Our latest vineyard view from Wolffer Estate Vineyards (taken by Ellen Watson) shows how much of a difference just a few weeks can make. The dandelions are gone. The bird netting is gone. And so are the grapes. I’ll be posting some harvest shots Ellen took soon. In the meantime, check out the Flickr slideshow.
October’s shipment from the New York Cork Club will be sent out soon, and it’s time to let members know what’s coming (and let non-members know what they are missing). First, as you can see, is the Ravines Wine Cellars 2006 Dry Riesling ($16). Yes, I know I’m sending another riesling and I swear I wasn’t planning to, but this one is just too tasty. Filled with lime, mineral and faintlyl floral qualities and awesome acidity, this really shows off everything that is so great about Finger Lakes riesling. And at $16 it’s a great buy too. Our second selection…
In our house, there’s only one baker. And it’s not me. Baking just requires a level of precision and adherence to ratios and recipes that I’m simply not capable of. I always put a little extra of this or that in when I’m cooking. Do that when you’re baking, and you could end up with a horrific result. Nena, on the other hand, is quite a baker. It’s one of the things that I fell in love with early in our relationship. Between my cooking (and hers as well) and her baking, we are a complete culinary set. She completes…
2003 wasn’t a great year for North Fork reds. I’ve written about it before, but basically there was a rainy period in October (after a good growing season) and two rounds of frost that resulted to many sub-par wines from that year. Particularly reds. And Pellegrini Vineyards’ 2003 EastEnd Select Merlot ($15), which is normally a decent, gulpable seems to have fallen victim to that bad weather. The nose is promising enough, offering straightforward black cherry aromas with a little earthiness and smoke. But the palate is disappointing and disjointed. Fairly light in body, there’s some cherries, dried leaves and…
Roman Roth shared some exciting news (at least for riesling lovers) with me over the weekend. He’s making a Grapes of Roth 2007 Riesling. Roman found 4 tons of fruit at Split Rock Vineyard in Greenport, and as he put it "The grapes looked great when I first saw them with a low yield of 2 tons per acre and so I jumped at the opportunity. We have been babying it here at the winery. At the moment it is fermenting at extremely low temperature of 56 Fahrenheit and it is looking good." Just like the GoR merlots, only about…
I should have posted about this sooner, but our resident photographer, Ellen Watson, is one of the featured artists/photographers taking part in Plein Air Peconic II an exhibition featuring sites conserved by the Peconic Land Trust. Ten plein air painters and three landscape photographers worked in the field during August and September of 2006 to create Plein Air Peconic, a project that takes the ongoing collaboration between local artists and the Peconic Land Trust one step further. Plein Air Peconic II — the second major exhibition of all 14 Plein Air Peconic artists — opened on Saturday, October 6, 2007…
Saturday morning, several of you (my readers) descended upon Sannino Bella Vita Vineyard on Saturday morning to harvest cabernet sauvignon for our community-made Long Island red blend. I was unable to make it because I was in the Hudson Valley visiting good friends, picking apples and stopping at Alison Winery in Red Hook. From what I’ve heard and from the pictures I’ve seen, a good time was had by all. We’ll be pressing the cab on the 28th. This is going to be fun.
I heard a joke last weekend that goes something like this: "Don’t wear orange on the North Fork this time of year. You might be taken home by someone." It’s probably not the funniest joke you’ve heard lately, but it aptly describes the sometimes-chaotic behavior of the pumpkin-picking masses. All those families, dead set on finding the perfect pumpkin, the best hay ride and the curviest corn maze, have been clogging the major North Fork arteries for weeks and will continue to do so through the fall. Whether you call it the harvest parade, a parking lot or bumper-to-bumper, the…
As you long-time readers know, I like seeing Long Island wines mentioned in the big-time, mainstream press…but I also find myself being critical of the coverage. Either the writers get their facts wrong, choose the completely wrong wineries to represent the region, or perpetuate the sort of "France and California" snobbery that I loathe so much. But, Lettie Teague of Food & Wine Magazine gets it right in her recent story "Can Long Island Make World-Class Wines?" At least when it comes to the places she tasted, the wines she liked and the answer to that question. My only comment…
Because my parents were in town last weekend, Nena and I were able to sneak out of the house, sans Jackson, and have dinner together for the first time in a while. It doesn’t happen much these days, so we try to take full advantage when it can happen. After calling one of our favorite places, The Kitchen - A Bistro in St. James, only to find out that they aren’t open on Sunday evenings, we settled on a new-to-us place in Port Jefferson, Ruvo. We’ve had friends tell us good things, so we figured we’d give it a shot.…