It has been brought to my attention by a few readers that there are some errors in the published book, which should come as a surprise to no one. The most egregious is an omitted section of paragraph that follows the end of page 15: “Others, however,” for on page 16 it should continue: ” . . . dispute this claim.”
This should be followed by a paragraph at the top of page 16: “Another consideration in choosing a site on Long Island is the flocks of migratory birds that move across it. If the vineyard is surrounded by woods and shrubs—good roosting areas-—the risk of bird damage is increased. Especially troublesome has been the voracious starling. Charming in small numbers, these migratory birds become a dark menace reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds as they sweep down in flocks of thousands, just as the grapes are reaching their ripe perfection. They can devour or spoil acres in a matter of hours. Long Island vineyard owners have tried all kinds of weapons in this battle: propane cannons, four-wheel, all-terrain vehicles, miles of shiny Mylar tape, hawks, party balloons, and netting. Most vineyards concluded that the only solution was to put anti-bird netting over the entire vineyard during periods of bird migration, which occurs about the time that grapes begin ripening. It is a solution used by virtually all Long Island vineyards today.”
On page 64 a reference is made to Mark Gibbs, of Wine Advocate. Mark Squires, of Wine Advocate caught this embarrassing slip, because Gibbs is actually meant to be Squires. Don’t ask.
Croteaux Vineyards had been listed as a winery without a tasting room. It has since been purchased, as of August 2019, and the tasting garden was to reopen this Spring, but due to the virus, this has been postponed. However, Croteaux is again releasing its wines, which can be purchased online or by curbside pickup at the site. https://www.croteaux.com/home
Peconic Bay Winery was cited as defunct; it has now been purchased by Stefan Soloviev and was rumored to reopen this Spring or Summer. At this time (May 29, 2020), however, there is no further word on plans to reopen, perhaps due to the Coronavirus. However, while the Winery has a FaceBook page, it has no web page of its own. The FB page says that it is open, but I see no evidence of that. In any case, there are definitely plans to produce wine grapes in the vineyards they still own.
Following is a highly selective list of books that I’ve read or consulted that I consider particularly worthwhile. If I haven’t read or consulted a book, I do not recommend it. Alas, there are more that I’ve not read than have—I’ve only 140 books on wine in my library, and some are still waiting to be read, though nearly all have served as references.
Grapes, Wine, Wineries, and Vineyards
There are seven general wine books that one should own in order to be truly well- and completely informed:
1. Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine, 4th ed. (2015) is just indispensable, with a comprehensive coverage of just about every topic bearing on wine that one can think of, a true Abbocatto to Zymase encyclopedia. All articles are signed, all cited references noted. Robinson was both the editor and a contributor. The 4th edition adds 300 additional, new terms, though many will only be of interest to wine professionals. For a full review on this blog, see the post: The Three Indispensable Wine Books.
2. Equally indispensable is Hugh Johnson & Jancis Robinson’s The World Atlas of Wine, 8th ed. (2019). How else could one find the way around the vinicultural regions of the world, including NY State? The maps are in full color, ranging in scale from street-level for the Champagne towns and the lodges in Oporto, to 1:45,000 and larger for wine regions. The text for the many regions is the very model of pithy, clear writing. For a full review on this blog, see the post: The Three Indispensable Wine Books.
3. In 2013, two new, serious reference books on wine—sure to become indispensable and classic are: Jancis Robinson and Linda Murphy’s American Wine: The Ultimate Companion to the Wines and Wineries of the United States (a very useful feature is its summary of each AVA, including the best grapes grown, and listing the top wineries by category); the other must-have is Jancis’s encyclopedic Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including their Origins and Flavours, written in collaboration with Julia Harding and José Vouillamoz. See my post, The Three Indispensable Wine Books, for a complete review of Wine Grapes.
4. Emile Peynaud’s vital and perennial The Taste of Wine: The Art and Science of Wine Appreciation (trans. Michael Schuster, 1987). Originally written in French as La Goût du Vin in 1983), it is considered definitive by many in the field.
But then, there is always Jancis Robinson’s How to Taste (2000), which is both a how-to for tasting and a guide to the aromatic and gustatory sensations of the different varieties and how they can differ from place to place (i.e., from terroir to terroir). Robinson’s is certainly the more approachable for most readers.
5. WSET students and graduates, anyone interested in wine certification, and indeed, even winemakers can benefit from David Bird’s Understanding Wine Technology: The Science of Wine Explained, 3rd ed., which has been required reading for all WSET students, is a very clear and lucid explanation—in laymen’s terms—of what goes on right down to the molecular level of yeasts, viruses, and chemistry generally. It’s also a very good read.
6. I very much enjoyed and admired Jamie Goode and Sam Harrop’s Authentic Wine: toward natural and sustainable winemaking (2011), which has many really interesting insights into what really goes on in a vineyard, a winery, and what it takes to be a sustainable winegrower and producer. Much food for thought, though some may cavil about a few of the authors’ conclusions.
7. If one wanted to carry as much information about wine in a portable package, there’s one that I cannot live without: Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book 2020. It is pithy, witty, thicker than ever, and claims to be the Number One Bestselling Wine Guide, which it deserves to be. I’ve bought every edition since the very first one, published in 1977 (it was rather slim then). Also available as a Kindle Book from Amazon.
8. A book not to be overlooked is Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World Complete Wine Course,Revised, Updated & Expanded Edition (2018). Zraly is a truly gifted instructor and virtually anyone can benefit from his guidance. His approach is original and his book is the most popular wine book of its kind, with over three million copies sold worldwide.
New York and East Coast Wine
Long Island Wine Country: Award-Winning Vineyards of the North Fork and the Hamptons, is an useful guide to visiting Long Island vineyards and wineries. Written by Jane Taylor Starwood, editor-in-chief of Long Island Wine Press, she gives us an insider’s track on the owners, the winemakers, and the wineries themselves. In a conversational tone (and amply illustrated), the book leads the reader from East to West on the North Fork, and then down to the Hamptons, as though it would be followed geographically. It’s a bit frustrating an approach if one wants to do research and would prefer an alphabetical organization, but it’s a quibble given the overall quality and usefulness of the book, although it’s now rather out-of-date, given that it was published in 2009.
Louisa Thomas Hargrave wrote a gracious memoir, The Vineyard: The Pleasures and Perils of Creating an American Family Winery. One cannot begin to understand what was involved in creating the Long Island wine industry without reading this charming and touching account of the establishment of Long Island’s first winery, Hargrave Vineyard, in 1973, when there were only small farms and potato fields. It is charming in its modesty, touching in its honesty, and a remarkable tale of what it takes to start a vineyard from scratch when you don’t even know what you’re doing! And look at what it started–a whole industry that is one of the dominant features of the East End of Long Island, begun with passion, commitment, and hard work, but ultimately at the cost of heartbreak and renewal. Now out of print, it may be available, used, on Amazon or AbeBooks.
In Marguerite Thomas’s Touring East Coast Wine Country: A Guide to the Finest Wineries (1996) we have the first important guide to the wines and wineries of the East Coast, from Maine to Virginia, replete with useful insights and a good background on the history of the viniculture of each state. It also provides biography capsules of some of the most important or interesting winemakers. Given that the book was first published in 1996, a good deal of its information is now more of historical interest, and it needs, and deserves, a new edition.
More recent is Carlo DeVito’s East Coast Wineries: A Complete Guide from Maine to Virginia, published in 2004. Still, even this needs to be brought up-to-date, but its value lies in its own take on East Coast wineries, with listings of the wines offered by each estate with brief descriptions, recommendations and excerpted tasting reviews of the wines. Let’s hope that, like Thomas’s guide, DeVito’s will also receive a new, updated edition soon. For the serious wine tourist, one guide complements the other, so why not buy both?
An interesting and somewhat chatty book is The Story of North Fork Wine: Historical Profiles and Wine Country Recipes (2009), John Ross’s up-close-and-personal look at the people who work in and run the wineries. A chef who owned Ross’s North Fork Restaurant, he became close to many in the wine trade, especially given that he was interested in devising recipes and menus that would best accompany the wines of the region.
Vital–thanks to its clear, lucid writing and very useful history of LI viticulture and winemaking–is the excellent Wines of Long Island, 3rd edition (2019) by José Moreno-Lacalle, based on the 2nd edition by Edward Beltrami & Philip E. Palmedo. It includes profiles of the most important personalities in the LI wine world as well as all the producers, with descriptions and reviews of wineries and their wines–both past and present–and a generally judicious insight into the trends and achievements of the region. Definitely worthwhile owning, if you love LI wines. (Is this called self-promotion?)
Organic and Biodynamic Viniculture
Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course: The Birth of the Biodynamic Method, is the foundation text of the biodynamic movement. A compilation of eight lectures delivered in Germany in 1924 provides, in Steiner’s own words, the basis for what he called a new science based on the natural rhythms of the world and the cosmos, as recovered from the traditional practices of the peasant farmers of yore. It is meant as a healthy antidote to the rise of farming methods based on industrial chemicals and fertilizers. Many leading vineyards are farmed by this method, from the Domaine de la Romanée Conti in Burgundy to Shinn Estate in Long Island. You owe it to yourself to read the lectures if you wish to really understand what Biodynamics is about.
Nicolas Joly is a leading proponent of Biodynamic viticulture, and he practices his preaching at one of the greatest vineyards of the Loire, the Coulée de Serrant. Joly’s Wine from Sky to Earth: Growing and Appreciating Biodynamic Wine, is a true believer’s panegyric to Biodynamics. His ideas and those of the founder of Biodynamics®, Rudolf Steiner, are put into practice at two vineyards that I know of: Macari Vineyards and Shinn Estate.
Lon Rombough’s The Grape Grower: A Guide to Organic Viticulture, is an excellent introduction to how to grow grapes organically. It’s also very practical, as the guide is really intended for the novice who wants to start a backyard vineyard or even a commercial one. It takes the reader step-by-step on establishing an organic vineyard, imparting along the way a good deal of knowledge and savvy advice.
Other Wine Books of More than Passing Interest (or Not)
Tyler Colman, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink (UCal Press, 2008). I highly recommend this book for its clarity and scholarship. The subject of politics in the wine world proves to be fascinating, and the author chose to approach it by comparing, for example, the AOC laws of France (and by extension, much of the EU) with the AVA regulations promulgated by the TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau). There are surprising insights into how and why wine is grown and made in different countries, why labels look the way they do on each side of the Atlantic, and the effects of custom, religion, crime, regionalism, nationalism, and so forth on the wine trade. Eminently worthwhile for the serious wine-lover.
John Hailman, Thomas Jefferson on Wine (UMiss Press, 2006). Another book that is based on sound scholarship and research, also well-written, but one may wish to skip all the tables and lists, which are difficult to grasp at times simply because the wines of Jefferson’s period (1743-1826) varied so much in name, currency, weights and volumes, that clear comparisons with our own period are so difficult to make. Still, if one has the patience, there is reward in seeing how all-encompassing were the interests and tastes of the first great oenophile of the United States of America.
Thomas Pellechia, Wine: The 8,000 Year-Old Story of the Wine Trade (Thunder’s Mouth Press, NY, 2006) A work with great potential written by someone who has long been in the wine trade but whose sense of history is lacking in scholarship and critical acuity. Some of what he writes is couched in such vague or confused historical terms as to be virtually useless, especially when dealing with antiquity and the Middle Ages. The writing style is breezy and casual, but it lacks polish and lucidity. Such a shame.
A far better foray into wine history would be the classic Gods, Men, and Wine, (1966) by William Younger, or the more recent Story of Wine (1989)—or the New Illustrated Edition (2004)—by Hugh Johnson, both of which are better-written and historically more reliable. Neither of the latter books is available in Kindle versions, but they do enjoy the virtue of been on real, durable paper bound in hardcover.
A History of the World in 6 Glasses, by Tom Standage (2005), is more than just about wine. It tells its story by means of six beverages: beer (Mesopotamia & Egypt), wine (Ancient Greece & Rome), spirits (Colonial America), Coffee (Europe in the Age of Enlightenment), Tea (the British Empire), and Coca-Cola (Modern America and the Age of Globalization). It’s both amusing and informative, but I’d put the emphasis on the amusement. Unless you’ve utterly uninformed about wine or the other beverages, this is really History 001, rather lightweight.
Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine, edited by Barry C. Smith (2007), with essays by experts such as Paul Draper, Jamie Goode, Andrew Jefford, and others, with an enthusiastic Foreword by Jancis Robinson. The contributors also include a couple of philosophers and a linguist. The language of wine as presented in this book is clearly academic. A worthwhile but challenging book, well worth the time to read.
Wine Wars, by Mike Veseth (2011), which, with chapter headings like “The Curse of the Blue Nun,” “The Miracle of Two-Buck Chuck,” and “The Revenge of the Terroirists,” is an interesting and amusing way of treating the effects of globalization on the modern world of wine. It is also rather informative, and occasionally provides some surprising nuggets of information (such as the fact that Trader Joe’s is actually a German company).
Richard Figiel established the Silver Thread Vineyard in 1982, planting 10 acres near Lodi, NY to vinifera varieties and growing them organically to make natural wines. He sold the property in 2011 and currently writes a column on NY wines for Wines & Spirits Magazine. He had previously published Culture in a Glass: Reflections on the Rich Heritage of Finger Lakes Wine in 1995.
Happily for the reader he writes well and where appropriate turns to literary allusion or leavens the text with touches of dry wit. Most important of all, he reveals the history of wine in New York State by means of a sensibly-organized account that starts with the movements of the glaciers of the last Ice Age on through to the diaspora of the late Twentieth and early Twenty-First Centuries, when wineries, vineyards, and winemaking had spread throughout the state after a small and inconspicuous beginning in the Seventeenth.
In the Preface, Figiel mentions that after he purchased an abandoned Catawba vineyard he began “pulling out the past to plant the future . . . . One day as I was lining up end-posts for the rows of my new vineyard (it was a matter of pride to get them perfectly aligned, row to row) my eye wandered beyond the last post into scrubby woods . . . and there among the junipers and brambles was a fitful row of weather-beaten posts, ghosts of a vineyard on that hillside that predated the vineyard I’d pulled out . . . . I was looking back into the nineteenth century, and my posts happened to line up arrow-straight with that bleached, overgrown line of ghosts.”
Which leads to this book and the far from arrow-straight history of New York wine, which instead ambles along from one wandering post to another in time and geography.
Chapter 1 covers prehistory, from the time of the last advance and final retreat of the mile-thick ice sheet that covered the Northeast and nearly all of New York until about 10,000 years ago. It traces the movement of soil and terrain carried by the massive bulldozer of ice that left chunks of granite from the Berkshires in the bluffs of the north coast of Long Island, among other shifts across the region. This is all depicted in the sole map to be found in the book:
Chapter 2, “Beginnings in the Hudson Valley,” recounts the earliest attempts at growing wine grapes in the region, including the many failures planting vinifera varieties. Determined growers then set about planting native varieties like Isabella and Catawba while some began experimenting with hybrids—that is to say, interspecies crossings, resulting in some of the most successful hybrids for commercial vineyards, starting with the Iona. The history is complex but Figiel successfully manages to thread all the different paths that winegrowing took in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries into a coherent whole.
The following chapter, “Settling in the Finger Lakes,” is an exploration of the very complicated story of wine in what is today the premier region for Riesling in the country. When first explored in the early 17th century, large amounts of native grapes were found and it is possible that the earliest record of winemaking may date to before 1668, but this is an inference from a text by a missionary who writes about “vines, which bear tolerably good grapes from which our fathers formerly made wine for the mass.” Rev. William Botwick of Hammondsport in the 1830s may have been the first to plant grapes in the Finger Lakes for making wine and disseminate grapes for winemaking to his neighbors, and it was found that Isabella, as an earlier-ripener than Catawba, took best to the climate of the lake region. It took a long time for vinifera to catch on in the Finger Lakes, and that was, of course, thanks to the hard work of Dr. Konstantin Frank in the 1950s.
Chapter 4 is devoted to “Western New York,” which in this case means not only what would become the Lake Erie Region AVA but also the area from Rochester to Niagara, including the Genesee Valley, where a winery was established by Samuel Warren in 1834, 5 years before the Jaques winery was opened in Washingtonville in the Hudson Valley. The Irondequoit winery was established on its eponymous Bay on Lake Ontario near Rochester in 1841. A winery cooperative was formed on the Niagara Escarpment near Lockport in the 1860s. Much of the wine that was made for sacramental use. But where are these places, some of which are very little known? A map would be helpful.
“Collision of Cultures” (Chapter 5) covers one of the most interesting and fractious periods in American wine history—the rise of the anti-alcohol movement that led to Prohibition and the struggle of the producers of alcoholic beverages to resist that movement. As early as 1808 there was a reaction against the excessive consumption of spirits in particular, when a doctor near Glen Falls despaired of healing hard drinkers and founded the Moreau Temperance Association, which was aimed at spirits and brews, but not wine. By 1833 the American Temperance Union was established and the question became one of “which alcohols” to ban outright. Those who joined the Union and swore to totally abstain from the imbibing of any alcohol had a “T” placed by their names, hence the term ‘Teetotaler.’ Long before Prohibition, in fact, Rutherford B. Hayes, a teetotaler, was elected President in 1877. Figiel writes that “he drained the nation’s first household Dry . . . . Visiting dignitaries were confounded: ‘Oh, it was very gay,” one European ambassador said of a state dinner with the President, ‘the water flowed like Champagne.’ Individual towns and counties throughout the country and in New York began passing laws banning the sale of alcohol; indeed, the New York legislature passed a law restricting the sale of alcohol in 1845. That law was rescinded two years later, but the battle lines were drawn and the fight was on. The history of Prohibition is well-known and often told, and Figiel tells it with well-selected anecdotes to enliven the tale.
The sixth chapter, “Restart,” is about the hardscrabble road to recovery from Prohibition.
Chapter 7 is devoted to the Revolutionaries, those who changed the attitude and approach to grape growing and wine making in the State and withal most of the Eastern United States. There are capsule accounts of the work and accomplishment of five key figures who helped bring about significant change in the wine industry: Everett S. Crosby, Frederick S. Johnson, Konstantin Frank, Walter S. Taylor, and Mark Miller. Crosby was introduced to wine “in the rumble seat of a roadster after high school basketball games” during Prohibition and went on in 1950 to found High Tor Vineyard in the Hudson Valley. It was the first vineyard planted exclusively to French hybrids and the wines found a positive reception in wine shops and restaurants in New York City. In 1960 Johnson would establish his vineyard and winery on the Lake Erie escarpment and plant mostly hybrid grapes, bringing the region into the wine world after years of producing table grapes and grape juice. Frank, a difficult, determined, and uncompromising man is the father of vinifera wine in New York. Over a dozen years, starting in 1953, he planted a quarter of a million vines of a dozen vinifera varieties grafted to selected American rootstock and proved definitively that European vines could grow and thrive in the extreme cold of the Finger Lakes. Walter S. Taylor has to have been one of the most colorful characters on the wine industry stage: a rebel with a cause in opposition to big business and its overreaching attempts at control, particularly over the issue of the Taylor family name. Once Coca Cola had acquired the Taylor Wine Company it had an injunction issued against Walter S. using his surname on his own wines at Bully Hill. His irrepressible humor and anti-establishment outlook had him take on a goat as a mascot and quipped, “You can’t get my goat.” But read the story. And there was Mark Miller, owner of Benmarl Vineyards, who helped bring about a transformative law, the Farm Winery Act of 1976 that changed the New York wine industry forever.
“Transformation” is a chapter about the growth of large corporations like Coca Cola and Seagram’s that dominated the wine industry in the ‘60s and ‘70s until the passage of the Farm Winery Act of 1976 that was signed in to law by Governor Carey. Some of the winemaking practices in the larger wineries including “blending old American varieties like Catawba, Concord, and Delaware with bulk wine from California and new inputs from French hybrids. Water and cane sugar were routinely part of the mix. It was not uncommon for final blends to be up to one-third water and one-quarter Californian wine.” In some cases a small and profitable miracle was produced with “large quantities of bulk wine from small quantities of fruit.”
This is followed by a chapter devoted to Long Island, the last major wine region to be planted to wine grapes, unique among all the State AVAs in growing vinifera varieties only, with a tiny exception. Its history is comparatively brief, with the first vinifera vines planted in 1973 by Louisa and Alex Hargrave. Amateurs in Long Island, they showed that European varieties could produce excellent wine there and today Long Island has the most extensive plantings of Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, and Cabernet Franc in the State, not to speak of nearly twenty others as well, including Pinot Noir, Chenin Blanc, Dornfelder, and Albariño as well.
The final chapter is about the “Diaspora” of the wine industry throughout the State, encompassing new wine regions—though not new AVAs—in places like the Thousand Islands on the St. Lawrence River and Lake Champlain, as well as further developments in the established AVAs of the Finger Lakes, the Hudson River Region, Lake Erie, Long Island, and New York City. In other words, “New York wine became more diverse, more promising, more impressive, more inconsistent, and more confusing.”
Circle of Vines bears comparison with Hudson Cattell’s Wines of Eastern North American, previously reviewed in a post on this blog. However, while there is some overlapping history, Catell’s book touches on the period From Prohibition to the Present (i.e., 2013). It is meant as a “History and Desk Reference,” and is a far more scholarly approach than Figiel’s, replete as it is with endnotes, an extensive bibliography, and seven appendices with tables and charts. This is not to denigrate what Figiel has done, but his is a less formal approach, and he does list his sources and include an index; his book is 169 pages devoted to just New York, while Chattell’s 235 pages cover the entire gamut of Eastern wineries from Maine to Florida and all the way to the Mississippi River. Both are informative and very useful resources. A reader would be glad to have them both.
Regrettably, the book has very poor-quality illustrations—given their half-tone newsprint reproduction—and there are no maps to support the text, apart from the one that shows the movement of the ice sheet that covered the state over 10,000 years ago. One can only hope that if there is a second edition there will be a map for each chapter as well as higher-quality images.Circle of Vines, The Story of New York State Wines, by Richard Figiel, 2014. Excelsior Editions imprint of SUNY Press, Albany. 194 pages with appendices and index. 31 monochrome half-tone illustrations, including one map.
The entirety of the Northeast, including New York State, was once covered by Laurentide ice sheets up to nearly two miles thick during the Late Wisconsin Glacial Period, which receded about 11,000 years ago.[1] As the ice sheet melted it reshaped the landscape beneath it that was to take on the features that we know today, and it helped create the Hudson River Valley, leaving behind a complex and varied topography, soil, and climate–the terroir–, much of it appropriate for vine cultivation or other fruit.
1. Map from the Uncorked New York Web site.
The Hudson River Region AVA is the oldest continually-productive wine region in the United States. Though most people refer to this wine region as the Hudson River Valley or the Hudson Valley, on July 6, 1982 the BATF—in its wisdom—granted the AVA but chose to call it by another name in order to avoid confusion with a winery that already bore the name, Hudson River Valley Winery (no longer in production). If one were to look at different maps that depict the region, its geographical boundaries would not entirely clear, as the maps don’t all agree. (The best one is shown above.) Unfortunately, there is no official AVA map of the region, much less a map for its varied soils and climates. However, it is clearly described verbally in print: its western boundary is the Shawangunk Ridge (a northerly extension of the Appalachians) in Orange and Ulster Counties. It then follows the Delaware River to the New Jersey State line, from which it goes roughly east to its eastern boundary at the state lines with Connecticut and Massachusetts. It then extends north along those borders to the northeast corner of Columbia County, New York. From there it extends west to the juncture of Columbia and Greene Counties in the Hudson River.[2] It includes all or some of several counties: Columbia, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester.
It doesn’t quite encompass all of the Hudson River Watershed, which extends even further north and includes the Mohawk River (see map at left). From this it can be seen, by comparing it to the first map, that while it is primarily geographic, most of its boundaries are political, which is not unusual for AVAs all over the country; however, it also is not strictly based on a homogenous climate or soil types—the terroir—though many of the vineyards are planted on or near the slopes on either side of the Hudson River.
However, even today the true boundaries of the Valley are still in dispute, and the definition of the area of the AVA Region is questionable. Carlo DeVito, a wine writer and winery owner, commented that “The AVA is old and obsolete….it only covered the existing wineries that were around at the time of the filing, and makes no sense. More than half the valley’s wineries in the region are not covered by it. Here’s my take on it:” Where is the Hudson Valley?
Soil and Terroir
As can be made out from the soil map above, there is a range of soil that include “acid soils with neutral to acid frangipans” (pink color) that runs the length of the river valley, shifting to “medium to moderately coarse-textured acid soils with strongly acidic frangipans on glacial till from gray slate, sandstone, [and] slate” (red color). Contiguous to this is also “deep and shallow soils associated with hilly areas” (dark red). Along the mid to upper-length of the river we see “moderate to fine-textured soils on glacial lake or marine sediments” (pale blue). At the southern limits we see “muck” (dark blue, highly fertile) and “moderately coarse textured, very strongly acid soils from glacial till from granite” (brown color). As grapevines are not fond of acidic soils, this means that many if not most vineyards need alkaline additions such as lime to bring up the soil pH.
The most complete and accessible description of the soils and terrains of the Region may be that of the “New York Wine Course and Reference”, which is worth quoting at length:
This region crosses five [of the nine New York State] physiographic provinces and is composed of more distinct soil types than any other region. Moving north from Manhattan, the first province encountered is that of the Gneissic Highland Province, a hilly, complex region of highly metamorphosed ancient gneiss. This region encompasses the northern end of Manhattan Island and southern Rockland County, where it forms the Ramapo Mountains. The region continues across the Hudson, and the structure underlies Westchester, Putnam and a small part of southern Dutchess County. The hardness of the bedrock in this area and glacial action have resulted in shallow, rocky soils largely unsuitable for agriculture. Bordering the Gneiss Highland Province to the north is the Taconic Province, an area of lower elevation that extends from Orange County northward through southeastern Ulster County and across the Hudson River, encompassing Dutchess, Columbia, Rensselaer and Washington counties. The rocks in this province are largely shales, slates, schists and limestones, although the northern and eastern areas of Dutchess, Columbia and Rensselaer are underlain with hard metamorphic quartzite and gneiss. The topography of this province varies widely, starting as a valley in southern Orange County and progressing to rolling hills and valleys in the western portions of those counties on the east side of the Hudson, finally culminating the rugged highlands of the Berkshire Mountains in the easternmost section of the province. Given the wide variety of parent material and topography in this province, soil types and suitability to viticulture are extremely varied. Soils in the western portion of this province generally tend to have moisture problems and be low in fertility, although many good sites of limited acreage are under cultivation as orchards and vineyards. Soil conditions improve on the western side of the Hudson, with eastern Dutchess and Columbia Counties possessing the finest sites and consequently the greatest acreage of vineyards. Deep, well-drained soils with adequate moisture holding capacity and low to moderate fertility are present and available in large tracts of land, and offer the opportunity for the expansion of viticulture in the Hudson Valley. Two other physiographic provinces can be included in the Hudson River Region: the Catskill Province which borders the Taconic Province along the dramatic Shawangunk Ridge; and the Mohawk Valley Province which enters the region north of Albany. Neither has significant acreage in grapes, and discussion of the soils of these areas is not relevant to this subject.[3]
A further explanation makes even more clear just how complex the soil profiles of the Region comes from the USDA soil series page:
The Hudson series consists of very deep, moderately well drained soils formed in clayey and silty lacustrine sediments. They are nearly level through very steep soils on convex lake plains, on rolling through hilly moraines and on dissected lower valley side slopes. Saturated hydraulic conductivity is moderately high or high in the mineral surface and subsurface layers and low through moderately high in the lower part of the subsoil and substratum. Slope ranges from 0 through 60 percent. Mean annual temperature is 49 degrees F. and mean annual precipitation is 39 inches.[4]
The Region’s geographic setting is described as follows:
Hudson soils are nearly level to very steep on lake plains and lacustrine capped uplands and valley sides. Slope ranges from 0 through 60 percent. More sloping and dissected areas show evidence of slumping or mass slipping. Mean annual air temperature ranges from 46 degrees to 50 degrees F., mean annual precipitation ranges from 30 through 45 inches, and mean annual frost-free season ranges from 120 through 180 days. The elevation ranges from 50 through 800 feet above sea level.[5]
The Hudson River is one of the great waterways of North America, but it only runs 315 miles (507 km.) from its source, Lake Tear in the Clouds, located in Adirondack Park (elevation 1814 ft. (553 m.). It is what is called a ‘drowned river’ in that the waters of the Atlantic Ocean flow upstream with the tide as far as Troy, NY (north of Albany) which means that it is a very long tidal estuary–in other words, a fjord. For this reason it was known to the Lenape tribe that lived along its banks as Muhheakantuck (“river that flows two ways”).[6]
Indeed, it is the Hudson , with its moderating effect on climate, thanks to the tidal flow and winds that sweep upriver from the Atlantic as well as the so-called “lake effect” (or “river effect” in this case–except in the winter, if the river freezes and is covered with ice) of its wide, deep, flowing stream, that make it possible to grow grapes at all, as it would otherwise be too frigid for most varieties other than the native ones. Its growing season is short: 180 to 195 days. (By comparison, Long Island’s season lasts from 215 to 230 days, while the Niagara Escarpment enjoys 205 days, and the Finger Lakes AVA has 190 to 205 growing days.) Its production is also small, at 585 tons a year (about 2.5 tons an acre), whereas the Niagara Escarpment, with only 6 vineyards and 883 acres produces 4,648 tons (about 5 tons an acre), though some of this is for table grapes, which have much higher yields than do wine grapes.[7]
The AVA covers an area that extends roughly within the confines of the river valley proper, encompassing as it does 224,000 acres (90,650 ha), but it has only 430 acres planted to wine grapes among 49 bonded wineries[8]—some with, some without, vineyards—some of which buy fruit from the Finger Lakes or Long Island to make wine from varieties that do not thrive here, and in some cases from California. Many of the wineries produce fruit wine, such as raspberry, apple, strawberry, blueberry, and so on, along with grape wine. After all, the Hudson Valley is famous for its fruit production, and once was one of the largest producers of apples in the world.[9] However, as pointed out in an article by Carlo DeVito, “Where is the Hudson Valley?” on his blog, HudsonRiverWine, the boundaries of the AVA as currently drawn lead to confusion and are no longer relevant, given that they were drawn when there were far fewer wineries, and the number of wineries and vineyards in the Valley has not only grown exponentially, but many new ones are being established within the Valley but outside the AVA.
Some History
Tradition has it that the first vinifera vines were planted by French Huguenots in 1677, at the time that they first settled New Paltz. However, this is unlikely, because these Huguenots had come from Belgium and were more inclined to drink hard cider, brandy, and brews. However, the earliest record of vinifera planting goes back to 1642, when the New Amsterdam patroon, Kiliean Van Rennselaer sent cuttings to his commisary in Fort Orange (Albany), which of course didn’t survive the winter. Settlers then resorted to American varieties, but the wines made from these were likely not pleasing at all to the French or Dutch palates, but at least it was alcoholic. The first commercially-successful vineyard was planted with Isabella and Catawba in 1827 by Robert Underhill at Croton Point, just above Tarrytown. The oldest continuously-operated winery in the nation is Brotherhood Winery, originally established as Jaques Brothers’ Winery in 1839 at Little York (now Washingtonville, in Orange County) to make wine that was mostly sold to churches. When the last of the Jaques family died in 1885, it was taken over by Jesse and Emerson, who promptly renamed it Brotherhood. The earliest-planted continuously-used vineyard, going back to 1845, was planted by William Cornell in Ulster County. His brother-in-law, Andrew Caywood became involved and began developing hybrid varieties that could better grow in the demanding climate; one of his efforts led to the Dutchess grape, still widely grown in the Northeast today. That vineyard is today part of Benmarl Winery, in Marlboro.[10]
Farm Winery Act of 1976
Before Governor Hugh Carey signed the Farm Winery Act into law, there were only nineteen bonded wineries in all of New York State. Thanks to the tireless work and advocacy of people like Benmarl Winery’s Mark Miller, the new Commissioner of Agriculture, John Dyson (owner of Millbrook Vineyards and Winery), and the support of wine writers like Frank Prial of the New York Times, the restrictive post-Prohibition laws that then prevailed were replaced by a new set of laws that made it much easier for farms (i.e., vineyards) to establish new wineries for a small fee. The result was an explosion of winery growth in the State, and by 2008 there were about 255 across the State.[11]
Vineyards
The vineyards and wineries with vineyards in the Hudson River Region AVA (excluding cideries, meaderies, distilleries, and producers of fruit wine only), as of 2014, number thirty-one by my own count, and these are highlighted in bold type. Vine acreage is not always certain and in some cases little or no information is given The Websites are rarely of any use in this regard.
A number of wineries purchase some or all of their grapes from other growers, both from within the Hudson River AVA as well as the Finger Lakes and Long Island. There are any number of perfectly good reasons for this. A winemaker may want to produce wine from a variety that he doesn’t grow. Some vineyards are too new to produce commerciable fruit. With a few exceptions, most of the wineries and/or vineyards are very small in scale–most are, after all, “farm wineries.” In no case does this reflect on the quality of any of the wines so made. The gamut of quality is there to be had.
(NOTE: this article and the series on wineries that follow are only interested in wineries and vineyards that grow and/or produce grape wine. This is not a prejudice, it is simply that the focus is on sustainable viniculture, or the growing of wine grapes, as well as on winemaking. Wineries that have been reviewed on this blog are shown with a link):
Adair Vineyards*, New Paltz (West Bank, Ulster County; 37 acres, all hybrid)
Altamont Winery, Altamont (West Bank, Albany County; no information on acreage or planting)
Applewood Winery*, Warwick (West Bank, Orange County; ? acreage, both hybrid & vinifera)
Baldwin Vineyards*, Pine Bush (West Bank, Ulster County, 35 acres, both)
Basha Kill Vineyards*, Wurstboro (West Bank, Sullivan County, 1.5 acres, hybrid)
Benmarl Winery*, Marlboro (West Bank, Ulster County; 37 acres; both)
Brimstone Hill Vineyards, Pine Bush (West Bank, Ulster County; 13 acres, both)
Brookview Station Winery* [no vineyard, purchased grapes]
Brotherhood Winery*, Washingtonville (West Bank, Orange County; 40 acres, all vinifera?)
Capoccia Vineyards and Winery, Niskayuna (West Bank, Schenectady County, not AVA; no information)
Windham Vineyard and Winery, Windham (West Bank, Greene County; no information)
*Twenty-two of the wineries are members of the Hudson Valley Wine & Grape Assoc., and owners and/or winemakers meet from time to time to compare notes and discuss issues that are common to the region. The mission of the Assoc. is “to conduct educational programs to advance grape growing and winemaking in the Hudson Valley AVA.”
NOTE: Winery Websites will not always tell about the varieties in the vineyards, nor will they necessarily indicate what varieties go into their blended wines, as they may use generic or invented names for their blends. This doesn’t mean that one can’t ask in the tasting room. The only dependable clue as to whether the wines are made from grapes blended from more than one AVA (e.g., Finger Lakes & Hudson River) will be found on the label: if it says Hudson River Region, it may or may not be estate bottled but is from the Region; if it says New York State the wine is made from grapes from more than one region. Caveat emptor, but only if these issues matters to the buyer.
Wine-grape Varieties
The varieties that do thrive in the AVA are mostly hybrids as well as some cool-climate V. viniferas (hybrid variety information is from Robinson, Jancis, Julia Harding, et al., Wine Grapes—listed alphabetically, so page number are not needed); Hudson AVA acreage information comes from the “NY Wine Course”, pp. 75-61 passim; data is for 2013):
Aurore or Aurora, aka Seibel 5279 (White, French-American hybrid; less than 10 acres)
Baco Noir (R, French-American hybrid, Folle Blanche x Grand Glabre [V. riparia]; <10 acres)
Cabernet Franc (R, vinifera; 7 acres)
Cabernet Sauvignon (R, vinifera; <20 acres)
Catawba (R, either V. labrusca or a natural hybrid, in any case American; <10 acres, in decline)
Cayuga White (complex American hybrid created in Geneva, NY; <10, decreased from 38 acres in 1996)
Chambourcin (Red, French-American hybrid; acreage not reported)
Chancellor, aka Seibel 7053 (R, French-American hybrid; acreage for the AVA not reported)
Chardonnay (W, vinifera; 32 acres)
Chelois (R, French-American hybrid; acreage for the AVA not reported)[12]
Concord (R, V. labrusca x unknown vinifera?, decidedly American; 168 acres)
De Chaunac or Dechaunac (R, French-Canadian hybrid, by Albert Seibel; named for the Canadian enologist, Adhemar DeChaunac; <15 acres)[13]
Delaware (V. labrusca x aestivalis var. bouriquiana x vinifera?, American hybrid; <10 acres)
Diamond, aka Moore’s Diamond (labrusca x vinifera American hybrid; acreage unreported)
Dutchess (complex hybrid by A. J. Caywood of Poughkeepsie, V. labrusca x aestivalis x vinifera; <10 acres)[14]
Elvira (complex American hybrid, V. labrusca x riparia x vinifera; <10 acres)[15]
Frontenac, aka MN 1047 (complex American hybrid from Minnesota; )[16]
Gamay Noir (R, vinifera, a specialty of Whitecliff Vineyards)
Gewürztraminer (W, vinifera; <10 acres)
Golden Muscat (W, American hybrid ex-Cornell, labrusca x vinifera; acreage unreported)
Noiret (R, complex American hybrid created in Geneva, NY)
Pinot Blanc (W, vinifera, Alsace clone planted only at Stoutridge)
Pinot Gris (W, vinifera)
Pinot Noir (R, vinifera, almost unique to Oak Summit in the region; about 30 acres)
Refosco (vinifera, planted only at Stoutridge)
Riesling (W, vinifera; <10 acres)
St Pepin (complex American hybrid by Elmer Swenson in Wisconsin)[18]
Sangiovese (R, vinifera, planted only at Stoutridge)
Seyval Blanc/Seyve-Villard 5-276 (W, French hybrid, vinifera x rupestris x lincecumii; 73 acres)
Teroldego (vinifera, planted only at Stoutridge)
Tocai Friulano (W, vinifera, planted only at Millbrook Vineyards)
Traminette (W, complex American hybrid based on Gewürztraminer)[19]
Vidal Blanc/Vidal 256 (W, French hybrid, Ugni Blanc x Seibel 4986; <10 acres)[20]
Vignoles/Ravat 51 (W, complex French hybrid, Pinot Noir? x Subéreux?; <10 acres)
As can be seen from the list, most of the wine varieties are hybrids, developed specifically for traits that would enable the vines to survive the extreme cold, humidity, and diseases. The French hybrids were often developed to produce vines based on V. vinifera that were resistant to phylloxera, as the original intention was to plant them in European vineyards. Once it was realized that grafting American rootstock to vinifera shoots would adequately protect against phylloxera, interest in hybrids dropped in Europe, but many of the hybrids have been successfully introduced to the United States. American (esp. New York hybrids) were often developed to thrive in American vineyards with their attendant cold-climate challenges and the diseases that are endemic to the region.
Bibliography and other References
Unfortunately, there is a serious paucity of books devoted exclusively to the entire Hudson River Region AVA. The only one still available, by Martell and Long, is out of print but can still be ordered.
De Vito, Carlo. East Coast Wineries: A Complete Guide from Maine to Virginia. Rutgers U. Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 2004. An excellent guide to the wineries of the region, though having been published ten years ago, it doesn’t even include the author’s own winery: Hudson-Chatham.
Figiel, Richard. Circle of Vines: The Story of New York State Wine. Excelsior Editions, Albany, NY, 2014. Written by the once-owner of a Finger Lakes winery, this is a well-written account of the story of New York wine, with a chapter devoted to the Hudson Valley and additional related material in two others. The entire book, a sweep of history going back to the Ice Ages and up to the present day, is a worthwhile read and the chapter on the Valley is especially complete and valuable.
Martell, Alan R. and Alton Long. The Wines and Wineries of the Hudson River Valley. The Countryman Press: Woodstock, VT, 1993. Given that it was published 21 years ago, it is seriously out of date, and at a scarce 48 amply-illustrated pages, it covers but 20 wineries and a meadery. It is clearly meant for the general public.
New York Wine & Grape Foundation (text by James Tresize), “The New York Wine Course and Reference.pdf.” 2014. Available as an online download, it is an excellent and very complete research source, although it has a promotional slant. It also includes very useful regional maps on the soils, temperatures, growing degree days, etc. (Note: It is curious that the AVA map in the Wine Course document does not match the one on the Website: Fact and Figures, which is the version that I use at the beginning of this article; it is the one that I consider the most accurate.) The Website is listed below. In citations, it will be referred to as “NY Wine Course.”
A handful of others touch on the region here and there, but superficially. For example:
Berger, Dan and Tony Aspler. North American Wine Routes: A Travel Guide to Wines & Vines from Napa to Nova Scotia. Reader’s Digest Press: Pleasantville, NY, 2010. Very superficial, with no useful background and only four wineries listed on the two amply-illustrated pages about the Region.
Castell, Hudson. Wines of Eastern North American: From Prohibition to the Present: From Prohibition to the Present – A History and Desk Reference. Cornell U. Press, Ithaca, NY, 2014. Its subject is rather broad so that the Hudson Valley is only touched upon here and there, but it is a fine work of scholarship and an important reference.
Morton, Lucie T. Winegrowing in Eastern America: An Illustrated Guide to Viniculture East of the Rockies. Cornell U. Press: Ithaca, NY, 1985. An important book but it only offers a very cursory coverage of the Valley.
Robinson, Jancis and Linda Murphy. American Wine: The Ultimate Companion to the Wines & Wineries of the US. U. California Press: Berkeley, 2013. For an ‘ultimate guide’ there are only two pages, mostly covered by illustrations and no useful map. It counts 33 wineries, mentions Millbrook Vineyards and Winery as the ‘Superstar’ and shows three wine labels.
Thomas, Marguerite. Touring East Coast Wine Country: A Guide to the Finest Wineries. Berkshire House Publishers, Lee, MA, 2002. Mentions only two wineries and is out of date.
For grape varieties:
Casscles, J. Stephen . Grapes of the Hudson Valley and Other Cool Climate Regions of the United States and Canada, Flint Mine Press, Coxsackie, NY, 2015. An important an indispensable guide to the varieties of the region. (See my review of the book at Grapes of the Hudson Valley.)
Robinson, Jancis, Julia Harding, & José Vouillamoz. Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including Their Origins and Flavours. HarperCollins: New York, 2012. Simply the best and most complete reference to all varieties available in the English language.
For history:
Benjamin, Vernon. The History of the Hudson River Valley from Wilderness to the Civil War. Overlook Press, New York, 2014. Using up-to-date scholarship, this is a serious and significant contribution to the literature of the Hudson Valley but, alas, there’s very little about wine. Nevertheless, a very worthwhile book to own.
Online Sources
Be aware that most of these sites may not be up-to-date or may contain misleading or incorrect information.
AppellationAmerican.com: Hudson River Region Last updated before Robibero Winery was opened, so probably prior to 2009. It lists 32 wineries in the region.
HudsonBerkshireExperience.com Website for the Hudson-Berkshire Beverage Trail in Columbia County. It’s not only about wine.
HudsonRiverWine.com Blog by Carlo DeVito, author of East Coast Wineries. He is the owner of the Hudson-Chatham Winery and also maintains another blog, EastCoastWineries.com, which covers wineries from Maine to Virginia.
HudsonValleyWine&GrapeAssoc.com Website of the Hudson Valley Wine and Grape Association. It lists 22 wineries and vineyards as members.
HVNet.com: Wineries The Hudson Valley Network is more about tourism in the Hudson Valley than it is about the Hudson River Region AVA, and includes at least two wineries that do not belong in the AVA. It is also out of date.
HVWineGoddess.com A light-hearted but informative romp through the Valley. It is currently maintained with fresh material, but it isn’t clear if it updates old posts.
HVWineMag.com The Hudson Valley Wine Magazine is probably the source with the most up-to-date information about what is going on regarding wine in the Valley.
NYSAES (Cornell U.)* The academic/scientific go-to Website for all matters agricultural and horticultural, which means viticulture as well, in the State.
Also indispensable for New York State wines is the New York Cork Report by Lenn Thompson, with its many interviews, coverage of wine tastings, reviews, and more.
NewYorkWines.org New York Wine & Grape Foundation, aka Uncork New York, covers all the wine regions of the state. Though it states that there are 41 wineries in the Hudson region, but that includes 3 cideries, 2 distilleries, and 1 glögg producer, so strictly speaking there are really only 35 wineries in the region. “The New York Wine Course and Reference.pdf.” can be downloaded from here.
WinesNY.com: Hudson Valley Wines An unofficial wine blog with much to offer, and its coverage of the Hudson Region is interesting and informative. However, it has not been updated since 2009.
*NYAES stands for New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, in Geneva, NY, which is run by Cornell University.
[3] NY Wine Course, pp. 92-3. (An excellent introduction to New York State soils can be found on the Web page of the Hunter College Dept. of Geology: Soils of NY (a downloadable PDF.)
Hudson Cattell’s Wines of Eastern North America: From Prohibition to the Present, A History and Desk Reference (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2014), is an important new book on the history of the wine industry in the East, covering both Canada and the United States in equal measure. It is a scholarly work and is meant for a fairly narrow audience: wine professionals, others in the wine trade, and really serious wine lovers.
Its title brings to mind Lucie T. Morton’s Winegrowing in Eastern United States (Cornell, 1985), the first major scholarly book to cover both the history and viniculture of the region east of the Rockies. Comparisons are inevitable, but a quick overview of each book also brings out the differences (which are significant) and the similarities. Apart from the fact that Cattell’s work is twenty-nine years later, it shouldn’t be regarded as an update of Morton’s book. For one thing, Cattell covers the history of winegrowing in the East principally from the Prohibition era to the present (2013). Morton covers the period from Colonial times up to 1985 more evenly, though she doesn’t have as much to say about the consequences of Prohibition as does Cattell. However, Morton is largely focused on the viniculture, whereas Cattell’s is primarily about the industry as a whole. Morton touches on Canada briefly, Cattell gives Canada its full due relative to the United States. Essentially, one book supplements the other, and any serious student of the region should have both. (N.B.–Morton’s book is out of print, but can be found online, so still available.)
Cattell (born in 1931), has been covering the wine industry east of the Rockies since 1976 had has published numerous books and articles over the years, covering not only the Eastern United States but Eastern Canada as well. In those 37 years he has traveled throughout this vast region and met nearly everybody who mattered in the wine trade. He clearly has a profound knowledge of the region, the people, the soils, the varieties, the wines, the laws, and the controversies about almost everything bearing on the vines and wines of Eastern North America. In 2012 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the first Eastern Winery Exposition held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
A 2007 article in the Cornell University Library Website, “Noted Wine Journalist Speaks at the Lee Library, Geneva” (http://www.library.cornell.edu/insidecul/200705/#noted) mentions that “Cattell learned on the job. On his first visit to a winery in Pennsylvania he drove right by the winery’s vineyard. ‘I knew absolutely nothing about grapes and wine,’ he said. ‘In fact, I didn’t even realize they were grapevines.’” A portion of his education came from Liberty Hyde Bailey’s The Evolution of Our Native Fruits.
His knowledge and expertise show on every page of the book under review. The chapters are arranged both chronologically and thematically. The first chapter provides the historical background of the wine industry in the United States and Canada from pre-Prohibition days through Prohibition and its devastating effect on the industry to its still-lingering effects after the passage of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment. State and provincial retail monopolies such as those in Pennsylvania and Ontario come out of this, as does the three-tier system that defines wine and liquor sales throughout the United States.
At the conclusion of the chapter is an interesting bit about Charles Fournier, the French-born winemaker at Gold Seal Vineyards. He was from Champagne and had succeeded his uncle as winemaker at Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin. Personal tragedy was a factor in his decision to come to the States. One of his early projects had to do with the legalization of the use of the term “champagne,” which by Federal statute of 1934 had to be “a type of sparkling white wine which derives its effervescence solely from the second fermentation of the wine within glass containers of not more than one gallon capacity, and which possess the taste, aroma, and other characteristics attributed to champagne as made in the Champagne district of France.” In 1970 Fournier would write of how proud he was “of the success of the New York State champagne industry.” Yet, he was using American and French-hybrid varieties such as Catawba, Delaware, Dutchess, Elvira, and so on. By the ’90s, of course, EU laws would ban the use of the term “champagne” for any sparking wine not made in the eponymous region, but firms using that term before the EU law was passed had “grandfathered” the right to continue to use it, so today we still have older sparkling wine producers using the word “champagne”–note the use of the lower case.
Chapter Two is devoted to Philip Wagner and the arrival of French hybrids in the United States. Wagner, a newspaper reporter and editor, would prove to be one of the most important and influential individuals in the Eastern wine industry. From his struggles as a tyro winegrower in the early thirties, by 1933 he had published the first book in America on winemaking: American Wines and How to Make Them. Having limited success with vinifera varieties, he began experimenting with hybrids. In 1939 he imported Baco No. 1 cuttings from France via Frank Schoonmaker–the legendary wine guru of the post-Prohibition era–and from that shipment were to come all future Baco Noir vines in the United States. In fact, it was the first importation of hybrids from France, and by 1951 Wagner and Boordy Vineyards (which he founded in 1945) was the major disseminator of these varieties, among them: Seibel 6339, Seibel 1XX, Seibel 1000 (Rosette).
And so it goes for thirteen chapters illustrated in black & white images with the occasional table–ample text loaded with facts, data, anecdotes, and stories of individuals, such as the Hargraves and Lucie T. Morton, wineries like Taylor Wine or Wollersheim Winery of Wisconsin, as well as organizations such as the Vintners Quality Association of Canada (VQA) or the Pennsylvania Premium Wine Group. No one and nothing seems to have been overlooked.
With respect to Canada and its wine industry , Cattell marks Sept. 21, 1945 as “one of the key dates in eastern wine history.” Philip Wagner, visiting from Maryland, Adhemar de Chaunac, winemaker at Brights in Ontario, and others from New York, including Nelson Shaulis from the Geneva research station, participated in a tasting of thirty-two New York wines. Wagner had added some of his French hybrid wines. “There was total silence–Wagner later recalled . . . — as it was generally realized for the first time that good wines could be made from French hybrid grapes.”
The result was that de Chaunac went back to Brights and soon had some twenty French hybrids and a few vinifera varieties ordered from France. Commercial plantings began with 40,000 vines in 1948. In addition, thanks to advances made at Brights with regard to controlling downy mildew with sulfur on a regular schedule rather after it first appeared in the vineyard meant that the imported vines had a much better chance of survival. In fact, by 1955 Brights had produced the first commercial vinifera wine in the East: a Pinot “Champagne”. The following year Brights brought out a Pinot Chardonnay table wine (as the variety was then called).
Catell goes on to write about the arrival of the first hybrids in the Finger Lakes, as a result of the same tasting that had so impressed de Chaunac. The first hybrid planted in the Finger Lakes was Seibel 1000 (Rossette), going back to 30s (though apparently no attempt was made to make commercial wine from it). In 1946 Charles Fournier of Gold Seal ordered a minimum of 1,000 vines of both Baco Noir and Rossette. Two years later Wagner tasted the results of wine made from these varieties and was astonished by the progress. Eventually, other Finger Lakes producers began planting them–Widmer’s Wine Cellars, even, reluctantly at first, Taylor Wine Company, which until then was heavily invested in American varieties like Catawba. Indeed, it was Greyton Taylor who wrote in 1954 that “. . . we happen to believe that since wine comes from grapes, wine should taste as though it did.”
In the next chapter Cattell tells the well-known story of Dr. Konstantin Frank and his crusade to plant vinifera grapes in the Finger Lakes. He also recounts the controversial oenologist’s “Pro-Vinifera Crusade,” the “toxic scare” that was spread in the 60s claiming that wine made from hybrids was toxic, and the “vinifera-hybrid controversy.”
So Cattell provides not only a clear and well-organized tale of the wine industry in the East, but leavens it well with interesting, even fascinating, anecdote. At the same time, it can make for very dry reading. For example, in Chapter Four (Vineyards and Wineries Before Farm Winery Legislation), in writing about French Hybrids in Ohio, he writes:
Ohio is a good example of how a state got started on a wine grape program based on the French hybrids. The first French hybrids to arrive in Ohio were cuttings of Seibel 1000 (Rosette) obtained by Mantey Vineyards in Sandusky and sent to Foster Nursery in Fredonia, New York, to be grafted on Couderc 3309 rootstock. In 1954, Meier’s Wine Cellars in Silverton, ten miles from Cincinatti, planted Baco No. 1 (Baco Noir), Seibel 5898 (Rougeon), Seibel 1096, and Seibel 4643 on North Bass Island (Isle of St. George) in Lake Erie.
But then, it must be realized that this is most emphatically a History and Desk Reference. The book is amply annotated and has an extensive bibliography. It is not only suitable as a reference but is, thanks to its wealth of anecdote, readable and enjoyable as well. How can one not be delighted by an anecdote like this one, on p. 125, “Grapevines from Canada were exempt from quarantine, and some of the earliest plantings of the French hybrids in the Finger Lakes took place in the 1950s when truckloads of cuttings crossed the border after pruning was completed in Canadian vineyards.” Who would have guessed the source of French hybrids in the Finger Lakes?
Here and there are some minor errors. For example, on p. 117, on the history of the beginning of appellations of origin, he cites 1905 in France as the onset of AOCs, but overlooks the earlier history of designated regions in the Port region of Portugal in the Eighteenth Century. Another minor mistake: “Sugar and water were added to the pomace [should be must] to make the wine potable.” But I quibble. After all, as a proper work of reference Cattell has this to offer: The first petition for an American Viticultural Area designation was for Augusta in Missouri, applied for on Oct. 12, 1978 and granted June 20, 1980 as AVA #1; AVA #2 was Napa Valley, granted on Jan 28, 1981. He goes on to explain that the with the establishment of the Augusta Wine Board in 1979, standards were to be based on those in use in Europe—in fact, four of the five designated board members were also members of the Commanderie de Bordeaux.
Again, in writing about the Canadian wine industry, he refers to the Horticultural Experiment Station, in Vineland. There, he tells us, Ralph F. Crowther developed the Crowther-Truscott submerged-culture flor sherry-making method for making Spanish fino-type sherry, “a process that completely changed sherry-making in both Canada and the U.S.” Also, Tibor Fuleki created the Vineland Flavour Index for screening seedlings for the labrusca flavor by measuring methyl anthranilate and volatile esters. “Seedlings with an index over 14 were likely to have a discernible labrusca flavor component; vinifera and French hybrids averaged an index under 8. Conversely, Concord averaged 416.”
With respect to marketing, Cattell discusses how cooperative marketing began with the establishment of the first wine trails. The very first was created informally in Pennsylvania in April 1979. The first formal wine trail was later established in New York State in 1983 with the Cayuga Wine Trail. With funding from the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, the Keuka Lake Wine Trail was created on June 18, 1986, so that by 1996 there were six wine trails in New York State. Benefits of the wine trails included extending the tourist season from Columbus Day to end of the year, the establishment of new restaurants and B&Bs, and the rise of all manner of special events.
Another interesting factoid: “The success of the VQA in Canada was a factor in the decision to set up the New Jersey Quality Wine Alliance (QWA).” The program was inaugurated in 2000 in conjunction with the NJ Commercial Wine Competition.
Towards the conclusion of the book Cattell identifies three major trends that have helped the eastern wine trade get to where it is today: “First is increasing wine quality; next is the improved business-oriented perspective of the winery owners, such as marketing initiatives; third, the increased ability of the producers to cooperate on legislative matters at both the state and federal levels.”
And then there are the Appendices, loaded with all manner of significant information and data. Appendix A (The Origins of Eastern Wine Grapes), for example, has three pages of summarizing text and eight tables:
Table A.1. Grape species most important for eastern North American wine production
Table A.2. Vitis vinifera: lists the 36 vinifera varieties most planted in Eastern N.A.
Table A.3. American varieties: lists 23 varieties with their names, parentage, and source; e.g., Norton, Seedling (labrusca, aestivalis, vinifera), Introduced 1830
Table A.4. French hybrid varieties: lists these varieties by name, with original name or number, and parentage; e.g., Baco Noir, Baco 24-23; later Baco #1, Folle Blanche ₓ riparia
Table A.5. North American breeding programs: lists varieties by variety, number, cross, date introduced, and date crossed. The list of varieties are arranged according to the program that developed them; e.g., NY State Agricultural Experiment Station breeding program.
Table A.6. Independent breeding programs; e.g., Elmer Swensen and his varieties.
Table A.7. Foreign breeding program: Germany [focused on cold-climate varieties]
Table A.8. Vitis amarensis varieties
Appendix B contains a quite interesting exploration, in brief, of how numbered hybrids like Seibel 5279—developed by Albert Seibel in France, was given the commercial name “l’Aurore”–because it was very early-ripening. There are two tables.
Appendix E (Early Wine History, State by State), contains brief histories of the wine industry in each of the states covered in this book (in alphabetical order):
Alabama, Arkansas (one page), Connecticut (one page), Delaware (one short paragraph), Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana (one page), Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts (one page), Michigan, Missouri (one page), Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey (one page), New York (over three pages: The Finger Lakes, Hudson River Valley, Lake Erie, and Philip Wagner, Boordy, and Seneca Foods; curiously, with no section devoted to Long Island or a word about the Niagara Escarpment), North Carolina, Ohio (almost two pages), Pennsylvania (nearly two pages), Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia (a page and a half), West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
It ends at Appendix G, lists, by state, the American Viticultural Areas in the East.
Thirty-seven years of experience studying and writing about the wine trade in the East were necessary to write a book of this scope and completeness. It could not have otherwise been written.
Wines of Eastern North America: From Prohibition to the Present, A History and Desk Reference
by Hudson Cattell. Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 2014.
235 pages of text with b/w illustrations, 7 maps; 7 appendices (A-G) taking up 75 pages, including tables; and 36 pages of extensive endnotes.
In my view, were one to be forced to choose the three most indispensable reference wine books published in English, they would be these:
The Oxford Wine Companion, 4th ed., edited by Jancis Robinson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Hugh Johnson & Jancis Robinson. The World Atlas of Wine: A Complete Guide to the Wines of the World, 7th ed. London: Mitchell-Beazley, 2013.
Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding, & José Vouillamoz. Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including Their Origins and Flavours. NY: Harper Collins, 2013.
Some may quibble that The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia: The Classic Reference to the Wines of the World, 5th ed., 2011, by Tom Stevenson would be preferable to the Wine Companion, but I feel that the Wine Companion together with the World Atlas make for a more comprehensive exploration of the world of wine.
NOTE: None of these books are for the wine neophyte, for that I’d recommend Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World Wine Course, NY: Sterling Epicure, 2014. One of the great advantages of Zraly’s approach is that he explains how to taste wine in some depth.
As one can see, all three books are by British writers, with the exception of Vouillamoz, who is Swiss, and a highly respected ampelographer and vine geneticist.
One reason for the very high standards of style and scholarship has to do with the fact that Robinson, Johnson, and Harding are all Oxbridge stuff. The other reason the standards are so high is because it’s the Brits who have been writing about wine almost longer than anyone, certainly in English. It helps, as well, that they are not given to hyperbole or chest-thumping, just really good writing and scholarship. It is also a fact that Robinson and Johnson are perhaps the two most-widely read authors in the wine world, certainly in our language.
I choose these three books because I consider them to be comprehensive and complete, with top-of-the-class expertise, quality layout and printing, and very high levels of scholarship. For example, the Washington Post, in its review of the first edition of the Wine Companion, referred to it as the “definitive guide to the world of wine.” This remains true today, with the 4th edition just published in 2015. The new edition is substantially revised and updated.
I do not propose to review the Oxford Wine Companion or The World Atlas of Wine, which was newly published in a 7th edition in October 2013. I’ve already said something about each in my post, Wine Books that I Recommend. Suffice it to say that both books are widely recognized as indispensable and essential wine references.
This is particularly true of Wine Grapes, published as a hardcover edition with a slipcover and a beautiful layout, with scholarship galore to support one of the most difficult subjects in wine. It is expensive: on Amazon .com it can be found for $102, a substantial discount from its list price of $175. However, if one is truly serious about wine, as a wine-lover, wine writer, or a professional in the trade, it behooves one to get this book. It’s entirely worth the price.
Review of Wine Grapes
Robinson had already ventured into the subject of wine grapes with two earlier books, both for the “popular” press rather than for specialists: the first was Vines, Grapes, & Wines: The wine drinker’s guide to grape varieties, published in 1986, followed by her compact Jancis Robinson’s Guide to Wine Grapes, in 1996, based on the grape entries in the first edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine (1996). Her only serious competition in English was Oz Clarke, who published Oz Clarke’s Encyclopedia of Grapes: A Comprehensive Guide to Varieties & Flavors with Margaret Rand in 2001, which was later updated as Grapes & Wines: A comprehensive guide to varieties and flavours in 2010. All of these books primarily were aimed at the sophisticated wine consumer, and though all are highly informative, amply illustrated, and enjoyable to browse or do basic research, none was suitable for a professional audience nor offered the level of intellectual insight that Wines Grapes does.
The definitive reference for professionals, until now, was the great magnum opus in seven volumes, published in French, by Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel: Ampélographie, between 1901 and 1910. It covered 5200 wine and table grape varieties, with focus on the 627 most important one, accompanied by over 500 paintings depicting the grapes as bunches with their foliage. A selection of those paintings was incorporated into this volume under review.
This book discusses the 1,368 varieties that are still in commercial production, however small the plantings or the production. For every single variety, it lists its 1) principle synonyms, 2) varieties commonly mistaken for said variety, 3) its origins and parentage, 4) other hypotheses [if any exist], 5) viticultural characteristics, and 6) where it’s grown and what its wine tastes like. I’ll take, as an example, the entry for Baco Noir:
“Dark-skinned French hybrid faring better across the Atlantic than at home.”
“Hybrid obtained in 1902 by François Baco in Bélus in the Landes, south-west France, by crossing Folle Blanche (under the name Piquepoul du Gers) with Vitis riparia Grand Glabre. It is therefore a half-sibling of Baco Blanc. However, as noted by Galet (1988), since V. riparia Grand Glabre has female-only flowers with sterile pollen, Darrigan considered this hybrid to be Folle Blanche x V. riparia Grand Glabre + V. riparia ordinaire, which suggests that Baco used a mix of V. riparia pollen taken from two distinct varieties. . . . .
“Viticultural Characteristics
“Early budding and therefore at risk from spring frosts. Best suited to heavy soils. Vigorous and early ripening. Good resistance to downy and powdery mildew but highly susceptible to black rot and crown gall. Small to medium bunches of small berries that are high in acids but low in tannins.
“Where It’s Grown and What Its Wine Tastes Like
“Baco Noir was at one time planted in France, in regions as diverse as Burgundy, Anjou, and its home in the Landes, but the area has dwindled considerably, down to around 11 ha (27 acres) in 2008 . . . .
“The variety has fared better in cooler parts of North America since its introduction in the 1950s. New York crushed 820 tons in 2009 (almost double the amount for 2008) in both the Hudson River and Finger Lakes regions and in southern Oregon . . .”
But even before one gets to the profiles of those 1,368 varieties, there is the excellent Introduction, with subject headings such as:
The Importance of Grapes Varieties, which covers the background of how varieties came to take such a prominent place in a wine world that had once only paid attention to regions, such that the French, with their AOC system would identify a wine as from Pauillac, and the knowledgeable imbiber would know that this was a claret or red wine from Bordeaux—varieties be damned; in the USA wines were made that were identified merely as Claret or Burgundy, though the varieties could be anything but those from Bordeaux or Burgundy. There is even a box that clarifies the difference between variety (the grape) and varietal (the wine). There is also a chart showing the climate-maturity groupings of varieties.
The Vine Family, discussing some (but not all) of the vine species used to make wine, with emphasis on V. vinifera and its two subspecies, sativa (the cultivated vine) and silvestris, the wild or forest vine.
Grape Variety, Mutation and Clone, a fascinating discussion that explains how a vinifera variety comes into being, as well as explaining the differences between mutations and clones. One of the most interesting observation is the discovery that Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Blanc are all genetically identical according to standard DNA profiling, and are only distinguished by a single gene that changes the amount of anthocyanin that imparts color to the grape skins. This section also dispels some myths about varieties and there tendency to mutate.
Vine Breeding, which explains how the domesticated vine has been deliberately bred for particular characteristics, often by selected intraspecific crossing (vinifera with vinifera) or by interspecies crossing (e.g., vinifera with riparia). It also discusses successful vs. unsuccessful results, as in the case of the effect of the German Wine Law of 1971, which caused breeders to aim for varieties that would produce high sugar levels regardless of the overall effect on the quality of the resulting wines.
Pests and Diseases, an important category in any discussion of vines and vineyards, provides a background of how certain diseases and infestations were spread thanks to the intervention of human activity in the transportation of unwanted guests that often accompanied vines transferred from America to Europe for experimental plantings in order to see how American vines would do in European soil. Perhaps it would improve them. Alas, along came downy and powdery mildews and the charmless, almost invisibly tiny, parasitical mite that came to be called Phylloxera devastatrix, which nearly devastated the vineyards of France, Germany, and Italy.
Rootstocks, Grafting, and Fashion, a brief account of the significance of rootstocks—which could deserve an entire book in their own right—grafting, and how fashions in taste can be mollified for a time (remember the days of ABC—Anything But Cabernet/Chardonnay) by the simple expedient of top-grafting, rather than uprooting the entire vine and waiting three years for it to begin to bear fruit.
Vine Age, an explanation of how older vines offer the vineyardist a two-edged sword: higher-quality grapes at reduced production levels.
Changes in Vineyard Composition, discusses how vineyards are moving away from field blends (multiple varieties in a vineyard plot) to monovarietal cultivation as well as the resurrection of nearly extinct varieties that are still of interest for winemaking.
Labelling and Naming bears primarily on the marketing of wine. Where once Europeans rarely mentioned varietal names on the label and emphasized regional origin instead, the success of varietal emphasis in the New World eventually was accepted as the standard for all but the most traditional, expensive wines offered—say a Château d’Yquem (Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadelle anyone?) or La Tâche (Pinot Noir, period).
DNA Profiling, is about the shift from ampelography (the identification of a vine by its leaf and bunch characteristics) to the use of DNA to establish parentage and sibling relationships. Throughout the book there are family vines (trees) to show the relationship of, say Pinot to Syrah (!), no matter at how many generations removed. DNA profiling can’t answer all these questions, since a parent variety that is now extinct or unknown cannot be linked to its supposed progeny, so question marks abound in the charts.
The next chapter, four pages of text and three of charts, is Historical Perspective, with the following headings:
Grapevine Domestication: Why, Where and When? This covers the various theories that have been put forth by various scholars. The first one, the ‘Paleolithic Hypothesis,’ holds that sometime in pre-history spontaneously-fermented wine was tried and produced the proverbial euphoria we all know so very well. This oeno-archeologist, Patrick McGovern, was a bit of a wag, referring to this drink as “Stone-Age Beaujolais Nouveau.” It had to be consumed immediately upon release lest it turn into vinegar. This is followed by the “Hermaphroditic Hypothesis” which argues that in the Early Neolithic, when societies began to settle down, early attempts to cultivate wine grapes quickly eliminated the planting of male vines, because they could never reproduce; female plants could only reproduce if there were male vines nearby; hermaphroditic vines, which today comprise the vast majority of cultivated vines, needed only themselves, and reproduction was virtually guaranteed. Then there is the issue of where the domesticated wine vine was first cultivated, and while the answer is not entirely certain, there are various ideas as to where, and it largely centers on the regions near Anatolia, Georgia, the northern Fertile Crescent, and so on. The when actually depends on actual archeological finds in that general region, which suggest as early as ca. 8000 bce, with other proposals holding that it may not have been until ca. 3400-3000, again depending on which evidence is most generally accepted.
Western Expansion of Viniculture covers the general peregrinations of the wine vine from its ancestral home to Mesopotamia, then Egypt, and then Greece, Italy, France and on into Germany, Spain, and Portugal. Eventually, first with Spanish missionaries and later with immigrants to what would become the United States, cuttings and seeds were brought to the Western Hemisphere. Chloroplast DNA studies are cited as evidence of a possible secondary domestication of V. vinifera silvestris, but even this is in dispute.
Ampelographic Groups is a really interesting section that deals with what is referred to in the book as the “eco-geographical groups” or proles, first proposed by A.M. Negrul in 1938 and again in 1946. Although some of the proles varieties may, thanks to DNA fingerprinting, belong to another group than that originally proposed, for the most part it seems to hold up, with three groups proposed: Proles occidentalis Negr., Proles pontica Negr., and Proles orientalis Negr. All wine-grape varieties emanate from one of these three groups, with Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay in the western group, Rkatsiteli and Furmint in the bridging group, and Chasselas and Muscat Alexandria, for example, in the eastern group. An accompanying map shows the geographical distribution of these eco-geogroups in France, along with a table listing the ‘sorto-types’ of the different varieties in the larger classification. Complex, isn’t it?
This is followed by a list of the Varieties by Country of Origin, and here we learn that the single largest group belongs to Italy, with 377 varieties, followed by France with 204 varieties; the USA has 76 native varieties, and the UK has a single one, Muscat of Hamburg.
Thence, the alphabetical listing of all 1,368 wine varieties still in production at whatever scale. The example of Baco Noir has already been given. Pinot, with its great clonal diversity, includes 156 varieties in its family (shown as a 3-page chart), which includes Teroldego, Savagnin, Gouais Blanc, Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and so on. All this is based on DNA analysis, which, given the many lost or extinct varieties that belong in the tree, leaves open questions of parentage or sibling relationships. For example, If Pinot is one parent of Teroldego, which variety is the other parent? With the various members of the Pinot family that includes Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Teinteurier, and Pinot Noir Précoce, the entries for the Pinot family go on for 17 pages.
So it goes for all the varieties described, running 1177 pages, followed by a Glossary and an extensive Bibliography of 20 pages in length. References go from Acerbi, G., Dele viti italiane ossia materiali per servire alla classificazione mongrafia e sinonima of 1825 to Zúñiga, V C M de, 1905, on Tempranillo. The bibliography is up-to-date to 2012. Every variety under discussion has its citations from the bibliography.
Occasionally it passes up a nice nugget of information, such as the fact that in 1982 it was discovered that vines identified as Pinot Chardonnay were actually Pinot Blanc, but it took a few years for the newly-planted vines to produce fully-developed leaves, which allowed Lucy Morton—a viticulturalist who translated Pierre Galet’s book, A Practical Ampelography: Grapevine Identification, from French to English—to correctly identify the vines as Pinot Blanc by the shape of the vine leaves. (Incidentally, what was called Pinot Chardonnay—on the assumption that Chardonnay is a member of the Pinot family—is now called just Chardonnay). This little nugget could have been found under either the entry for Chardonnay or Pinot Blanc, but is in neither. Also omitted is any mention of the red vinifera variety Morenillo, which although “extinct” is actually still producing small quantities of wine in the Terra Alta DO. These are rare lacunae for such a thorough book.
This is not only a supreme work of scholarship, scientific research, and historiography, it is a remarkable accomplishment and an essential addition to the English world’s library of wine books. If you can afford it, buy it. You can’t afford not to.
As of July 2016, despite a much-needed reassessment, as so many of the sites have been significantly updated and improved, I have had no time to do a full re-evaluation. My book, The Wines of Long Island, 3rd edition, has just been turned in to my publisher, SUNY Press. After a period of decompression, I shall revisit all the Websites and update this post.
In an article published in Wines & Vines, “What Visitors Want from Wine Sites” (June 2011), Kent Benson explained what information he thought serious visitors to wine sites (specifically winery and vineyard ones) should provide. I thought that his ideas were worth serious consideration and decided to try and apply those criteria to the websites of the region that I am most familiar with: Long Island. Benson’s original article is accessible at Wines & Vines 6/11.
The Criteria
In order to assess the quality of the Long Island winery/vineyard websites, I have chosen to evaluate them on the basis of both the historical and technical information that they provide. Below is my adaptation (mostly a reorganization) of Kent Bensons’ wish list for wine websites:
Identify type of operation up front: Winery &/or Vineyard &/or Tasting Room
History: frank and honest, including founder, subsequent owners and corporate owners: (don’t pretend you’re a “family” winery when you’re not)
Winemaker, vineyard manager, and owner: names, pictures and bios
List of all grape varieties in the vineyard with acreage
Vintage report
Technical information (vinification)
Forthright, step-by-step, detailed description of the winemaking process: (tell all); e.g., details of aging regimen: proportion aged in wood, proportions of French & American oak, proportions of new, one-year, two-year, etc., oak alternatives employed
b. Technical data: degrees Brix at harvest, actual ABV, TA, pH, RS, dry extract, disgorgement date: (for sparkling wine) [this set data is for wine geeks; most others may not care]
Estimated drinkability range from vintage date
Purchase information (Online/Wine Club)
Available current releases and at least two previous vintages
Pairing and serving temperature suggestions
Bottle and label shots: (keep them current, show front & back labels)
Pictures of estate or controlled vineyards and of winery
In addition, I would like to see Winery websites that are easy to navigate and do not require that a visitor need dig for information or other data. All features should be easily accessible, which means that navigation options should not be embedded more than a level or two down from the main menu or home page.Blogs are very nice to have and can be extremely informative: Bedell Cellars, Channing Daughters, and Shinn Estate have particularly useful ones. However, they are not scored for this assessment, as most sites have no blogs.
Events and event calendars are an essential part of nearly any retail winery, but these are not scored individually in the assessments that follow, as they are mostly about entertainment and social matters, and information on winegrowing and winemaking is our real concern.
Consequently, I have also added a new criterion, for ‘general’ features. These are scored by the number of features listed above that appear on the Website, thus 10 ‘yes’ answers (features present) is complete. If a feature is not applicable (n/a) the score is not reduced. Furthermore, if a newsletter is available, I score the newsletter for quality of its information—if no newsletter is offered, it is not scored.
About the Assessments
NOTE: The assessments on the following pages are based on my version of Benson’s wish list. They are my own, and therefore subjective. Poor scores may sometimes reflect a deliberate desire on the part of the winery not to provide the kind of information that is being looked for here, possibly due to the time and cost of including it on the Web. In no case do these scores reflect on the wines offered on these sites.
The purpose of this assessment is both informational for visitors and, hopefully, a prod to the web designers and the site owners to add or improve features, if possible. Naturally, many of the wineries are very small and may not have the wherewithal to spend money on a better website than they already have. Some don’t appear to have the means to keep their sites up-to-date, or at least certain features such as blogs, which are time-consuming to maintain. It would be helpful if all sites provided a ‘last time updated’ on their home pages.
It shall be updated from time-to-time as enough changes to the websites so warrant. Assigning scores to the websites
Listed alphabetically, the assessments of the websites carry no imputations regarding a winery’s products. Major features are graded on a scale of 1 to 5:
1 = inadequate/little or no information
2 = fair/some information, albeit cursory
3 = adequate/basic relevant information, but lacking depth
4 = very good/most relevant information
5 = excellent/all relevant information
n/a = not applicable (e.g., no viniculture information because no vineyard)
The highest score possible for a website is 5.0 points out of 5. Nominally, the lowest score should be 1.0 point out of 5, but there is one site that has a blog about money and dogs and nothing about wine—an aberration, to be sure, but listed nevertheless for the sake of completeness.
The Sixty-two Websites (as of 11 June 2013)
NOTE: In May 2012 there were fifty-five Websites that were evaluated. As of July 2016 there are over seventy sites to be assessed.
Anthony Nappa Wines / Winemakers Studio: (3.9 out of 5)
Vineyard: No; no grape source info either
Winery: No (uses Raphael facilities)
Winemaker: Anthony Nappa
Tasting Room: The Winemaker Studio, Peconic (see Web assessment below)
History / background: (4/5) Very good
About / Biographies: (5/5) Excellent bios on both sites
Vineyard / viniculture information: (n/a)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (3/5) No notes, but adequate descriptions with food pairing suggestions on both sites
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (3/5) No; brief descriptions of wines, but purchase can only be made by phone at Winemakers Studio; there is also a resellers listing
Wine Club: Anthony Nappa: No; The Winemaker Studio: Yes, but the membership form must be printed and mailed in—a tad inconvenient.
Contact: phone, snail mail, or e-mail for both Nappa & the Studio
Directions: Yes, for Winemaker Studio, with map
News/reviews link: Yes, and up to date.
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: No
Tours: n/a
Photo gallery: No
Website design: (4/5) Elegant, easy to navigate, but link to The Winemaker Studio takes you to a very different style and layout (see assessment below)
General feature set: 5 out of 10 (2.5/5)
Additional features: Resellers option; link to Anthony Nappa Wine’s Facebook page.
Up-to-date: Nappa: Mostly, but there is no mention of Anthony’s hire by Raphael to be its winemaker; Studio: OK.
Comment: Two linked websites, one for Anthony Nappa Wines, another for the tasting room at The Winemaker Studio; information about the vineyards that source the grapes would be very welcome (and so interesting to the geeks among us).
NOTE: The Winemaker Studio features and sells wines by Anthony Nappa, Roman Roth (Grapes of Roth), Russell Hearn (Suhru Wines & T’Jara Vineyards), Erik Bilka (Influence Wines), John Leo (Leo Family Wines), and Adam Suprenant (Coffeepot Wines)
Baiting Hollow Farm Vineyards: (3.6 out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No (PWG)
Winemaker: Tom Drozd using PWG facilities
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (4/5) Personal, family focused
About / Biographies: (4/5) Personal, no staff biographies
Vineyard /viniculture information: (3/5) Succinct, no maps, no mention of terroir; focus on sustainability, but few specifics
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (4/5) very good, but not all wines are fully commented
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (3/5) Many choices, brief descriptions, food pairing suggestions; gift baskets
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: e-mail & phone
Directions: Yes, with map
News/reviews link: No
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes; focus on Rock & Roll and Bluegrass performances; weddings
Tours: Virtual (online)
Photo gallery: Yes, and video of horses and games as well
Website design: (4/5) Attractive if a bit busy-looking, with many options
Comment: Greeted by a picture of a child with a horse, one knows immediately that this is a family-oriented; the vineyard and its wines itself needs more attention. The BHFV Horse Rescue operation, by the way, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation, devoted to the rescue of horses.
Bedell Cellars: (5.0 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Richard Harbich-Olsen
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (5/5) Excellent account of sustainability & its practice
About / Biographies: (5/5) Excellent, full biographies of all staff
Vineyard / viniculture information: (5/5) Excellent, full description and parcel maps, discussion of terroir, sustainable practices (member of Long Island Sustainable Winegrowers [henceforth LISW])
Purchase online: (5/5) Very good descriptions, many choices, including sets
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: e-mail, phone & fax
Directions: Yes, with map
News/reviews link: Yes, many links to reviews in NYT
Newsletter / Mailing List: (5/5) Yes, by far the most informative and interesting newsletter of all, with keen and thoughtful observations about wine, viniculture, terroir, and so on. Issued from time to time.
Wine Blog: Yes, highly informative with both wit and humor.
Events / calendar: Yes
Tours: Yes, by prior arrangement
Photo gallery: Yes, and video as well
Website design / usability: (5/5) Excellent, elegant design (by Cro2), art is featured
General feature set: 10 of 10 (5/5)
Additional features: Excellent explanation of sustainable farming; art gallery; various wedding options
Comment: An elegant site, easy to navigate, many useful options, thoughtful design, exceptionally informative and complete. A plausible standard for winery websites with respect to the content that they could provide. Elegant design helps too, of course. The newsletter is a model as well—every issue is worth reading (though they do come out irregularly).
Bouké Wines: (4.2 4.6 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: No; purchases fruit from N. Fork & Finger Lakes vineyards
Winery: No (PWG)
Winemaker: No; Gilles Martin, consultant
Tasting Room: Tasting Room, Peconic
History / background: (5/5) Full & complete, well-organized
Purchase online: (5/5) Good, brief descriptions, but dig down for full wine notes
Wine Club: No
Contact: e-mail & phone
Directions: No
News/reviews link: Yes, including a list of awards
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: Yes, via a small icon at the bottom of the page
Events / calendar: No
Tours: n/a
Photo gallery: No
Website design: (5/5) Attractive, clean design, unusual navigation in places
General feature set: 4 of 10 (2/5)
Additional features: Links to responsible drinking sites (AIM & Century); Jazz recommended listening; boutique for wine accessories; the blog is really just a series of links; blogroll is a set of links to blogs by others
Up-to-date: Yes
Bouké Wines
Comment: Attractive and easy to use, it reflects well on the products offered; much improved design with excellent navigation; it could mention the vineyards sourcing the grapes; the list of NYC retailers selling the wines is confined to Brooklyn.
Brooklyn Oenology (3.7 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: No
Winery: No; PWG makes the wine
Winemaker: Yes, Alie Shaper
Tasting Room: Yes, offers BOE wines and a selection of other LI and Finger Lakes wines
History / background: (5/5) Complete
About / Biographies: (1/5) None
Vineyard/viniculture information: (n/a)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (5/5) Succinct but complete and clearly presented
Technical wine data: Spotty
Purchase online: (4/5) Yes, now BOE’s own online system
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Yes
Directions: Yes
News/reviews link: Eventually
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: Yes, but the last post was in Sept. 2012
Events / calendar: Yes; but no functional links to some events that could use them
Tours: n/a
Photo gallery: Mostly of the artist labels; art an emphasis of site
Website design: (4/5) Slick, sophisticated, but home page is rather busy in consequence
Comment: Site functions like a work in progress; the wine links don’t work properly if you select, for example, White Wines, as it takes you to an empty page. You must select a particular white wine, but it means that making comparisons a bit more difficult.
Brooklyn Winery (4.2 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: No
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes; Conor McCormack
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (4/5) Complete
About / Biographies: (5/5) Interesting and amusing
Vineyard/viniculture information: (n/a)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (5/5) Complete and clearly presented
Technical wine data: Yes
Purchase online: (n/a) Online sales are apparently pending; for now, purchase at retail or at the winery
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Yes
Directions: Yes
News/reviews link: Presently there are no complete reviews; PDFs are awkward to use
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: Yes
Events / calendar: Yes; but no links to some events that could use them
Tours: n/a
Photo gallery: Mostly of the artist labels; art an emphasis of site
Comment: Site may still be a work in progress, given that though it shows a shopping cart and checkout, in fact online purchases cannot be made.
Castello di Borghese: (2.2 2.6 out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Erik Bilka
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (3/5) Adequate, but one has to read the press releases to learn that this was originally Hargrave Vineyard, the first on LI, which the Borgheses purchased in 1999.
About / Biographies: (3/5) ) Adequate, with emphasis on aristocratic Italian heritage, but if one digs deeply there is a press article that provides some
Vineyard / viniculture information: (1/5) Inadequate, with nothing about viniculture
Purchase online: (3/5) Good, but too much navigation is required
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: by phone, snail mail, and email via info@castellodiborghese.com
Directions: Yes, text.
News/reviews link: Yes
Newsletter / Mailing List: (1/5) Yes; the newsletter, issued regularly, is largely confined to events at the winery and various links; there is no news about winemaking or viniculture
Comment: Web focus is on winery’s prestige and social events as well as its wine; no staff bios, not even of the owners, unless you find the press releases—so the info is available, albeit in a desultory way.
Channing Daughters: (4.8 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Christopher Tracy
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (5/5) Excellent, especially with regard to its philosophy
About / Biographies: (5/5) Excellent, with full biographies
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (5/5) Excellent: detailed and complete
Technical wine data: Embedded in the description/notes
Purchase online: (5/5) Excellent, wines are full described
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Yes
Directions: Yes
News/reviews link: Yes
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
Wine Blog: Yes, articles posted on East End by Christopher Tracy (not updated since 9/2011).
Events / calendar: Yes, but no entertainment or weddings, but rather for tasting classes.
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Yes
Website design /usability: (5/5) Excellent, elegant, easy to use (by Cro2)
General feature set: 8 of 10 (4/5)
Additional features: Art gallery featuring Walter Channing’s wood sculpture
Up-to-date: Yes, ‘Where to buy’ option shows the wines are offered in many states and are available in some of the best restaurants in the country, including Daniel in NYC, The French Laundry in Napa, as well as eateries in Montreal and Quebec City.
Comment: Attractive and easy to use, but lacks Background and About info, no bios
Diliberto Winery: (2.3 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No
Winemaker: Sal Diliberto
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (4/5) Very good, on the personal side, but must read reviews by others to get most of the information
About / Biographies: (3/5) Good, focus on Italian background; for fuller info one needs to go to the Newsroom option and read an interview in the LI Wine Press link
Vineyard / viniculture information: (n/a) No info about outsourced vineyard
Comment: A very basic website; no online purchasing
Duckwalk Vineyards / Duckwalk North: (3.4 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes
Tasting Room: Yes, at both sites
History / background: (4/5) Very good
About / Biographies: (4/5) Very good, focus on Italian background
Vineyard / viniculture information: (2/5) Sustainable practices claimed, but little detail
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (3/5) Good, but little about vinification
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (4/5) Good, but prices don’t show with wine choices
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Phone, fax, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: No, just the address
News/reviews link: Not yet
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes, devoted to entertainment
Tours: Yes, according to LI Wine Country, but it doesn’t appear to be the case according to the winery Website
Photo gallery: No, but a slide show of ten images includes one of goldfish (?). A picture of a duck would make more sense for Duckwalk, one would think.
Website design /usability: (4/5) Very easy to use; home page is dominated by pictures of its scheduled entertainers
General feature set: 5 of 10 (2.5/5)
Additional features: About Duck Walk’s supported causes; there used to be an option to choose any of four languages other than English: French German, Italian, and Spanish, but that appears to have been removed since the site was reviewed last year (2012)
Comment: What? No directions on how to get there? No newsletter? A rather basic site, it could also use more information about viniculture, especially given the claim to sustainable practices, and more about the wines, as well.
Grapes of Roth by Wölffer Estate: (4.4 out of 5)
Vineyard: No; grape sources are identified—incidentally—in a review
Winery: No, uses Wölffer’s facilities, as he’s its winemaker
Winemaker: Yes, Roman Roth
Tasting Room: Wölffer Estate and The Winemaker Studio, Peconic
History / background: (4/5) Very good
About / Biographies: (5/5) Excellent: full biography, in chapters
Vineyard / viniculture information: (3/5) Good, about outsourced vineyard
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (5/5) Excellent: detailed and complete
Technical wine data: Yes, very detailed and complete
Purchase online: (5/5) Excellent, wines are full described
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: in small print at bottom of Home page: e-mail, snail mail, and phone
Directions: n/a
News/reviews link: Yes, but it isn’t up-to-date.
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: External events are listed and are up-to-date, but no calendar
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Yes, in connection with Roth’s bio in chapters
Website design /usability: (5/5) Elegant and straightforward design (in a glass), very easy to navigate (by ZGDG)
General feature set: 6 of 10 (3/5)
Additional features: No, but you may need to get used to the puns.
Up-to-date: Events, yes, but the reviews page has nothing later than 2010
Comment: Elegant design, if a tad idiosyncratic, very complete info about wines and Roth.
NOTE: Now that Roth has been named a partner in Wölffer Estate, where he has been winemaker for over 20 years, Grapes of Roth will be part of the Wölffer brand.
Harbes Farm & Vineyard: (3.2 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No
Winemaker: Edward Harbes IV
Tasting Room: Yes
History / Background: (2/5) Adequate, focused on family & farm
About / Biographies: (2/5) Adequate, but no biographies
Comment: A wine website with a split personality: fun & games for kids; wine for adults, even a farm market; there are three different farms, only the one in Mattituck has a vineyard
Harmony Vineyards (1.8 2.2 out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No
Winemaker: No; uses Eric Fry of Lenz
Tasting Room: No
History / background: (1/5)
About / Biographies: (1/5)
Vineyard / Viniculture information: ( 2/5) little is said in text, but some pictures are worth a few more words
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (2/5) actually, all wines are commented on by quoting reviews, but there are further notes when one goes to purchase online.
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (3/5) easy to use, adequate wine notes
Wine Club: No
Contact: Yes
Directions: address and map
News/reviews link: Yes
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: No
Photo gallery: Yes
Website design: (3/5) Attractive and straightforward
General feature set: 5 of 10 (2.5/5)
Additional features: Art gallery (text, no images!), We Support (list of causes & charities); video of house moved to new site, accompanied by music; promotions
Up-to-date: wines of the 2010 vintage are on offer
Comment: An informative and attractive website that needs a real News/Reviews link; it supports the Southold Project in Aquaculture Training (SPAT), for sustainable fishing.
Jason’s Vineyard (2.8 out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No
Winemaker: Yes, Jason Damianos
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (3/5)
About / Biographies: (4/5)
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (2/5) Just adequate, but little about sustainability
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (2/5) Adequate, but barely
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (n/a) Wines are listed and briefly described, but cannot be purchased online.
Wine Club: No
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Yes
News/reviews link: No
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: TBA, according to the Website
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Yes, but limited
Website design: (4/5) Pleasant design with a Greek theme, easy to navigate and use.
Comment: An attractive site lacking important information, including bios
Lenz Winery: (3.3 3.4 out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Eric Fry
Tasting Room: Yes
History / Background / About / Biographies: (2/5) Adequate, no bios
About / Biographies: (1/5) Inadequate, no biographies
Vineyard / viniculture information: (3/5) Succinct; no parcel maps
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (4/5) Complete description, no notes
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (5/5) Excellent
Wine Club: Yes; 3-level club program
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Yes, address and map
News/reviews link: Yes
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes, and not just parties, but serious tastings of wines from around the world; Weddings (however, as of May 2013 the link to the events page is broken).
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Yes
Website design / usability: (5/5) Sophisticated, minimalist look and functionality
General feature set: 7 of 10 (3.5)
Additional features: Tours; “Petrus tasting” notes to emphasize quality by comparison to French equivalents; prior tasting results yet to be posted; Lenz cottage stays available for wine club subscribers
Up-to-date: hard to tell; latest wines offered date to 2009; the latest reviews were in 2006
Comment: An attractive, useful, and interesting site lacking some basic information, including bios
Lieb Cellars / Bridge Lane Wines: (4.0 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No, uses PWG
Winemaker: Yes, Russell Hearn is an owner and a winemaker/owner at Premium Wine Group
Tasting Room: Yes, at PWG
History / Background (4/5) Good, found under the rubric Our Vineyard.
About / Biographies: (3/5) Good, limited bio about owners
Vineyard / viniculture information: (3/5) Good, but incidental to the overall story; no maps; sustainable practices (member LISW)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (4/5) Very good; inconsistent from wine to wine
Technical wine data: Though indicated as available, trying to open the wine spec sheets and tasting note PDFs produces a “Error 404 Page not found.”
Purchase online: (5/5) Excellent
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Yes, from different directions and a map to boot
News/reviews link: Yes
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes
Tours: No
Photo gallery: No
Website design / usability: (5/5) Excellent and very attractively designed.
General feature set: 6 of 10 (3/5)
Additional features: Featured restaurants that offer Lieb Cellars wine, particularly a link to Craft Restaurant, given that Lieb makes a sparkling wine for Craft’s private label as well as a link for Lieb’s Summer Rosé for Park Ave. Restaurant’s private label. (Both restaurants are in NYC.)
Comment: An attractive and largely well-designed site that is mostly easy to get around; though there are two separate labels—Lieb Cellars and Bridge Lane, the distinction between them is not made clear. The inability for users of opening the wine tasting notes and spec sheets is frustrating; apart from the error message, clicking on the Continue button simply takes one back to the wines page—in other words, a circular routing.
Macari Vineyards: (4.0 4.4 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Kelly Urbanik, also Helmut Gangl, consultant
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (4/5) Sufficient history & background
About / Biographies: (5/5) Excellent, especially on the backgrounds of the winemakers
Vineyard / viniculture information 4/5: Useful information about vinicultural practices; no parcel maps
Winemaker’s notes / wine description 4/5: Professionally-written descriptions, no notes
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (4/5) Easy to use
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Addresses with maps
News/reviews link: Yes, including many recent reviews for 2013
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes
Tours: Virtual (online), tells much of the story of the winery and vineyards
Photo gallery: Yes
Website design: (5/5) Very attractive and easy to navigate
General feature set: 9 of 10 (4.5/5)
Additional features: Weddings, Private parties
Up-to-date: Yes, includes 2012 wines on offer and up-to-date reviews
Comment: The virtual tour that I so highly recommended in 2012 is, alas, no more.
Martha Clara Vineyards (3.5 3.9 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No, uses Premium Wine Group
Winemaker: Yes, Juan Micieli-Martinez uses PWG
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (3/5) Brief, focuses on family
About / Biographies: (5/5) Full bios of owners & winemaker/manager
Vineyard / viniculture information: (1/5) Virtually no information, but uses sustainable practices (member LISW)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description (5/5) Full, rich descriptions; click on bottle illustration for more information, including . . .
Technical wine data: Yes, also via downloadable PDF.
Purchase online: (5/5) Store is a catchall for wine, gifts, and events; minimal descriptions of wines with food-pairing notes; full wine information is found under ‘Wines’
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: phone & e-mail. Also Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and BlogSpot.
Directions: Yes, text and Google map.
News/reviews link: No
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: No, it has been eliminated.
Tours: Yes
Events / calendar: Yes; encourages large parties, weddings, meetings, etc. Calendar shows upcoming events through Sept. 2013, including concerts, dinners, other. Does not mention special viniculture class led by vineyard manager, Jim Thompson, held once a year.
Photo gallery: Ample, nicely presented; videos offered, but apparently disabled as of 4/9/2012
Website design: (4/5) Front page busy & unattractive, the rest of the pages use a minimalist design & are easy on the eyes; navigation is mostly straightforward; home page uses functional Table of Contents (with fake page numbers—a tad confusing)
General feature set: 8 of 10 (4/5)
Additional features: Strong emphasis on community involvement & charity support; also offers horse & carriage rides. Videos offered, but no longer accessible. Small zoo for children.Up-to-date: Yes
Comment: Other than the opening page, an attractive site; however, to read about the wines involves using a display of pictures of wine bottles—to select click on the image to read about the wine; the media feature is, quirkily, not quotations or links from the press or reviewers, but rather, videos that are no longer accessible.
Mattebella Vineyards (3.3 3.6 out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No, PWG
Winemaker: No, PWG
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (1/5) No real information
About / Biographies: (2/5) Just adequate
Vineyard / viniculture information: (5/5) Good, with emphasis on sustainability (member LISW)
Purchase online: (5/5) Excellent, with adequate wine descriptions and an interesting variety of purchase option
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Phone, e-mail
Directions: Option is not functional as of 5/4/13
News/reviews link: Yes, but usually cited without dates
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: Yes, but not updated since 2009
Events / calendar: No, you can request information via a Gmail link.
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Yes, with many family pictures in all categories; e.g., Vineyard
Website design: (4/5) Attractive and easy to navigate, but a few too many mouse clicks needed here and there; some features are not yet active, such as a list of retailers and restaurants that offer the wines
General feature set: 6 of 10 (3/5)
Additional features: You can view the front & back labels of the wines, the only site that provides this
Up-to-date: The blog and some other sections seem to be spottily up to date.
Comment: It’s apparent that this website was designed for other than informational purposes.
Palmer Vineyards: (3.0 1.0 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Miguel Martín
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (0/5) No longer, though it used to tell about the founder, Bob Palmer
About / Biographies: (0/5) No staff bios, but pictures of the staff
Vineyard / viniculture information: (0/5) Nothing
Winemaker’s notes / wine description 5/5 Excellent; some notes very complete
Technical wine data: For some wines
Purchase online: (4/5) With the new makeover it is not presently functional (but it had been very good, easy to use, brief descriptions of wines). Let’s hope that it will be as good as the former version (212)
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Yes, via MapQuest
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
News/reviews link: No
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: No
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Yes; also a video promo
Website design: (3/5) OK, easy to use and navigate, but many useful features and options have been eliminated [the site was created using Vistaprint, a do-it-yourself Website application; previously it had been done by Cro2, a professional site designer
General feature set: 5 of 10 (2/5)
Additional features: None
Up-to-date: Apparently, given that it’s a new design, but there is no datable information, though this should be corrected once the online-purchase feature is enabled.
Comment: A brand-new look and feel, with the home page emphasizing “Live Music Every Weekend”; the site that feels incomplete and lacks the most basic information on the winery, vineyard, or staff. A shame, but the site will be regularly revisited to see what it will become once completed.
Paumanok Vineyards: (4.6 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Kareem Massoud
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (4/5) Very good
About / Biographies: (4/5) Very Good, no complete bios
Technical wine data: Yes, but only for their top red wines
Purchase online: (5/5) Excellent, full wine notes and reviews are quoted
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Yes, with GPS coordinates & MapQuest
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes, issued regularly to announce wine dinners, reviews of their wines, and the occasional entertainment event
News/reviews link: Yes
Wine Blog: Yes, many interesting posts and links to articles, and it’s up to date.
Events / calendar: Yes
Tours: Yes
Photo gallery: No
Website design: (5/5) An attractive and well-organized site, easy to use (by Cro2)
General feature set: 9 of 10 (4.5/5)
Additional features: Quotes Walt Whitman on Paumanok’s name; lists all the restaurants and wine stores at which their wines can be found, as well as a full selection of lodgings in the East End, plus a helpful list of related wine Web sites
Comment: An excellent site that needs just a little improvement in the History & About sections, including staff bios
Pellegrini Vineyards (4.2 4.3 out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes
Tasting Room: Yes, Zander Hargrave
History / background: (5/5)
About / Biographies: (3/5) Lacks biographical information
Vineyard / viniculture information: (5/5) Full description of the vineyards; no parcel maps; useful notes on viniculture
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (5/5) Adequate on the Tasting Notes option, but much more complete if one goes to the Trade Support option (2001 through 2008)
Technical wine data: Yes, but one has to use the Trade Support option to get to them.
Purchase online: (4/5) No wine descriptions accompany purchase options, so one has to go the Tasting Notes option to read them
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Yes
Directions: Text & map
News/reviews link: Yes, excerpts only
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes, but since signing up 13 months ago, I’ve not received a single newsletter
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes
Tours: No
Photo gallery: No
Website design: (5/5) Very attractive, straightforward to use, though one has to dig through some options; Tasting Notes aren’t also viewable in Purchase section; full wine notes are accessible through Trade Support option
General feature set:6 of 10 (3/5)
Additional features: In Trade Support there are images of both the front and back labels of the wines.
Up-to-date: Yes, for events and tasting notes (up to the 2011 vintage); Trade Support info only goes up to the 2008 vintage, as was the case when the Web site was reviewed in May 2012. There is no mention of the fact that Russell Hearn, the winemaker, recently left the winery.
Comment: A nice, clean design featuring an elevation drawing of the façade of the Raphael winery, it is notable in part for what it doesn’t have as well as what it does: No quotations or links from the news media or reviewers. It also lacks any biographical information on staff, and tells a visitor little about the vineyard. One the other hand, it offers excellent wine notes.
Red Fern Cellars (1.8 out of 5)
Vineyard: No
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Aaron Munk
Tasting Room: No
History / background: (0/5) No
About / Biographies: (0/5) No
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (n/a)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (4/5) No notes, ample descriptions
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (n/a) e-mail or phone orders only
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: only by snail mail or e-mail; no phone listed
Directions: No; visits must be arranged in advance
News/reviews link: ; link to WineLoversPage.com; Jewish Week (2008, though it reviews 2005 wines)
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: No
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Yes
Website design: (3/5) Adequate and straightforward, but few options
General feature set:4 of 10 (2/5)
Additional features: LI Wine links; option for custom labeling
Up-to-date: No; it doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2008; latest wines listed are 2005; it hasn’t changed since last year’s assessment (2012)
Red Fern Cellars
Comment: Functional, but with minimal information; is it even up-to-date?
Red Hook Winery (1.4 out of 5)
Vineyard: No
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Abe Schoener, Robert Foley
Tasting Room:Yes
History / background: (1/5) Bare minimum to be useful
About / Biographies: (0/5) Minimal info, no bios
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (n/a) buy grapes from many sources
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (0/5) No notes, descriptions
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (3/5) OK, but no information on the wines
Wine Club: No
Contact: by phone, snail mail or e-mail
Directions: Address only
News/reviews link: No
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: No
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Yes
Website design: (3/5) Adequate and straightforward, but few options
Roanoke Vineyard (4.4 out of 5) [updated 11-16-13]
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No
Winemaker: Roman Roth at Wölffer Estate
Tasting Room: Yes, both at the vineyard and on Love Lane in Mattituck
History / background: (5/5)
About / Biographies: (5/5) Good info and full bios of all staff
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (3/5) Little vineyard info or maps; though an adequate, brief note on viniculture (strange, given that the Owner, Rich Pisacano is a “vineyardist” and his father, Gabby, is the vineyard manager.)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (4/5) Brief, sometimes more complete, often less, and just a tad tongue-in-cheek in the self-promoting phrases; e.g., a ‘wild fermentation’ Chardonnay “Quite simply . . . leaps out of your glass!”’
Technical wine data: Yes, but some more, some less
Purchase online: (n/a) Order by phone, then arrange for pickup or delivery on one’s own.
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Yes, phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Yes, uses Google Maps
News/reviews link: Yes, via the option, ‘Judgment of Riverhead’
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes, they are mostly about wines and tastings, often in cahoots with restaurants, some with themes, such as “how to be a Wine Snob”; issued weekly
Wine Blog: Of sorts (‘Judgment of Riverhead’ again) but informative, amusing, and well worth reading.
Events / calendar: Yes, and it’s all about wine, like the Smackdown tastings
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Not as such, but many pages are well-illustrated
Website design: (4/5) The opening page looks crowded but as a whole the site is easy to use and very functional. Some features require a bit of clicking around.
Comment: A website that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but provides a good deal of serious information in a sometimes light-hearted way. It is, in its way, rather endearing. However, it’s a vineyard, so why is there not more information about the vineyard proper?
Sannino-Bella Vita Vineyard (2.5 3.4 out of 5 points)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Anthony Sannino; also with his vine-to-wine students
Tasting Room: Yes, at Ackerly Pond’s barn
History / background: (3/5) Adequate
About / Biographies: (5/5) Full bios
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (2/5) Little information, as a member of the LISW, it practices sustainable viniculture, but a nice video of the vineyard with pleasant musical accompaniment
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (3/5) Descriptions with food-pairing suggestions
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (3/5) Yes, with brief wine descriptions
Wine Club: Yes, through vine-to-wine program
Contact: Yes, phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Yes, with map
News/reviews link: Yes, this is where one can find more information about the wines.
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes, but I’ve received none since I signed up a year ago
Wine Blog: Option is not functional
Events / calendar: Yes, including music, tours, and classes
Tours: Yes
Photo gallery: Yes, several that are thematically based
Website design: (3/5) Not unattractive but busy yet functional, though to find the video one needs to select the B&B option
General feature set: 9 of 10 (4.5/5)
Additional features: Bed-and-Breakfast (reservations can be made online); Vine-to-Wine experience; virtual tour of the vineyard and slide presentation of the Tuscan Suite guest house.
Comment: website with focus on the Vine-to-Wine program; several interesting options but little about the vineyard; considerably improved over the version assessed last year.
Scarola Vineyards (3.6 3.9 points out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No
Winemaker: No; uses Roman Roth at Wölffer Estate
Tasting Room: No, planned but not yet open to public
History / background: (5/5) Complete
About / Biographies: (5/5) Complete, with brief bio sketches of all the staff
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (1/5)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (5/5) Full notes and description at Trade option
Technical wine data: Yes, via For the Trade option
Purchase online: (4/5) Limited wine descriptions, with no direct link to the Trade option; order by phone, e-mail, or online
Wine Club: No
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: No, only the street address
News/reviews link: Yes
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes
Tours: Yes
Photo gallery: Yes
Website design: (4/5) Attractive enough, but there are some navigational challenges
General feature set:6 of 10 (3/5)
Additional features: link to Cedar House on Sound B&B, owned by Scarola family
Comment: Strongly family-oriented and emphatically Italian. Given that the Scarolas have a vineyard and no winery, it is frustrating to find that the site scrimps on vinicultural information yet has plenty to say about its wines (made Roman Roth).
Sherwood House Vineyards (3.6 points out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No
Winemaker: No; Gilles Martin is the contract winemaker
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (5/5)
About / Biographies: (5/5), full biographies of the owners and Gilles Martin
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (1/5) Very little mentioned
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (3/5) no notes, pairing suggestions
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (4/5) Very easy to use, but limited wine information; wines sold online are available in a minimum of 2-bottle lots (or 4, 6, or 12)
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Yes, with MapQuest to the vineyards, tasting stand, and tasting room
News/reviews link: Yes
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes, sent monthly
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes, and up to date.
Tours: No
Photo gallery: Yes
Website design: (4/5) Elegant, very easy to navigate
Comment: Newly redesigned website, much improved and easier to navigate than the old one; much useful information but short on tasting notes, which used to be much more complete and included technical notes as well. That’s a loss.
Southold Farm + Cellar:
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: uses Raphael Winery facilities
Winemaker: not yet
Tasting Room: not yet
History / background: (2/5) At present a brief story, with much hope for the future
About / Biographies: (2/5) owners don’t even mention their surnames
Vineyard / viniculture information: (n/a)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (n/a)
Technical wine data: n/a
Purchase online: (n/a)
Wine Club: No
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: No
News/reviews link: No
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes, but a newsletter may be a while off
Comment: I find the design too forward and distracting. Still, it has its good points: detailed information about important things such as its history, the biographies, notes; bad point: almost nothing about the vineyard or viniculture.
Suhru Wines (4.6 out of 5)
Vineyard: No
Winery: No; uses PWG, of which owner Russell Hearn is a partner
Winemaker: Yes, Russell Hearn
Tasting Room: Winemakers Studio
History / background: (5/5) Excellent
About / Biographies: (5/5) Bios of the owners and the sales manager
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (n/a)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (5/5)
Technical wine data: Yes, if one clicks on the Wine for the Trade option
Purchase online: (4/5) with full descriptions, but one must go to the Trade option to see the notes & tech information before purchasing
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Phone, e-mail via Gmail, snail mail
Directions: n/a
News/reviews link: Yes, though not up to date
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes, sent monthly
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: n/a
Tours: n/a
Photo gallery: No
Website design: (4/5) Well-designed and attractive, if rather busy, but mostly easy to navigate
Comment: A really serious website. The focus is entirely on the wine. Premises are not open to the public.
T’Jara Vineyards (4.1 out of 5)
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: No; uses PWG, of which owner Russell Hearn is a partner
Winemaker: Yes, Russell Hearn in cahoots with Jed Beitler, co-owner
Tasting Room: Winemakers Studio
History / background: (5/5) Excellent, via a 12-page PDF
About / Biographies: (5/5) Very complete with a curious omission: the owner’s last names aren’t mentioned, but they can be found in the contact information.
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (2/5) Some excellent description, including a parcel map, but no mention of practices
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (5/5)
Technical wine data: Yes
Purchase online: (4/5) It would be nice if it would allow one to click and see the notes & tech information before purchasing; 3-bottle minimum
Wine Club: No
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: No, but there is an address
News/reviews link: Yes
Newsletter / Mailing List: No
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: No
Tours: No
Photo gallery: No
Website design: (5/5) Well-designed and attractive, easy to navigate
General feature set: 5 of 10 (2.5/5)
Additional features: None
Up-to-date: Yes, for the wines, but the last news entry dates to 2012
Comment: A serious but engaging website. The focus is on the history and the wine. Premises are not open to the public.
Vineyard 48
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (1/5)
About / Biographies: (1/5)
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (1/5)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (3/5)
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (3/5)
Wine Club: No
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
News/reviews link: Yes
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes, all music
Tours: No
Photo gallery: No
Website design: (2/5) Some navigation choices are in very small text at the bottom of the page; not intuitive or easy to figure out
Additional features: Row of Vines Dedication, Weddings and Private parties
Up-to-date:
Vineyard 48
Comment: There are links for reviews if one does a search for it. (It had been a minimalist approach to providing access—the focus was strongly centered on purchases and events. Little information, even about the wine.) NOTE: online reviews tend to trash the place as a party venue out of control; other reviews extoll it as a party venue
Waters Crest (2.0 points out of 5)
Vineyard: No
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Jim Waters
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (2/5) No history, a little background in About section
About / Biographies: (3/5) Good overview, but no bios per se
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (n/a)
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (4/5) Good description but no notes
Technical wine data: No
Purchase online: (1/5) Apparently not, but perhaps through wine club; not clear; one has to fill out a PDF application and send it in
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Phone, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Only the street address
News/reviews link: Yes, but very limited
Newsletter / Mailing List: follow on Facebook
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes
Tours: No
Photo gallery: No
Website design: (4/5) Attractive, mostly straightforward to use.
General feature set: 6 of 10 (3/5)
Additional features: Link to LI Wine Country Places to eat & stay.
Up-to-date: Yes, clearly indicated on each page.
Waters Crest Winery
Comment: In some ways its functions can be frustrating, but this is the only website in this survey that gives a page’s most recent update
Winemakers Studio
Comment: see Anthony Nappa Wines, for they share a Website.
Wölffer Estate (4.7 4.9 out of 5)
As of January 2016 it has been substantially updated, but not yet reassessed.
Vineyard: Yes
Winery: Yes
Winemaker: Yes, Roman Roth
Tasting Room: Yes
History / background: (5/5)
About / Biographies: (5/5) Good biographies of all the staff
Vineyard / Viniculture information: (5/5) Mostly general observations, with focus on terroir; for viniculture info one needs to dig into the News feature, but as of 2013 there is now a link to the LISW Web site, which details the sustainable practices followed by Wölffer.
Winemaker’s notes / wine description: (5/5) Very complete and full
Technical wine data: Yes, very complete, one could not ask for more
Purchase online: (5/5) Full notes and descriptions immediately accessible to buyer, but not all wines are provided with notes &/or descriptions—an odd inconsistency; they also offer verjus and vinegar
Wine Club: Yes
Contact: Phone, fax, e-mail, snail mail
Directions: Yes, text with a painted map (not Google or MapQuest)
News/reviews link: Yes, though a 2013 review by Howard G. Goldberg has no link.
Newsletter / Mailing List: Yes
Wine Blog: No
Events / calendar: Yes
Tours: None appear to be offered
Photo gallery: Yes, on Flcker
Website design: (5/5) Newly updated, clean and attractive, mostly straightforward navigation, but why should one have to dig for the vinicultural information?
Comment: One needs to dig a bit for some features. Very complete information in many areas, but strangely lacking in details about the vineyard—no map, mention of acreage, etc.; read Wine & Vineyard and you then have a link to another page, The Vineyard & Winemaking, where one can find out about viniculture. Some inconsistencies with regard to wine notes (very full for some wines, no information at all for others).
