Long Island Whine: Are LI Wines Really Over-Priced? Or are We Looking at Them From the Wrong Perspective?

Just like the wines we drink, any discussion of wine prices and
price-to-value ratios is always a complex and layered one. There are
dozens of factors that help a winery’s management decide what to charge
for its wines, including land costs, labor costs, market pressures, and
supply and demand. The list goes on and on. The idea of “value” is even
tougher to pin down as it’s so subjective and affected by things like
the media, mood and personal perception.

So before we can even tackle the question, “Is Long Island wine
over-priced?” there are a few points that need to be made.

First, wine on Long Island varies from winery to winery and year to
year. Richard Olsen-Harbich, managing director and winemaker at Raphael
in Peconic, said it best in an email to me last week. “As in most areas
producing wine, you have good value, you have great wines and you also
have poor value and bad wines — and because we are not that large a
(wine-producing) area, it gets magnified.” Rich went on to say that he
doesn’t even like talking about Long Island wine in general terms.

Next, when I contacted several winemakers and winery managers in the
area, I found that very few customers actually complain about wine
prices in winery tasting rooms themselves. “Interestingly enough,"
Olsen-Harbich noted, "the tasting room provides an overall wine
experience that people are typically very satisfied with. The biggest
complaints we hear are that we don’t have enough white wine – or that
our wine isn’t sweet enough.”

Wine that isn’t ‘sweet’ enough is a topic for another time, but the
“overall wine experience” point is very important. I personally am
willing to pay more for a bottle of wine if the setting, the friends
I’m with and the overall experience is memorable.

So now we know that we can’t generalize about Long Island wines and
that people rarely complain about the prices in tasting rooms (even
though they are almost always higher than at local wine shops). But
people do complain about L.I. wine prices – just not in tasting rooms.

As a wine lover and an admitted Internet addict, I’m active on a few
wine discussion sites and through my own website (www.lenndevours.com)
I’ve met and emailed with wine lovers the world over. Many of the
people I meet haven’t even tried Long Island wine – it’s just too hard,
even impossible, for them to get. And sadly, many of those who have
tried LI wines have tasted wines on the lower end of the quality
spectrum. For instance, someone commented recently, “I can buy wines
from Chile that are much better than the stuff I’ve tasted from Long
Island, and they are a much better value. Long Island wines are just
over-priced for what you get.”

I hear this kind of comment all the time. And it’s frustrating.

How can one best respond to this criticism? Trent Preszler, vice
president of operations for Bedell Cellars in Cutchogue, has a great
answer. “Whenever someone says something to me about our prices being
too high, I simply tell them it is not true. It is a myth promulgated
by consumer misinformation and a lack of understanding about the
broader wine market. Can you name one premium boutique (winery) in Napa
making fewer than 10,000 cases a year that sells a world-class Bordeaux
blend for around $20-30, like us? For equal quality comparably produced
(small-scale farm winery) American Bordeaux-style reds out of Napa or
Washington, you’d be paying at least double or triple, if not five
times what we charge."

But can Long Island wines compete with these top wines from Napa and
other respected wine regions? I certainly think so and Charles Massoud,
Paumanok Vineyards’ co-owner and winemaker, has pulled together the
blind tastings against these world-class wines to prove it.

“In a blind tasting with Dr. Harvey Passes, three Chardonnays from Long
Island (Lenz, Bedell and Paumanok) were tasted blind with a fourth
wine, which when revealed was Puligny Montrachet Champs Canets 2002,”
Massoud said. “Eric (Fry, winemaker at Lenz), Kip (Bedell, winemaker at
Bedell Cellars), Dr. Passes and I could not tell which was which. Ours
sold for under $20 while the Puligny sold for between $55 and $75,
depending on the store. When you compare apples to apples, our prices
are a bargain.” This is just one example. Other wineries have conducted
similar tastings with similar results.

Preszler concurs. “When compared with other small-scale viticulture
efforts around the world, there is no question that the best Long
Island wines offer the best value for the money.

That’s a very important point. The best Long Island wines really are
great values. But if you’re not the type of person who typically spends
$20-30 on a bottle of wine, you may find the lower end pricey. If you
are used to paying less than ten dollars for a bottle of wine from
Australia, Chile, Argentina and other warm growing regions, some Long
Island wines can certainly seem expensive. “Long Island cannot compete
with cheap wines from hot climates. But if you are looking for wines
with character, the value is there,” said Roman Roth, winemaker and
general manager of Wolffer Estate in Sagaponack.

So what has to happen to change the perception of all Long Island wines
as expensive and over-priced? I think people need to put aside their
preconceived notions and taste the wines – and taste the right wines.
It would be unfair to base your opinion of California wines solely on
Beringer White Zinfandel, and serious wine drinkers shouldn’t base
their impressions of Long Island wine solely on one or two wines
either. As we said before, you just can’t generalize.

Robin Meredith of Broadfields Cellars summed up the issue of the
relative value of Long Island wines in his wine club newsletter last
summer: “There will always be boatloads of solid $10 wines coming from
places like Spain, Australia and Southern Italy, but using those wines
as your benchmark for value means you will never taste a Barolo from
northern Italy, a Cote-Rotie, Hermitage or Chateauneuf-du-Pape from the
Rhone Valley or a Pinot Noir from just about anywhere. Compared to
wines of similar structure, ambition and distinction from around the
world, Long Island’s best wines (Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay)
are better values than ever.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.