He’s looking to Manhattan for sales success instead of being boxed into a tasting room model. He’s not planting a melange of mediocre-performing varieties. It didn’t take long to uncover his business savvy. “I’m a seven-day-a-week guy,” he told me. He lives downstate but spends just about every weekend in the Finger Lakes. It’s a project that could take him into retirement, but he’s not there yet. He grew up in Syracuse, has moved around, and wanted to return with a kind of passion project. He had deep appreciation for wine from around the world, and has spent years in California. Staying within the boundary of our agreement, I can say the owner is new to the wine industry, but not new to wine. While flowing with gorgeous imagery and helpful information, the website offers nothing about the owner. We’re trying to discover whether single clones give unique, discernible character. ![]() The owner hired a team to do “a lot of soil preparation, and we’ve been very focused on clone selection. Website visitors will find a heavy emphasis on the land at Boundary Breaks. ![]() It’s people working in a special place.” A web designer in New Zealand laid out the simple, compelling structure for the site. “I want the entire team to be featured and celebrated,” the owner told me. The result is a website focusing on images, with just enough language to convey the goals and details without ever sounding condescending or hyperbolic. The remaining two-thirds will be sold downstate, where the owner has connections and an eye toward higher-end Manhattan locations.īoundary Breaks hired Brooklyn-based photographer Noah Kalina. The reserve will sell for $30 the other three rieslings check in at $20.īut where to find them? The owner expects a third of the wines to be sold in the greater Finger Lakes region through restaurants and, eventually, retail outlets. I just want to fit in.”īoundary Breaks has started out with four rieslings: a dry bottling, two semi-dry bottlings, and a reserve riesling that resembles the late-harvest wines made at Hermann J. Everything I had heard about collaboration was true. “I’m not used to the collegial atmosphere. “I’ve been a businessman,” the owner said. When Russell took a job at Red Newt Cellars, the Boundary Breaks owner turned to Ian Barry of Villa Bellangelo to help fill the gap in 2012. That trio made the 1000 cases of Boundary Breaks wines from the 2011 vintage. The owner sought out help from longtime regional pros, including the Fox Run team of Peter Bell, Tricia Renshaw, and Kelby Russell. The vines are situated on sloping land between two drop-offs, a kind of space between ravines, or boundary breaks. Another six acres of the variety went down in 2010. In 2008, the BB team started the groundwork on a 120-acre farm, planting six acres of riesling. “I can’t think of anything better than pursuing the best riesling we can grow and make.” “This area has simply broken out with riesling,” the owner told me. But Boundary Breaks is a new Finger Lakes winery with its own vineyard acreage on the east side of Seneca Lake. There is no tasting room (yet), and you have to work hard to find the wines (for now). You’ll find yourself asking why most other wineries don’t simply scrap what they have and follow this model. I agreed, picked up the phone, and learned in half an hour that Boundary Breaks is on a fast track to success.īefore you read further, let me urge you: If you haven’t seen the website that has so many people talking, click here now. It’s not that he’s a celebrity - you’ve almost certainly never heard of him - but he has business reasons to keep his name out of the proceedings, for now. With a little digging I was able to uncover some answers, but only after the owner secured a promise from me not to reveal his identity. ![]() Some time around the first of the year, word started to spread in Finger Lakes wine circles about a remarkable new website for a winery most people had never heard of.
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