The Long Island Merlot Alliance has sponsored a summer intern to do local Merlot research during the 2007 vintage. The intern, Christopher Grassotti, is a student in the Masters degree program in viticulture and enology at Ecole Nationale Supérieur Agronomique in Montpellier, France. In his work for LIMA, he will be working closely with LIMA members, Viticultural Research Program Leader Alice Wise, and others at Cornell University. He will focus on defining the dominant and strongly identifiable aroma/ profile of Long Island merlot and identifying the differences found in other quality wine regions. This will allow specific analysis, in the…