08.31.2011 Uncategorized Wine Column: Challenges of the ‘heartbreak grape’ When wine grapes were first planted on Long Island in the 1970s and ’80s, most growers chose to plant the most important grape varieties of France, including chardonnay and...
06.20.2011 Uncategorized Wine Column: A lesson on the ABCs of chardonnay Last year, Americans spent $2,026,986,920 in retail shops on chardonnay, making it by far the most popular white wine variety on the market. The dollar value of the next...
06.05.2011 Uncategorized Wine Column: New varieties add spice on North Fork In my last column, I wrote about Champagne vigneron Philippe Brun and his ironic take on being a “pirate” farmer. On a drive around his grand cru vine plots,...
05.24.2011 Uncategorized Wine Column: Grape farmers are anything but dumb In a current television ad for Ocean Spray cranberry juice, a young man standing in a cranberry bog in rubber waders plays out the stereotype of a hick farmer...
04.25.2011 Uncategorized Wine Column: Late harvest can yield sweet results Even after a wine journalists’ jaunt to sweet-wine-centric Germany in September, I continue to prefer bone-dry wines, and rarely consume wines with more than half a percent residual sugar....
04.09.2011 Uncategorized Wine Column: Aging hasn’t slowed these local ‘relics’ I can be pretty jaded when it comes to wine tastings, but there was no room for “been there, done that” at a tasting of 26 Long Island wines...
03.29.2011 Uncategorized Wine Column: What makes Long Island wines ‘cool’ From 1973 to 1999, when I had my own vineyard, I always loved to work in the field after the sap began to flow in mid-March. The barely sweet...
03.14.2011 Uncategorized Wine Column: Bacon chocolate, a jug of wine and thou Pairing food and wine is part of a wine journalist’s job description, but I rarely write about specific pairings because, frankly, I’d rather generalize: Good wine goes with good...