Wine Tasting in Long Island

Our second day in Greenport started with a perfectly lazy morning of getting up late, having a hearty brunch, then sitting at a coffee shop for a while. After that, my sister and I were ready to get some constructive activity in the day - winery hopping.

There are some 60 wineries in Long Island with most of them in the North Fork. People around me are all aware of the existence of New York wines, but these are often missing from the lists of 'will-try' or 'bring-to-a-friend's-party.' I believe that's still partly because of the contradictory connotation Long Island is associated with, as Lettie Teague of Food & Wine describes in the beginning of her article "Can Long Island Make World-Class Wines?" Besides, the most selection of New York wines I've seen was at Astor Wines, not that I was really looking for one. With this limited bag of knowledge and perception, I had an afternoon to get a taste of Long Island wines.

I've always said I'm in the business of wine (drinking), but it wasn't until recently that I started to put much thought into it. I used to take a wine class once in a while, with all my good intentions of learning about this fermented grape juice that tastes so good. Yet, more often than not, after a couple of tasting glasses which almost amounted to my tolerance limit, we were all having a good time and everything was great and life was awesome. Of course the instructor would give the disclaimer of 'spit out after each tasting' but what nonsense is it to spit out alcohol that's already in your mouth?

The only downside of the few wine classes I took was that I didn't remember much of anything I wanted to learn. Eventually at a wine class taken as a part of the culinary school program, I managed to follow the basic 'recommendation' of spitting out. Then last year, I took the WSET Intermediate course which helped me start training my palate of recognizing and associating wine flavors with commonly used words to describe them. The class still didn't make me memorize all the chateau's and maison's, but it helped me appreciate and enjoy more of what I was drinking anyway.

Back to the North Fork - We started at Shinn Estate Vineyards, and at the first sip of our first tasting flight, we were both refreshingly surprised - a bright spring day in our mouths vs. an overcast, cold day outside. It was the right kick-start to our afternoon. After that, we visited 3 more wineries - Macari, Lenz and Rafael - part randomly and part by recommendations of our B&B hostess Donna. (We also stopped at Channing Daughters in the Hamptons on our way back home 2 days later.) Each winery had its own character - Macari with its super-friendly staff, a mellow, quaint feel of Lenz, well-organized tasting of Rafael, and Channing Daughters with unique grape mixes - and tasting flights representing its proud efforts and helpful people explaining them.

Between the tastings, we played with a dog at a winery, got lost many times even with the iphone navigation ("according to this navigation, we are now going through an open field of nothing, no roads, no streets."), lingered around looking out the vineyards, had a lazy lunch ("they must be chasing around a goat to make cheese to put in our sandwich"), and went back to the same conversation many times - "Chardonnay...is white?" "Sauvignon Blanc? I thought Sauvignon was red," "No, Cabernet Sauvignon is red," "And now, this is what?" "Sauvignon Blanc, blanc means white," "Oh, so what's the red one?" "Sauv...wait, you're confusing me!" Yes, my sister is a big drinker.

At the last stop of the day, my sister 'forgot' to spit out the tasting flight and ended the day in a very happy mood. Even with over 1.2 million visitors a year, our visit on a random weekday before the busy summer season let us enjoy the idyllic scenes of the North Fork vineyards and made me feel like I found a still well-kept secret that I was now part of - Long Island wines. Tasting flights allowed us to take a peak at scrumptious wines that are normally out of my budget range and led us to find great wines within my budget that are grown in New York.

We ended up bringing home a bottle of First Fruit from Shinn Estate, which was the first tasting of the first winery we went to, and a Due Uve, a blend of Merlot and Syrah from Channing Daughters. At some point this summer, a day will present itself as a 'First Fruit Day' and another day as 'Due Uve Day.' When the day comes, we'll happily open a bottle accordingly. Then we'll talk about our first sisterly wine tasting in Long Island.