KNOX — Searching for a home over several years, Victoria Vattimo and her husband Ernest Cupernall settled on a tract of land in Knox with the help of their teacher from wine school.

In 2012, they bought the 11-acre property — an 1839 farmhouse and a barn — with its south-facing slope necessary to have rows of healthy wine grapes and fruit trees they knew they wanted to grow, with the hope of having an estate winery.

They are living out their desires to be close to nature and family, and to work their land toward the end of their careers in state government. Each feels drawn to working outside, and their property shows it.

In front, a stone wall runs along a narrow town road, where homes are sometimes several hundred yards away. A series of blue tubes in March carries sap from the maple trees there.

Across the driveway is a large barn, which houses the metal and glass equipment Cupernall uses to evaporate the sap, making syrup, and to also brew beer. He has a small group of friends who have formed a brewing club and, along with wine from the grapes, he hopes to offer the beer to more people.

Around the backside of the house is one of Vattimo’s several vegetable gardens, where she grows plants in moist soil. Across the lawn behind the house are small orange flags staking out where she plans to put an herb garden closer to the backdoor of the kitchen. And, further up the slope, a raised bed holds strawberries that continue to produce fruit into the cold months of the fall.

Nearby, small ruts in the ground are left where some of the couple’s fruit trees — peaches, cherries, apples, and pears — were first planted. They found the soil was far too moist there, and moved the trees farther west along the property.

“Trial and error,” Vattimo said on a walk along her land.

The barn is perpendicular to their house. Now a shop full of tools for Cupernall’s woodworking and industrial equipment for syrup, wine, and beer making, it was once the home of a frame shop.

The house is painted the color of sage, with white trim on the sills and eaves and a dark red metal roof.

Seeds of farm life

Cupernall works for the New York State Insurance Fund overseeing hardware maintenance, and Vattimo is a legislative coordinator for the state’s Office of Children and Family Services.

She grew up on an acre and a half in suburban Guilderland, where her parents had just enough land for her and her sister to raise sheep and chickens for 4-H projects.

Her parents now run a farm in Schoharie County, where they raise Romney sheep for meat and wool in what Vattimo called “a 4-H project gone awry.” Her father was raised on a farm, and her mother grew up in Albany, where, Vattimo said, she followed the wagon delivery of Freihofer’s baked goods around the city, trying to feed the horses.

“I think it must be innate,” said Cupernall of their being drawn to produce food from their land. He grew up in the suburbs of Schenectady, and spent his late teens on Long Island, but he feels connected to the area through his family’s deep history he has traced to Dutch settlers.

“I’m playing farming right now, that’s what I’m doing,” said Cupernall. “Will I ever become a farmer? I don’t know.”

Eight-hundred-and-fifty-grape vines were planted on the slope behind the couple’s home two summers ago. Cupernall calls the vineyard his passion, to which he plans to devote his attention after he retires. With beer and wine made onsite, he envisions having an estate winery where people can come to purchase or sample his products, and the brewing club can grow.

The plan is helped by state legislation allowing farms to have such operations, and newer varieties of wine grapes that can withstand colder climates. This has broadened the opportunity for vineyards outside of the Finger Lakes region known for its wine in New York. Cupernall and Vattimo are affiliate members of the Upper Hudson Valley Wine and Grape Association, which is centered around Saratoga, Washington, and Warren counties.

“Their flavor profile and aromas are more like traditional European grapes, as compared to the previous generation of the cold-climate grapes that could survive here, which were more like Native American grapes, or what I would characterize as slightly unripe or vegetal European-style wines,” Gregory Giorgio, who has worked in the wine industry most of his life, said of the new varieties. The Cupernall first began learning about winemaking at Giorgio’s class, a wine school he holds at the Home Front Café in Altamont.

Giorgio said, with a wider wine culture in America, combined with greater access to information and the cold-hardy grapes, he has seen more cases of hobby winemaking and grape growing in the area.

Now, Cupernall and Vattimo get their outdoors questions answered by friends, a thick tome titled “Country Wisdom,” or online, where sites like Pinterest and YouTube offer tutorials and ideas from people who have experience.

“You can see it. It’s not just theoretical. You see what they do,” Cupernall said of videos posted on the Internet. “If you prune fruit trees, you can see what cuts they’re making.”

The couple’s property is as much of a journey as it is a place to settle.

“It’s not just to grow perfect fruit,” said Cupernall. “It’s to learn. It’s how to get there. It’s the experience of getting there, and then the realization that, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ It’s like anything else in life.”

Editor’s note: Victoria Vattimo is a friend and former high school classmate of Enterprise village reporter Elizabeth Floyd Mair.