Bob McGregor was a physicist at Kodak and a home winemaker who spent his spare time in the late 1960s searching for vineyard land around Keuka Lake. In 1971, he and Marge, along with friends David and Elizabeth Stewart, bought 70 acres on the eastern bluff. Bob left Kodak. The grapes went in. The first commercial vintage was 1980.

Bob McGregor's obsession was red varieties that could survive Finger Lakes winters while producing something worth drinking. He traveled to Soviet Georgia in the 1980s and brought back Saperavi, a thick-skinned, deeply pigmented grape that the region had been growing for millennia. Saperavi is now one of the winery's signatures — a deep, tannic red that surprises people who expect New York to produce lighter wines.

The family still runs it. The east bluff of Keuka Lake produces conditions different from the west — more shale in the soil, a slightly different light. McGregor is one of the places that demonstrates how much the Finger Lakes varies from one hillside to the next, and why the geology matters.

McGregor Vineyard

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