Their second act? Running a winery in their 70s.

GUILDERLAND — Jim Besha Sr. has a new definition for an optimist: Somebody who plants a vineyard when they’re past age 65.

Besha, 75, and his wife, Joyce, 73, qualify as optimists after they decided to create Clover Pond Vineyard following her successful career in nursing and his as an industrial engineer who built hydroelectric plants.

Skeptical friends kept asking: Are you sure you know what you’re getting into? Shouldn’t you be easing into retirement?

The Beshas discussed their idea at length with friends Gerry and Mary Barnhart, a husband-and-wife team who run Victory View Vineyard in Schaghticoke.

“They didn’t want to discourage us, but they kept stressing how much work is involved,” Jim Besha recalled.

The Beshas tuned out the naysayers and took on long hours. They opened a large tasting room in May. They offer four reds, three whites and two roses, all from grapes grown on their 130-acre property. The couple and their two sons also built houses on the property and live among the rolling hills of the vineyard.

They harvest grapes on 8 acres of vines, which this year produced roughly 20 tons, 4,500 gallons and 15,000 bottles of wine – all of which is sold exclusively at the tasting room. Their wines are in the $20 range per bottle.

Last week’s grape harvest was about 30 percent higher than last year.

“The vines loved the hot, dry summer,” Joyce Besha said.

She is the master gardener of the husband-and-wife team.

“She can grow anything,” her husband said.

The vineyard’s soil is a loam mixture excellent for growing. It also holds moisture well. The vines’ roots go down about 8 feet, which makes them less susceptible to drought. They chose varietals developed to withstand sub-zero upstate winters and to be pest-resistant.

The grape varieties include Marquette, Maréchal Foch and Frontenac blanc and gris.

“They grow like crazy,” he said. “I call them weeds with good P.R.”

Next year, another 8 acres of grapes will be ready for harvesting, doubling production.

“We’re still learning as we go,” his wife said. She took an online course in winemaking.

Her husband studies YouTube videos and calls the Barnharts regularly when he runs into something that stumps him.

They entered nine wines in the 2020 New York Classic competition, run by the New York Wine & Grape Foundation. “We won nine awards, mostly silvers,” he said. “I was happy with solid B grades.”

The business part of the equation came easily, since Besha ran Albany Engineering for decades.

“This is not a hobby farm or a vanity project,” he said. “We’re running it to make a profit.”

The engineering firm has 15 employees and operates four hydro plants in the Capital Region. His son, Jim Besha Jr., is company president while his father devotes the bulk of his time to the
vineyard.

The couple has three grown children, two sons and a daughter, and seven grandchildren. The three children, the father and an uncle all earned degrees at Syracuse University. Their son, Patrick, an English major at Syracuse, is a NASA administrator who lives on the property and helps his parents on the weekend when he’s not traveling for work.

Jim and Joyce Besha grew up near each other in the town of Guilderland and met at Guilderland High School. He graduated in 1965, she in 1967.

“People think we were high school sweethearts, but it’s not actually true,” he said.

After friends set them up, he took her to the senior prom. They married in 1972 and lived for 40 years in Berne in the Helderbergs.

“The soil wasn’t good there,” she said.

They bought the Guilderland property a decade, located along Route 20 about 2 miles west of the intersection of Carman Road and near the town reservoir.

They planted the first vines in 2014.

During the pandemic, they built an 8,000-foot building. The basement holds the production facility and upstairs, the 2,900-foot tasting room is bright and airy with tall ceilings, blonde wood flooring, a wall of windows overlooking the vineyard and a patio.

Kites appear to be floating high above the tables.

The couple created a design that resembles a Dutch barn and reflects the contemporary aesthetic they found in Oregon wineries they admired. They did much of the work themselves.

The genesis of the winery comes from a bending of the truth by Besha, who told his wife he was buying 100 vines as an experiment. He actually had purchased 2,000 red wine varieties. She wanted a balanced crop, so added 2,000 white wine varieties.

They do all the farm work themselves, with the help of a newly hired teenage helper and an assist from family members.

They start their day at 5 a.m.

“Hey, we’re farmers now,” he said.

On weekends, when the tasting room is open, they typically put in 14-hour days.

“We don’t mind hard work,” she said. “We’re fortunate that we’re in good shape and can do it.”

Her husband, the engineer, is also an early adapter of machinery that makes farming and producing wine less labor-intensive and more efficient.

For instance, he purchased a 40-year-old Vectur grape harvesting machine that straddles the vines, slowly working along each straight chute. It mechanically shakes the vines, which causes the grapes to drop into a large bin. He bought it cheap and engineering colleagues from his business helped get it running.

“It’s a game-changer,” he said.

They harvested all the white grapes last Tuesday in a single day and the reds on Wednesday.

“It rained heavily on Monday, but it dried out enough and we had a good harvest,” he said. “It’s all about timing. A couple more days of rain and we might have lost the crop.”

Were they still harvesting by hand, they would have enlisted a dozen friends to work for many days. Inexperienced pickers tend to waste a sizable percentage of grapes by missing or dropping them. The machine is exceptionally proficient.

He also purchased a tractor that steers itself using GPS.

“The joke is that I wanted a vineyard so I could buy more tractors,” he said.

He bought a Dutch-made computer-generated laser that scares away grape-eating birds instead of having to install expensive, labor-intensive bird-proof netting. The Dutch gizmo moves a light beam over the darkened vineyards at dawn and dusk in shifting patterns to keep the birds frightened and off-balance. It is very effective and there are no dead birds caught in netting.

He also bought a chute comber, which mechanically repositions vines in a fraction of the time it would take people doing it manually.

Besha believes they have one of the most innovative vineyards in the country.

“I’m not afraid of employing new technology,” he said. Spoken like a true optimist.

Paul Grondahl is director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at grondahlpaul@gmail.com