Emmett Reed

Career Winemaking at Laurentia Vineyard and Winery in Madison, Ohio, United States, since 2022 has placed Emmett Reed in the working seam between vineyard and cellar, where agricultural timing and fermentation discipline have to match. The role asks for the kind of judgment that comes from moving back and forth between vine and tank, with each decision carrying weight in the finished wine. Before Laurentia, Reed was winemaker and vineyard manager at Gustafson Family Vineyards in Dry Creek Valley, United States, in 2011, a position that tied cellar work directly to vineyard management and required fluency across the full cycle of production. At the center of Reed’s approach is a simple craft argument: winemaking does not sit apart from farming. It is an agricultural practice shaped by observation, timing, and restraint, with the vineyard setting one set of conditions and the cellar answering them. Reed frames the work as a long sequence of small decisions, where the eventual wine depends on choices made earlier in the rows and among the leaves. The craft lives in that exchange between environment and method, with science and season held in balance.

Signature

Reed describes the core of the work as a balance between agriculture and science, and he names the farmer’s perspective directly: "What I really love about winemaking is that harmony between the agriculture and the science. At the end of the day I’m a farmer."

Recognition/etc “What I really love about winemaking is that harmony between the agriculture and the science. At the end of the day I’m a farmer.”