Photos provided.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Saratoga Sparkling Co. and Galway Rock, two local wine brands with the same owners, spouses Kate and Ryan Taylor, will be opening a tasting room in Ballston Lake this fall. Along with this opening, will be the reveal of a third wine line called Robinia Hill that was made with business partners in Skaneateles with grapes from there.
“We've kind of grown too big for our britches. So we're expanding on a place that can accommodate the winery and a tasting room, a larger vineyard and all that goes with it,” Kate Taylor said. Their first bottled wine was filled in 2014, four years ago.
According to Taylor, the two are closing on the property in the next few days, at the time of our interview. Taylor explains that the expansion is all part of a plan, a year in the making. The two received a microenterprise grant from the town of Ballston, while the land purchased for the vineyard will be put into the American Farmland Trust that ensures the land will always remain farmland.
“It’s going to get a face-lift (the buildings) and then hoping to open sometime this fall. We're going to do a soft opening in the middle of October and then we'll be open for real sometime in November,” Taylor said.
“It's actually two buildings, we're kind of going to be open and letting people experience what’s going on with the construction and harvest, so we'll have the tasting room partially open and once its completed we'll do a big grand opening,” she added.
Galway Rock was the first of the soon-to-be three wine labels, first bottled in 2014. It has a total of four wines, two reds and two whites while Saratoga Sparkling Co., which was added to the mix about year later, has a sparkling white and a sparkling rosé. Robinia Hill will be targeted for restaurants but will also be available for sale at the tasting room.
The tasting room, which will be located at 998 Saratoga Rd., will also have 68 acres of land for a vineyard. Taylor says they will start off with five acres of grapes, which in turn, will produce between 30 to 40 tons of grapes. Most of these grapes will be used for the Saratoga Sparkling Co. brand. A courtyard will look over the vineyard and provide outdoor seating for tastings and small plates.
“We started the whole thing at my parents house, a small winery, a small vineyard kind of like a test to see which grapes grow in the area in Galway, so if it grows here it should grow in Ballston Lake, its a little bit warmer there,” Taylor said.
Once the tasting room is open, guests will be able to witness the wine-making process as well as outdoor seating in a courtyard that looks over the vineyard.
