8 Awards in San Francisco Chronicle, including a gold for our Merlot

Nearly 5,700 wines from more than 1,000 U.S. and Mexico wineries.

2019 Sky Acres Winery Merlot Gold

2016 Sky Acres Winery Cabernet Franc NJ Silver

2019 Sky Acres Winery Black River Red Bronze

2015 Sky Acres Winery Cabernet Franc  Bronze

2016 Sky Acres Winery Cabernet Franc Bronze

2019 Sky Acres Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Bronze

2019 Sky Acres Winery Riesling Bronze

2019 Sky Acres Winery Sauvignon Blanc Bronze

 

8 Awards in San Francisco Chronicle Awards, 2019 Merlot wins Gold

Wines made in GOfermentor wins 6 years in a row

Sky Acres Winery has exclusively used GOfermentor technology since 2014. The advanced GOfermentor+SmartBarrel winemaking process enables us to safely make wines without any sulfite additions. These wines have enhanced color and a fresher, fruitier flavor.

2019 Merlot, Gold

2016 Cabernet Franc NJ, Silver

2019 Black River Red, Bronze

2015 Cabernet Franc, Bronze

2019 Cabernet Sauvignon, Bronze

2019 Riesling, Bronze

2019 Sauvignon Blanc, Bronze

NJ winery of the year in NYIWC, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023

Online orders, free delivery in NJ for 4 bottles or more.

Sky Acres Winery is an award winning winery, it was named NJ winery of the year 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018 by NYIW competition. Sky Acres Winery is located in 50 acres of pristine woodlands and pasture in Bedminster New Jersey. The name of the winery comes from the long time interest in aviation and the logo represents our red Waco YMF5 biplane that both the owners fly.

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Meera and Vijay Singh

The winery and vineyard is primarily used for research into new and more sustainable ways to make wine. Better quality wine with minimal water usage and minimal environmental impact is the goal. It is a test site to evaluate the patented GOfermentor® winemaking machine, SmartBarrel® aging system, and a home wine making system the GOfermentor Jr®. These products are available at www.GOfermentor.com. GOfermentor won the 2019 Innovation Award from the Wine Industry Network.

Our wines are available Online.

Our wines have NO sulphites , NO preservatives and, NO sugar added.

Grape Harvest 2023, Thank you to all who helped.

Sky Acres Winery wins 8 San Francisco Chronicle Awards in 2021

Sky Acres Winery has exclusively used GOfermentor technology since 2014. The advanced GOfermentor+SmartBarrel winemaking process enables us to safely make wines without any sulfite additions. These wines have enhanced color and a fresher, fruitier flavor.

Our wines won 8 medals in the 2021 San Francisco Chronicle competition, continuing a winning streak over 6 years. Sky Acres Merlot won a gold in the 2021 wine competition.

Of particular note is our Petite Syrah 2016, which won a bronze in 2018. The same wine won bronze again in 2020, showing the aging potential of our wines, even with no sulfites added. “Our GOfermentor+SmartBarrel made wines are pure – just grapes and yeast.” says Meera Singh, Winemaker, Sky Acres Winery.

Evaluating nearly 6,700 wines from over 1,000 wineries for the 2021 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

Tour and Tasting, October 5th, 2019 2pm to 6pm

Taste the wines made by the innovative, patented, GOfermentor. Get a behind the scenes glimpse of winemaking process using the GOfermentor. Two demonstrations and tours of the winery at 3pm and 5pm. There is no handicap access.

The $15.00 charge to attend the Open House, wine glass and $5.00 towards a bottle of wine. Tickets will be available for pickup at the winery entrance. Click here to sign up.

Courier Post features Sky Acres Winery!

Courier Post Article on San Francisco Chronicle’s ‘Best in Class’ Award

“Indeed, hybrid grapes can produce wines that evoke suggestions of dark fruits, provocative spice and simulating acidity, as shown by this Black River Red.”

That quote about Sky Acres Winery’s Black River Red wine came from Mike Dunn, a judge in the recent 2019 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

Sky Acres, which is in Far Hills, took home a Best in Class award in the Red Blend: Red Native/Hybrid category. The winning 2017 Black River Red, named after the Black River Road that owners Meera and Vijay Singh live on, is produced from estate-grown marechal foch, a hybrid French red wine grape.

 

Black River Red wins Best in Class!

2019 San Francisco Chronicle Awards

2019 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition — now the largest wine competition of North American wines.

2017 Black River Red, Best in class. “Indeed, Hybrid grapes can produce wines that evoke suggestions of dark fruits, provocative spice and simulating acidity, as shown by this Black River Red.” Wine Judge Mike Dunne

2017 Cabernet Franc, Silver

2016 Cabernet Sauvignon, Silver

2017 Mr Big, Silver

Featured in The Wall Street Journal, Future of Everything Oct. 12, 2018

The Winery That Fits in a Closet

Countertop beer-brewing kits are common. But what if you could produce Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay in a series of odorless, biodegradable plastic bags, using nothing but grapes and a machine the size of a small trash can? That’s the promise of the GOfermentor Junior, an automated winery 30 inches high and 18 inches deep and no louder than a refrigerator. Geared toward the oenophile making wine for private consumption, it goes on sale in early 2019 for $500.

By Aleksandra Crapanzano

Read more The Winery that fits in a closet 

Sky Acres Wins Again!

2018 San Francisco Chronicle Awards

After receiving nearly 7,000 entries from 36 states across the country, the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, the largest competition of American wines in the world, has once again narrowed thousands of wines down to an exclusive few, with our Cabernet Franc NJ 2016 winning Silver, our Black River Red 2016 winning Bronze and our Petite Syrah 2016 also winning Bronze.

Sky Acres Winery Featured in New Jersey Monthly

It’s in the Bag

A former pharma exec’s invention aims to take the mess out of winemaking.

By Marlaina Cockcroft

Vijay and Meera Singh want to clean up the winemaking business. “It’s just a mess,” says Vijay, a former pharmaceutical executive. “It’s so dirty a job.” His solution: a machine that ferments at the touch of a button. “In a funny way, our wine is made kind of like a pharma process,” says Singh. “Everything is clean, closed, sterile. No muck, no dirt.” At the heart of the process is GOfermentor, a machine he invented to automate winemaking. A number of wineries have given GOfermentor a spin, and wines produced using the machine at Sky Acres, the Singhs’ winery in Far Hills, have been honored in international competitions.

Read the Whole Article

Sky Acres Winery Cabernet Franc NJ wins Gold!

San Francisco Chronicle Awards

After receiving 7,000 entries from 28 states across the country, the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, hailed as the largest competition of American wines in the world, has once again successfully narrowed thousands of wines down to an exclusive few, with  our Cabernet Franc NJ 2015 winning Gold, our Black River Red 2015 winning Silver and our Petite Syrah 2015 winning the Bronze.

SFCWC-2017-AwardBadge-Gold-Color

Cabernet Franc NJ 2015

SFCWC-2017-AwardBadge-Silver-Color

Black River Red 2015

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Petite Syrah 2015

Harvest Challenge Award

HarvestChallengeAt the Harvest Challenge, judges taste wines with other wines of the same appellation. Thus, with cross-regional competition removed, the inherent quality of wines can be seen without the influences that sometimes eclipse even a wine of very high quality.

Petite Syrah 2014 wins Bronze

A “Lazy” Inventor’s Vision May Be the Future of Wine 

The story of Sky Acres Winery in the Black River Journal Late Summer 2016

By C.G. Wolfe

BRJ-meeravijay-cropped

The tranquil, monophonic intones of Gregorian chants washed over the blushing Petite Syrahs and Cabernet Francs at Sky Acres Winery in Bedminster. Winding down the long drive of the property’s anonymous entrance in Somerset County’s “horse country,” the only hint that you are approaching a winery, is a neatly arrayed, three-acre vineyard of sprouting shoots and twisting tendrils. At Sky Acres, there are no tanks, traditional presses, cooperages, wastewater treatment facilities, or other machinery and outbuildings typically associated with commercial wine production. Utilizing an innovative, sustainable, and forward-thinking new process of winemaking, vintners Meera and Vijay Singh, have compressed their entire winery into the spotless stalls of an immaculately converted, pre-existing horse stable, abutted by woods, rolling green fields, and a tidy chicken coop, creating a “zero footprint winery.”

Vijay Singh describes himself as a “lazy” person, an odd claim for a world-recognized biotech scientist who holds more than 20 patents, has published hundreds of papers, and who revolutionized the production of biopharmaceuticals in the late 1990s, with the Wave Bioreactor, a low cost, labor-saving, innovation in cell cultivation that is used in nearly every biotech/pharmaceutical manufacturing company today.

Read the Complete Article Here

Fermenting Wine Grapes in a Bag

The GOfermentor enables quality improvement in small wineries

By Richard Carey

Wines&VinesSmall wineries have multitudinous obstacles when making high-quality wines. In many respects, as home winemakers who have become commercial winemakers will attest, it is easier to make 5,000 gallons of quality wine than it is to make 5 gallons. So much of winemaking is influenced by scale. The smaller the vessel in which wine is produced and stored until bottling, the more the negative influences (such as oxygen) can detract from the quality of the wine. It has to do with surface-to-volume ratios, the opening and closing of the vessel and many other factors. For example, it takes the same amount of time to open a 5-gallon vessel, remove a sample for analysis and close the container as it does to open and close a 5,000-gallon vessel. But the impact on the wine is many times greater in the 5-gallon vessel.

Consequently, new techniques for managing small-lot production are some of the more important introductions to the wine industry. Small wineries are the backbone of the industry, and the creative outlet they bring to the industry is important for its development and management. Additionally, methods that aid in quality development often require expensive equipment that small wineries cannot afford. They can also take time away from other winemaking practices, which compromises quality. Technology that can help achieve the goal of better wine for smaller wineries can be transformative.

Just prior to the 2015 harvest, I learned about an intriguing new way to manage fermentations in small wineries. Vijay Singh, an entrepreneur who sold his biomedical business and started his own winery, had developed a different technique for use with small to medium-sized fermentations.

The product, known as GOfermentor, is designed to minimize water use and to help with the natural “messiness” of harvest. Singh’s product was in the latter stages of development, but I had the opportunity to use one of his systems during the 2015 harvest, and I have spoken with others who are testing the system. The theory behind the GOfermentor is to contain the juice during fermentation in a bag that is large enough to hold 1 ton of grapes and can be sealed off from exposure to air. The bag is supported by a specially designed bin similar in size to a 1-ton harvest bin.

Read the Complete Article

San Francisco Chronicle wine contest, Label Series Lakes Gold, Petite Syrah takes bronze

We are happy to announce that we won two awards at the prestigious San Francisco Chronicle wine contest. Our acclaimed Petite Syrah 2014 took the bronze in the under $ 24.95 category. Not an insignificant achievement for a wine made in NJ in our first year of production! There were over 7100 entries, including thousands from Napa, Washington, and other well know appellations.
We also won best-of-class gold for our wine label series.

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Winespectator.com Oct 2, 2015

winespectator

Taking the Water Out of Winemaking

A biotech innovator develops a new way to lower costs for small wineries and reduce water usage across the industry