Meet the Hudson Valley Artisans Redefining Upstate New York’s Food and Drink Scene

The Hudson Valley has long drawn New York City dwellers in search of clean air, spectacular hikes, and upstate culture. Now a budding community of artisans — young farmers, bakers, vintners, distillers — is turning the region into a modern breadbasket. 

It is a tightly woven ecosystem that also extends to restaurants and hotels. At Tenmile Distillery, in the town of Wassaic, for example, the grain used to make whiskey comes from a farm in Tivoli, 30 miles away, while the gin and vodka it produces are served at stylish addresses like the Troutbeck, a hotel in Amenia, and the restaurant Stissing House, in Pine Plains. 

Being upstate has other advantages, too. “Our plan doesn’t have to be about growth,” says Nora Allen, who runs Mel the Bakery, which moved to Hudson from Manhattan last year. “There’s no better feeling than looking outside and seeing people enjoying their pastries on a sunny day with their friends or their family, or just their dog.” 

Here are five Hudson Valley makers behind food-and-drink establishments that are special enough to plan a weekend around. 

Tenmile Distillery

Joel LeVangia, a former filmmaker and developer who grew up in the Hudson Valley, discovered his passion for whiskey after trying a glass of Yamazaki 25. “It was $1,500 a bottle,” he said. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s stupid, I can buy a bottle of scotch for $100 or $200, and it would be just as good as the Japanese stuff.’” Except he couldn’t find anything that came close.

So began LeVangia’s deep dive into whiskey making. About a decade later, he and his father-in-law, John S. Dyson (a political and economic advisor who owns Millbrook Winery), turned a 70-acre farm in the rolling hills of Wassaic into the Tenmile Distillery. Their secret weapon: master distiller Shane Fraser, who was hired from Wolfburn, one of Scotland’s northernmost distilleries, to create an American single malt that could measure up to the world’s finest, using barley from New York. 

Today, two gleaming copper-pot stills shipped from Scotland greet visitors as they enter a converted century-old dairy barn. Visitors can watch the whiskey-making in action through floor-to-ceiling windows, sample cocktails in a clubby tasting room, and order Neapolitan-style pizzas from a food truck parked on the grounds. 

It’s been more than four years since Tenmile sealed its first cask, and a year since customers have been allowed to taste it. (The distillery also makes small-batch gin and vodka.) By Scottish standards, that’s indecently young. The rest of the early production is aging in hundreds of oak barrels a few steps away from the barn. “The Japanese have proved there’s a market for doing this the right way,” LeVangia said. “It forces us to focus on quality, and that’s better for all of us.”

Mel the Bakery

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, and Nora Allen was firing a glaze gun primed with egg wash over a batch of freshly proofed croissants. After 15 minutes in the industrial-size oven, she took them out and slid one onto a plate for me. It was airy and flaky and buttery: pure deliciousness. She smiled at my evident pleasure. 

Croissants are only a small part of Allen’s repertoire at Mel the Bakery, which she opened in the gallery- and café-filled town of Hudson a year ago. Her gluten-loving customers come for the cinnamon rolls (the spice is ground in-house), savory pastries (mine were topped with foraged ramps), ginger cookies dotted with pine nuts, and Rugbrød, a flavorful Danish loaf made with rye flour that Allen mills herself. “We only make that one day a week because it’s so labor-intensive,” she said.

An alumnus of Roberta’s pizza and the Standard hotel in New York City, Allen never planned to move to Hudson. But in 2023, the landlord of her Lower East Side bakery put the building up for sale. She relocated a few months later. 

As I approached that morning, I had been able to follow my nose to her bright bakery. It was humming with customers, who sat at minimalist concrete tables in the small park outside. Allen estimates that her bakery goes through 800 pounds of flour a week, which she mainly sources from Farmer Ground, in Ithaca. That’s a lot of croissants.

Chaseholm Farm Creamery

“When my father was a kid, I think everyone here either worked in or was touched by dairy farming,” Rory Chase said of his family’s community in Pine Plains. “Now it’s probably one in a hundred.” So in 2007, when his father sold the family’s milking herd, Rory and his sister Sarah (who was in college at the time) decided to innovate and found a creamery for artisanal cheeses. 

Today, Chaseholm Farm has its own herd again and makes a variety of firm, soft-ripened, and spreadable cheeses, including the highly acclaimed triple-cream Nimbus, the nutty Stella Vallis Tomme, and a buttery camembert — all sold at nearby farmers’ markets and grocers. 

“Authenticity resonates with consumers,” Rory told me, especially during the pandemic, when urbanites decamped to the Hudson Valley and were “able to come and look a cow in the eye.” 

There are other reasons to visit Chaseholm. A farm shop sells its own grass-fed beef, raw milk, yogurt, and pork. And during the warmer months, the siblings host burger nights, live music, and a popular show called Dairy Drag, billed as “a drag race like no udder.”

The Chatham Berry Farm 

If you had driven through the small town of Chatham four decades ago, you might have passed a small cart selling berries. The man behind it was Joseph Gilbert, who had been given a 24-acre farm by his parents. Today, The Chatham Berry Farm is a beloved garden center and farmers’ market that on warm nights morphs into a neighborhood hangout. 

Gilbert still farms berries — lots of them — but also salad greens grown in hydroponic greenhouses, a dizzying array of brassicas, bedding plants, and herbs, as well as an eye-popping range of flowers. There is also a large farm store, which is open year-round and sells fresh produce, local meats, and prepared foods. 

With the help of his sons, Jon and Michael, a Greenhouse Cidery was added a few years ago, with live music and picnic tables. Children (and sometimes dogs) chase one another in a fenced-in yard nearby. There is even a seasonal outdoor restaurant, Yummy Kitchen, that serves Asian-inspired dishes, like crispy eggplant spiked with garlic sauce, under a trellis woven with morning glory. 

On a late spring evening, Michael was in one of the greenhouses, prepping a table of hydroponic pea shoots. Music and laughter could be heard from the cidery, where guests were placing orders for wasabi Caesar salads and hard cider. Joseph Gilbert’s cart has come a long way.

Suarez Family Brewery

Dan Suarez believes a good beer should linger. His test is to take a sip and let it sit for 10 seconds. “Does it feel good?” he asks himself. By that measure, his beers at Suarez Family Brewery, which occupies a former tractor showroom in the town of Livingston, would pass with flying colors. His sunny taproom, which overlooks Route 9, is a pilgrimage spot for beer lovers, who admire his refined ales and lagers with catchy names like Walk, Don’t Run; Summer Whoa; and Postscript. 

Suarez, who nurtured his beer passion by growing hops in his parents’ Brooklyn garden, did not need much persuading to open a brewery in the Hudson Valley. After spending childhood summers on his family farm in Ecuador, and learning the craft from Shaun Hill, a Vermont brewmaster, the woodlands of Dutchess County were a natural fit. He’ll often flavor his beers with foraged ingredients like staghorn sumac. “Half of the botanicals and herbs and flowers that we use I was made hip to by farmers and growers in Hudson,” he said.

Suarez’s wife, Taylor, oversees the business side of the operation. Rounding out the “family brewery” is their eight-year-old son, Enzo, who has been hanging out in the taproom since birth, and four-year-old Mira (“our COVID baby,” Dan said).​​ Suarez’s brother and sister-in-law own a popular restaurant, Gaskins, 10 minutes down the road in Germantown. No prizes for guessing who supplies the beers.  

A version of this story first appeared in the September 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Hands On.”