Posts Written OnSeptember 12, 2011

By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor The timing of Leonard Oakes Estate Winery’s party celebrating their two double-gold medal winning wines from the annual New York Food & Wine Classic couldn’t have been more appropriate. Two weeks before, their 2008 Vidal Icewine and Steampunk Cider both received this award, with the Icewine even taking home the honor of “Best Dessert Wine” in NYS, but the real story behind the appropriately named “Double Gold Rush” event: it was the first public release of the aforementioned hard cider. Being a lucky member of the industry and media, I was invited to the…

By Dave Seel, Long Island Food Correspondent Driving through Cutchogue on Rt. 25, you have to keep a keen look out for the sign at McCall Wines or you might miss it. The tasting room, an old potato barn, is nothing like the large structures of other wineries, but is a relic of what the land has been and what it is now. Russ McCall, who spent summers on Long Island as a boy and is now a veteran of the wine industry, bought the property with The Peconic Bay Land Trust in 1996 to save Down’s Woods, Fort Corchaug…