By Evan Dawson, Finger Lakes Correspondent The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace is, quite simply, the fastest and most enjoyable wine-themed book I've ever read. It is not, to use a rather nebulous term, the "best" book about wine I've read — that distinction rests with Neal Rosenthal's Reflections of a Wine Merchant — but it reads like fabulous and fabulist fiction, and that's a real credit to the author, considering it's not fiction at all. The Billionaire's Vinegar tells the story of the most infamous bottle of wine ever sold, but it tells much more than that. In fact,…
Posts Written OnMarch 2009
Bedell Cellars: A Trip to the (Wine) Library
Four library reds at Bedell Cellars Bedell Cellars is one of the true jewels of the North Fork wine industry. You have history — it was founded in 1980 by Kip Bedell who still serves as founding winemaker. You have an influx of new capital — the result of Michael Lynne purchasing the winery in 2000. And you have terrific wines coming out of a state-of-the-art winery and modern tasting room. One thing seems to be a constant through the many changes Bedell Winery has gone through in recent years — quality wines that are among the region’s best. On…
Red Tail Ridge Winery: A Different Kind of Investment
By Jason Feulner, Finger Lakes Correspondent While the basic strategy for opening a functional winery differs from region to region, in the Finger Lakes the trend seems to follow a path that calls for the opening of the tasting room first with production facility and vineyard coming later. While this might be a generalization of sorts, it makes sense in many respects. Nearly 75% of wine sales in the Finger Lakes occur on site; many larger wineries lease production space; and a vineyard takes quite a few years to produce grapes. A winemaker or entrepreneur can purchase grapes, make wine at a different…
New York Cork Club: March Selections
The wines for the New York Cork Club's March 2009 shipment left Greene Grape today, so I wanted to tell you a bit about them. I always have a lot of fun when I pick the wines that we send out to our members, but this month's selections are two that I'm particularly happy that we were able to get for the club. I wouldn't call them hard to find per se, but you have to go to the winery to get them when we did. First is a wine from Anthony Road Wine Company, their 2007 Martini-Rienhardt Selection Riesling…
Windham Vineyards 2008 St. Pepin
Never heard of the St. Pepin grape? I hadn't either until James Bateman, owner, vineyard manager and winemaker at Windham Vineyards in Windham, NY sent me a couple of his wines — including this Windham Vineyards 2008 Estate Select St. Pepin ($15). Windham is perhaps best known as a skiing town and not surprisingly Bateman, an Englishman, presides over the highest elevation vineyards in the east — at 2000 and 2200 feet above sea level. As you can probably guess, it gets cold up there in his vineyards, which is why he is growing varieties like St. Pepin, which is…
Heard Through the Grape Vine: Jim Silver Leaving Bedell Cellars for Peconic Bay Winery
For now, this qualifies for the "strong rumor" folder, but I've heard that Jim Silver, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Bedell Cellars, will be leaving soon to take over as the new general manager at Peconic Bay Winery. Jean Partridge, currently Bedell's wholesale account executive, will become the VP of sales and owner Michael Lynne's son, Jonathan Lynne will join the team as Executive VP of Sales. Peconic Bay Winery's current GM, Matt Gillies, is leaving on "great terms" and is planning his new future "quite enthusiastically." Matt brings a wide array of winery and vineyard experience…
Channing Daughters Winery 2005 Mudd
Channing Daughters Winery's winemaker, Chris Tracy, is a magician with white wines. For the most part though, I find his reds a notch or (and sometimes two) below the level of those beautiful whites. He's no less creative with the reds though. Take this Channing Daughters Winery 2005 MUDD ($40) a blend of 48% merlot (from Sam McCullough’s Vineyard in Aquebogue), 36% cabernet sauvignon (from Mudd Vineyard in Southold) and 16% Blaufrankisch (from CDW's estate in Bridgehampton). I don't know many winemakers who would take a Bordeaux-styled blend of merlot and cabernet and throw 16% Blau, which is most commonly…
Announcing TasteCamp EAST 2009 in Long Island Wine Country
After weeks (maybe months) of preparation (much more than I ever anticipated), I'm finally ready, willing and able to announce the newest endeavor I've undertaken — TasteCamp EAST 2009, a wine blogger event that will bring more than a dozen wine bloggers to Long Island wine country May 1-3 this spring. The concept for TasteCamp is a simple one: getting enthusiastic bloggers together in a region that is new to them to taste as much wine as possible and speak to as many winemakers as possible over the course of a weekend. Most smaller, lesser-known wine regions in the world…
Clovis Point to Join the Long Island Merlot Alliance (LIMA)
The official announcement is coming later this week, but I've just learned that Clovis Point has decided to become the newest member of the Long Island Merlot Alliance (LIMA). LIMA was formed in 2005 to develop quality standards in the production of classically-styled Long Island merlot and to establish Long Island as the leading region for merlot in the New World. To date, LIMA has been rather quite on the public scene, focusing on vineyard research and conducting tastings to identify the qualities that help define "typical" Long Island merlot. The group, which includes Raphael, Pellegrini Vineyards, Sherwood House Vineyards,…
Are Napa Winemakers Robert Parker’s Bitches?
Robert Parker's Bitch from Josh Hermsmeyer on Vimeo. Here in New York, we don't really need to worry about Robert Parker or James Laube — they don't taste NY wines for their respective publications. For Parker's Wine Advocate, David Schildknecht covers New York and for the Wine Spectator, people like Thomas Matthews, Mitch Frank and James Molesworth taste and write about the wines of New York. Still, this video put together by Tina Caputo of Vineyard and Winery Management should be of interest to anyone who drinks or makes wine. And of course I'd be remiss not to give my…