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Roanoke Vineyards 2012 Gabby’s Cabernet Franc

Roanoke Vineyards 2012 Gabby’s Cabernet Franc ($43) shows the ripeness of the vintage, but is a standout for its elegant intensity and early complexity. A blend of cab franc grown in a part of Roanoke’s estate vineyard known as “Gabby’s rows” because Pisacano family patriarch Gabby Pisacano manages them along with 17% merlot and 1% petit verdot, it offers a spicy and slightly herbal – in a good way – nose with layers of sweet black cherry and blackberry with subtle but distinct minty-licorice notes and high-toned floral aromas. Pretty and fresh on the medium-bodied palate, mixed berries lead the way…

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Bellwether Wine Cellars 2013 Vin Gris of Pinot Noir

I don’t consider Kris Matthewson, winemaker at Bellwether Wine Cellars, to be a “natural winemaker” (what does that even mean?). True, he doesn’t like to make a lot of cellar additions and prefers a decidedly hands-off approach, but he’s not above making adjustments if a wine needs them. That said, his wines do lean toward the idiosyncratic. They invite the adventurous and open minded and aren’t for everyone. Some are truly unlike any other in the Finger Lakes region. I think he probably likes it that way. Of a lineup that also includes a handful of single-vineyard rieslings, a gamay noir-dominant rose and…

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Uncork the Forks: Harvest 2015 Offers Abundant Optimism

Editor’s Note: This is the lastest ediction of my biweekly column for The Suffolk Times and Riverhead News-Review.   After writing grape harvest reports for more than a decade, I’ve learned a few things. One, every winemaker is hopeful this time of year. Comments like “This will be an outstanding vintage” and “XYZ will be a great year for Long Island wine” abound. I’ve also learned that it’s not always true. It’s easy to get caught up in the romanticism of wine and wine country, but this is a business — the business of selling wine. That salesmanship begins before the…

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5 Questions with… Julia Hoyle, Sheldrake Point Vineyards

Julia Hoyle may have found her way into the wine industry innocently enough, looking for a part-time job while attending college, but she quickly found herself surrounded by great people and a curiosity for the business she couldn’t contain. Hoyle started at the Fox Run Vineyards tasting room in 2009 and worked her way into the cellar where she took every opportunity to learn from veteran winemaker Peter Bell before she left in 2012. Julia moved on to Atwater Vineyards for the fall 2012 harvest season, which provided insight into operations at another prominent Finger Lakes winery. Once harvest finished Julia’s…

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Support Fossil & Till’s Indiegogo Campaign

If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time, you may or may not remember the name Mark Grimaldi. He’s served on tasting panels for us in the past (including our Wines of the Year tastings), he used to coordinate our “Drink Local Dinners” when we had them and he’s also a personal friend of mine. His wife Olivia owns a great little wine and cider shop in Ithaca, NY now, and he is a partner in the new Aurora Ales & Lagers Co. and with partners Eric Clemons (Coeur Wine Company) and Ian Barry (Barry Family Cellars) he’s working to…

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Barry Family Cellars 2013 Tuller Vineyard Pinot Noir

Barry Family Wines 2013 Tuller Vineyard Pinot Noir came and went — only 50 cases were made and they sold quickly — but it’s a wine that I’ll remember. We always remember the good ones, don’t we? Barry Family cellars co-owner and winemaker Ian Barry started working with John Tuller and his fruit during Barry’s first vintage in the Finger Lakes, when he was working at Heron Hill. At the time, Heron Hill bought all of Tuller’s fruit, including pinot noir, chardonnay, riesling and cabernet franc. “I always thought his fruit was unique, but particularly his pinot noir, which I would often keep…

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Inside Copake Wine Works, aka “Frankly Wines North”

The first Saturday tasting at Copake Wine Works felt slightly subversive: Standing behind a table in the front window, co-owner Christy Frank splashed Greek white and Moroccan syrah into the glasses of customers who were possibly more used to tried-and-true Chardonnay and G&Ts on lazy August afternoons. The wines were quenching, though, and well-priced, so many left with bottles of Semeli “Mountain Sun” Moschofilero and Ouled Thaleb Syrah cradled in their arms. On Instagram, Frank has called Copake Wine Works, the three-month old wine shop she and her husband, Yanai, run in this sleepy upstate village, “Frankly Wines North,” and its shelves offer a mashup…

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New York’s Next Wave: A New Generation is Earning Attention With Quality and Experimentation

Editor’s Note: This is my latest New York-focused piece for Beverage Media Though they haven’t saturated the metropolitan New York market by any means, New York wines aren’t the new kids on the block anymore. Rather than look to distant lands for “the next big thing,” enough intrepid buyers have looked in their own backyard to raise the profile of New York State wine to at least a known quantity. Many of the top — the classic ones, really — are known quantities. Wines from stalwarts like Hermann J. Wiemer, Paumanok Vineyards, Dr. Konstantin Frank and Channing Daughters Winery hold…

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Uncork the Forks: At Harbes, Come for the Corn, Stay for the Wine

Editor’s Note: This is the lastest ediction of my biweekly column for The Suffolk Times and Riverhead News-Review. When I hit the North Fork in search of farm-fresh produce, I don’t go to just one farm stand. I have my favorites for certain things. If I’m buying tomatoes, I usually go to Sang Lee. We get fresh goat cheese at Catapano. When it comes to sweet corn that you can eat raw, right off the cob, even without the typical butter and salt, I head to Harbes Family Farm in Mattituck. Picked in the morning and on my plate that evening,…

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Kemmeter Wines 2014 Sonero

“Balance” is a term that gets bandied about in the wine world. Collectively, “balance” has a meaning that most agree on — a wine is balanced when all the different components (fruit, residual sugar, acidity, tannin, etc.) come together in a harmonious way. A balanced wine doesn’t have protrusions or awkward components. But even if we can agree conceptually on this definition, there is a lot of room for interpretation. A wine that you find perfectly balanced, I may find too oaky. Similarly, what I consider balanced might have too much acidity for you. Context matters too — and that gets us…

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