Craft Distillers & Wineries Along the Hudson-Berkshire Beverage Trail

What is the Hudson-Berkshire Beverage Trail?

The Hudson-Berkshire Beverage Trail is one of the best-known drinking trails in the region, tucked between the Hudson Valley and the Berkshire Mountains and stretching from southeast of Albany down toward Hudson and through Columbia County, New York, before crossing into Massachusetts. Along the way you will find handcrafted wines, spirits, and ciders, plus farm stands with fresh produce, artisanal cheeses, baked goods, pure maple syrup, and fresh apple cider. In 2014, Paste magazine named it one of the five best drinking trails in America.

These days the trail is best experienced two ways: as a self-guided drive between member wineries and distilleries, or all at once at the annual Hudson-Berkshire Wine & Food Festival, held each spring at the Columbia County Fairgrounds in Chatham. Here is the lay of the land.

Trail Stops at a Glance

The New York wineries

Brookview Station Winery

At the northern end of the trail, Brookview Station sits on the grounds of century-old Goold Orchards in Castleton. Sue Goold Miller, a third-generation owner of the orchard, and her husband Ed began making wine in 2005 and opened the winery the following year, naming it for a small train station in Brookview where Sue’s grandparents arrived in 1910. Its apple wine, Whistle Stop White, earned a Best Hudson River Region Wine award early on. Come in the fall for apple picking, fresh pies, and tastings of the wines and ciders.

Hudson-Chatham Winery

In Ghent, about three miles south of Chatham, Hudson-Chatham pours crisp, minerally whites and a lineup of reds that are unrefined, unfiltered, and handmade, showing a freshness of fruit and a distinctive nose in the best Burgundian-styled tradition. It remains one of the trail’s anchor wineries and a regular at the annual festival.

Tousey Winery

Tousey, in Germantown, has a panoramic view over the Hudson River and the Catskills and grows most of its own grapes, with vinifera like Chardonnay, Riesling, and Pinot Noir under production. It began with Kimberly Peacock’s father, a Hudson Valley honey farmer who made Crème de Cassis, and is now run by Kimberly and her husband Ben, who returned from Denmark to build it into a full winery. The tasting room, in the Blue Roof building right on Route 9, is a stylish, intimate spot, with a café serving cheese boards, salads, and more on select days.

Clermont Vineyards & Winery

Set on a former dairy farm near Clermont State Park, Clermont Vineyards boasts dramatic panoramic views of the Catskill Mountains. Its wines are made in the traditional Portuguese style, crafted from grapes grown on the property. Once an optional detour, it is now a member of the trail in its own right.

The New York distilleries

The trail’s distilleries lean on what the region grows best: orchard fruit and grain. Two of them turn local apples into applejack.

Harvest Spirits

At Golden Harvest Farm in Valatie, Harvest Spirits turns the farm’s own apples into its spirits, including applejack, its apple-based Core vodka, flavored vodkas, malt whiskey, and brandy. It offers tastings of a lineup that is very much an expression of the orchard it sits on.

Hudson Valley Distillers

Founded in 2014 by Tom Yozzo, Chris Moyer, and their families, Hudson Valley Distillers makes small-batch vodka, applejack, and whiskey from local ingredients, housed in a renovated barn well over a century old in Clermont. In its Cocktail Grove, visitors can enjoy inventive cocktails and light, local fare alongside tours and tastings.

Hillrock Estate Distillery

In Ancram, Hillrock is one of the few field-to-glass whiskey producers in the world and the first US distillery since before Prohibition to floor-malt and hand-craft whiskey on site from estate-grown grain. The estate grows its own heirloom rye and barley, and the tasting room and bar let guests sample and buy its fine whiskeys, including a Solera-aged bourbon. Distillery tours are by appointment, so call or email ahead.

Into the Berkshires: Massachusetts

Cross into western Massachusetts and the trail picks up two Berkshires stops, one steeped in apples and one in spirits.

Furnace Brook Winery at Hilltop Orchards

Furnace Brook is an award-winning winery at the historic Hilltop Orchards in Richmond, a roughly 200-acre property run by the Vittori family for more than two decades. The bucolic hilltop setting offers sweeping views of the Berkshire hills, and the visit comes with extras: the region’s celebrated cider donuts, fruit pies, preserves, and artisan cheeses, plus the estate’s own JMash hard cider and a taproom. Taste the wines and ciders, then walk the orchard and woodland trails.

Berkshire Mountain Distillers

In Sheffield, Berkshire Mountain Distillers handcrafts spirits in small batches at the Berkshires’ first legal distillery since Prohibition. Established in 2007, it is one of the founding members of the craft-distilling movement, and its lineup includes Greylock and Ethereal gins, Ragged Mountain Rum, Ice Glen Vodka, Berkshire Bourbon, and New England Corn Whiskey. Tours and tastings are offered several days a week.

How do you visit the trail?

The marquee event is the Hudson-Berkshire Wine & Food Festival, held over a weekend each May at the Columbia County Fairgrounds in Chatham, New York. A tasting ticket includes admission, a souvenir glass, and pours from trail members and other regional producers, with food vendors and seminars across the weekend. The rest of the year, the trail is a self-guided drive, easy to tailor to a single afternoon or a long, winding day.

However you go, the through-line is the same: handcrafted drinks made close to where their ingredients grow, in two of the Northeast’s prettiest stretches of countryside.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Trail

🍇 The Trail at a Glance

Key facts about the trail, its members, and how to visit.