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Pennsylvania #Tastemaker: Anthony Vietri | Va La Vineyards

Photo courtesy Jeff Alexander “Tastemaker” is a term typically used to describe a person — either a sommelier or writer in the wine world — who decides what is good, cool or otherwise interesting. With my new #Tastemaker profiles, I’ve decided to usurp the term to mean someone who actually makes the wines, ciders, spirits, etc. that we love. A “tastemaker” should make something, after all. I spent the first 20-plus years of my life living in Pennsylvania. I was born there in one of Pittsburgh’s northern suburbs, went to college in a small town called Meadville, PA and then went to…

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Weekly New York Wine News — March 14, 2016

Photo via Stuart Pigott NEWS Northern Grapes Project – 3/8/2016 Representatives from Cornell delivered two presentations at the Norther Grapes Symposium, the annual conference on cold-climate viticulture and wine making. Dayton Business Journal – 3/8/2016 Boundary Breaks Late Harvest Riesling No. 90 makes it on this list of world class dessert wines. Finger Lakes Times – 3/10/2016 Sayre Fulkerson of Fulkerson Winery and Marc Fuchs of Cornell’s Geneva Experiment Station respectively received Vineyard and Research Unity Awards at the New York Wine & Grape Foundation’s annual banquet. Press and Sun Bulletin – 3/12/2016 First time wine festival in Binghamton with…

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Looking Ahead After 12 Years of the New York Cork Report

12 years ago today, I launched this site — then known as LENNDEVOURS. It was my second blog, the first being a fairly generic one that I treated a bit like a diary or journal, and it started covering food and wine in a broad sense. I had just started drinking Long Island wine and not long after, when I couldn’t find a website with information that I wanted about those wines anywhere, I decided to create it myself. Not long after that, I got my first wine columnist gig for a local newspaper. My wife — my most staunch supporter…

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Wolffer Estate Vineyard 2013 Chardonnay

Roman Roth has a way with chardonnay. Always has and probably always will. I don’t drink a lot of chardonnay, mind you, but I can recognize and appreciate well-made chardonnay of any style. For Wolffer Estate Vineyard 2013 Chardonnay ($19) Roth started with seven separate lots — all hand-harvested and fermented separately in 70% stainless steel and 30% French oak (his portion also completed malolactic fermentation). After six months of sur lie aging, those seven lots became one 1,117-case production. As I look back over my notes, I see that I wrote “fruity” three times, but it’s not just fruity.…

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New York #Tastemaker: Christopher Bates | Element Winery (Among Many Other Places)

“Tastemaker” is a term typically used to describe a person — either a sommelier or writer in the wine world — who decides what is good, cool or otherwise interesting. With my new #Tastemaker profiles, I’ve decided to usurp the term to mean someone who actually makes the wines, ciders, spirits, etc. that we love. A “tastemaker” should make something, after all. There was one person I didn’t take into account when I set out to ‘take back’ the term tastemaker from writers and sommeliers with this weekly series: Christopher Bates. He’s also a sommelier — and well-regarded one at that. But…

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Weekly New York Wine News — March 8, 2016

NEWS Syracuse.com – 3/1/2016 Award winning amateur wine maker Randy Agness finally goes pro in the Finger Lakes, with an initial release of Riesling from Seneca Lake. * News Editor had the opportunity to taste some Agness 2014 home Riesling and Gruner Veltliner at the 2015 Wine Bloggers Conference and gave them both enthusiastic thumbs-up. Cornell Cooperative Extension – 3/2/2016 An extensive report analyzing New York’s brewery supply chain documents the expansion of the state’s malt barley and hops plantings as well as the premiums paid for locally grown ingredients. North County Now – 3/4/2016 Far northern New York economy…

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Boundary Breaks Vineyard 2014 No. 239 Dry Riesling

I’ve become a bit jaded about Finger Lakes riesling — but I don’t mean that to sound as bad as I know it does. But after so many years tasting so many good-to-great rieslings, I’ve come to expect it in a sense. I don’t want to say that I take it for granted because I don’t. There is still a lot of mediocre (or worse) riesling in the Finger Lakes. But, for a wine to really stand out during a tasting, it has to be something special. When such a wine retails for less than $20, even better — if increasingly rare…

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New York Cork Club: March 2016 Selections

  “Does he pick these wines because we like them?” One of our friends — who also happens to be a member of this club — asked my wife that recently, and while the short answer is probably “no” it’s a bit more complicated than that, I think. I want each and every one of you to love each and every wine that I pick each and every month, the reality is that I have to like it first. As much as I want to keep you happy, I’d never put a wine into a shipment that I didn’t like,…

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From the Archives: “Celebrating 40 Years of Long Island Wine: A Look Into the Future”

Editor’s Note: Every Thursday — call it Throwback Thursday if you’d like — we’ll pull a story from the more than a decade of NYCR stories and republish it. This week, I don’t go back as far as I usually do — only 3 years. But, looking back on this post, where I make some predictions about Long Island wine as it celebrated it’s 40th anniversary, I’m happy to see that I wasn’t far off on at least some of these.  I’ve got some ground to make up if I’m going to write 40 posts about Long Island wine’s first 40 years.…

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Corks of the Forks: The Do’s and Dont’s of a Good Wine Dinner

Winery events abound on the East End, but not all wine events are created equal. They range from the very wine-focused — things like barrel or vertical tastings — to the not-at-all-wine-related. I’m looking at you, vineyard yoga. Among all winery events, the wine dinner reigns supreme. Just about every winery in America hosts them at restaurants or right on their own property. It’s a simple equation: winery plus restaurant equals fun to be had. They are a great way for a wine producer to reach new audiences and build relationships with restaurants. Restaurants benefit, too, often selling these dinners…

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