Long Island Sauvignon Blanc in the New York Times
Posted
June 4, 2007 by Lenn Thompson in
News & Events
In yesterday’s New York Times, Howard Goldberg offers a nice roundup of Long Island sauvignon blanc.
This is, I think, one of Goldberg’s best pieces in a while. He tasted, I assume blindly, a wide array of local sauvignon and ranks them.
I don’t think that I’ve had all of the wine mentioned, but for the ones that I have had my rankings would be very similar. I’d probably move the Macari up a notch but otherwise, I think I agree almost completely.
Sauvignon blanc plays second fiddle to chardonnay way too often around here. I really think we’re going to see some great sauvignon coming out of Long Island in years to come.
I am enjoying the sauvignon blancs and my preference is for the Shinn Estate and Jamesport Vineyards offerings. And the Paumanok SB dessert wine has been extraordinary the last 10 years.
After 15+ years of regularly sampling a majority of the LI chards, SB is a pleasant and welcome change of taste.
Although I did enjoy a ’98 Pellegrini Vintner’s Pride chardonnay last Saturday.
I am more and more impressed with the Long Island S.B. offerings. Jamesport and Shinn have, also, been favorites. Incidentally, we opened a Channing S.B. from Mudd Vineyards last night with some mussels I steamed up, and it was absolutely wonderful.
2006 is shaping up to be a really awesome year for the Long Island whites - despite just how good a growing year we had in 2005. I think that 2005 was so extreme that some of the winemakers didn’t know how to handle such ripe fruit. They are showing in 2006 that there were some great lessons learned!
Lenn, thanks for your kind remarks.
Yes, the sauvignon blancs were tasted blind. As usual, I bagged the wines, then shuffled the bags around until the original order could never be reconstituted.
Raphael’s 2006 was easily identifiable because of its clean-plate-glass clarity. I admired its freshness and brightness for the same reason that I love sauvignons from Styria, an undeservedly obscure region in Austria.
In the end, I felt slightly let down by Macari’s sauvignon. The estate has steadily shown an aptitude for the grape; almost certainly its 2006 was tasted while it was going through a partly unsociable phase.
Jared: I couldn’t agree more. So far, the 2006 whites have really impressed me and the same can not be said for 2005. Perhaps as you said winemakers just didn’t know how to handle the ripeness. To me, many 2005 whites are just a little too fruity and unbalanced…even a little flabby.
Howard: I tasted the Raphael sauvignon Sunday night for my upcoming column in Dan’s Papers…and I couldn’t agree more. It is easily the most aromatic of the batch-and I agree with you 100% that it, along with the Jamesport, are the top two local bottlings.
I must admit I did not yet try the Raphael sauv blanc. And I most definitely agree with the 05 vs. 06 general comparison for many of the non-chard whites discussed by Jared and Lenn.