If Esther and John Earle designed a family crest, it would depict a grapevine entwined around a beehive.

With grapes and honey as their crops of choice, the Earles make wine at Torrey Ridge in Penn Yan, Yates County, and mead at Earle Estates next door.

Either beverage might not have figured into the couple’s livelihood at all if they had missed the opportunity to befriend scientist Bob Kime.

As an employee at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, Ontario County, until his death in 2002, Kime spent much of his career studying how to improve the taste and appearance of mead, or honey wine. The Earles got to know him in the early 1980s, when they donated orange blossom honey from their bee colonies for his experiments.

The Earles expected nothing in return except a few bottles of the resulting mead, which they eventually sent to Ithaca liquor stores to gauge its commercial appeal. Buoyed by the public’s interest, the couple opened Earle Estates, their very own meadery, in 1993. Six years later, the couple began making grape and fruit wine at Torrey Ridge.

In the two-storey tasting room accented by brass chandeliers, cathedral ceilings and blond wood, the staff pours Torrey Ridge and Earle Estate products.

“One’s just as good as all the rest,” said Esther. “We’re proud of them all so we don’t have a showcase wine.” The couple has owned the winery since 1999.

— Sheila Livadas, for FingerLakesWine.com

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Not wheelchair accessible.