We grow Concord.
Ninety-one years and still here.
We are seventy-five farm families along the southern shore of Lake Erie — the oldest commercial and largest contiguous Concord-growing region in the United States. We work approximately sixteen hundred acres. In a good year we bring in eight to nine thousand tons of fresh Concord grapes. We own this cooperative. We govern it. We're building its next chapter ourselves.
Strong
We grow Concord here for one reason: this land was made for it.
Lake Erie does the work of two seasons at once. Spring freeze risk is buffered by breezes off winter-chilled waters; in fall, breezes off summer-warmed waters push the first hard freeze into early November and give the fruit weeks of extra ripening time. The soils drain right. The land sits at just the right elevation. Farmers figured this out in 1869 and never stopped. About thirty-two thousand acres of vineyard now run along this fifty-mile stretch of shore, and roughly ninety-eight percent of it is planted to Concord — the largest contiguous Concord-growing region in the United States. We've been working it as a cooperative since 1935, and we plan to keep working it.
🌱 We farm with our heads, not just our backs.
Integrated pest management, cover-cropping, soil-health-first viticulture. We work directly with Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Cornell Lake Erie Research & Extension Lab — fewer inputs, better outcomes, healthier vineyards.
💧 We farm above one of the Great Lakes.
Every decision we make on the vineyard floor rolls downhill to Lake Erie. Controlled drainage, erosion-conscious row design, reduced-input practices — we protect the lake that makes the whole thing possible.
🤝 We protect the heritage that brought us here.
We support the Lake Erie Concord Grape Belt Heritage Association in documenting and celebrating this place. The story of how this region came to grow Concord is worth telling and worth keeping.
🌾 We keep the land working.
The land works because we work it. Member-grower acreage stays in active Concord production — not bought up, not subdivided, not paved over. That's the cooperative's job, and it's been the cooperative's job for ninety-one years.
The Concord Grape Belt, in figures.
Juice Just Got GOOD for you™
100% Concord grape juice. Shelf-stable. Spill-resistant. Built for the institutional cafeteria tray.
We grow the most American grape there is. We put it in a 4-fluid-ounce neck pouch engineered for K-12 cafeterias and institutional foodservice. No added sugar. No artificial colors. No preservatives. Real Concord juice from real Lake Erie vineyards — produced by Lake Erie Juice Company, the wholly-owned subsidiary we built ourselves.
We entered. We won. First place in the Best New Concord Grape Beverage Category.
New York held its first-ever Concord Grape Innovation Award competition in 2022, with two categories — Best New Concord Grape Beverage and Best New Concord Grape Food Product — and six finalists in each. We entered the beverage category and won it. $20,000 grand prize plus $8,000 in Cornell expert support — every dollar of it went straight back into moving the product toward commercial production.
Ninety-one years of persistence, patience, and a lot of Concord.
From our vineyards directly to the buyer. No middlemen we don't choose.
Three things we're going to do — and we're already moving ahead with them.
-
1Stop being dependent on a handful of buyers. For decades, Lake Erie Concord growers have lived or died by the decisions of a few companies on the buyer side. We watched it happen. We're building a second market channel — one we own, one we control — so a contract cancellation somewhere else doesn't end us.
-
2Open new markets ourselves. School nutrition. Food banks. Broadline foodservice distributors. International concentrate buyers. Every new channel we open is another acre worth keeping in production. We're not waiting for someone else to do this.
-
3Keep this region a region. The Lake Erie Concord Grape Belt is the largest contiguous Concord-growing region in the United States — fifty miles of vines along Lake Erie. Vineyards turning fallow doesn't just hurt growers — it changes the landscape, hollows out the local economy, and ends a way of life. That's not going to happen on our watch.
We can't do this alone.
Food science research, packaging safety design recommendations, and pilot production support.
Regional viticulture research and on-the-vineyard support for our member-growers.
Research, IPM training, and viticulture education for member farms.
Cooperative business management consulting (two-semester student engagements).
Industry advocacy and Concord industry strategy.
Documenting and celebrating the cultural identity of the Belt.
Grape juice toll processing.
Project consulting support.
2026 crop financing.
Design & construction of our new packaging plant.