Strikingly Vibrant, or Is the North Fork the Next Napa

...without whom this issue would
not have been possible
august 23–29, 2013
gwen hyman
Gwen Hyman has cowritten two cookbooks with
her husband, chef Andrew Carmellini, Urban
Italian (Bloomsbury), and American Flavor
(Ecco), and teaches at The Cooper Union in New
York City. She wrote this issue’s “So Many
Dinners” column on page 68.
What’s your perfect Hamptons meal? A
clambake with clams right out of the Peconic
and some yummy fresh-out-of-the-water fish.
Why do you enjoy writing for Hamptons
magazine? Writing about food gives me a
great excuse to really look around the local
restaurant scene at well-loved places as well as
new ones popping up around the area.
alice liao Writer and editor Alice Liao has interviewed Philippe
Starck, Patricia Urquiola, Michael S. Smith, and
Ross Lovegrove. A former editor of Architectural
Lighting and Kitchen & Bath Business, Liao
wrote this issue’s home feature on page 102.
What defines Hamptons architecture? It
mariska hargitay
Actress, activist, and advocate Mariska Hargitay is
known for her Emmy Award–winning role on Law &
Order: Special Victims Unit. In addition, she is
the founder and president of Joyful Heart Foundation,
which helps victims of sexual assault and domestic
abuse. Hargitay interviewed Bobby Flay and
Stephanie March for this issue’s cover story (page 96).
How long have you known Bobby and
Stephanie? I met Bobby in 1998, on School
Street in Bridgehampton of all places. Stephanie
and I met at an SVU read-through in the
summer of 2000. I knew right away I really liked
that girl. What is your favorite characteristic in each of them? What I like best about
Stephanie is her great blend of agile intelligence,
keen humor, abiding interest in the world, and
her deep commitment to making friendships
last. I like Bobby’s readiness—eagerness,
actually—to laugh out loud. He’s got this great
combo in him of hooligan, guy-you-don’t-wantto-mess-with, and loyal big brother, all held
together by a gentle sweetness.
is steeped in the past yet accommodates the
artifacts of modern life and other cultures with
grace. What did you learn about Jack
Pearson through his home? What some
may describe as his pastimes are truly
passions, which is evident in his glorious
garden and the plentiful art and antiques on
display in his home.
james sturz
James Sturz is author of the novel Sasso (Walker &
Company), and contributed to Italy: The Best
Travel Writing from The New York Times. He
has written for Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast
Traveler, and the International Herald Tribune.
In this issue, he wrote about vineyards on the North
Fork (page 110).
How are the North Fork’s wines different? The classic mistake with Long Island
wines is to compare them to California ones.
North Fork wines are closer to those from
Burgundy and Bordeaux. They’re absolutely
ready for the world stage. Why was it
significant for you to write this piece? I
arrived on the North Fork one afternoon, with
ample skepticism about its wines. What
surprised me, though, is how quickly it fell away
once I began seriously tasting.
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strikingly
VIBRANT
As Long Island celebrates 40 years of winemaking, a fresh look at the area
begs the question: Is the North Fork the next Napa Valley? by james sturz
U
rsula Massoud walks through leafy rows of vines of
Sauvignon Blanc, studded with clusters that are getting
bigger every day. By the time you read this they’ll be
swollen, and it’ll nearly be time to pick.
“We planted in 1983, in May, even before we closed on
the property that fall,” Ursula recalls. “My husband and I
were living in Connecticut, and we’d read an article in The New York Times that
crazy people were growing vinifera grapes on the North Fork. So we bought
10 acres. For the first nine years, my husband worked for IBM. He’d come
home in a suit, change into boots, and then we’d come out to Aquebogue for
the weekend. At first, we sold grapes. Then we made our first wine professionally in 1989. Sherry-Lehmann later took it, and Charles quit IBM after that.
He took the ‘bronze parachute’ because he said this was so much better. Then
the White House came out, too, and served our 1997 Late Harvest Sauvignon
Blanc at a 50th-anniversary dinner for the signing of the NATO pact.”
So goes the somewhat-abbreviated version of Paumanok Vineyards’ rise—
one that includes everything but the hard work: the perspiration in summer,
the harvesting and hand-sorting in fall, and the wearing of thermal underwear
in winter to prune the vines before buds break at the end of April and fruit
begins to set (plus the thousands of winemaking decisions along the way). This
September, Paumanok (1074 Main Road, Aquebogue, 722-8800; paumanok.com)
marks its 30th year, which it will celebrate on September 28 with a benefit for
Peconic Bay Medical Center and the vineyard’s first “bubbly,” as Ursula
fondly calls it. The Massouds have 80 acres planted now. Meanwhile, winemaking on Long Island celebrates its 40th anniversary this year—a milestone
that will be commemorated at the annual Harvest East End, on August 24.
Paumanok Vineyard first
planted in 1983, marking
its 30th-year anniversary
this September.
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The Massouds have grown Paumanok along with their family—their eldest
son, Kareem, is the winemaker now, while his two younger siblings, Nabeel
and Salim, manage the vineyard and do administrative work—but they’re
hardly the only ones to have helped transform Long Island’s East End into one
of the world’s premier wine regions, one known for its elegant, Old World–
style wines. With more than 50 wineries on a 25-mile stretch between Baiting
Hollow and Greenport (plus three more on the South Fork), Long Island has
earned a place on Wine Enthusiast’s 2013 top-10 list of wine destinations.
Jamesport Vineyards was
founded in 1981; today, secondgeneration winemaker Ron
Goerler Jr. oversees the winery.
“We showed the world that
estate-grown wines could excel on
Long Island, and we established it
as an area for complex and
—louisa hargrave
vivacious wines.”
O
Since 2005 Wine
Camp has given Long
Island oenophiles
access to meeting,
tasting, and working
with local vintners.
photography by daniel nazzaro (wine camp); deborah wilm (borghese)
f course, the Massouds weren’t the first. Ten years before
they arrived, Louisa and Alex Hargrave, newlyweds just
out of college without so much as a vegetable garden
between them, bought a 66-acre farm in Cutchogue (the
plots were all cabbage, cauliflower, and potato farms
then), and planted the first vinifera grapes on the island.
(Vinifera grapes, long cultivated in Europe, include all the famous varietals wine-drinkers know, while North America’s native species, labrusca,
is better known for its use in Manischewitz wines and Smucker’s jams.)
The Hargraves were pioneers. In her 2003 memoir, The Vineyard: The
Pleasures and Perils of Creating an American Family Winery (Viking), Louisa
compares her experience to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s on the prairie, and as
with any newcomer, there were mistakes: wrong varietals for the region,
planting in areas that were too wet, aging Cabernet Sauvignon in Arkansasmade whiskey barrels, which stripped it of so much color it had to be sold as
nonvintage rosé. But more interesting is what the Hargraves did right. “We
showed the world that estate-grown wines could excel on Long Island, and
we established it as an area for complex and vivacious wines,” she says today.
Or as she put it in her book: “I became the midwife for a whole new region.”
By 1989, there were 26 active wineries and 1,300 acres planted on Long
Island. By 1999, there were 38 active wineries and 1,700 acres, which
makes today’s 3,000-plus acres, and 500,000-case annual production a
serious success. Long Island plays an important role in making New York
the fourth-largest wine-producing state in the country, although third in
terms of the economic impact of its $3.8 billion wine industry.
The Hargraves sold their vineyard in 1999 to Ann Marie and Marco
Borghese, an Italian prince who renamed it Castello di Borghese (17150
County Road 48, Cutchogue, 734-5111; castellodiborghese.com), and who still produces Sauvignon Blanc from the original vines, along with exceptional
Chardonnays, Pinot Noirs, Merlots, and Cabernet Francs. Many other original wineries are also still around today: The Old Field Vineyards (59600 Main
Road, Southold, 765-0004; theoldfield.com), established in 1974—try its 2007
Commodore Perry Reserve Merlot; Lenz Winery (38355 Main Road, Peconic,
734-6010; lenzwine.com), around since 1978; Pindar (37645 Main Road, Peconic,
734-6200; pindar.net) and Peconic Bay (31320 Main Road, Cutchogue, 734-7361;
peconicbaywinery.com), both in business since 1979; and Pugliese (34515 Main
Road, Cutchogue, 734-4057; pugliesevineyards.com), Laurel Lake (3165 Main
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A vineyard truck full
of Pinot Noir at
Castello di Borghese
in Cutchogue.
Road, Laurel, 298-1420; llwines.com), and Bedell Cellars (36225 Main Road,
Cutchogue, 734-7537; bedellcellars.com), all producing wine since 1980—
Bedell’s 2009 Merlot was served at President Obama’s second inaugural
luncheon. But there are also startling newcomers, including Kontokosta
Winery (825 North Road, Greenport, 477-6977; kontokostawines.com), which
opened in June. The founders are brothers Michael and Constantine
Kontokosta, who also own the Cove Place Inn in Aquebogue and
Harborfront Inn in Greenport, just down the road.
photography by daniel nazzaro (wine camp); deborah wilm (borghese)
T
Anthony and Sarah Nappa
at The Winemaker Studio,
in Peconic.
here was a time when Long Island wines suffered a bad
rap. “The farmers out here didn’t give us a shot in hell,”
admits Ron Goerler Jr., of Jamesport Vineyards (1216 Main
Road, Jamesport, 722-5256; jamesportwines.com), whose
father first planted grapevines in 1981. “In those days, we
finished harvesting in September, so we picked green
grapes and used sour fruit to make California-style wines.” California was
everyone’s model back then, since it was the American success story. Many
in Long Island’s wine community still talk dreamily of the 1976 Judgment
of Paris, when Stag’s Leap and Chateau Montelena beat French competitors in a blind taste test, and all of Napa was catapulted onto the world
stage. (Twenty years later, bottles of the winning Cabernet Sauvignon and
Chardonnay were enshrined in the Smithsonian’s collection.)
But the point is that Long Island wineries learned. First, they realized that
California, with its much-hotter climate and extra month of growing days,
wasn’t the right model; they recognized that the proper example all along
was France, particularly Burgundy and Bordeaux, where the climates are
similar to that of the East End. The grapes that thrive on Long Island are the
same ones that do well in France: Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet
Franc, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay. (Malbec, Petit
Verdot, and Syrah are grown in lesser quantities on the East End, often for
blends.) If you’re buying, 2010 is the prized vintage, followed by 2007 and
2005. So far, 2012 has proven spectacular for whites, and the hope is it will
blow consumers away even when the reds start trickling out. Fortunately, all
Long Island vineyards had harvested their grapes by the time Sandy hit,
although sometimes just by days.
“We established Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Chardonnay as rock-solid,”
Louisa remembers. “But that foundation lets wineries try other varietals, like
Riesling, which has been incredibly successful, or Blaufränkisch and
Albariño, because they have the security of knowing what works.” Today
some 38 different vinifera grapes are grown on Long Island, and Cornell’s
Cooperative Extension in Riverhead keeps testing new varieties.
One popular experimenter on the North Fork is Anthony Nappa. Once
winemaker at Shinn Estate Vineyards (2000 Oregon Road, Mattituck, 8040367; shinnestatevineyards.com) and now at Raphael (39390 Main Road,
Peconic, 765-1100; raphaelwine.com), he also produces bottles under his own
name and sells his and other local winemakers’ private labels at his
Peconic-based Winemaker Studio (2885 Peconic Lane, Peconic, 774-6417488; anthonynappawines.com)—many are produced at Premium Wine
Group’s custom-crush facility in Mattituck, one of only a dozen in the
country. To pursue his interest in cool-climate wines, Nappa decided
against studying at U.C. Davis, as so many American vintners do, and
headed straight to Lincoln University in Christchurch, New Zealand,
where cool-climate wines are the rule.
“Napa Valley invented wine tourism, especially with the help of California’s
food movement and people like Alice Waters,” Nappa says. “But we have our
own locavore movement now, and outside of Oregon, there’s no other serious
cold-climate winemaking in the United States. Don’t be fooled by Washington
State because that’s mostly desert. The US is all about fads, and we all know
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Sherwood House
Vineyards in Jamesport
was named 2012’s North
Fork Winery of the Year at
New York’s International
Wine Competition.
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what that’s meant for California wines—over-ripe, jammy, and over-oaked. Now
we’re getting back to well-balanced, elegant, and more food-friendly wines.”
These East End wines are lower in alcohol (California’s sun means more
sugar, which increases the proof), higher in acid (making their flavors
sharp), and conveniently ideal for pairing with Long Island seafood or
duck. “And now we’re making Rieslings and Merlots that taste like New
York, not Germany and France.” Nappa is also making a white Pinot Noir
called Anomaly that’s been winning praise.
“The criticism we get is that our wines aren’t everywhere,” Nappa continues, “but that’s because we have a huge market here and can’t produce
that much.” Together, Napa and Sonoma are almost 2,330 square miles,
while the North Fork is less than 160. “But we have that same proximity to
a huge wine market that gave California its start.”
“The criticism we get is our wines
aren’t everywhere, but that’s
because we have a huge market
here.”—anthony nappa
photography by brian sckipp (sherwood house); daniel nazzaro (wine camp)
A
nother way of addressing whether Long Island is the next
Napa Valley is how Barbara Reuschle, who staffs
Paumanok’s tasting room, does it: “We had a bachelorette party here, and everyone had T-shirts on that said,
pretending we’re in napa. I was really nice, but I asked,
‘Why would you want to pretend? We have elegant wines
and beautiful vineyards, too.’ Sure, Napa and Sonoma are stunning, and
there’s no shortage of hot-air balloons wherever you look. But have you
ever tried to swim? You’ve got to love 55-degree water—even in August—
while it’s no secret what there is here.”
It formerly was a foregone conclusion that the North Fork would be
developed. Russell McCall, a former wine wholesaler who grew up in
Syosset, is one of many vineyard owners whose purchase has helped to
keep developers out. Some, like the Hargraves and McCall, whose 152acre property includes former tribal lands, have sold development rights,
insuring that the area will keep its rural identity and never reproduce the
urban sprawl of what Syosset has become. “All these fields would have
become strip malls and housing developments, but they became vineyards
or gourmet-produce farms instead,” concurs Jane Taylor Starwood, author
of Long Island Wine Country: Award-Winning Vineyards of the North Fork and
the Hamptons (Three Forks). “We’ve had agricultural progress. What will
this area be like in another 20 years? Just like it was 20 years ago, except the
houses that were falling down are all fixed up.”
Meanwhile, the wines keep getting better, regularly rating scores of 90
and higher in Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, and The Wine Advocate. Once
there were missteps, and once the vines were young—putting their energy
into growing stalks and roots instead of making grapes. But Long Island
has entered a new era, with an ongoing cycle of mature vines, always at
their peak in quality now. “It’s half-land, half-sky here, and you get just one
chance per year to make good,” says Louisa, who has watched her early
efforts turn into a celebrated industry. Just as in Bordeaux, some local wineries now offer futures. But Long Island’s future is already here. H
Wine Camp offers learning
in the fields and at tastings.
Oenophile Education
Aside from beaches and charming villages, wine has helped
define North Fork tourism. In 2000, half a million tourists visited
Long Island’s wine country. In 2012, that number grew to 1.3
million. Based in an old farmhouse at Palmer Vineyards in
Riverhead, the Long Island Wine Council helps promote the area’s
wines. This fall, another group, the East End Tourism Alliance, will
run free shuttles around the South and North Forks on select
weekends. But first, Long Island Wine Country is kicking off its
40-year anniversary with Harvest East End: The Wine & Food
Classic (harvesteastend.com), held this year at McCall Vineyard in
Cutchogue on August 24, with 43 wineries participating.
Since 2005, Darolyn and Christopher Augusta of The Harvest
Inn (40300 Main Road, Peconic, 765-9412; harvestinnbandb.com)
and Connie and Scott Ellis of Ellis House (47100 Main Road,
Southold, 765-6106; ellishousebandb.com) have been offering
Wine Camp, a spectacularly well-arranged four-day chance to
meet, taste, blend, and work the fields with local vintners,
vineyard managers, and owners, as well as to join winemakers
such as the Borgheses for dinner and pair their wines with
different plates. Starting in September 2014, Wine Camp
(winecamp.org) is also offering its 800-plus alumni a first-time
chance to enroll in a master class, with segments on distilling and
sommelier tasting techniques. Sannino Bella Vita (1375 Peconic
Lane, Peconic, 734-8282; sanninovineyard.com) and Waters
Crest (22355 County Route 48, Cutchogue, 734-5065; waters
crestwinery.com) also offer winemaking courses and opportunities on their estates.
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