Sunday afternoon, Nena and I were feeling a bit restless…summer-time cabin fever really. It was a beautiful day and after spending the morning unpacking our wedding gifts and finding room for the various wine glasses, serving dishes, etc…we wanted to get out and enjoy the day.

So, we hopped in the car and headed out east to the wineries (shocking, right?)…with no particular plan in mind.

For as long as we’ve been visiting Long Island wine country, we’ve heard about the cheese shop in the region — the Village Cheese Shop on Love Lane in Mattituck. And, until Sunday, we’d never visited.

Now, it’s going to be an integral part of any trip out east.

It’s a small shop, but their selection seems amazing and they even have a few tables and a small menu for them. The menu is mostly different cheese samplers, broken down by region, country, etc. But, they also have a few different fondues…something Nena was interested in and a future choice I’m sure.

On this day, we picked up their Italian sampler (complete with sliced baguette and imported olives) and a hunk of local herb-coated goat cheese from Catapano Dairy Farm. The selection of cheese was a bit overwhelming because we’re fine cheese neophytes, so we took the "easy" way out this time.

Then, we headed to one of our favorite little wineries, Lieb Family Cellars, to enjoy our cheese and bread lunch with a bottle of their 2003 Pinot Blanc ($17). Almost every time we take a picnic lunch to the wineries, we stop and get a chilled bottle of this, their signature varietal.

So there we sat among the cabernet franc vines, sipping, nibbling and enjoyinga  great afternoon together. At the risk of sounding like an Old Milwaukee commercial, I thought to myself several times as the wine and cheese disappeared "It doesn’t get any better than this."

As we talked, Nena and I agreed that we’d both like to learn more about cheese. So that’s my next project, finding some good books about cheese before our next trip to the Village Cheese Shop (631.298.8556).