Sheldrake Point: Cayuga Lake’s Lakefront Tasting Room

The first time I drove down County Road 153 to Sheldrake Point, I missed the turn. You come around a curve on the west side of Cayuga Lake, the road dips, and suddenly there’s a yellow farmhouse, a long lawn, and the lake about 30 feet below the tasting room window. No big sign, no gateway arch, no flags. You park on gravel, you walk past somebody’s dog, and then you’re on the patio with a glass of dry Cab Franc rosé looking at the cliffs on the opposite shore. That’s the entire pitch for Sheldrake Point. They don’t try harder than that. They don’t need to.

The view from up by the winery building. The tasting room sits at the bottom of the slope, then a 400-foot beach, then the lake. You can see the cliffs on the east shore from any seat on the patio.

I’ve been visiting Cayuga wineries for years, and Sheldrake is the one I send first-timers to when they tell me they want a “proper Finger Lakes day with a view.” Most of the trail’s wineries are uphill from the water with a slot of lake visible between the trees. Sheldrake is on the water. Boats tie up at the dock; people walk over from the slips with wet feet. It’s the only winery on the west arm where the lake is the whole experience, not a distant prop.

This guide covers what to drink, when to come, what the tasting actually costs (with the new owners’ updated structure), how to combine Sheldrake with the rest of the Cayuga west side, and the small details I wish someone had told me before my first visit. There’s also a note on the Vintage Room library tasting, which is the most interesting $50 you can spend on this trail and the thing nobody mentions in the listicles.

Where Sheldrake Point Sits, Geographically and Otherwise

Aerial of the west arm of Cayuga, taken east of Ovid. Sheldrake sits down the bluff from this stretch. You drop off Route 89 onto County Road 153 and you’re at the lake.

Address is 7448 County Road 153, Ovid, NY 14521. Phone is 607-532-9401. Ovid as a town is about 15 miles north of Ithaca and about 15 miles south of Geneva. If you’re staying in Ithaca, plan on a 25-minute drive up Route 89, which is the lake-hugging two-lane that runs the full west shore of Cayuga and is the most scenic road in the Finger Lakes when the leaves turn. From Geneva you come down 89 in the other direction, same drive in reverse.

The “Sheldrake Point” itself is the small spit of land that juts out into the lake at the winery’s south edge. The vineyard slopes east toward the water, which is the orientation winemakers around here pay real money for: morning sun on the vines, lake-effect moderation through the afternoon, and Cayuga’s 400-plus feet of depth keeping early frosts off the buds. They’ve got 55 acres of vines now, started in 1997, with ten vitis vinifera varieties, which is a polite way of saying “no Concord, no fox grapes, no labrusca compromises.” The first estate vintage was 2000, released in 2001. By 2009 they were New York State Winery of the Year. They won it again the next year.

What Just Changed: The 2025 Ownership Switch

If you came here a few years ago and remember the founders’ story, here’s the update. Chuck Tauck and Fran Littin, who started Sheldrake in 1997 with a small group of wine enthusiasts and ran it for 28 years, sold the winery in April 2025. The new owners are Dean and Michele Babich, who came from medical careers and have been on a multi-year search for the right Finger Lakes property. Their pitch is “great wine is best enjoyed with great company,” which is owner-vocabulary for “we’re keeping the warm-and-friendly thing the previous owners built.”

The good news for visitors: the winemaking team didn’t turn over. Dave Breeden, who has been the winemaker since June 2002, is still here. Dave Wiemann, the vineyard manager since 1999, is still here. The Riesling style, the Cab Franc rosé style, the ice wine program, all continuous. So if you read a five-year-old review of Sheldrake on Tripadvisor and got excited about a specific wine, the wine is probably still being made by the person making it in 2018. The transition reads clean.

The main tasting bar runs the full length of the longest wall, with a second tasting room in the back for busy days. Walk-in, first-come, first-served. No reservations for the bar.

The Tasting: $15 for Five Wines, Pick Your Own

Here’s how the current tasting structure works, which a few outdated guides on the trail still get wrong. You walk in, you grab a spot at the bar or a seated table (first-come, first-served unless you’re a Wine Club member, in which case you can call ahead and reserve in the Garden Room). You’re handed a list of about 20 wines. You pick any 5 for $15 per person. That’s it. No predetermined flights, no themed tastings forced on you. If you want all whites, all reds, or three rosés and two ice wines, that’s your call.

This is one of the better tasting formats on the Finger Lakes. Most wineries on Cayuga still do a fixed flight of 4 to 6 wines they choose for you, which is fine but takes the guesswork out of guesswork. Sheldrake’s “pick five” is generous, particularly because they pour real two-ounce samples and the staff doesn’t rush you. On a busy Saturday you might wait 15 minutes for a bar spot, but once you’re in, nobody’s checking the clock.

The previous reviews on the trail mention a “Riesling flight” or a “Reserve flight” at different prices. Those packaged flights are gone under the new ownership. It’s $15, your choice of five wines, full stop. Wine Club members get free tastings.

For groups of 7 or more, you have to call the tasting room in advance (extension 110). They genuinely cannot accommodate buses or stretch limos. Sheldrake is one of the few Cayuga wineries that explicitly says no to bus tours and limos. If you’re booking a Finger Lakes wine tour bus, check that the operator routes around Sheldrake. Some do; some try to talk their way in and get turned away. Embarrassing.

What to Drink at Sheldrake Point

The full estate lineup. Riesling and Cab Franc are the workhorses, the dry rosé is the cult bottle, and the ice wines are the splurge. Don’t leave without trying at least one of the four.

I’ll spare you the marketing copy and tell you what’s actually worth your tasting slots, in the order I’d taste them.

Dry Riesling

This is what they do best, and it’s not even close. Sheldrake’s dry Riesling sits in the middle of the Finger Lakes Riesling spectrum: crisper than Hermann J. Wiemer’s Magdalena, less petrol-driven than Forge Cellars, with the green-apple-and-flint thing that Cayuga whites get from the shale-gravel-loam soils. If you’re new to Finger Lakes Riesling, start here. If you only have one tasting slot left and you want to remember the place, this is the one.

Riesling (off-dry, around 2.4% residual sugar)

Their off-dry Riesling is a notch sweeter than the Dry but well short of a real semi-dry. The 2.4% residual gives it a roundness that balances the acidity, which is the trick most cool-climate Rieslings struggle with. Pair with anything spicy. This is a Thai-takeout wine.

Dry Rosé

Sheldrake has produced a dry rosé every year since 1997 with two skipped vintages, and since 2009 it’s been 100% Cabernet Franc, made by the skin-contact method (12 to 18 hours of must contact, which gives it that pale-pink color). Production is now 2,500 to 3,000 cases a year, which makes it one of the most-distributed Finger Lakes rosés on the East Coast. It’s the first wine they bottle and release every year, usually in the dead of winter. Order it on the patio in late June and see if you don’t drink the bottle.

Cabernet Franc

The reason I send Riesling skeptics to Cayuga in the first place. Sheldrake’s Cab Franc has that classic Loire-meets-cool-climate profile: red fruit, a little bell pepper, fine tannins, and the kind of finish you’d associate with a $40 Chinon for $25. The 2010 vintage that American Winery Guide raved about was a great year, but they make a good Cab Franc almost annually. The Riesling and the Cab Franc are why this place wins awards. Everything else is supporting cast.

Wild Ferment Riesling

If you want to taste what Cayuga Riesling does when the winemaker basically gets out of the way (native yeasts, no acid corrections, no bench-trial sugar adjustments) this is your bottle. It’s funkier than the regular Riesling, with a slight cidery note some people love and others find weird. I love it. Order at the bar and decide for yourself; this is exactly the wine the friendly server should describe in detail before pouring.

Ice Wine

The Sheldrake ice wines won Best Wine at the 2015 Canberra International Riesling Challenge against nearly 500 wines from seven countries. This is not marketing fluff, it’s a real result. They make ice wine from both Riesling and Cabernet Franc grapes, picked by hand at 4am in sub-17-degree weather between November and February when the conditions allow. Some years they can’t make it at all. When they have it, taste it. A 2-ounce pour at the tasting bar will tell you why dessert wine deserves the respect it loses in the rest of the American wine industry.

The Beta Series

Sold only at the tasting room, the Beta Series is Dave Breeden’s experimental line. The most famous is the “Acid Head Riesling,” which started as a 2017 trial and became a cult bottle. Other Beta wines have included Riesling Bubbles (2020), Rosé of Merlot, and a Muscat Ottonel Bubbles (2023). If you see one of these on the list, take the slot. You can’t buy them anywhere else.

The Vintage Room: The $50 Tasting Almost Nobody Books

The Vintage Room. Cork floor, vaulted trellis ceiling that mimics the inside of a barrel, stained glass, stone masonry. Reservations only, and worth it.

This is the part of Sheldrake that gets buried in every other guide. Tucked into a converted 19th-century horse barn behind the main tasting room, the Vintage Room is where they pour from the library. Over 5,000 bottles dating back to 1997. The library exists because the original ownership decided in the late 1990s to hold back several cases of every wine they made, which is rare; most wineries can only afford to keep a single case or two of any given vintage. So Sheldrake has the deepest vertical of Cayuga Lake wines anywhere.

You book online. Tastings run Friday and Saturday, two seatings per day at 11:00 AM and 12:30 PM. It’s $50 per person, payable when you reserve. You’ll choose from a list of library wines and they’ll plate local cheeses to pair with what you pick. Maximum group size is 6. No one under 21, even with parents. Reservations are required and the room is intimate. There isn’t really a walk-in option.

If you’ve ever wanted to taste a 2003 Sheldrake Riesling against a 2018 Sheldrake Riesling and decide for yourself how Cayuga vinifera ages, this is the only tasting in the region that lets you do it side-by-side. For the price of a mediocre dinner in Ithaca, it’s the most interesting wine experience on the Cayuga Wine Trail. I’d skip a second winery that day to do this instead.

The Patio, the Lawn, the Lake

The lakefront patio. Order wine by the glass at the bar, walk it down the lawn, sit at the picnic tables six feet from the water. Bring a sweater after 6pm even in July.

What sets Sheldrake apart from any other west-side Cayuga winery is the geography of the property. After your tasting (or instead of one. wine by the glass and bottle is also available), you can walk a glass down the lawn to picnic tables that are basically on the water. The 400-foot pebble beach in front of the property is open, the patio has shade and umbrellas, and the entire setup is dog-friendly outdoors. There’s a treat jar at the bar.

The Point of Flavor Bistro, run out of the Garden Room, is open Wednesday through Sunday, walk-ins only. The menu changes seasonally and the kitchen closes 15 minutes before the tasting room. They have a dinner menu Friday through Sunday from 4pm to 8pm. On days the kitchen is closed, they sell local cheeses, charcuterie, and chips so you can graze on the patio with a bottle. Per ADA and NY state law, only task-trained service dogs are allowed in the bistro itself, but pet dogs are welcome on the lawn and at the standing bars outside.

If you arrive by boat (and people do) you tie up at one of eight slips at the F-shaped dock just south of the point. Up to 35 feet in length. Depth at the slips is 5 feet. The dock GPS coordinates are on Sheldrake’s site if you’re looking on Navionics: N42° 39.8442′, W76° 41.9354′, accuracy plus or minus 10 feet. From the slips you walk a gravel path along the beach and across the road to the tasting room.

The dock. Eight slips, 35-foot maximum, five feet of depth. If you have a boat on Cayuga, this is the only winery you can pull up to and walk in.

When to Visit

Sheldrake’s official hours are Monday through Thursday 11am to 5pm, and Friday through Sunday 11am to 8pm. The bistro stops seating 15 minutes before close.

I’ve been on a quiet Tuesday in October and on a heaving Saturday in July, and the experience is genuinely different.

The window most people miss is mid-week in May and early June. The weather’s stable, the leaves are out, the lake’s warmed up enough to sit by, and the place has maybe 10 visitors all afternoon instead of 200. If you can swing a Tuesday or Wednesday visit, the staff has time to talk through the wines properly, and the patio feels like a private estate.

Saturdays in summer are crowded. Crowded means a 10-to-15-minute wait at the bar, the Bistro is on a longer hold, and the lawn fills up by 1pm. It’s not bad. The property absorbs people well. But if you wanted “intimate,” book a Tuesday.

October is busy in a different way: leaf-peepers up from the city, wine club members coming for the harvest pickups, and the road north of Ithaca on Route 89 turning into a slow parade of out-of-state plates. Beautiful, worth doing once, but plan for the drive to take longer than Google says. Look at this aerial of Route 96A between Lodi and Interlaken in October. That’s the same energy 89 has on the west side that month.

The ridge between Seneca and Cayuga, near where Route 96A connects them. Fall is when the wine trails go from sleepy to slow-traffic; expect 30-minute drives to take 45.

Winter is quieter than people expect. The Vintage Room runs through the cold months, the Bistro stays open most days (kitchen-closed dates posted on the site), and you can get a fireplace seat to taste through Rieslings while the lake outside looks like a black mirror. The ice wine harvest, when conditions cooperate, happens between November and February.

How to Combine Sheldrake With the Rest of the West Side

Sheldrake is not a “spend the whole day here” winery in the way that Wagner Vineyards on Seneca’s east shore can be. It’s a one-and-done stop with food, plus the lawn for hanging out. The right move is to make it the centerpiece of a 3-stop west-side day.

Going north to south on Route 89, the Cayuga west-side cluster I’d build around Sheldrake looks like this:

The vineyards along Cayuga’s west arm. Most of the wineries on this trail back the same lake-effect microclimate, but Sheldrake’s literal lakeside position is the only one with the patio touching the water.

• Hosmer Winery (north of Sheldrake, in Ovid). Hosmer’s Cabernet Franc is one of the best on the trail. Lower-key tasting room than Sheldrake’s, very serious about the wine. Worth a stop if you liked the Cab Franc at Sheldrake and want to taste the same grape from a vineyard half a mile north.
• Long Point Winery (south of Sheldrake, also Aurora-side reachable across the lake). The reds, particularly the Syrah, are the differentiator. Long Point feels less polished than Sheldrake but the wines reward the visit.
• Treleaven Wines / King Ferry Winery (further south, on the east side near King Ferry). If you’re game for a longer loop, cross the lake at the Cayuga-Seneca Canal at Seneca Falls and come down the east side. Treleaven’s Chardonnay is the underrated local pick.
• Lucas Vineyards (north end, near Interlaken). Lucas is the original west-side winery, the first one founded on Cayuga in 1980. Their Tuggboat reds are the workhorse if you want a comparison point against Sheldrake’s Cab Franc.

For a tighter day with no driving, the Cayuga Wine Trail guide breaks down the full loop. If you want to drink without driving, see the tour cards below or the Finger Lakes wine tour buses guide for operators that handle the shuttle work.

The Tour Options Worth Booking

Sheldrake explicitly doesn’t accept buses or stretch limos, but there are a few tour formats that visit Sheldrake and the surrounding west-side wineries without bringing 30 people through the door. These are the three I’d actually book.

The Practical Stuff Nobody Tells You

Ride-share doesn’t work out here. Uber and Lyft cover Ithaca and Geneva but coverage on Route 89 between them is patchy at best, especially in the evening. Sheldrake’s own visit page warns you: “if you are dropped off, please have a pick-up already scheduled.” If you came up from Ithaca and plan to drink, either book a private tour with a driver, hire a car service in advance, or get a designated driver. Calling for a Lyft from the patio at 5pm on a Sunday is how you end up sleeping in the lot.

Dogs. Welcome outdoors and at the standing bars on leash. Treats at the bar. Not allowed inside the bistro (only ADA service dogs).

Kids. Welcome on the lawn and in the bistro with parents, but not allowed in the Vintage Room. Patio runs to the water with no fence. Keep an eye on small swimmers.

Bathrooms. Inside the tasting room. Single-stalls, line moves fast even when busy.

Wheelchair access. The tasting room and bistro are on level grade. The path down to the lake is gravel and slightly sloped, manageable for most chairs but not pristine. The dock is a wood deck with one step.

Wine to take home. Pricing is fair: most bottles run $18 to $28, the dry rosé is around $20, the ice wine is $35 to $50 a half bottle. They ship to most US states except Utah, Mississippi, and Alabama. If you find something at the bar you love, buy a case before you leave; the wine club is also a good move if you’re going to be drinking Cayuga whites for the rest of the year.

The artisan gift shop. Worth five minutes. Local cheeses, salsas, peanut brittle, pickled garlic scapes, mustards, and the kind of Finger Lakes-made stuff that makes a real gift basket. Better selection than the average winery shop.

Where to Stay Nearby

If you’re making a weekend of it (which I’d recommend over a day trip from Ithaca), the practical bases are Trumansburg, Aurora, and Geneva. Trumansburg is the closest village to Sheldrake, about 12 miles south, with a walkable Main Street and a couple of B&Bs. Aurora across the lake has the Aurora Inn, which is the upscale lake-view choice. Geneva is the city option for upscale food and the full hotel range on Booking, including Geneva on the Lake (the Wyndham Grand version, which is the trail’s most polished property).

Trumansburg Main Street, the closest walkable village to Sheldrake. Twelve miles south on Route 96, with a couple of B&Bs and the Falls Tavern.

For the hotel-and-tour bundle approach, the Finger Lakes wine tour packages guide compares the operators that bundle a Sheldrake-or-equivalent west-side stop with Geneva or Watkins Glen accommodation. If you’d rather rent a lake house and hub from there, the packages guide covers that too. Camping is also a real option in this area, particularly at Cayuga Lake State Park near Seneca Falls or Taughannock Falls a few miles south of Sheldrake; the Finger Lakes camping guide has the breakdown of which campgrounds pair well with which wineries.

Sheldrake vs the Other Named Wineries on the Trail

You’re going to see Sheldrake compared to a half-dozen other “famous Finger Lakes wineries” online, and the comparisons are mostly bad. Quick read on where it actually sits:

• Versus Dr. Konstantin Frank (Keuka Lake, west arm). Frank is the historical heavyweight: longer Riesling track record, deeper Riesling bench, and the Rkatsiteli that nobody else in the US makes well. Sheldrake is the better lakefront experience and arguably the better Cab Franc.
• Versus Lamoreaux Landing (Seneca east). Lamoreaux is the modernist building with the killer deck, also serious about Cab Franc (the T23). Lamoreaux’s wines are slightly more expensive and the property feels more designed; Sheldrake feels more lived-in.
• Versus Hermann J. Wiemer (Seneca west). Wiemer is the wine geeks’ Riesling. Magdalena Vineyard is the closest thing to a single-vineyard German Riesling produced in the US. If you’re a Riesling obsessive, Wiemer ranks above Sheldrake on the strict wine-quality axis. If you want to drink wine outside on a beach, Sheldrake wins by a mile.
• Versus the rest of the Cayuga trail. Sheldrake is the property and the food. Hosmer is the better Cab Franc. Long Point is the underdog. Lucas is the historic stop. There is no single Cayuga winery that does everything Sheldrake does, which is why I keep sending people here first.

One More Thing: The Boats, the Beach, and the Long View

Cayuga Lake from the Bridgeport end near Seneca Falls. The west arm runs from here south to Ithaca, and Sheldrake sits roughly in the middle of that arm.

Half the appeal of Sheldrake, after the wine, is what the property gives you to do between sips. There’s a small pond out back the previous owners mentioned in their guide as “Thoreau-esque.” There’s the beach. There’s a winemaker who’ll happily talk to you about pH and residual sugar if you ask. There’s the kind of pace where it’s perfectly fine to spend two hours on the lawn with one bottle of Riesling and a cheese plate, watching boats pull up to the slips and people walk up wet from the water.

The ownership change is worth watching, but the bones of the place are right. The vineyards, the winemaker, the property, the patio. You can’t buy that combination on a different lake in this region. Forty-five minutes from a parking spot in Ithaca; ninety from Rochester; four hours from Manhattan if you’re disciplined about Saturday morning traffic. The lake is the reason. The wine is the bonus.

Dave Breeden has been the winemaker at Sheldrake since June 2002. Two chemistry degrees and two philosophy degrees. He’ll happily talk Plato or pH. Worth asking.

For more on planning a Cayuga visit, the Cayuga Wine Trail piece is the next read. For an Ithaca base with Sheldrake as one stop in a longer day, the Ithaca wine tours guide pairs the visit with the Cornell campus, Taughannock Falls, and the rest of the south-end attractions. And for the bigger picture, the Finger Lakes wine tours overview is the parent piece that ties all five lake trails together.