Spotlight: Channing Fields
August 5, 2024
This year, we were pleased to welcome you to Channing Fields as we celebrate conservation at Through Farms & Fields 2024. We are grateful to Molly Channing and her family for welcoming us back to this incredible property. We are truly thankful for their support of the Trust and our conservation work.
For many years beginning in the early 1990s, the Trust was fortunate to work with the late Walter Channing on his vision to acquire and protect over 50 acres of land here in Bridgehampton. These acres, including vines, meadows and woodland, are part of an assemblage of over 100 acres that the Trust worked to preserve.
Walter was a renaissance man – a sculptor, an investor, a vintner, and a conservationist. He donated conservation easements to the Trust that protect everything around us today. His capricious humor and artistry are evident in these beautiful fields, with a cherished few of his sculptures on view today. We lost Walter too soon, but Molly along with their daughters Francesca, Isabella, Sylvia, and Nina – and Larry Perrine, Christopher Tracy, and Allison Dubin, the partners of Channing Daughters – are keeping Walter’s “experiment” thriving.
While the early grapes of Chardonnay and Merlot that Walter began in the 1980s produced wines in the 1990s primarily for private consumption, today the wines produced by Channing Daughters are award winning and internationally recognized. At Through Farms & Fields we had a toast to Walter’s vision and celebrate the conservation of land and the bounty it provides us.