Silver Thread Vineyard
Seneca Lake Winemakers · A Hoadley Family Profile
The gravel drive at Silver Thread climbs a short rise off Caywood Road and opens to a small wooden tasting room, a few rows of vines falling off toward the lake below, and — on most days — the kind of silence that makes you understand why someone would choose to farm this particular parcel rather than a bigger one. There is no second parking lot. There is no event pavilion. The tasting room is perhaps the smallest of any serious producer on the east shore, and that is, transparently, the point. Silver Thread is a winery that has, more than once, declined to get bigger, and the wines are what they are because of that decision.
Richard Figiel planted the site in 1982, in an era when the east-shore Riesling revival was still a prediction rather than a fact. He was among the first on this shore to identify the particular east-facing slope above Lodi — steep, shallow-soiled, gravel-and-shale mix, catching afternoon sun through the row openings — as a Riesling site worth taking seriously. For nearly three decades he made wine there the way a vigneron of his generation tended to: small batches, low intervention, trust the site. He wrote about the Finger Lakes for the regional press. He became, in quiet ways, one of the founding farmer-writers of the modern east-shore trail.
In 2011 Figiel sold the operation to Shannon and Paul Brock, a younger couple who had spent years working in small-production Finger Lakes wineries and who bought Silver Thread on the understanding that the thing they were buying was the philosophy, not just the acreage. The transition ran smoothly in a region where winery successions don't always. Under the Brocks, Silver Thread has become more itself — certified organic in vineyard management, biodynamic in practice where the calendar allows, minimal intervention in the cellar, solar-powered operationally. Shannon Brock handles the winemaking. Paul runs the vineyard side. The two of them are the full-time staff for most of the year, pulling in part-time help during harvest and tasting-room peak.
The certified-organic distinction matters more than it sounds like it might. In a climate as damp as the Finger Lakes — humid summers, heavy dew, pressure from powdery mildew and downy mildew in nearly every vintage — organic viticulture is not the default choice. It is not a minor adjustment to a conventional program. It is a serious commitment to a smaller, more labor-intensive way of farming, and the number of Finger Lakes wineries that carry the certification is small. Silver Thread is one of them, and the wines read as you would expect wines from honest organic farming to read: more savory, more saline, more shaped by the site than by cellar correction.
The dry Riesling is the place to start. It is the house wine and the most accessible expression of the approach — fermented dry, aged on fine lees, bottled with minimal manipulation. What it gives you is a Riesling that sits squarely in the Alsace-adjacent register the east shore does well: wet stone, a hint of savory herb, a long finish that tastes almost of the pine stand you drove past to get there. Drunk young, it is tight but generous. Drunk three or four years in, it opens. It is priced, currently, as a mid-tier regional bottle, and it is the best value argument for the organic approach we can make.
The single-vineyard and block-specific bottlings — the Blackbird is the best known — are where the site-specific work shows up most clearly. Blackbird is from a designated row on the estate that produces slightly more concentrated, slightly more structured Riesling than the house blend. In the cooler vintages it reads almost Grand Cru Alsace — broader, waxier, longer on the palate. In warmer years it shows more stone fruit. Either way, it is the Riesling we pour at home when somebody asks what organic Finger Lakes farming actually tastes like. The answer is not abstract. It is in this bottle.
Beyond Riesling, Silver Thread makes a Chardonnay, a Gewürztraminer in suitable years, a cool-climate red blend called Good Earth Red, and a handful of seasonal or library releases. The Good Earth Red is worth mentioning on its own: a blend of the cool-climate reds the east shore actually does well — Cabernet Franc, Blaufränkisch (Lemberger), and whatever else the vintage provides — made in a restrained, food-oriented style that rewards being drunk slightly cooler than you'd expect. It is not a wine designed to impress at a tasting. It is a wine designed to go with dinner, and it succeeds at that in a way that most Finger Lakes reds do not.
What Silver Thread has chosen not to do is, in a way, the most telling part of the story. They have not built a wedding venue. They have not installed a glass-walled tasting pavilion with a dramatic pour bar. They have not expanded into a 20,000-case operation. They have not diversified into sweet blends, branded merchandise, or a clever second label. They have, instead, stayed small — production measured in a few thousand cases a year — and stayed oriented toward the wine. This is a choice. It costs them volume. In a region where the economic pressure is relentlessly toward scale, it is a philosophical statement.
The tasting-room experience reflects all of this. The Brocks or a staff member of one to two others will pour you a flight of five or six wines, usually seated if the porch is open and the weather cooperates. The staff know the vineyard rows by name. The pours are honest. There is no charcuterie upsell, no event package, no velvet rope between tiers of tasting. If you want to ask about the biodynamic calendar or what the cover crop is doing that year, they will talk to you about it, and it will not feel like marketing. If you want to buy a case and leave, they will let you do that too.
We send guests here because the wines are excellent, yes, but also because the place is the answer to a question that comes up over dinner more often than you'd think: what does conviction look like in a region dominated by commercial expansion? At Silver Thread, conviction looks like a couple running a small organic farm on a steep east-facing slope, making wines that could be priced higher than they are, refusing to build the event center that would double their revenue. This is rare. It is becoming rarer. The fact that it exists at all on Seneca Lake is one of the quiet reasons the east shore is worth spending a weekend on.
A short note for repeat visitors. The library pours are generous here, and the back vintages of the Blackbird and the dry Riesling are currently some of the best-value aged Rieslings available at the cellar door anywhere in the region. Ask. If they have bottles open, you will taste something that reframes what you thought cool-climate Riesling does with time.
Silver Thread is the winery we send guests to when they've already done Wiemer and Forge and want the third stop on an east-shore day that will tell them something the first two didn't. What it tells them is that the Finger Lakes is not just one story, and that the most interesting producers on this lake are the ones who have decided — actively, in the face of easier alternatives — to stay small and get it right.
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What we tell our guests to order. The Dry Riesling as the baseline — it is the honest introduction to the house approach. The Blackbird Riesling to hear what site-specific Riesling from certified-organic farming actually sounds like. And the Good Earth Red to remind yourself that the east shore can make a dinner-table red if the producer takes it seriously.
How to plan the visit. Small tasting room, limited hours — check the current schedule before you drive. Reservations are recommended in summer, particularly if you want the porch. The drive is five minutes off Route 414 on Caywood Road; easy to combine with a stop at Wiemer to the north or Boundary Breaks to the south for a full east-shore morning.