Element Winery

*SOLD OUT* Join us for a 6-course Surf & Turf pairing dinner featuring a curated wine selection from Master Sommelier and Winemaker Christopher Bates of Element Winery! Featuring cellared wines from past vintages – 🗓️Wednesday, May 6th $125 per person + tax & gratuity Bar opens @ 5pm Dinner @ 6:30pm For reservations call 5852713470 or email [email protected]

We’ ve partnered with Restaurant Lento to bring you an exclusive evening of exceptional cuisine and rare, cellared wines on Wednesday, May 6th at 6:30 pm! Join us for a 6-course Surf & Turf pairing dinner featuring a curated wine selection from Master Sommelier and Winemaker Christopher Bates, of Element Winery! Featuring cellared wines from past vintages, this is an experience designed for those who truly appreciate great food and wine. To make a reservation, please call or email the restaurant. See you there!🥂

Hey folks—thinking about building or continuing a career in wine, hospitality, or cooking? Maybe it’s time for a change. Curious about wine beyond the glass—how it’s grown, how it’s made? Or what it looks like to serve some of the best wines in the world, five nights a week, to some of the best guests in the business? For those on the cooking side: interested in joining a team where food and wine come together as something greater than the sum of their parts? The Finger Lakes has all of that—and more. At @flxtable @elementwines @inourelementwines @colloquialwines , we’re looking for engaged, enthusiastic, and genuinely hospitable people to join the team. Kindness, self-motivation, and accountability matter most. Experience helps—but for the right person, it’s negotiable. If you’re interested, send a DM to @sommelierbates and we’ll point you in the right direction. Positions are available immediately, both seasonal and long-term. If you’ve got a passion for wine and hospitality, we’d love to help you build something with it.

We’re beyond proud to share that in the 2026 Guide to the Finger Lakes, Element Winery has once again been named a Top Winery! Even more thrilling, our 2017 Seneca Lake Equilibrium Wine Farm Cabernet Franc received Top Wine recognition by Laura Winter Falk, Certified Sommelier, wine educator, and founder of “Experience! The Finger Lakes”. A wine from 25-year-old vines, aged 18 months in neutral oak, and grown on a site we believe in with everything we have. The patience in the cellar and all the hard work our team and our Sommelier, Christopher Bates, puts into the land and each grape is what leads us to this moment. Thanks to everyone who believes in the Finger Lakes as deeply as we do. The world deserves to know how great this place is. 🍷✨ And if you want to try our wines too, feel free to look around our website! Or visit us at our Element Wine Tasting Room on 18 Linden Street, Geneva! #ElementWinery #FingerLakesWine #CabernetFranc #SenecaLake #CoolClimateWine

PSA folks: we are looking for a few outstanding beverage professional (current and future) to join our teams. As we gear up for another season, and maybe a new project, we are looking for a few folks who are looking for a new challenge for @flxtable @elementwines @colloquialwines and equilibrium wine farm. I’m gonna be honest though, this isn’t for the light of heart. Experience is important, but, vision, drive, heart, passion, obsession, and self accountability are far more important. We are looking for dreamers, but, specifically, for those who are then willing to put in the hard work, overcome the obstacles, and simply do the grind to make them come true. I’m not gonna spin a tale about how our expectations or the perfect work life balance. We are looking for the next generation of game changers to join our team, so, if you are ready to commit to the craft and take the next step, we want to hear from you! We are looking for a broad range of positions, some of which can be combined: vineyard and/or winemaking apprentice, sommelier, tasting room guru, etc. If you are, or want to be, a beverage professional and are looking for a team that expects excellence, holler at us. You can email resumes to info @ flxhospitality . Com or dm. A passion for hip hop isn’t required, but, is a plus…

🍷偶然重なった日程でNYワインが新年の宴に参戦^^🍷 2026.01.25 NYワインのインポーターをしている友人夫婦とNYワインのワイナリーオーナー夫妻 @gotowine.kyodo が鹿児島に来ることになった日程が新年の宴と重なり、それじゃワインも紹介しようってことで、マスターソムリエでもある @elementwines オーナーのクリストファーベイツさん自ら、彼の作るピノノワールとブレンディッドワインを振る舞って説明もしてくれ、宴をますます楽しくしてくださいました。（24日にご参加くださった皆様、ごめんなさい😂） このピノノワールとかぶら蒸しの出汁が最高に合う！と。 夜は、カウンターで郷土料理を楽しんでもらって。 人のご縁と偶然のタイミングで、鹿児島の食と芸とNYワインとの融合が✨ 図らずもこのような機会に恵まれることは本当にありがたいことです。 全てに心から感謝しています。 @koito_sumiyoshi @yukiko_sanei

@elementwines first Gewurztraminer in nearly 10 years is hitting the bottle this morning! While Gewurztraminer is far from my favorite grape, it is an important part of the finger lakes landscape, and so we always have had an interest in seeing what we could do with it…and the results are beyond expectation. Wildly aromatic and expressive, this wine has great weight and texture, but, a little phenolic bitterness keeps it in check from being heavy. This will need some time in bottle before release, but, once this emerges from its slumber, don’t sleep on it. Our wines have changed a lot of the years, hopefully for the better. I can’t wait to share these new bottlings with you!

It’s always a with a mix of emotions that I enter this stage of the year. Sometimes it happens sooner, sometimes it happens later, but at some point, I have to make real concrete decisions about what each one of these tanks and barrels is going to actually become. I don’t tend to follow anybody else’s schedule, so sometimes my wines are bottled earlier, sometimes later, but the deciding factor is the wines themselves. So, while I taste throughout the year following the vintage, I find it always takes our wines time to begin to express their true personalities, and while I could force those decisions earlier on, I just continue to feel that I would be under informed if I did so. If you know me, you probably know that I’m a fan of big bold bombastic and often times binary statements. I think that leads folks to sometimes thinking that my decision-making is a fast bold process as well. But if you really know me, you might also know that I’m riddled with self-doubt and insecurity, and that I question every decision I make, over and over and over until I’ve analyzed it from every possible angle. Then, I typically I go back to the drawing board because i’ve punched so many holes in that decision that it no longer holds water. So blending can be a great pleasure, and an incredible stress reliever to know that these wines are hopefully going to end up in bottle soon. Meaning offmy to do list, safe and secure and tucked away to continue the development in a protected environment. But at the same time, this process is full of long days of blending, only to return the next day and throw it all out and start again… What you see in front of you is a surprisingly diverse range of (allegedly) white wines produced from the 2024 vintage which I am working to piece together into our bottlings for @elementwines and @inourelementwines . Particularly, these are components I’ve selected for the 2024 Can’t Stop/Won’t Stop, which (may) include: Riesling, Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, Gruner…and…that’s probably enough. The 2022 version is currently up on the website, and ready to ship for t-day!

Feeling good about this… I’ve been working on the blend for the 2024 can’t stop/won’t stop white this week, and just revisited the first version of this cuvée to inform that process. The 2022 was roughly equal parts Chardonnay and Riesling (atypical I know, but, representative of place, as these are the two most planted white grapes in the finger lakes), and shows a fun mix of oxidative and reductive qualities that push and pull against each other. But, ultimately, my goal has been simple, to create a blend that represents our region, so, to that end, in 2024 we will be adding a number of new grapes, including gruner, Pinot Gris and gewurzt. While the 2024s are still some time out, the 2022’s are available on our website now, and shippable@in time for thanksgiving!

Want to join us for dinner in a place like this? Read on to learn how! Finally, a picture of something other than botrytis! (Though, if you look closely, you’ll realize that this is just a photo I took while I was out searching for more botrytis…) That being said, we’re gonna take a break from our regularly scheduled photos of “rotten” grapes, and switch directions for a moment. It’s wine club and new release season! Since I’ve finally been able to make a little more wine in the last two years, I am able to open a few more spots in our wine clubs for 2026. If you are currently on the waiting list, you should have received your link to sign up last week, and all others are first come first serve, and the spots are live now. So, what’s with the @elementwines wine clubs? Simple. Sign up for one of the three club options, and you will be on the short list of folks who receive a box of joy twice a year (spring and fall), with either 3, 6 or 12 bottles of my favorite new releases, and occasionally, something special from my cellar…and yes, we can ship to most states. Additionally, club members get an extra discount on their orders, VIP treatment at our tasting rooms, and maybe most fun, invites to our members only club events (cellar tastings, vineyard tours, theme tastings, etc). Club events, I’m sure you’ve been to them…now, let us racket it up a few notches. Think dinner in vines, tasting through the wines that came from that site, ducks slowly grilling over the trimmings of those vines… the subtle beats of Guru floating in wind, and suddenly, a 15 year vertical of @elementwines syrah appears for the duck. And of course, as the night progresses, there are likely to be cigars, mezcal, and a few more cellar treats. So, if you’ve ever been curious about our wines, now is a great time to sign up. I can even get you our recent fall release out before the weather gets too cold (2022 element Riesling, 2019 element Chardonnay equilibrium wine farm and 2021 element Merlot equilibrium wine farm). Now is the time to join the “coolest” wine club in America! Link in bio!

Sweet wines for sweet people. So, this is my life now…convincing you all now that you REALLY do want to be drinking more sweet wine well in advance of @elementwines inevitable release of a whirlwind of single vineyard botritys affected bottlings of finger lakes Riesling (though…watch out for the occasional gewurztraminer and gruner in there as well…), ranging from gently off dry to lusciously decadent…So, just remember, while you might not know it yet, you’ve been silently asking for these wines for years now…really, I’m just doing this for you. But, to be serious for a second, this is a good image of what we’ve been obsessing about…botrytis influenced Riesling clusters. Ugly on the outside, sweet and tasty on the inside (I’ve been called worse). Yes, that is mold, and yes, it’s edible…In fact, we eat these berries just like this all the time. But, it’s not actually the mold we want, it’s the wholes that their myiciluim poke into the skins, allowing water to evaporate but leaving behind the sugars, acids and flavors. So, this mold is just rupturing the skin enough to allow the grapes to dry…but, in the process, it also contributes its own flavors: saffron, ginger, honey, beeswax, and new to me this year (I’ve eaten a lot of these berries this year, and begun to notice that just as the botrytis sets in, while still plump, that this particular flavor appears briefly), candied pineapple. I’ve yet to achieve it, but, I hope to someday pick only those berries and capture that particular flavor in a bottle…but, alas, maybe next year. So, this cluster in particular, would give a few options. Taken as a whole, this would likely press out around 40 brix (40% sugar). But, a little snip snip with the clip, cutting off the bottom half and separating these two, the top might be closer to 50 brix, while to bottom would give closer to 30 brix. Needless to say, it’s a lot of work, a lot of time (labor$$$) and a lot of skill. Our team has really been rockstars in this project, and without them, this certainly wouldn’t have been possible. So, remember, you are dying for these wines…you NEED them…you can’t wait to drink them. But, first, I need to figure out how to filter.

Want to make your sommelier want to go (secretly) bang their head off the wall in wall (it’s a thing…)? Well, here is the fastest way…say something like “I don’t drink sweet wine”, as you ask for recommendations on the wine list while sipping soda/sweettea/lemonaid/aperolspritz/redbull/notoriouslysweetcalireds… sure bet, someone will be screaming in the walk-in. So, here’s my PSA: sweet wines are delicious, and incredibly sophisticated…so, don’t shy away, lean in. And, understand sweetness in wine isn’t binary, it’s a spectrum, from a gentle, balancing fruitiness to an exhilarating off dry beauty to a ripe elegantly chilling joy to a full on densely decadent expression…remember what science tells us…sweetness = joyness. So, stop denying yourself joy, and start living a little… sweet wines are for pros. Be a pro. And, yeah, clearly we only make stupid sweet wines these days @elementwines so, start prepping your palate, cause it’s about to get real serious… Drink your dessert. Sweetness = godliness. “Off dry” is the same as “on joy”. For real though…please drop the bravado. We (humans) love sweetness. But, the world has created stereotypes about sweetness in wine, and it’s a shame. A sweet wine is the perfect way to end (and, scientifically, start) any meal, and instead of a heavy dessert, a vibrant sweet wine leaves you feeling fresh and ready for fun!