Long Island Merlot Better Than Bordeaux?
By Lenn Thompson, Founder and Editor-in-Chief
(Note: A version of this column will appear in the 7/23 issue of Dan's Papers)
I don’t typically pay much attention to the awards, scores and medals bestowed upon Long Island wines by a seemingly un-ending list of publications, festivals and fairs. Most of these competitions are flawed and I just don't think that the results can be seen as authoritative.
Over the past 5 years that I've been writing about New York wines, I’ve seen too many great wines “win” bronze medals while obviously inferior wines get gold.
I still think, and I hope that I always will, that it’s best to pop a lot of corks and taste for yourself. Trust only one palate — your own.
Regardless of my personal opinions about competitions, the results of these tastings can be interesting and help emerging regions (yes, Long Island is still emerging) position themselves in the marketplace. I guess I’m saying that there is some value there, just not as much as the organizers and wineries would have you think.
Recently, some Long Island wineries, including member wineries of the Long Island Merlot Alliance (LIMA) shipped an assortment of local merlots to the Napa Valley in California to be tasted by Appellation America, an online publication and wine shop that “seeks to study and define in detail the flavors and aromas unique to the terroir of American wine regions so expert tasters and consumers know what to expect from wines produced there.”
As a part of the website’s “Best of Appellation” program, Clark Smith, Vice President of Best-of-Appellation Evaluations for Appellation America, led a panel of experts through a semi-blind tasting (I say semi-blind tasters knew that the wines were all from Long Island) of more than 50 local merlots — including 39 from LIMA members. 35 of those wines were awarded “Best of Appellation” status (see the full results), winning either gold or double-gold medals, an impressive showing even in the eyes of a competition cynic like me.
After tasting the wines, Smith said that Long Island merlot “…consistently produces tasty offerings, even in cool years when the wines drink well young, and somehow consistently avoid the grainy, vegetal crudeness of Bordeaux’s poor vintages. Merlot is either great or just good here…. Long Island Merlot has achieved a very high standard of consistent trueness-to-type which, in my opinion, surpasses most of Bordeaux, dollar for dollar.”
Despite Appellation America’s America-centric focus (bias?) for a moment, that is still quite a statement. For an ‘outsider’ (someone not in the local wine industry) to make such a statement speaks volumes about the quality and consistency of Long Island merlot.
Smith went on to say that Long Island merlots have a “delicacy and elegance” and are “a very refreshing respite from our California amped-up offerings.” To hear a wine expert — and one from California — make such a statement is refreshing. Especially because I happen to agree with him.
Then again, does anyone really like California merlot?
But here cdomes the admitted cynic in me: As wonderful — and potentially important — as these results are, they need to be kept in perspective.
First, only a handful of Long Island wineries even sent wines out to Napa for this tasting. Wines from many of the best producers on the East End — places like Bedell Cellars, The Lenz Winery, Paumanok Vineyards, Roanoke Vineyards and Shinn Estate Vineyards — weren’t included in this tasting. As such, this only represents a sliver of the true merlot story on Long Island. If the Appellation America panel had tasted a wider range of producers, their findings would be more credible and authoritative.
Second, this wasn’t a true blind tasting, so commentary about Long Island merlot versus merlot from Bordeaux or California should be taken with a grain of salt — as one man’s (Smith’s) opinion. It would be great to see how this set of 50 wines would fare in a double-blind tasting with wines from California, Bordeaux , Washington State and other top merlot-producing regions of the world. Maybe we should organize such a tasting this fall.
That all said, the results of this tasting are encouraging and not without merit. As Donnell Brown, director for LIMA told me in an email, the results mean that “Long Island is a bona fide wine region making world-class wines that deserve greater recognition” and “Merlot is a varietal that has a consistent and consistently good expression on Long Island. It represents us well.”
Those two statements are fact, at least in one man’s opinion — mine.
These comments do not surprise me, and as you know similar sentiments have been expressed about Finger Lakes rieslings and other varietals.
It all comes down to matters of perception and marketability, however, and I’m beginning to formulate a bit of an ecnomic theory about how wine is valued. Double-blind tastings might satisfy a statistically insigficant body of wine nerds, but such considerations do not a business make.
While it’s always nice to hear positive things about Long Island wines, keeping things in perspective, as you suggest, is indeed very important. First, consider the source: Appellation America is a group of essentially amateur wine lovers who like to scribble a bit. They hardly make up a trustworthy or credible body of qualified and educated wine enthusiasts. Few are season wine writers and I would venture to guess that even fewer have ever ventured onto Long Island’s North Fork or Sagaponack, so their opinions and awards are not based on any comprehensive tasting or study of Long Island Merlots, which range from the sublime to the flabby and forgettable. Plus, unfair as it may be, a majority of the wine writing hoi polloi don’t take the varietal all that seriously in the first place and wouldn’t be caught dead drinking “any f**king Merlot.”
Lenn - thanks for posting this. We happen to think this tasting was quite important as it was one of the first organized tasting events of Long Island wines conducted in California. This concept was put forward by the Long Island Merlot Alliance and was open to all producers on L.I. I’m confident it would have been an even stronger showing had there been more entries.
Ron, with all due respect, I disagree with your comments and I think its time to watch another movie.
In the words of the famous wine critic John Cleese, most of the wine-writing “hoi polloi” you describe “wouldn’t know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret.”
Lenn,
Applause for your comments. And thanks for the compliments regarding Paumanok’s Merlot.
I went to the web site and I caught the following sentence:
“Appellation America is an online publication that provides a comprehensive source of information on North American wines and wineries; third-party evaluation of wines, through its unique Best-of-Appellation program;…” How can they call this “Best of Appellation program” when they clearly have not reached out to understand the Appellations they are reviewing and not reaching out to most of their producers? It seems more like, as Rich stated, that they responded to an initiative from LIMA. That contradicts a bit their proclaimed desire to be a “comprehensive source”. How “comprehensive” can it be when they do not include more than 75% of the Merlot producers?
Yet Rich states that this was open to all. If so I must not have read some significant mail, or my memory is worse even than I think it is.
Either way this is yet another validation that our merlots are quite good. Many of your fellow bloggers said so. The proof is in the sales though and I do not think any LI winery is hoarding wine.
The Wine Advocate also rated many Merlots including ours as high as 92. And they are not known to have a LI bias.
As to blind tastings, we had a very successful one in 2005 where LI wines came ahead of several great Bordeaux and CA wines. It is well documented for any one who wishes to read about it. We will be happy to host another based on a similar format.
Charles