Within the rolling hills and historic farmland of the Washington County countryside lies the multi-award-winning Victory View Vineyard. This family owned & operated estate winery produces wine using grapes specially developed to grow in our cooler northern climate.
With a commitment to building a peaceful community space and a passion for creating delicious wine, Victory View Vineyard has quickly grown into a can’t-miss destination for wine enthusiasts, locals and travelers alike. After all, their wine not only reflects the hard work they put into the vineyard year-round, but the area’s unique sense of place!
Let’s peek behind-the-scenes at Victory View Vineyard, from grape-growing to fermentation and beyond.
Where the Wine Got Started
As an estate winery, Victory View Vineyard‘s wine is made using only grapes grown on their property! To stay busy after retirement, couple Gerry and Mary Barnhart launched a new endeavor on their farm: making wine in 2008, and then opening a tasting room on-site in 2013.
Since then, they’ve embedded themselves into the community, hosting a range of events throughout the year, from markets to Sangria Sundays with local food trucks. Plus, Victory View often hosts artisans and vendors during our area’s tours, including the Art & Ag Tour and the County Bounty/Cheese Tour! Additionally, the vineyard is also part of the eastern stretch of the Upper Hudson Valley Wine Trail.
To this day, Victory View remains a family-owned and -oriented business. Their extended family (of all ages) are deeply involved in many of the vineyard’s activities, including each grape harvest & wine bottling season. In fact, many of the vineyard’s wines are named in honor of their grandchildren!
The Victory View Wine-Making Process
Grape Varieties Grown
Perched on top of a beautiful hill in Easton, NY, Victory View Vineyard’s cold-hardy grapes enjoy plenty of sunshine, a vital ingredient to growing good fruit for wine. Naturally, this area’s fertile soil, southern exposure and temperate climate is ripe for grape-growing. Due to personal preference, the Barnharts mostly produce dry wines, which they believe pair best with food. However, they also produce a one semi-sweet white wine, as well as one sweeter port-style wine.
To supply their range of white and red wines, the Barnharts cultivate 7 varietals of French-American hybrid grapes: marquette, maréchal foch, frontenac, melody, la crescent, lacrosse, and petite pearl. By crossing these two breeds, the plants benefit from cold-hardiness and disease-resistance from native North American grapes, allowing the farm to have a more relaxed disease and pest management program than if they were growing pure European grapes (which would also be unable to survive our winters.)
How Victory View Wine Gets Made
The winemaking process is a delicate balance of art and science. After all, as hard as you try, you can’t make good wine from bad fruit. That’s why Victory View Vineyard spends time in every season of the year, hand tending to their grapes and ensuring they’re in prime health!
Their vineyard is set up to optimize air flow and sunshine, which minimizes fungal diseases and allows the fruit to grow big and juicy. In fact, the sunshine on the grape skins is what helps develop the flavor! While the vines begin growing in spring, they’re first trained to grow horizontal, and then manually combed to trail down. The lateral growths are trimmed off throughout the season, as they tend to shade out the fruit.
During the late summer harvest season, it’s all-hands-on-deck at Victory View Vineyard! The grapes are picked at their optimal ripeness, and put into lug vessels that hold about 30lbs of grapes each. Then, they’re run through crusher/de-stemming machine. After that, the white grapes go directly into the wine press, which presses out the juice that’s then used for fermentation. As for red grapes, they go into one of the large wine vats to go through fermentation with skins, seeds and a few stems. This is to extract both color and flavor from the skins during the process, unlike with white wines.
Fermenting red wine takes between 5-7 days, held steady at around 80 degrees to maintain the nice, fruity flavors that are burnt off at higher temperatures.After that week or so, the red wine then goes into the wine press, getting rid of the pomace (the leftover skins and seeds.) Interestingly, that pomace is then used by local distiller Luckey Spirits, who referments it and distills it into grappa, an Italian-style distilled spirit.
Final Stages of the Process
Once fermentation is done and it’s gone through the press, it heads inside to start a secondary fermentation process in a smaller tank (called malolactic fermentation.) While the primary fermentation is yeast-based, with added yeasts turning sugar to alcohol, the secondary process is bacteria-based. This 40- to 60-day process changes the malolactic acid in the wine into lactic acid, which tastes much better to the human palate. This aging process adds complexity and structure to the wines, allowing them to develop their full potential. About 15 and 45 days after starting this fermentation, the wine is racked to separate the remaining seeds and skin from the clean wine. Progressively, the wine gets clearer with less sediment.
After the tasting room closes in December, the heat for fermentation is turned off, allowing the wine to cool, which stabilizes the wine. Around 35 degrees, it secretes tartaric acid (used for cream of tartar!), further improving its flavor over the winter until it naturally begins to warm in the spring. After a final racking step, the wine goes into the barrels. Since oak barrels “breathe” a little, winemakers lose some wine to evaporation – called the “angel’s share.”
Finally, the wine gets bottled. It’s a multi-stage process, with many people and machines involved: a bottle washer, a bottle filler, a bottle corker, a heat-wrapper, and then someone casing the boxes up and labeling each one for storage. In about 4 hours, Victory View Vineyard is able to fill around 200 cases!
Details About Visiting
Visitors will find Victory View Vineyard’s tasting room in a beautiful blue building, offering stunning views of the vineyards and the rural countryside. They’ll be able to enjoy tastings of the winery’s wines, often paired with locally-sourced artisanal cheese trays and other products. When the weather is nice, customers enjoy the outdoor seating, and the barrel room holds additional seating inside.
In conclusion, Victory View Vineyard is a must-visit destination for anyone interested in wine, rural living, and the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley. Whether you’re a wine enthusiast, a history buff, or simply looking for a relaxing day trip, Victory View Vineyard has something to offer everyone!
Looking for more great activities in this area?
Naturally, that’s just the beginning of the many unique attractions, activities and amenities across the county!
Near Victory View, you’ll also find the delicious Mexican food of Casa Reyes, as well as unique gifts and locally-made goods at Tiashoke Farm Store. Or, explore more local options, from lodging and dining to unique experiences, events and more!
