Photography by R.J. Caputo

On a vine (by rjcaputophotography)

Grapes growing on a farm in NYC? Better yet, Wine being made from these grapes. The Queens County Farm Museum is a 47-acre farm, the last one in New York City. It’s been a working farm since 1697 and open as a museum and educational institution since 1975. The museum helps to interpret the site and to teach the public about the City’s agricultural history. There are sheep and pumpkins and goats and hogs and corn. And in 2004 an acre-and-a-half of vinifera French wine grapes on American root stock was planted in 4 varieties: chardonnay, merlot, cab franc, and cab sauvignon.

The grapes are grown here. But modern-day winemaking requires specialized equipment like automated grape presses, large fermentation tanks, and a bottling facility. The Queens County Farm Museum has none of this. It doesn’t even really have enough grapes to get a sufficient volume of wine for modern day equipment. Therefore the grapes are outsourced to other wineries on Long Island and mixed with those grapes are bottles and sold under the name “Queens Farm Vineyards”.