Riesling Wine Grapes
June 3, 2026
Lemberger Wine Grapes
June 3, 2026
Pinot Gris Wine Grapes
Cool-climate Pinot Gris from mature vines on the Lake Erie shore. Fresh, aromatic fruit with real acid, available for 2026.
Why buy from our farm
- Mature, thirteen-year-old vines on a genuine cool-climate lakeside site.
- Real acid retention, the thing that separates good Pinot Gris from flat Pinot Grigio.
- Dry-farmed, IPM, canopy managed for airflow and fruit quality.
- He will move the pick window within reason to hit your Brix and pH. You are buying fruit farmed toward your spec, not just his.
- Around 10 tons available from this block for 2026, with additional Pinot Gris available from a second Hammond Road planting, and multi-year contracts on the table.
- Pickup at the vineyard, with help sorting logistics.
Pricing available on request.
The grape
Pinot Gris is the aromatic white that rewards a cool site. Grown warm, it goes flat and broad. Grown cool, it keeps its acid and its perfume, which is where the interesting wine lives. It handles a range of styles, from a crisp, mineral dry white to a richer, textural bottling with skin contact, and the fruit takes a winemaker wherever they want to go. What it needs from the vineyard is a site cold enough to hold freshness. This one is.
Where it grows
The Dill Park block sits about two tenths of a mile off Lake Erie, close enough that the lake sets the pace of the whole season. That proximity pushes ripening a little later, which for an aromatic white is a feature, not a problem, because the extra hang time builds perfume while the cool site keeps the acid intact. Rows run north to south, the block is dry-farmed, and it’s on an IPM spray program. Everything about the site is pointed at freshness.
How Bill grows it
Two and a half acres planted in 2012 and 2013, so these are settled, mature vines at thirteen years. Cordon-trained on VSP, single clone (146), dry-farmed start to finish. Irrigation is available but Bill doesn’t use it, letting the vines find their own water and concentrate the fruit. Leaves come off mechanically around pea-berry size, the canopy practice Bill runs across all his vinifera, to open the fruit zone for airflow and light. Harvest is mechanical, mid to late September, and Bill sets the pick to the buyer’s target.
Why winemakers want it
Fresh, aromatic Pinot Gris with real acid is harder to source than the volume of Pinot Grigio on the market suggests, because most of it is grown warm and picked for yield. This block does the opposite. Across five vintages the fruit held TA in the 6 to 7.35 g/L range with pH steady in the low-to-mid 3s, which is the freshness a winemaker wants and often can’t find at this scale. Brix has run in the high teens to 20, right in the window for a crisp, aromatic style, and the fruit will hang longer if you want more sugar.
