Madison, Ohio · Lake Erie

Vincent William, in thirty pictures.

In 2016, Michael and Katy Profeta bought a fifteen-thousand-square-foot shell above Lake Erie: no plumbing, no finished rooms, three previous owners who had given up. Eight years later it holds a winery, a restaurant and an eight-room inn. Thirty pictures from one season.

30 pictures Five chapters 1300 Belleair Avenue

I The Lake

Everything faces north

It was the water, not the building, that stopped Michael Profeta on Belleair Avenue. Every window that could face the lake would.

A glass on the lawn above the beach — 02The patio at sunset

At 42° north a red grape has no business ripening. Lake Erie, shallow and slow to cool, holds the season open just long enough.

Grand River Valley · 1,300 acres of vines · one of them here

II The Vineyard

An acre of Cabernet Franc

Told to expect three years before usable fruit, the vines gave it in fourteen months. The wineries next door lent the press.

III The House

Stone, cedar and church slate

A family started it in the 1990s, a bank held it, investors walked away. The Profetas finished it themselves, under a roof of slate salvaged from a Pennsylvania church.

The Wood Room, morning light on the hanging canvas — 14The Wood Room

The clawfoot tub in Room 101 — 15Room 101, the clawfoot tub

Digging the pool turned up broken china and forks. For half a century a forty-room hotel fed its guests on this ground, until the lake took it in 1962.

Cottage Grove Inn · 1914 — 1962

IV The Table

The cellar and the kitchen

Michael Profeta makes the wine one floor below the dining room and pours it at the bar most nights. Chef Jeff Gable’s menu moves with the farms down the road.