Harpersfield Vineyard Blog

Welcome to Harpersfield Vineyard located in the heart of Grand River valley in Geneva, Ohio.

We proudly and unabashedly view ourselves as farmers, and consider our work in the vineyard as essential and elemental to the production of high-quality estate bottled wines that speak of the soil and place in which they were grown. Harpersfield wines truly embody the notion of “terroir.” No precise English equivalent exists for this quintessentially French term and concept. Terroir being the combination of grape variety, soil, micro-climate weather and the ability of those elements to work together to produce wines that have their own unique characteristics and imprimatur. Our wines are fiercely independent. We are producing wines that when one smells and tastes them claim for the entire world to hear “I’m from Harpersfield Vineyard, found nowhere else on the planet, and very proud to say it!”

Our wines speak of place and not the type of oak barrels that they were aged in, or the designer wine yeast that was used in their vinification. Wines made from grapes grown in vineyards that are tended with great care and an eye towards sustainable farming practices. Harpersfield Vineyard wines are made without the spurious cellar practices of micro-oxygenation, reverse-osmosis filtration and de-hydrogenation and without the use of the plethora of chemical agents employed by producers of the “cookie-cutter” Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs that litter wines shelves around the country today.

Part of our credo is that our wines are alive, and for those wines to truly grow and evolve they must first be given the freedom to mature as their nature sees fit and without the will-full, interventionist, iron-fisted hand of man. We only grow grapes that are at home in our iron-rich clay soils and compatible with our cool climate. We are heedless of the affairs of the “marketplace” with its attendant faddishness and reliance on so-called “designer wines.”

Finally, we believe that our wines are the joyous representation of the best that life has to offer. They hark back to traditions millennial old, and offer us a glimpse of the past and a view of the future. They stimulate the mind and tease the senses. They offer us succor. They are what make us human.

“Harpersfield wines are: nourishing… theological… and they banish depression!”
W.R.G., 6 December 2008