Posts Written OnMay 2008

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here (not lately anyway) but our local grocery stores are awful. Pitiful really. They are particularly pathetic when it comes to the produce departments. The produce rarely looks fresh and it tastes great even less often. That’s just one of the reason we can’t wait for our summer vegetable, fruit and egg shares to start at Garden of Eve Organic Organic Farm. It starts in a couple weeks, and our goal is to avoid the chain stores as much as possible for the 22 weeks of the program. And, because I can’t help but…

Brooklyn Uncorked was a lot of fun this year. And I mean a lot of fun. How could it not be? You have 30 Long Island wineries, a half dozen breweries, a couple cheese shops, several restaurants and a lot of great, food-beer-and-wine-loving people in a great space in Brooklyn. Can it get much better? Well, I guess they could have actually intermingled the restaurants and other food vendors among the wineries so you didn’t have to go downstairs to get most of the food, but that’s a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. Even though this was…

We don’t speak much of wine from the ‘other’ coast here on LENNDEVOURS, but today we have to look to California, saddened by the news that Robert Mondavi has died at the age of 94. Whether you like the wines he was responsible for or his methods of promoting them doesn’t matter. Without him, the American wine industry wouldn’t be what it is today… and I mean that in a good way. He was a great popularizer of wine and a champion for California and the United States. Those in the wine industry who try to appeal to the masses…

By Jason Feulner, Finger Lakes Correspondent Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend the Second Annual Rendezvous with Riesling event at the New York Wine and Culinary Center in Canandaigua, New York. As the name implies, this event brings together sampling of New York wineries, mostly from the Finger Lakes, to showcase their most recent riesling offerings. I highlight some individual wines below. This event also served as my first visit to the Wine and Culinary Center. While I had always assumed that it had something to offer, I’ll admit that I was a bit dismissive of a centralized…

The local wine scene is dominated by some of its biggest producers, which only makes sense, I guess. I’m talking aobut places like Wolffer Estate, Lenz Winery and the Ps — Pindar, Palmer, Peconic Bay and Paumanok. Each has a wide range of wines in its portfolio, but merlot is a constant. Each makes at least two different versions each vintage, sometimes more. Those are the big fish in the little pond that is Long Island wine country. But there are little fish too. Every vintage, it seems, welcomes new wineries. In fact, I learned about a brand-spanking new one…

By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Correspondent Last month, a giant step toward catapulting Niagara USA’s Wine Trail into the future was taken by James Baker of Lockport, NY, when more than a year’s worth of hard work and research finally came together in an official AVA (American Viticultural Area) proposal submitted to New York State’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau Regulations Division. Baker is calling it the Ontario Lake Plain AVA, and it’s an area that includes the northern parts of three western New York counties just south of Lake Ontario and north of the Niagara Escarpment. The boundaries…

Year-to-year weather differences affect every winery. But when you only make a single wine, like say merlot, each year, it has an even larger impact on your business. Take Medolla Vineyards for example. Owned by John and Denise Medolla, this new procucer snuck up on me last spring their first release — a 2002 merlot.  2002 is considered by many to be an above average years for Long Island merlot and that wine is a classic North Fork merlot that, at $22, is one of the best deals in local vino. It straddles the line between Old and New World…

I don’t have a lot of time for reading these days. Between a busy day job, a burgeoning freelance career and the exhaustion that chasing a 16-month old around causes, reading has fallen down the priority list lately. I still have the best intentions. I try to go to bed a little early so I can read for an hour or so before actually going to sleep. Of course that just leads to me waking up a couple hours later with the book on my chest and the lights still on. This might seem like a weird way to announce…

As we continue our look at Paumanok Vineyards’ 2007 whites — all closed under screwcaps — we get to a truly one-of-a-kind wine, Paumanok Vineyards 2007 Chenin Blanc ($28). Chenin blanc is rare on the North Fork — no one else grows it actually — and this is a wine that can be difficult to get your hands on. They don’t make much and it has a rabid following.    The nose is complex and expressive, showing a fruit salad mélange of grapefruit, mango, pear, melon and orange blossom. A medium-bodied palate starts off fresh and clean with melon, grapefruit…