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…
Better late than never I always say. (Okay, maybe I never say that because I’m typically not a very patient man. Oh well.) I’ve finally gotten around to doing my half of the WBW/IMBB Fabulous Favorites Festival round up (see Alberto’s half). So, without further adieu… Apparently Michelle of My Wine Education should have followed the rules (haha). She didn’t pick a favorite and her pairing of Biltmore House 2004 Syrah with pepper steak just didn’t get it done. Of course, rules are meant to be broken (and are broken regularly with these events!) Catherine from Purple Liquid, which is…
I know that many of my LENNDEVOURS readers also read my column "Over the Barrel" in Dan’s Papers out on the East End of Long Island. With that in mind, I thought it important to mention that the column that is running this weekend, focusing on Palmer Vineyards, has been edited heavily and is quite different from what I submitted originally. I plan to publish the original version of the column here in the next few days. Writing for ad-supported publications can be a challenge and it certainly has its pitfalls. That’s one reason I love blogging so much, I…
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…
This week in Corks of the Forks, I travel to Sherwood house Vineyards’ tiny lil tasting room (pictured at right) in Mattituck. It might be a small room, but the wines certainly aren’t small on flavor. They make some of the best Burgundian-style chardonnay on the North Fork and I like their Old World-style merlot as well.
Because a man (or woman) can’t live on local wine alone, join me in welcoming Donavan Hall to the LENNDEVOURS team. A Rocky Point, NY resident, Donavan is going to be covering the under-appreciated local beers of Long Island and New York State. He already covers the beer scene for several online publications including The Spirit World, A Good Beer Blog, and his own blog Catch & Release. If you are thirsty for Long Island brewed beer, check out his Long Island Beer Guide. He’s also an avid home brewer, Long Island wine lover and, yes, LENNDEVOURS reader. Welcome, Donavan…and…
Think about your favorite food – roast duck, filet mignon, foie gras – whatever it is. Would you want to eat that food for every meal, day in and day out? Chances are you wouldn’t, no matter how much you love it. So it should come as no surprise that winemakers, who often taste dozens of wines every single day, don’t always drink the same wines when they are “off the clock.” In fact, most agree that drinking only their own wine is a bad idea. We asked several local winemakers and winery owners what they drink when they are…
Friday night (more on that in a moment) I smoked my first pork shoulder. I bought a 9 lb. picnic shoulder not knowing that most pit master prefer the "butt" portion of the shoulder to the picnic. But (pun intended) I had what I had…and it turned out delicious. I started by trimming off quite a bit of fat (not all of it mind you) and the skin on the lower portion of the roast. I don’t have a scale that goes high enough to weigh this size roast, but I’m guessing I took at least a pound or two…
