow picking bins onto the crush pad.

In the meantime, we hope to see you in the tasting room! Fall’s beautiful display of color is just around the corner, and we couldn’t imagine a more perfect time to enjoy a glass of wine on the porch.

Harvest is Over

More than three weeks ago, with frozen fingers and the first frost crunching underfoot, we picked the last rows of Frontenac Noir, the last clusters of the 2025 harvest. That fruit is now wine, and this week, we rack the Frontenac Noir to barrel, tucking it in for its long, quiet rest. The madness of harvest continues long after we finish picking, but now that the most time-sensitive tasks in the winery are just about complete, we can finally say HARVEST IS OVER! Celebration requires too much energy, so for now we rest and reflect.

The 2025 growing season was an eventful one. Without the grace we gave ourselves in our first year of farming this vineyard, and with all that we had learned and wanted to do differently, the stakes felt high. A cool, misty spring with two frost scares and lots of disease pressure dampened our spirits right out of the gate. Eventually the clouds cleared, the sun shone, and the vines grew quickly, our confidence growing with them. An intense heatwave in July brought swarms of unwelcome Japanese beetles that turned leaves to lace. We tried to tell ourselves that they were helping to thin the canopy and expose the fruit but we weren’t convinced. Thankfully, the heat soon broke and the beetles disappeared as quickly as they arrived, sparing the vines from any lasting damage.

The next couple months were the real story of the 2025 vintage. At the beginning of August, just as the clusters began to ripen, a dry pattern settled in with abundant sun, warm days, and cool nights that made us feel like we were back in California. The ensuing drought was devastating for most farmers in Vermont, but this is the weather that every winemaker dreams of in the run up to harvest, keeping berries small, concentrating flavors, and staving off rot and mildew. Without rain storms to force our hand, we were able to pick exactly when we wanted, an unthinkable luxury that made harvest feel almost leisurely.

The dry weather led to lower yields in the vineyard but exceptional quality in the winery, characterized by big, structured wines that will outlive us. We harvested a total of 13.7 tons of fruit this year, including 7.8 tons picked in a massive 5-day push just before a big rain and the first frost. That's the kind of picking timing that produces great wines and is only possible because of our community of volunteers and their dedication to harvest. We simply can’t thank them enough.

The end of the season brings relief, satisfaction, and joy, as well as a strange sense of mourning as the vineyard goes dormant. These plants that you’ve marveled at and worked with all year, inspired by their ambition, feeding off their energy, so suddenly lose their leaves and become skeletons. But the wines, those eternal legacies of the growing season, are there to comfort us throughout the winter until the vines greet us again in the spring. And then we get to do it all again.

Harvest 2025 Begins

This past weekend we celebrated the beginning of the harvest season with a dinner in the vineyard. We walked through the vines, tasting different varieties of grapes at different stages of ripeness. We discussed what we look for in the fruit to know when to pick, and how the flavor and texture of the berries at harvest impacts every winemaking decision we make from then on. We drank some pretty cool wines paired with four delicious courses from the geniuses at Haymaker Bun Co. It was a magical evening, one that has left us feeling energized and inspired to start harvest this week.

And start harvest we did! On Thursday we picked the first fruit of the 2025 season - our single row of Adalmiina.

This is an early variety with lower sugar and acidity, and citrusy flavors that become more tropical as it ripens. We love Adalmiina as a component in our methode champenoise sparkling wine, adding a punch of fruit and a complex, savory character. At just 582 pounds, it’s our smallest pick of the year and the perfect way to ease into the madness of harvest.

Soon the picks will be much larger, and we would love your help in getting these beautiful grapes off the vines and into the winery. Last year our community helped us pick 35,000 lbs of fruit from this little vineyard and we’re excited to do it all again!

We will be picking regularly throughout September and October, dependent on ripeness and weather. We start picking at 8am and plan to finish around noon. We provide gloves, pruners, sunscreen, and bug spray, as well as lunch and wine. All you need is sturdy footwear and positive vibes.

Interested in joining us?

Click here to learn more and sign up for our list and
we’ll let you know when we’re picking.
We can’t wait to have you!

Our Farming Philosophy

A focus on sustainability and ecology through regenerative agriculture

Spring in Vermont is a time of life-giving warmth and color—a clear, compelling reminder of the importance of natural beauty on the human condition. Spring is also a time to act. To act upon lessons learned from the previous season, upon new farming plans formulated in the winter, and toward long term goals for the vineyard and the environment as a whole.

As stewards of this land, we place great emphasis on strengthening the natural world, using our knowledge and vitality to preserve its beauty and resilience. The tenants of regenerative agriculture are central to our practices in the vineyard, especially those that protect the soil and encourage biodiversity.

“The major distinguishing factor of the regenerative farming philosophy is the emphasis on restoration, which translates to a hyper-focus on topsoil and cover crops. By increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing the ecosystem, and supporting biosequestration, the regenerative farm strengthens the health of its own soil and increases the earth’s resilience to climate change.”

You’ll hear lots more about our farming philosophy in the future, but check out what we’re doing in the vineyard this spring to work toward our goals.

Last week we added three new members to our vineyard crew! Pruson, Foxy, and Wobbles are two month old Shropshire lambs from our neighbors at Werner Tree Farm. They’ll be hanging out with us this spring, grazing the vineyard floor, aerating the soil, and leaving behind some fertilizer.

Shropshires, once the most widespread sheep breed in Vermont, fell out of favor in the mid-20th century but are now making a comeback because of their use in regenerative agriculture. Their unique distaste for new shoots growing on woody plants makes them perfect for rotational grazing in both vineyards and tree farms, allowing farmers to maintain beneficial cover crops without the disruptive and damaging use of herbicide or tillage.

We also managed to get three new bat houses installed in the vineyard with a goal to grow our bat colony on the farm. Grape berry moth is a very real threat to our crop every year, and most farmers spray insecticide to help control populations and limit damage. Bats eat massive amounts of insects and we’re hoping that if we give them a nice place to sleep, they’ll help us protect our crop without using insecticides.

Ecological farming FTW!

Winter at the Vineyard

New Year, New Vine

Snow has blanketed the vineyard and so far it’s been a beautiful, vintage Vermont winter. The sustained cold weather means the vines are now fully dormant, quietly recovering from the last growing season and eagerly preparing for the next. Dormancy also means that it’s time for one our favorite vineyard tasks of the year: pruning.

Pruning is like pressing a vine’s reset button, shedding the wood that laboriously produced last year’s harvest and making room for new growth. We may remove up to 90% of the vine’s wood every year, each cut strategically placed to maximize the plant’s potential and longevity. Nothing we do in the vineyard has a bigger, more lasting impact on the vine’s ability to fully and sustainably ripen fruit than pruning.

It’s not a glamorous process - maneuvering pruners with hands incapacitated by bulky gloves, unwrapping impossibly strong tendrils, and trying to avoid getting whipped in the frozen face by a rogue cane - but each vine is a unique and fascinating puzzle.

Without foliage to block our view, we can clearly see the vine’s structure and the clues it left us from the growing season. These clues - the length and thickness of a cane, the presence of a scar or stretch mark, the spacing between buds - help us decide what to cut away and what to retain. In this way, we can affect the shape of the vine, improve its immune system by redirecting sap flow away from damaged or diseased wood, encourage growth of a new trunk, and balance its vegetative (shoots, leaves, etc.) and reproductive (grapes!) potential.

Pruning is cold, hard work but its methodical nature and the quiet of winter make it a time for reflection, sharing stories, planning, catching up on podcasts, and discovering new music. The tracks in the snow remind us of the wildlife that share this land with us. And we stand in reverence of the vines, masters of regeneration and resilience.

Harvest Wrap Up

Time for the vineyard managers to rest and the winemakers to get to work. Oh, wait…

That’s a wrap on Harvest 2024 and what a beautiful vintage it was! The month of September delivered fantastic weather with very little rainfall and lots of sun, giving us the freedom to pick each variety at peak ripeness. The vineyard produced 17 tons of grapes with big sugars and bigger flavors, all of which is now fermenting away in the winery, well on its way to becoming the next bottles of Lincoln Peak wine.

The wines have a lot left to reveal as they continue to develop, but so far the quality in tank and barrel is looking excellent. These wines are like our children, so it’s impossible to pick a favorite, but we are especially excited about two very different expressions of La Crescent, a rich and textured Frontenac Blanc, and a few different lots of Marquette already aging away beautifully in barrel. We can’t wait to share these wines with you next year!

With the first frost at the vineyard last week, the vines have dropped their leaves and will soon begin their long, well-deserved sleep. It was a whirlwind of a growing season - simultaneously seeming to drag on and fly by - but we feel so fortunate to have been graced with a great vintage in our first year farming the vineyard. We are endlessly grateful to this community, our volunteers, and our family and friends for supporting us throughout the year. It’s good to be back home in Vermont.

Harvest Begins

The 2024 harvest has officially begun, with our earliest ripening variety, Adalmiina, coming off the vines on the last day of August. She's now happily fermenting away in the winery as we impatiently wait for the rest of the fruit to tell us when it's ready. Mother Nature hit the pause button on ripening last weekend with cool temperatures and a shot of rain, reminding us that fall is coming soon...but not yet! We're back to perfect conditions in the vineyard and it looks like it'll stay that way for a while. It's the home stretch of the growing season and we expect to be picking fruit in earnest over the next few weeks before all of our attention moves into the winery to focus on processing and fermentation. It's a magical time of year and we can't wait to make some wine.