How Uncle Benny’s Apple Schnapps Became a Finger Lakes Wine-Spirit Hybrid
It started with Uncle Benny. In 1986, Herman Young visited his wife Wilma’s uncle in Germany and spent a day tasting the neighbor’s apple schnapps. Berentzen Apfelkorn, sweet and warm and completely unlike anything Herman had encountered in New York’s fruit country. He brought the memory home. Thirty years later, that memory became a wine. Sommer Solstice is a fortified red blend from Young Sommer Winery in Williamson, NY — Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot, fortified with Tree Vodka, an apple spirit distilled from four-generation-grown New York apples by neighboring Apple Country Spirits. It is not quite wine. It is not quite spirits. It is something Herman Young invented by following a memory of a German afternoon and paying close enough attention to make it work.
From Uncle Benny’s Schnapps to the Lake Ontario Shoreline
Herman Young did not set out to invent a new category of beverage. He set out to recreate a memory. Wilma Young, born in Germany’s Rhine River Valley, comes from a family of vintners — her ancestor Friedrich Anton Sommer was a respected winemaker. When she and Herman visited her Uncle Benny in 1986, the afternoon with the neighbor’s apple schnapps planted a seed that took decades to germinate.
They couldn’t distill themselves. The regulatory gap between winery and distillery is significant and Young Sommer’s identity was firmly as a winery. Herman experimented for years with apple wine fortified with grape spirits — getting closer to the memory but not quite there. The breakthrough came when he looked to neighbors at Apple Country Spirits, operating from DeFisher Fruit Farms — four generations of fruit farming on the same Lake Ontario shoreline — who launched Tree Vodka in 2012: a craft apple spirit from locally grown New York apples.
Apple spirit fortifying grape wine. Not grape spirits, not German schnapps exactly, but something honoring both and belonging entirely to this stretch of New York fruit country. Herman navigated TTB formula approval and New York SLA approval, got the labels cleared, and started blending. The first release was Apfel Breeze — named in honor of Uncle Benny. Then came Sommer Solstice and Sommer Equinox. A line of products that exists because one man paid close attention to a glass of schnapps in 1986 and spent thirty years figuring out how to make something like it from the fruit growing outside his window.
The Three Hybrids
How the Blending Works — Herman Young Explains
“The process is pretty simple once we worked out the right volumes of each ingredient to achieve a finished product at 20% alcohol by volume. We handle each element carefully, ensuring that the flavors and purity are not compromised. For all of the blends, we allow the ingredients to integrate for two to three months before we attempt to finish by filtering and bottling.”
On what the wine and spirit do for each other: “I think it is more of how they complement each other rather than enhance. The flavors of each wine are still preserved, allowing the characteristic of each blend to come forward — tannins, richness — with the mid-palate slightly enhanced as the spirits start to wake up your senses before the warmer finish spirits deliver the final ‘wow.'”
Visit Young Sommer Winery
Address: 1 mile north of NYS Route 104, Williamson, NY 14589
Web: youngsommerwinery.com
Trail: Lake Ontario Wine Trail
What to expect: Hard ciders, grape wines, fruit wines, and all three wine-spirit hybrids. Outdoor patio, picnic-friendly grounds, event room. Production tours with advance notice.
Start with the Sommer Equinox — the crowd favorite. Then let Herman tell you about Uncle Benny.
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