New York’s wine country just landed one of its biggest comebacks in decades. 🍷
Pleasant Valley Wine Company, the oldest winery in the Finger Lakes region and the second largest in the state, shut its doors last year after 166 years of continuous operation.
Now it has a buyer, a $47 million restoration plan, and a timeline that has the region talking again.
Tucked into the hills above Keuka Lake, less than five hours from Manhattan, Pleasant Valley isn’t just another shuttered wine estate looking for a second act.
It holds the designation of U.S. Bonded Winery No. 1, becoming the very first winery in America to receive federal bonding, a title it has held since its founding in 1860.
The winery that basically invented American sparkling wine
Founded in 1860 by Charles Champlin and a dozen local investors, Pleasant Valley built its reputation on sparkling wine at a time when almost nobody in America was making it seriously.
That bet paid off spectacularly. The winery’s champagne won a gold medal at the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair, earning the nickname “the Great Champagne of the Western World,” a title so good the winery still operates under the brand name Great Western today.
The property backs up that history with real architecture. Nine fieldstone buildings make up the historic campus, five of them dating back to the 1860s and built in the Italianate style, all of it listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980.
At its peak, the facility sprawled across 425,000 square feet with a storage capacity of over 14 million gallons, making it one of the largest wine production sites in the entire state.
Why it closed and what happens now
The winery survived the Civil War, Prohibition, and ownership changes through Coca-Cola, Seagram, and the Doyle family, but it couldn’t outlast a rough stretch in the industry.
Pleasant Valley ceased operations in early 2025 and hit the market for $4.9 million, ending a 166-year run as the oldest continuously operating winery in the Finger Lakes.
Enter Vine Enterprises LLC, an Indiana-based investment firm under The Vine Group, which is now stepping in with a plan that goes well beyond a simple reopening.
Governor Kathy Hochul’s office announced the group will invest at least $47 million to acquire and modernize the site, with the state kicking in up to $12 million in capital and working capital grants through Empire State Development .
Here’s what the restoration actually covers:
- Relaunching legacy brands under the Pleasant Valley and Great Western names
- Restoring full-scale processing and beverage manufacturing operations on site
- Rehabilitating the historic Champagne Cellars, one of the property’s signature structures
- Creating 69 new jobs in Steuben County
- An additional $100,000 state grant directed toward marketing New York wines more broadly
When construction actually starts
Vine Enterprises plans to break ground this fall, according to both the Governor’s office and multiple local outlets covering the deal.
No firm reopening date has been announced yet, and given the scale of the rehab work, especially on structures original to the 1860s, this is shaping up to be a multi-year project rather than a quick turnaround.
Why this one matters beyond the Finger Lakes
New York’s wine industry has been quietly building serious credibility for years, and Pleasant Valley reopening under real investment sends a signal that the state is betting big on that reputation continuing to grow.
The property already holds New York’s largest plantings of Chardonnay and Riesling, and its location at the southern tip of Keuka Lake places it right in the heart of a wine region increasingly drawing comparisons to Napa on a smaller, quieter scale.
For now, there’s nothing to book and no tasting room open.
But for a stretch of upstate New York that’s less than a day trip from the city and packed with over 200 years of winemaking history, this is exactly the kind of project worth keeping on your radar for a future weekend escape.