Posts Tagged“featured”

Judgement Day: Is There Mettle Behind the Medals?

This holiday weekend, when you belly up to the tasting bars of your favorite local wineries — or any given winery, really — inevitably you will see on display bottles draped in shiny heavy medallions of bronze, silver, and gold. Annual beribboned medals of merit, glinting under lights positioned just so to draw your eye to their shiny pomp and circumstance. Tasting notes on flight sheets further explain the sight — this one won a silver, this one a double gold. And every now and again, you find the goose with the golden egg: The coveted Governor’s Cup. But do you ever wonder who…

Continue Reading

Let Us Eat Local: ‘Just Food’ Celebrates All Things Locally Grown

For those who spend their disposal income on the edible artistry of Manhattan’s best chefs, Just Food’s Fifth Annual Let Us Eat Local was like being inside Willy Wonka’s Fancy Fall Food Factory. The event benefited non-profit, Just Food, which keeps civilians in five boroughs of New York City connected with farms and local products. They engage the community by teaching how to grow and identity healthy food through CSAs, classes, outreach and Farm School, a program giving students a framework to grow produce in the concrete jungle. Forty restaurants rolled out dishes for a walk-around tasting using seasonal ingredients…

Continue Reading

Pop-Up Mead Tasting in Brooklyn with Enlightenment Wines

I received this invite this afternoon and thought it was more than interesting enough to post here. I have very little experience with mead, but after reading a bit about Enlightment Wines, I’m intrigued by the wild ferments, local ingredients and interesting flavor combinations. The event is this Thursday, October 4 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s a one-night-only pop up mead bar that will feature “some very limited edition esoteric wines” described as “locally sourced bone dry fruit wines and limited edition infused meads.” Enlightenment Wines Pop-Up Thursday, October 4 7 p.m. – 12 midnight 254 South 2nd Street  Williamsburg, NY 11211 Menu:…

Continue Reading

Amy Zavatto Joins NYCR Team

I’m not 100% convinced that Amy Zavatto is a real person, so if you’ve met her, please vouch for her. Though Amy splits her time between New York City and Shelter Island (where she grew up), we have yet to meet in person. She’s a ghost or perhaps a figment of New York wine’s collective imagination, writing about Long Island and Finger Lakes wines  as part of her writing for a variety of outlets, including Imbibe, Edible Manhattan, Wynn Magazine, Foxnews.com. Her work has also appeared in Details, More, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Food & Wine. She is the author ofThe Complete Idiot’s Guide to Bartending, Eat NY, and co-author of The Renaissance…

Continue Reading

Macari Vineyards 2011 ‘Katherine’s Field” Sauvignon Blanc

Macari Vineyards is always one of my go-to producers for Long Island sauvignon blanc, particularly the Katherine’s Field bottling, which is made without oak. It always tells the tale of the growing season and doesn’t try to mimic sauvignon from the Loire or New Zealand or California. Macari makes Long Island sauvignon blanc. 2011 was a cooler year and one marked with heavy hurricane-related rain late in the season. Macari Vineyards  “Katherine’s Field” Sauvignon Blanc ($23) shows the coolness of the vintage, with melon, grapefruit, lemon zest and thyme notes and a lighter-bodied style, with fresh, clean acidity and surprising length. A…

Continue Reading

Red Cat Cellars Celebrates Opening of New Tasting Room

  Hazlitt’s Red Cat Cellars in Naples is celebrating the opening of its new tasting room, a large building on the grounds of what used to be Widmer Wine Cellars. Hazlitt bought the property in 2010 from Constellation Brands. Since then, Hazlitt reports investing more than $1 million to upgrade vineyards and equipment, as well as refurbish existing buildings and launch the new tasting room. Winemaker Tim Benedict said during a recent chat that he was “thrilled” with the progress at the site, and the wonderful 2012 weather has certainly only helped. The old Widmer vines were often gnarled and…

Continue Reading

A Real Winery’s Tasting Room is Not a Bar… And Other Advice to Get the Most From a Visit to Wine Country

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this topic. 99% of you know everything I’m about to write. And agree. And act this way. But I still feel compelled to write about it. Why? Maybe it’s because pumpkin-picking season is upon us on Long Island and wine country roads are clogged with local agritourists. Maybe it’s all of the bar-masquerading-as-a-tasting-room stuff I’ve been reading. Or maybe it’s that I’m becoming more and more like my father every day in that I simply expect people to act the right way in every situation — including visiting wine country. Most of the time,…

Continue Reading

“My” Vineyard on the Adirondack Coast

The Cornell Cooperative Extension cold-hardy cultivar trial vineyard in Willsboro, NY, on the western shore of Lake Champlain, sits in a place of true natural beauty, and is home to a number of grape varieties that have been bred for disease resistance, and tolerance of extreme cold to points well below -25F.  Willsboro is also my own home stomping ground, which is where reporting on this place becomes admittedly a bit challenging.  Objectivity is obscured by my associations with the place, which are as long and deep as the lake itself. I was dipped in Willsboro Bay for the first time…

Continue Reading

Why Don’t Finger Lakes Wineries Offer Riesling in Magnum?

The other day I picked up a magnum of Hermann J. Wiemer 2008 Dry Riesling in magnum. It had me thinking: Magnums are so sexy. How come almost no one in the Finger Lakes offers riesling in magnum? I was going to say that no one in the Finger Lakes bottles their wine in larger formats, but of course that’s wrong. You can find Red Cat in magnum. Fox Run’s Ruby Vixen, , Arctic Fox, Chardonnay perhaps. Some of Bully Hill’s offerings, I’m sure. But why not riesling? After all, the world’s finest riesling ages gracefully for many years, and…

Continue Reading