The Work We Do: Rachel Sunday, Sherwood House Vineyards
I’m Rachel Sunday. I’m the tasting room manager at Sherwood House Vineyards in Jamesport. I’m going into my third year here.
We have 36 acres. We produce all of our wines locally and grow all of our estate grapes. This tasting room is our second tasting room. We had the original one where our grapes are — off Oregon Road in Mattituck — but we’ve been at this location for almost 10 years.
I actually started off bartending when I was in college here and there. I moved to New York a few years ago and I was a wine club member here. They asked for a part-time position on the weekends. I took that and then it just kind of escalated into the management position.
People look at our menu, decide if they want to do a flight. Some people want to do a glass, some people want to do a bottle. Our flights are our most popular. They range in price from $20-$30. They include whites and reds; blush wines are in there as well.
We sell year round. Our harvest is usually September to October. So once we harvest, everything goes into the barrel, then it ages in there and we’ll do bottling and everything like that and then release it.
The major wines we produce are chardonnay, cabernet franc, merlot; we have some petit verdot. We do chardonnay a couple of different styles. Even though it’s the same grape, they all have different flavor profiles and structures.
Right now we’re pouring 2016 vintages, 2017 vintage. We still have some 2010 and 2012. But it’s typically a couple years behind. So we’ll harvest in 2019 and we won’t release that for two or three years.
We also host wine club parties, which are really great. Everyone gets to get along and mingle.
Everyone seems really supportive. Like, we’re pretty close with a lot of the other wineries. We send people to them, they send people to us.
I really just kind of like interacting with the people, the customers that come in. It’s not your day-to-day, every day, 9 to 5, sitting in an office. It’s always something new or exciting. It’s nice to just interact with people instead of just the same thing every day.
“The Work We Do” is a News-Review multimedia project profiling workers around Riverhead Town. It is made possible by Peconic Landing in Greenport. See more photos on Instagram @riverheadnewsreview.