Lemberger Wine Grapes
June 3, 2026
Itasca Wine Grapes
June 3, 2026
Regent Wine Grapes
Deep-color, soft-textured Regent from Hammond Road. A ripe, dark red that comes in sugar-ready every year, disease-hardy in the vineyard.
Why buy from our farm
- Reliable sugar ripeness every vintage, no marginal-year swings.
- A genuinely distinctive dark red, not another lot of the region’s usual hybrids.
- Disease-resistant fruit farmed dry, IPM, low-spray, on well-drained ground.
- Cordon-trained and canopy-managed for fruit quality over raw tonnage.
- 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.
- Roughly 8 to 10 tons available for 2026, with multi-year contracts on the table.
- Pickup at the vineyard, with help sorting logistics.
Pricing available on request.
The grape
Regent is a German red hybrid bred for exactly the problem Eastern growers face: real red-wine color and flavor from a vine that resists the fungal diseases which punish vinifera in a wet season. It makes a deep, dark wine with soft tannin and low acid, the kind of red that drinks well young and doesn’t fight you. It is still uncommon in the US, so most winemakers have not worked with it. That is either a hurdle or an opening, depending on the buyer. For a winery looking for a distinctive dark red or a color-and-body component that isn’t the same Chambourcin everyone else is buying, it is worth a look.
Where it grows
Hammond Road sits on a gravel bluff about a mile back from Lake Erie. The lake buffers the winter and stretches the season, and the gravel drains hard so the canopy dries fast after rain. For a disease-resistant red on an IPM program, that airflow and drainage are why Bill can farm it with a light spray hand. The variety does most of the defending, the site handles the rest.
How Bill grows it
An acre and a half planted in 2014, cordon-trained on VSP, dry-farmed start to finish. Leaves come off mechanically around pea-berry size, the same canopy practice Bill runs across all his vinifera and hybrids, to open the fruit zone for airflow and light. Spray program is IPM. Harvest is mechanical and comes early, usually the first week of October, because this grape ripens sugar fast.
Why winemakers want it
Regent’s strength on this site is dependable ripeness. Across five vintages Brix has averaged around 21.3 and never dropped below 20.6, so the sugar is there every year without the swings you see in more marginal reds. The wine it makes is dark and soft, low in acid and easy to approach young, which is a real asset for a winery that wants a ready-drinking red or a deep-colored blending component.
One straight point, because a winemaker will see it on the data sheet. This is naturally low-acid fruit. TA has run in the low-to-mid 5s in recent years with pH in the mid 3s, so a winemaker targeting a structured, age-worthy red will likely acidify, and one making an easy-drinking style will find the fruit already where they want it. Bill will hang the fruit to your target and adjust the pick to suit your style. Know what you’re buying, and it delivers.
