Tag: Wine Country

When summer is in full swing, it’s hard to move off the patio at home. I can spend hours under my shady pergola, sipping something cool. Still, however much inertia takes hold, there are wine events coming up on the East End that are motivating enough to make me head on down the pike for some vinous entertainment.

As a devoted lover of bubbly, I never want to miss the James Beard Foundation’s annual summer celebration of all things sparkling: Chefs and Champagne at Wölffer Estate Vineyards in Sagaponack on Saturday, July 21, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Raising money for the ongoing mission of the JBF, “to celebrate, nurture and preserve America’s diverse culinary heritage and future,” Chefs and Champagne is a gigantic, tented walkabout tasting representing the best of the best from America’s chefs. Coming as it does during New York City’s slow time, when anyone who can escapes to the country, it attracts an impressive array of foodie stars.

In past years, Chefs and Champagne has paid tribute to single celebrities like Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse, but this year JBF Award winners Ted Allen and the judges of Food Network’s Chopped — Maneet Chauhan, Scott Conant, Amanda Freitag, Alex Guarnaschelli, Marc Murphy, Marcus Samuelsson, Aarón Sanchez, Chris Santos and Geoffrey Zakarian — will all receive this honor together. These über talents of the food world are a spirited lot; their energy adds to the vibrancy of the evening.

Nicolas Feuillate is the official Champagne sponsor. I suggest you get there early, before the vintage Brut 2004 runs out, then hop on over to the Wölffer Estate table for winemaker Roman Roth’s divine wines, which this year will include the intriguing Diosa Late Harvest Chardonnay 2010 and Fatalis Fatum 2007.

Later this summer, from 6 to 9 p.m. on Aug. 25 (moved up from its previous September date to take advantage of a new location at the Hampton Classic’s Bridgehampton show grounds) the Wine Spectator will again sponsor Harvest East End, Long Island’s foremost celebration of local wine and food, benefiting East End Hospice, the Group for the East End and Peconic Land Trust. Organized by Merliance (an alliance of Long Island merlot producers) and the Long Island Wine Council, Harvest East End will offer tastes from up to 40 East End wineries and 30 top restaurants with an exciting array of award-winning wines — including barrel samples of not-yet-released wines — and local, seasonal dishes from some of the region’s finest chefs, using all locally sourced foods.

Harvest East End’s Festival Tasting (called “Fall for Long Island” even though it’s still summer when it takes place) is, like Chefs and Champagne, a walkabout event where you can graze to your heart’s content while schmoozing with chefs and vintners. If you want to hang out with the high rollers you can also buy tickets to the VIP section, which will get you in early and give you access to comfortable tables and, more important, a special “wine library” tasting of older vintages. These tickets are almost sold out, so act quickly if you want that extra dose of glamour.

Even more coveted are invitations to a handful of 10 Mile Dinners, part of the Harvest East End experience organized to raise money for its beneficiaries. Soon to be announced, these are dinners held at spectacular private homes and prepared by star chefs using food sourced from within 10 miles. Each dinner features the wines of a single Long Island winery. Most dinners will be open to only 10 invited diners each; invitations can be obtained by applying to [email protected]

Besides these two blockbuster events, many wineries offer delightful places to relax and enjoy a glass of wine, often with music. Among my favorite picks are Martha Clara’s Sunset Vines and Canines educational vineyard walk (the next one is on Aug. 1) — bring your dog down for a walk through the vineyards with winemaker Juan Micieli-Martinez and his dog, Satchmo; a sybaritic afternoon sipping rose on the barn swing at Croteaux Vineyards; and Baiting Hollow Farm’s pony rides added to the mix of music and wine, supporting its equine rescues.

On Aug. 19, McCall Vineyards will host the summer’s most singular event: an aboriginally inspired buffet cooked by local chefs, where you can cut your fish or meat with an Algonquin flint, all to benefit the Southold Indian Museum. This is your chance to taste samp (cracked corn) and squash where Cutchogue natives once grew similar crops.
Choose your favorite, get out of that hammock and go for some summer fun.

Ms. Hargrave was a founder of the Long Island wine industry in 1973. She is currently a freelance writer and consultant.

Milla Handley has been making wine in California since 1975. Back then, she was one of very few women actually down in the cellar, dragging hoses around and monitoring fermentation temperatures. In 1978 she and her husband, Rex McClellan, moved to the remote Anderson Valley, north of Sonoma, where, over time, they planted 29 acres in chardonnay, pinot noir and gewurtztraminer. In 1982, she began to make her own wine in their basement.

At the time, Milla and Rex were true winemaking pioneers. While Napa was surging to prominence under the leadership of such wine greats as Robert Mondavi, the Anderson Valley was a little too far from San Francisco, a little too cold, a little too rural for the kind of investors who poured money into Napa. But Milla liked its isolation. She enjoyed the camaraderie of her hardscrabble farming neighbors. Even after Rex’s death, she continued making wine there despite its many challenges.

At Milla’s vineyard, heavy fog from the Pacific Ocean makes for cold nights (around 50 degrees during the growing season). When the fog clears, it can get as hot as 112 degrees. Most of the time, a 35-degree change in 24 hours is typical there. This makes the vines struggle to ripen, but it also conserves acidity in the fruit. Just when the fruit is almost ripe, autumn rains begin, sometimes forcing a premature harvest.

I met Milla in Manhattan at Keen’s Steakhouse, where a small group of wine writers was led through a retrospective tasting of 12 Handley pinot noirs from the 1997-2009 vintages. We tasted silently and seriously, then asked questions of Milla and her co-winemaker, Kristen Barnhisel. It was indeed a tasting worthy of focused attention; the wines were seriously good. But what I liked best about the tasting was Milla herself. She and I began making wine at the same time (1975), and she told stories that I could really identify with about raising two children while making wine professionally.

As much as Milla liked the remoteness of her Anderson Valley home, from a very early age her eldest daughter wanted to live in a more populated area. “Mom,” the child said, “Let’s move to New York.”

“No,” said Milla. “New York is too far away.”

“Then can we move to San Francisco?”

“No,” said Milla. “That’s too far, too.”

“Well then,” asked the child, “How about Booneville?”

My own daughter, at age 3, used to say, quite regularly, “I wanna go somewhere!” And we were already in Cutchogue, which was about as populous as Booneville back then.

Milla may live in the middle of nowhere, and favor a laid-back personal style, but she is sophisticated in the world of wine. She told me of her meeting with the cellar master at the famed estate of Romanée Conti in Burgundy. This man, revered for his wines but a notorious fanny pincher, encircled her shoulders with one arm, grasping her breast in one hand while firmly holding a bottle of 1966 Le Montrachet in the other. Being a true lover of wine, and not wanting to compromise her chance to taste one of the world’s finest white Burgundies, Milla ignored the inappropriate gesture.

“Hey, he’s French! And he was scheduled to have a triple bypass. He looked like a garbage man,” she told me. “Besides, the wine was worth it.”

Having survived this and other forms of disrespect familiar to many female winemakers (“We were once called a coven,” Milla says), Milla has expanded Handley Cellars, so that now she makes wines from several vineyards. Still, my favorites were those from her home vineyard, called “RSM” after her late husband. The 1997 had a wonderful subtlety rarely found in California pinot noirs. As old as it is, the wine still blossomed in the glass, with flavors of black cherries and allspice.

I also admired the 2005 RSM Pinot Noir, which had nuanced fruit and sweet, nutty wood.

Other tasters preferred the bigger, more extracted wines, like the 2009 RSM, with its brilliant color and lush fruit. But this is a style one expects from a California pinot. When Milla said, “New York has a European palate,” someone yelled, “No they don’t. They want fruit bombs!”

That’s an issue for Long Island’s vintners, too: Wine critics have led consumers away from subtle, cool-climate wines. I sympathize with Milla, who said, “I’m trying not to be a bitch. I’m trying but I fail sometimes.”

Ms. Hargrave was a founder of the Long Island wine industry in 1973. She is currently a freelance writer and consultant.

For Long Island’s vintners, the vintage of 2011 has been one of the most difficult in 30 years. Beginning with a fierce winter that made pruning vines in drifting snow a reminder that viticulture is a test of humans’ desire to dominate nature, the growing season proceeded with one challenge followed by another. Relentless spring rain followed by soaring heat spawned unfriendly fungi and delayed ripening. Localized hail damaged some clusters. Worse, the ripening ability of many vineyards was badly affected by salt spray from Tropical Storm Irene, which caused leaves to shrivel and drop while berry sugar counts were still too low to make wine.

However, much winemaking is romanticized. Ultimately it is like every kind of agriculture; growers must always countenance crop losses. Global climate change, as predicted, has brought heavier than normal weather events. Experienced winemakers become philosophers, taking the good with the bad and making the most of every situation. Some are luckier than others; where one vineyard is denuded by salt spray, another may be favored by a sheltered location and sustain little damage. Many fine wines will still result from this vintage; the lesser wines will be light quaffing stuff, consumed and forgotten by harvest 2012.

While vintners all over the world deal with the vagaries of nature, I found on a recent trip to far-flung parts of the world that some of the oldest wine-growing regions have different challenges, caused by customs, politics and religion.

In modern Turkey (a secular nation created in 1923 from parts of what used to be Byzantine and Ottoman empires), the wine industry has roots going back to 4000 B.C. Noah’s biblical vineyard was located there, and the Greek god of wine, Dionysus (or Bacchus to Romans), was born there. Although the Ottoman Muslims prohibited winemaking during the 500 years of their reign, Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, founded a commercial winery in 1925 in his efforts to westernize Turkey. By 2009, wine consumption in Turkey reached 20,906,762 liters, with national production currently at over 275 million liters.

Increased acceptance of and international investment in Turkish wine were spurred by the introduction of international grape varieties in the 1990s. But even as that wine industry has grown, the secularization of Turkey has met with fierce resistance from its increasingly radicalized Islamic community. Today, its government is run by a Muslim prime minister who has hindered the Turkish wine industry by taxing alcohol and prohibiting restaurants from serving wine in outdoor spaces. I was shocked to find the cheapest wines sold in Turkish restaurants priced at $40 and up due to exorbitant taxes on alcohol.

In contrast, in the (formerly Soviet) Republic of Georgia, the Western-friendly government encourages its wine industry, which has been favored by new infusions of capital. There, the obstacles have more to do with custom than religion. Georgians have made wine for over 8,000 years; their wines are part of their identity.

While it was a state of the Soviet Union, Georgia’s winemaking was centralized and production driven by volume, not by quality. In the Kakheti region, a broad fertile valley under the Caucasus Mountains, households historically made their own wines in buried pottery amphorae, kveris, which were filled with grapes and left to develop, unopened, for several years. Thus, traditional Georgian wines differ greatly from modern, stainless steel fermented wines. They are dry, textured and tannic. I found some I tasted to be compellingly complex and not as oxidized as I expected, but many are just plain funky.

When I went to Vinoterra Schuchmann, a new Georgian winery funded by German investors, I saw how difficult it is to merge this ancient winemaking technique with new methods. Their assistant winemaker, Roland Burdiachveli, grew up in a winemaking family and was educated in Germany. He showed me how new kveris are used to ferment some of the fruit, then removed to French oak barrels for finishing rather than being sealed up for years. The result is a hybrid style that needs to find understanding and acceptance both at home and abroad.

With 60 percent of its wine made in modern tanks, with new technology, and 40 percent made the old way, Schuchmann is betting on both sides of the fence. For them, the search for identity is as much a challenge as an opportunity. They have to train their workers to change both techniques and attitudes. And they, like vintners everywhere, have to contend with weather, too.

Ms. Hargrave was a founder of the Long Island wine industry in 1973. She is currently a freelance writer and consultant.