Conneaut Cellars Winery

Hours: Open Year Round

History

Conneaut Cellars Winery is distinguished for its award winning wines. The winery fashions itself after a turn-of-the-century winery and performs all of the winemaking operations at the 6,400 square foot winery. Tender loving care is applied to each process, from the grapes to the bottle. The grapes are gently squeezed by small bladder presses and then aged in stainless steel tanks, French oak barrels, and American oak barrels. The winery offers a broad spectrum of tastes from the farm wines of our grandparents (native American) through the more sophisticated French-American hybrids to the noble vinifera of world fame. Some wines are labeled using proprietary names to promote the local area. 

Conneaut Cellars Winery was founded by Dr. Alan Wolf in 1982. Dr. Wolf was exposed to winemaking when working for the US State Department in Germany in the 1950s, where he placed political refugees as winery workers.  Some of these émigrés were biochemists. Later, he learned basic winemaking by enrolling in courses at the University of Würzburg and the German Wine Institute at Geisenheim. During the 1960's Dr. Wolf experimented with more than 130 grape varieties for Cornell University and The Pennsylvania State University, as well as teaching basic winemaking courses at several colleges. During the next decade, he saved and planned for starting his own winery. After retiring from education in 1981, Dr. Wolf and his wife, Phyllis, established Conneaut Cellars Winery with the mission to make a memorable and distinctive wine that reflects the northeastern climate of Lake Erie - the Lake Erie Wine Appellation.