Who are the “Wineries Without Walls?”
Chaos Cellars: Will Jenkins, our winemaker, founded Chaos Cellars as his private label to make wine in his own style, using experience from working in California and Oregon. Chaos is a central part of any winemaking practice, even if we don’t mean to admit it. At Chaos Cellars, we like to act as shepherds, guiding our wines through the process to express their full natural potential.We never shy away from new ideas. We love blending traditional methods with creative modern twists to craft wines that stand out as unique in their categories. We have a little acreage at the top of the Keuka Bluff with some big intentions to one-day be a vineyard site. At our core, we make natural, low-intervention wines in a clean way. We blend traditional and modern winemaking methods, and treat every grape as having premium potential.
Entelechia Wine Cellars: Founded by winemaker Matt Denci, Entelecheia is the idea that everything, be it human — or grapevine for that matter — is called to fulfill its nature, to be fully itself, to embrace all the variety and vulgarity of life. This means working with dedicated growers to make wines from the Finger Lakes that can only be from this area, using a low intervention style of winemaking. Wines to rediscover who and what we are…
Little Clover: Erin, the winemaker for Little Clover, is an ardent lover of sparkling wine, ¨I became infatuated with the smaller, grower-style sparkling wines coming out of France. Rather than blending juice from various vineyards, these wines represent a particular place and time, highlighting the work of the grower. And it clicked–we can do this here. We can produce a high-quality sparklings that are representative of our Seneca Lake estate in the Finger Lakes.¨
Vagabond: Vagabond makes wines that don’t check a box but instead make you feel a sense of wonder from this very special place, the Finger Lakes. The brand might be new, but Jimmer has been working in vineyards and wineries for twenty years. Alex has been making wine in the Finger Lakes for fifteen vintages. They choose to focus on a gentle approach, utilizing ancient techniques like foot stomping, ambient fermentations and lees stirring to achieve wines that are fresh and energetic, with just a light touch.
John Albert: John Monnier, founder of John Albert, likes to thoughtfully experiment with different winemaking techniques to push wines to new horizons, to allow them to be all they can be. This is a passion project where different small batches of wine are produced every year. While there are some stylistic throughlines in the wines John makes, they will change year to year in style of wine as well as the variety of grapes used.