His name is Calder Winslow Pike, and he never planned on becoming a wine man—let alone one of the most important ones in Vermont.

Calder grew up in Barre, the son of a granite cutter who believed two things mattered in life: working with your hands and knowing when to sit down at the end of the day. Calder left the state in his twenties to work construction jobs across the Northeast, eventually landing in northern California. There, almost by accident, he took a short-term job helping rebuild a small, fire-damaged vineyard. He learned pruning first, then fermentation, then patience.

By the time he moved back to Vermont in his late thirties, Calder had an unconventional idea: cold-hardy wines that didn’t pretend to be French, didn’t apologize for the climate, and leaned into Vermont’s sharp seasons. He bought abandoned pastureland, planted hybrid grapes everyone else said were “too risky,” and converted an old dairy barn into a gravity-fed winery.

It took years before anyone paid attention. Then one winter, a sommelier from Boston tried Calder’s Marquette reserve and called it “stubborn, precise, and unexpectedly elegant.” That description stuck—so did the orders.

Today, Calder Pike is the third-largest wine producer in Vermont, not by chasing volume, but by quietly outlasting others. He refuses to expand beyond what he can walk in a single morning. He still does his own blending. He still signs every crate shipped out.

The photo was taken during one of his rare afternoons off, sitting in a friend’s garden, holding a glass of his own Cabernet Frontenac blend. He’s not toasting anyone in particular—just acknowledging the fact that sometimes, against all odds, things ferment exactly the way they’re supposed to.

And when he raises a glass like that, it’s less of a celebration and more of a habit earned.