Family news first. 2025 was another year in which I feel blessed to share that Pam & I, and all our extended family have been blessed with good health. Sure, us being in our 70’s means a few more creaks and groans, and minor doctor’s visits. But we are healthy and able to enjoy family and friends.

We continue to greatly enjoy daughter Adele and family living right next door to us, and thus being able to see Adele, Nate and grand kids Peter, Lydia and George quite often. Attending their sports events and concerts are great joys! Sons Noah, Josh and Dan are all no more than an hour’s drive away, so we see them often. And with Nate and Noah working full time for the vineyard/wine tasting room, and Adele and Katie part time in the tasting room, we simply see each other a lot.  Around July, Pam & I decided to start attending Interlaken Baptist Church with Nate, Adele & family. It is a great blessing to attend church with one’s ‘kids’ and grandkids.

For those not inclined to slog thru what always becomes a longer update than expected, here’s the synopsis of significant events, with more detail below:

• Pam & I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary this year. Dan, Adele, Nate, Josh, Noah and Katie spent varying amounts of time with us over a few days at the cottage and out for meals and excursions to area parks.

• As an anniversary time away, in June Pam & Fred went to the Cincinnati area to visit the Ark Encounter (recreation of Noah’s ark) and the Creation Museum. While in that area, we were able to visit with our friends Tom & Kathy Greene.

• We greatly enjoyed attending our grand-kid’s volleyball and basketball games. This fall all 3 are playing on basketball teams at Finger Lakes Christian School, who allow home-schooled kids to play on the school’s teams, if they take one class during the school year.

• As part of exploring hosting a ‘helicopter rides event’ at the vineyard (probably won’t happen – insurance issues), a helicopter landed on the grass runway in front of our house.  Just a cool thing!

• We hosted a wedding, at the vineyard, for a friend of Nate & Adele’s.

• In May we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first vineyard plantings (May 21, 2015). In 10 years we’ve grown to 21 acres of 8 varieties of vinifera grapes (basically, traditional European grapes used for ‘premium’ wines). It was a very good year, in both quality and quantity, for growing grapes for wines, with great expectations for the forthcoming wines. However, demand for the portion of grapes we sell to other wineries was down, meaning more for us … and an upcoming plethora of Airy Acres wine in 2026.

• As I write this, Pam and I are looking forward to leaving Dec. 29 for a cruise starting in Rome, going to Naples, Sicily, Crete, Ephesus and Athens (returning Jan. 8).

Dan continues living in Honeoye Falls, as a self-employed computer consultant. He services individuals, small businesses (including our business website), and some local government offices. He’s active in his church, Calvary Chapel Southside. As Honeoye Falls is about 1 hr. drive away, we see him often – he and son Joshua often drive down together.

Adele continues home schooling Peter (now 18), Lydia (16, thus driving) and George (14). Peter has a couple part-time jobs, enjoys watching NFL and NBA as he ponders post high school options. Lydia continues harp lessons, accompanying the praise singers at church, sometimes also with Adele. She works part-time at the Driftwood Inn on Cayuga Lake.  George has developed an interest in wood working. He & Nate bought a small laser device that cuts patterns in wood on some coasters and cutting boards that we sell in the tasting room. George still enjoys playing the piano. Nate of course continues as the Vineyard Manager, producing our grapes that make great wine. And he continues various upgrades on their home.

Next is son Joshua. He continues teaching 8th grade math at School of the Arts in Rochester. It’s part of the Rochester public school system, with special  programs for music, drama and fine arts.  He continues to sing in various Rochester area choirs. And continues his 2 hour classical music program on WXXI radio from 1-3PM on Sundays.

Noah & Katie celebrated their 1st wedding anniversary in June.  He works full time for Airy Acres as the Tasting Room manager and more. With Adele & Katie’s help staffing the tasting room, he’s able to reach out to area stores and restaurants to carry our wines. Katie also works part time giving horse riding lessons at a facility in Webster. Also she worked some this fall at Buttonwood Winery, learning quite a bit about wine making.

Pam and Fred remain involved in much the same activities. Fred, with the project to renovate the 1840’s farm house into the Airy Acres tasting room finished, and Nate and Noah taking care of the vineyard and tasting room, now focuses mostly on the ‘behind the scenes’ stuff for the business. Such as making sure the money comes and goes to the right places at the right time, doing the payroll, completing the seemingly never ending reports and payments to NYS, IRS, TTB and more.  He serves on the board for a Christian NYS lobbying organization (and more), New York Families, who seeks to influence NY legislators and legislation from a Christian perspective.  In September he started mentoring a Cornell senior living at the Chesterton House, a Christian residence adjacent to the Cornell campus. They meet 1:1 every other week.

Pam continues as Teaching Director of the Between the Lakes Community Bible Study class. It has about 50 participants from about 10 area churches engaged in both in-person and Zoom discussion groups. Pam provides overall leadership for the class. This year’s 30 week study is Psalms. Fred and Pam facilitate a co-ed discussion group, and he helps with computer/tech support and as the class treasurer. She’s also joined the praise singing team at the Interlaken Baptist Church.

Now, the vineyard and wine business update.

With the new tasting room now open for over a year, we continue to focus on increasing wine sales to both ‘in person’ and web store sales, and to area stores and restaurants. Key to this is simply getting new customers to ‘find’ us, being located a bit ‘off the beaten path’, between 2 main roads. Noah’s been great using social media for this and we have ads in various publication relevant to the FLX ‘wine world’, a growing email list and ‘wine club’. Also, we were blessed by a great article in the ‘Life in the Finger Lakes’ magazine, and a wine blogger putting us on her ‘10 Best Finger Lakes Wineries‘ list.
If you like wine, stop by at Airy Acres (we love seeing friends, past and present).
We added solar panels to the vineyard barn roof, which should supply all our electric needs for years.
As in 2024, no new vine plantings in 2025 (or planned for 2026). For now, 21 acres with 8 varieties (Gewurztraminer, Riesling, Cab. Sauvignon, Cab. Franc, Lemberger, Chardonnay, Saperavi and Rkatsiteli) provide enough grapes for our wines (made solely from our grapes) and to also sell about half the harvest to other area wineries.
In 2025 we did release some new wines – Airport 6NY3 (port dessert style), and a white Lemberger ‘Blanc de Blau’. There will be a couple more new ones in 2026

A common question from customers is what does it take to create and operate a vineyard and wine business.  With Dan’s help, we created this webpage to depict some if it. All the pictures/videos come from our operations, except the very last one.

Also, anyone reading this who owns an RV and belongs to Harvest Host, we are a Harvest Host site. Another excuse to visit!

In closing, for us Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, and His subsequent years of earthly ministry culminating in His death, resurrection and return to heaven, from which He continues to share His love for us. Those receiving this update are a mixture of those who share in this joyful celebration and those who may not.  If you’re interested in learning more about Jesus, Pam (585-301-1812, pam@bassettes.com) or Fred (585-727-3328, fred@bassettes.com) would be honored to chat with you about any questions you might have. Perhaps Linus explained it well to Charlie Brown in 1965, a show that won a Peabody and Emmy for outstanding ‘children’s’ programming.

One of the joys of the tasting room is having friends and family, some of whom we’ve not seen in years, stop by to visit. We’d love to see you.

Blessings on you and yours,

Fred & Pam