Posts Written OnJune 2006

Many of you have already seen it (and emailed me about it) but being in meetings all afternoon kept my eyes from Eric Asimov’s story about some Long Island wines he tasted recently at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. Let’s just say that I think he’s much more on target with this story than the last time he wrote about Long Island wines. It’s nice to see a respected wine writer like Eric say good things about these "older" vintages. Along with the contention that LI wines are too expensive, lack of cellar worthiness is the other complain I…

I’ve written before about how poor a job, in general, New York wineries do with their websites and Internet marketing. Some wineries don’t have websites at all. Others have sites that were built years ago and get updated maybe once a year. And many ignore contact forms and emails that come in via their sites. In short, very few "get it" when it comes to marketing themselves and their wines online. It’s a shame really as Internet marketing can be one of the most cost effective forms of marketing available. Of course, some of the smaller producers just don’t have…

Saturday morning, Nena and I battled the dreary weather on our way to Raphael to visit "my vines" for the first time, before sticking around for a barrel tasting of 2005 reds (more on that later this week). Winemaker and managing director, Richard Olsen-Harbich met us in the winery and took us over to the row of cabernet franc vines that will be used to make the first LENNDEVOURS-labeled wine. We also learned that Rich went to college at SUNY Cobleskill, just outside of Nena’s hometown. Small world when you consider the size of said hometown. The row is right…

Friday over at Wine Sediments, my tour of America’s wine regions continued with a visit to Gruet Winery in New Mexico. Well known for their bubbly, Gruet also makes several still wines — which are what I focused on. As with Arizona, I preferred the reds.

As you’ve no doubt already heard, many vineyards lost some their red wine crop last fall as the East End was pummeled with record rainfall. Unfortunately, Palmer Vineyards was one of the hardest hit, losing almost all of their reds — enough that their 2005 red wines were made using grapes from the Pacific Northwest. But, because most of our area’s white wine grapes were harvested before the deluge, the dry, warm growing season expresses it self quite well in many of the 2005 whites I’ve tasted. Bright fruit that tends more toward the tropical than usual is common and…

Do you know the name Paola Valverde? Probably not — but you should. In a wine region dominated by well-known, pseudo-star winemakers — the Chilean-born Valverde deserves much more attention than she does for the work she’s doing at Macari Vineyards. Yet, she flies under the radar perhaps more than any other local winemaker. But, anonymity aside, her wines speak for themselves. And some of them speak quite loudly. Macari has long produced one of my favorite roses, and the Macari Vineyards 2005 Rose ($12), which will be released in a couple weeks, continues that pedigree. A pretty salmon-orange-pink, its…

By Contributing Columnist Donavan Hall When I moved to Long Island in 2002 I didn’t know anything about the local beer culture. I didn’t even know where I could find a decent beer store.  Fortunately, the corner grocery in my new neighborhood had six packs of something called Toasted Lager from Blue Point Brewing Company. So after unloading my moving truck I was able to quench my thirst with that caramel colored, roasty brew. That was a little more than three years ago. There was a time when in most restaurants on Long Island, if you said you wanted a…