France, Italy, California, and Australia are well-known wine regions. Pennsylvania, alas, doesn’t crack the top 50 for most people.
But don’t count out local wineries. Pennsylvania has a winemaking tradition that dates to the late 1600s, when William Penn himself established a vineyard in Philadelphia, as documented by the Pennsylvania Wine Association. Today, the state has more than 14,000 acres of vineyards, with five designated American Viticultural Areas. One of those areas is Lake Erie, the second-largest grape growing region outside of California.
Many Western Pennsylvania wineries source their grapes or juice from the Lake Erie region. The cold-weather terroir of Erie is especially hospitable to hardier grape varietals, including Concord and Niagara, that tend to produce sweeter wines.
Western Pennsylvania wineries are experimental and ambitious, offering wines that range from complex dry varieties to sippable sweets to juicy fruit bombs.
These wineries don’t just make their goods locally — their libations are the literal fruit of Pennsylvania’s soil.
A selection of Wooden Door wines, shown in the winery’s Vandergrift location. (Joyce Hanz | TribLive)
Jeff Pollick, owner and founder of Wooden Door Winery, started out making wine with a kit he received as a gift and watched a business bloom from there. A teacher for 21 years, he stepped down from the profession to do the winery full time.
Since 2010, he’s been producing wines from juice he purchases mostly from Erie with a little from southern New York. The Vandegrift winery is located in a well-restored former church, which also serves as an event space. The wine bar offers a menu of flatbreads and other light fare. “We make the wine on the premises and we make hard cider, too,” Pollick said.
There are seven tanks on-site at Wooden Door Winery. Pollick starts gearing up for new batches of grapey goodness every autumn.
At present, Pollick offers about 20 different wines, ranging from crisp whites to flavorful reds. He enjoys making unique blends from different varietals. But there is one factor that determines success in Western Pennsylvania: “I’ve always said, in the 15 years of being in business, sweet wines, in this area, pay the bills. They keep the lights on.”
But their most popular bottle is actually a blush wine called Door Knocker. “It’s a blend of Concord and Niagara, 50/50,” he said. “It has been our staple probably since the very first year.”
Wooden Door Winery: 101 Custer Ave., Vandergrift, 724-889-7244, woodendoorwinery.com
Wine candles sold by Bella Terra Vineyard and a bottle of cuvée at Bella Terra Winery in Hunker. (Shane Dunlap | TribLive)
Leveraging his past experience in horticulture, Jay Bell decided to start growing grapes in 2011. Now, his Bella Terra Vineyards winery has two locations, one in Bedford and the original in Hunker.
“I enjoyed vineyards in particular and I said, ‘Let’s plan a vineyard, I think that would be a fun concept to manage,’ ” Bell said.
He and his wife grow a variety of grapes on site, pulling a few other types from North East to round out their repertoire. And they have a vast repertoire.
“I would love to have like 10 options or less, but I can never seem to get a wine list under 20,” Bell said. “People love it, and you always want to try something new, but no one ever wants to get rid of any.”
Both locations of Bella Terra have a bistro menu of sandwiches, flatbreads and salads, with more offerings for Sunday brunch.
Their top-selling wine is the Sweet Finley, a rosé made from Concord and Niagara grapes. But they have everything from a dry sparkling Blanc de Blanc to reds such as Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc.
Bella Terra Vineyards: 121 Sunny Lane, Hunker, 724-635-3658, bellaterravineyards.com; 113 S. Richard St., Bedford, 814-623-1051, bellaterrabedford.com
A white from La Vigneta Winery. (Joyce Hanz | TribLive)
Francesca Howden has watched her Sicilian father make wine her entire life, mostly sticking to more traditional Italian dry red varietals like Sangiovese.
Back in 2011, Howden teamed up with her father and her husband to start La Vigneta Winery. That first year, they only made 120 gallons of wine. Last year, they made 60,000 bottles.
“We started out making three styles of wine, and now we make 24 styles,” Howden said. “We’ve grown. It’s taken time and we’re finally in a place where we can call home.”
While La Vigneta sources grapes and juice from around the world, they source a lot of it from Mobilia Fruit Farms in North East, Pa. “They’ve been around for over 100 years and they’re great people,” Howden said.
In 2024, they bought a 16-acre property in Winfield in southern Butler County. After spending most of 2025 renovating its buildings, they opened their new production building a few months ago, along with a full-service restaurant helmed by Chef Dylan Cruz.
Much like other vintners in the area, Howden discovered that Western Pennsylvania has a sweet tooth when it comes to their wine. Their most popular sweet wine is a fruit wine made with Niagara grapes, peaches and blackberries called Peachberry.
“We make award-winning sweet wines and fruit wines, and a lot of people do seek those unique fruit flavors and the blends. So we come up with different combinations of fruit and they’re really well-received,” Howden said.
La Vigneta Winery: 352 North Pike Road, Winfield, 724-524-1703, lavignetawinery.com
A selection from Bushy Run Winery in Harrison City. (TribLive)
This Harrison City winery owned by Bill Gourdie and his wife, Karen, has been bottling wines of many varieties since 2013. Going from hobbyists to business owners, the Gourdies sell about 3,500 cases of wine a year at farmer’s markets, festivals and a dozen Giant Eagle locations.
While they sell a plentiful range of wines, their best seller is a sweet fruit wine called Lemon Kiss. “We’re the first winery in Pennsylvania to come out with an all-lemon wine,” Bill Gourdie said. “There’s no grape in it, it’s only fermented lemons. It’s like a light limoncello.”
They partner with a number of farms near Erie to get the best quality Pennsylvania grapes, and sing the praises of new hybrids that are being engineered by Cornell University. While they do source some grapes and juice from other areas, they try to keep it in the state as much as possible.
They keep it close to home with their fruit wines, too. “We have some of our farmers who will actually come to us with their overripe fruit that they can’t sell. … It helps the farmers out, they’re not wasting their produce. We barter back and forth with them with some wine — kind of the fruits of their labor, fermented and in a bottle.”
Speaking of keeping it in the state, you can do something extra sweet when you buy your sweetheart a bottle — contribute to the preservation of local history. The Bushy Run Battlefield, the historical site of the 1763 battle between British troops and Native Americans, is located near Harrison City in Penn Township. Nine bottles from the winery are themed after the battlefield. “When we sell those bottles, we do donate a dollar a bottle back to the battlefield,” Gourdie said.
Thanks to wines such as Battlefield Blush and General Braddock, the winery has donated more than $30,000.
Bushy Run Winery: bushyrunwinery.com. Call 412-952-1774 to arrange curbside pickup in Harrison City.
A selection from Courtyard Winery. (Courtesy of Courtyard Winery)
Courtyard Winery was established in North East, a town just east of Erie, to utilize the delicious Lake Erie grapes found nearby. It also has a location in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.
Justin Ortel, vice president of new business at Courtyard Winery, said that while they produce a wide spread of wines, their focus is on local. “Everything that we produce here is grown within five miles of the winery,” he said.
Courtyard Winery was founded by Randy and Laura Graham about 16 years ago. The couple met in California and fell in love with that state’s wine country before moving back east. “They moved to the North East area, in the middle of 10,000 acres of grapes,” Ortel said.
While their offerings do include crowd-pleasers, including plenty of sweeter wines, they also experiment with lesser-known grape varietals. “We like to look at a similar latitude line and really go after that,” he said.
One of these unusual picks is the Saperavi grape, originating in the country of Georgia and producing a full-bodied, tannic red wine.
Ortel said their most popular wine is Twisted Red, a sweet and bold red wine. On the dry side, Captain’s White and Captain’s Red are also big sellers.
Courtyard Winery: 108 19th St., Strip District, 412-408-3237; 10021 West Main Road, North East, 814-725-0236, courtyardwinery.com
