Palaia Vineyards Sweet Clover Rd Highland Mills

Phone#:
(845) 928 - 5384

Fax#:
(845) 928-7683

Celebrate Your History!

Palaia Vineyards "Pa-Lie-Ahh"...named for our winemaker's grandfather, Angelo Palaia who emigrated here from Italy and passed his winemaking skills on to his son and grandson. We have taken the basics he gave us , and with modern winemaking techniques have been able to make some truly outstanding wines. Here at Sweet Clover Farm, we believe in celebrating and preserving the history of our family, country, town and homestead.

We are proud to be the owners of a working farm that has been in the Hudson Valley for over 200 years. Once a dairy farm, it is now home to over 10 Acres of vineyards with more planned for the future. The 200- year old bank barn had been restored over the last 3 years and is now a beautiful, clean winery on the lower level, with storage and a tasting room above preserving the look and feel of the historical building.

We invite you to come and visit. Explore and Celebrate the history around us !

From Barn to Winery

In 2002 we were awarded a matching $15,000 grant from New York State to help restore the barn, which did help, but only made a dent in the total amount it took to finally stabilize it. When we bought the property, it was listing to the West because of water pushing the stone wall that is holding back the bank on the East side.

This Photo shows the restoration team digging a trench in front of that wall to take the pressure off and install drainage.

Cables were attached at all the main bents (those large beams on the left) on all 3 floors and dug under the driveway where they are connected to earth anchors to keep the barn from ever leaning again. 100 tons of rock was used to fill the trench in front of the barn after the drains were installed.

All the the sills that the barn was sitting on had to be replaced, since many had been subject to rot. You will notice a line on the outside of the barn about 4 feet up from the ground where they cut the walls away to jack up the barn. (They numbered them for us to put back, wasn’t that nice?)

The lower level required that all of the “street beams” be replaced since they were almost warped into “waves”, being held up with bottle jacks and old pieces of telephone poles and stray wood. They jacked out the slanted concrete bits that were left of the floor, made a huge dirt pile where the parking lot is now, and left the rest to us.

We spent the next 4 years working on the barn while trying to put in a vineyard and make wine in the carriage house behind the main farmhouse. The whole story and photos of everything can be seen at the winery, which we finally finished just in time to open in 2006.

Complimentary Wine Tastings

LIVE MUSIC

On

Friday

&

Saturday

&

Sunday