KING FERRY - King Ferry Winery opened its doors Saturday for a festival celebrating the harvest season, with tours, wine tasting, ice cream, music and food.

The festival, held in conjunction with Baker's Acres, continues today and comes at one of the busiest times of the year for the winery. Autumn brings not only tourists for wine tasting, but crates of grapes waiting to be pressed into wine.

Visitors were invited to see the winery press grapes to make Riesling on a tour of the wine making process, Pete Salton, one of the winery owners, said. Eight tons of grapes were used on Friday, and Salton said he expected to continue pressing grapes at the same rate in the coming days.

“This time of year, we try to cycle the grapes through as quickly as possible,” Salton said to a group of guests. “We know that more are coming every day.”

The tour gave visitors a behind the scenes look at how the grapes are dumped in a hopper and smashed before being pumped into a large cylinder with a nylon bladder that fills with air to squeeze out the juices.

The juices sit overnight, to allow the solids to settle out, and the liquid is pumped into another room where yeast is added and it is left to ferment.

“It is allowed to ferment for two months,” Salton said. “We will work with it in the spring and this time next year it will be on the market.”

Visitors were also invited to taste the different varieties of wine that the winery makes, especially their newest wine, Apple Mystique, Chris Couch, the winery's operations manager, said.

“I've tasted all the reds.” Jeremy Mailloux, a visitor at the winery, said. “I was especially impressed with the Pinot Noir and the Mystere. The Mystere was sweet, but actually quite good.”

Cayuga Lake Creamery made a new sorbet for the event called Apple Mystique Pear, Jeff Kostick, the creamery's co-owner, said. The creamery tries to make different treats for the various winery festival events throughout the year, he said.

“We wanted to make something seasonal and the apple was an obvious choice,” Kostick said of inventing the flavor. “I thought it would go well with pear, so we tried it.”

The creamery makes the new flavor by adding Apple Mystique wine into the pear sorbet base as it is freezing, he said. It has been pretty popular at the festival so far.

“We have had many people stop by for a taste and most of them say that they are going to come back after lunch and get some,” Kostick said.