Time moved on. Some years were kind to grapes. Some were not. Winters scolded. Summers tried to make up for it.

Most vineyards planted strong hybrid grapes that could handle cold. The wines were honest and useful. People were grateful. But deep inside, some of them still ached for fruit that carried the taste of this place like a song and not just like a sweet.

One cool spring morning, a new man climbed the slope above Hammondsport. He spoke English slowly, but he spoke vines as if they were old friends.

His name was Dr. Konstantin Frank.

He knelt and pushed his fingers into the soil the way you might feel a child's forehead.

"Cold," he said, and he smiled as if cold were not a verdict but a riddle. "Good."

He believed that vinifera grapes—the fancy European kinds—could live here too, if they had the right roots, the right hills, and enough patience.

Some experts far away said no. They had never stood in this wind. They had never watched this lake.

Dr. Frank had learned from harder winters in Ukraine. He did not argue with the weather. He listened to it. In Hammondsport he found a helper—Charles Fournier of Gold Seal, who already knew about bubbles and fine fruit.

They spread a map between them while the lake listened below.

"Here," they agreed at last. "We begin here."

They planted on the western hills where Keuka keeps a pocket of mercy. They grafted tender European tops onto strong American roots, like careful stitches joining two pieces of cloth.

Vera, older now and quick with twine, tied the young vines to the wires. "Loose and kind," she told the helpers. "We are training a song, not building a fence."

On clear nights that threatened frost, Karl breathed a thin sheet of lake-air upslope. At dawn he pressed cold air gently down and away so it would drain into hollows instead of sitting on the new buds. He talked in Murmurcraft to stone and soil: Hold the day a little longer. Let it go a little slower at dusk.

Tiny flowers came. Their smell was shy but brave. Small green clusters swelled and hung like pale bells.

When Dr. Frank tasted the first good wine from those hills, he closed his eyes. His face showed a quiet joy, the kind that comes after long work and many doubts.

"The hills remembered their song," he said.

In 1962 he put his name above a door—Vinifera Wine Cellars. The sign did not shout. It simply said what the hands inside hoped to do.

Down on the water, Karl wrote Welcome in his wake, then let it soften into Return. Tradition and courage had decided to share a table.

More families planted vines. Music from porches answered music from tasting rooms. On warm evenings, the sounds crossed the lake and braided together. The water caught them all and made them one place's song.

Through good years and hard ones, one line stayed true:

"We keep the lake, and the lake keeps us."