Spotlight: Nikki Borisenok '08

Alumnna Spotlight: Nikki Borisenok '08

From fashion to horses, flowers, wine, and whiskey

On a recent winter afternoon, Nicole Borisenok worked on the new wine club software. She needed to check on the tulip bulbs started indoors. Also: it was foaling season.  

“The first is due next week. We have to be ready,” Borisenok said by phone from her Saratoga farm. 

Making sure stalls for 13 soon-to-be- born thoroughbreds are sanitized is a far cry from Borisenok’s product development days at Victoria’s Secret in New York City. But she prefers the creative, fast-paced work on Old Tavern Farm, just down the road from Saratoga Race Course.

Her parents, entrepreneurs and philanthropists Michelle and Walt Borisenok, started the commercial horse-breeding farm in 2016. Once joining them two years later, Nicole added a winery, flower farm, and distillery, which her husband Michael Krasodomski, runs.  

“I’m trying to grow and connect these businesses because not everyone is in the market for a racehorse!” noted Borisenok, 34. “My hope is to continue to build the farm for generations to come.”

An Albany Academy education, she acknowledges, may seem unlikely preparation for an agriculture career. In fact, Academy gave her just the start she needed. 

Borisenok joined her brother Michael ’06 there after attending elementary school in North Colonie. With support of her teachers, she exceeded her expectations academically and played lacrosse and field hockey. 

“Academics never came that naturally. I really had to put in the effort. I needed smaller classes and individualized attention,” Borisenok said. “Academy gave me the foundation and confidence, and always provided a community, even years after graduating.” 

She remains close to friends she made there and, in 2021,joined the Board of Trustees to support the school that has given her so much. 
Borisenok majored in international business and marketing at Ithaca College and played lacrosse. A contact at Albany Academy connected her to Victoria’s Secret. After four years, she returned to the family farm near Saratoga Lake where she’d spent summers. Dating to the 1800s, the farm had become a resort and later subdivided.  

Walt Borisenok, who had grown up on the property, slowly purchased seven adjacent properties and knocked down nine buildings to restore it to what is now a 200-acre farm. The farm was named for its one surviving building, a tavern from the resort.

“We couldn’t’ save the tavern, but the pillars off of the tavern’s bar are featured in our barn,” Nicole Borisenok said.

Old Tavern Farm focuses on breeding and selling elite thoroughbreds that compete at top venues, including Saratoga. But once returning upstate, Borisenok saw there was much more she could do to capitalize on the buzz of Saratoga in the summer.

“It’s certainly a hot spot and a tourist attraction. We see the influx of traffic and sales during those busy months. Being in the horse business we get to be part of the excitement,” said Borisenok, who is also on the Saratoga Hospital Foundation board. 

The winery she developed at Old Tavern Farm produces a full line, available on site, in local wine stores and at the racetrack – in cans, as the venue requires. The farm-themed gifts, distillery and flowers followed. 

“I would grow flowers for my wine tastings – and expanded to flower farming for wedding showers and charity events,” she explained. “We have 50,000 seedlings a year and a whole team operating our flower business.” 

As they move the farm forward with tours and events the family continues to invest in its history. Recently, Borisenok said, they relocated four barns dating to the 1800’s and reassembled them on the farm, where family members in their own homes. 

And Borisenok and Krasodomski, now have a son, Christian. 

“He’s one. Yes, he’ll be at Academy,” she vowed. “Class of 2040- something?”