Last year’s (much smaller) WoTy tasting.

By Lenn Thompson, Executive Editor

The planning is complete, all of the wines and beers have been gathered, and later this morning the non-Long Island members of the New York Cork Report family will hit the road, heading to the North Fork for our third-annual Wines of the Year Weekend, which we’ve taken to referring to simply as WoTY.

As with our staff and coverage of New York’s adult beverage team — this year’s WoTY program has grown significantly compared to last year’s.

Last year, we dipped our toes into beer, adding a small Beers of the Year, tasting a handful of beers after all of the wine tasting was complete.

This year, the BoTY tasting will feature 10 of the best beers being brewed in the state, and we’re going to taste the them this afternoon. They deserve a separate tasting. We’ll announce the winner tonight via Twitter and Facebook, with more coverage here on the site next week.

Tomorrow morning, we’ll re-convene to work our way through 16 flights of New York wine, choosing regional category winners and maybe (if the voting is unanimous) some state-wide category winners.

We’ll announce those winners tomorrow afternoon or evening — again via Twitter and Facebook. The tasting always inspires more stories — some unexpected — so you’ll be reading about the tasting quite a bit.

WoTY weekend is about much more than just the tastings, however. Because of our collectively busy lives and being spread out across the state, WoTY is also the only time each year that the entire gang (or at least most of it) gets together. We are proud of the hard work we have and do put into making this site what it is. This weekend is a celebration of that too.