Corey Creek September 15, 2013

Posted by nofowineaux in Tasting, Uncategorized and tagged with bedell, cabernet franc, chardonnay, Corey Creek, First Crush Red, gewurztraminer, Malbec, merlot, NoFo, North Fork, sauvignon blanc, Sparkling Rose, syrah, Taste Rose, Taste White, viognier September 18, 2013

http://www.bedellcellars.com/cc_tastingroom.php

The tasting room sits on a rise overlooking the vineyard.

Bedell has, in effect, two tasting rooms, since all Corey Creek serves are Bedell wines, except for their own Gewürztraminer. Corey Creek’s room is somewhat more rustic looking than Bedell’s, and there are nice picnic tables on the pretty grounds. However, since we last tasted Bedell a year ago in August, it was time for a new tasting anyway. (That’s what makes this such a challenging project—just when you think you’ve tasted every winery, you realize that another year has begun and they have new vintages. As they say, it’s a tough job, but…)

We had the room to ourselves on a bright and sunny but slightly chilly September afternoon, except for some children whose parents were picnicking outside, and who came running in to use the rest room. The two servers were friendly and chatty and quite well-informed, and we spent a pleasant time with them.

Corey Creek offers two tastings, plus wines by the glass or bottle. The Estate tasting includes 5 wines for $12, and the Premium has 5 wines for $15. Somewhat disappointingly for those looking to try a variety of wines, several of the wines are the same on each list. However, our server had a good idea, and, since she had a bottle open anyway, gave us a taste of a different wine instead of one of the overlapping ones. I’ve marked the wines which were only on the Premium tasting with an * so you can decide whether you want to invest the extra $3 to try them or not. I would stick to the Estate tasting next time.

Corey Creek 2012 Gewürztraminer $40

Both tastings include this wine, Corey Creek’s only offering of its own wine, as I noted above. This has a bit of that cat pee smell Gewürztraminers sometimes have. The taste is quite bracing, with lots of lime and tangelo, and is rather acid at the end. Not a sweet Gewürztraminer! It is good, though I like One Woman’s version better.

Note the snazzy bottle on the right.

2. 2012 Bedell Chardonnay $30

This is, our server informs us, a blend of Chardonnay grapes from six separate plots, and is fermented half in oak and half in steel, so it avoids being either overly oaky or overly simple. This has some nice tropical fruit flavors and the usual vanilla scent of oaked chards, but is not very complex.

3. *2011 Taste White $35

I really like the label of this one, as it has an interesting image which reminds me of Marilyn Monroe. This is a blend of 40% Sauvignon Blanc, 32% Viognier, 22% Chardonnay, 5% Gewürztraminer and 1% Riesling, and I enjoy sipping it. It is nice and light, and would make a great summer aperitif, with some lemon-lime flavors that would complement seafood very nicely.

4. 2011 Taste Rosé $20

Again, both tastings get this wine, a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah. With that information, you would expect this to be a rather complex rosé, but in fact it is just okay, and once again does not measure up to the Croteaux rosés, our gold standard for the North Fork. It is, however, a perfectly fine rosé, with the typical strawberry aroma and tastes of papaya and peach.

5. Bedell Sparkling Rosé $45

You won’t find this on the menu, but noting our seriousness of demeanor and my careful note-taking, our server offers us this addition to our tasting. As she says, this would make a great aperitif, and, as my husband notes, you could easily quaff a lot of this “and then fall over.” It would be lovely with a strawberry floated in it, as it is relatively dry. This is a “tank fermented” sparkler, but they also make a Méthode Champenoise sparkling wine, using the facilities at Sparkling Point.

6. First Crush Red $20

Now we switch to reds. I’m thinking of picnics and roast chicken and a slightly chilled Beaujolais Nouveau as we discuss this wine. It is fairly mellow, soft, and not very assertive, and would be good with a simple dinner. Quite buyable.

7. 2012 Cabernet Franc $40

Both tastings include this, my favorite so far, with lots of layers of taste, including blackberry. Again, it is dry, but not too dry, and very pleasant to drink.

8. 2010 Merlot

Rather than give both of us the Cab Franc, the server cleverly gives my husband this Merlot instead so we can try a different wine. This is a fairly typical NoFo Merlot, with nice black cherry tastes and a short finish.

9. *2011 Malbec $50

Lighter than I expect for a Malbec, this has lovely tastes of boysenberry, with some hints of cocoa. Very good, though a bit pricey for how I would rate it.

A view inside the tasting room.

Reasons to visit: Quiet rustic tasting room (buses, etc., by appointment); Bedell wines plus their own, so a good place to come if Bedell is crowded; the First Crush Red and the Taste White.

We could have had our tasting on this pretty porch.

Diliberto Winery April 13, 2013

Posted by nofowineaux in Tasting, Uncategorized and tagged with cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, Cantina, chardonnay, Diliberto Winery, merlot, syrah, Tre April 15, 2013

The trompe l’oeil murals make you feel like you’re in Italy.

http://www.dilibertowinery.com/

“April is the cruelest month,” according to T.S. Eliot, and the weather has certainly borne that out, with a couple of warm days followed by cold and rain. Today is at least sunny, though a bit on the cool side, as we head over to Diliberto’s Winery, one of the places we’ve been to fairly frequently, though not recently. We look forward to sitting in his cozy tasting room with its trompe l’oeil mural of an Italian street scene, listening to Italian opera, and pretending we’ve gone to warm sunny Italy for a day.

The room is presided over by Sal Diliberto himself and his wife Maryann, though Sal is in and out of the room as he ducks into his big kitchen to prepare his homemade pizza and other treats. A table of wine club members is getting wines by the glass and two pizzas for a late lunch or early cocktail hour treat, and we know from past tastes that the pizza is good, with a crisp thin crust and fresh ingredients ($15, and there’s also a cheese platter available). Sometimes, especially in the winter, Sal (also a lawyer, with a practice in Queens) has held cooking classes, showing a room full of tasters how to make pizza, pasta, or gnocchi. He calls this “Sunday with Grandma,” though HE is “grandma”!

In the past we’ve also liked his wines, especially his reds, which tend to complement Italian food very well (no surprise). However, this time our response is rather mixed. Perhaps he’s had an off year or two, since we were last here in 2011—though he does recognize us. The drill here is to order at the small bar, then sit at one of the ten or so tables—more in the summer, when the patio is open—and wait while the server brings each glass. The menu lists four wines for $12, and/or two premium wines for $9, and we opt for one of each, and I’ve marked the premium wines with *. As we sip, we listen to Sal visit with the customers, many of whom are clearly regulars, and to recorded opera (sometimes Sal himself sings, or has a performer in) and watch “Visions of Italy,” a public television show that features aerial views of the cities and countryside of Italy. One could be in a sidewalk café in an Italian village, especially when he emerges from the kitchen with freshly made pizzelles, a little free treat.

2008 Chardonnay $19

An aroma of wet cardboard and acetone greets our nostrils, but we hope the wine tastes better than it smells. This is a very tart, lemony chardonnay, with some notes of unripe pineapple, making it a tough chardonnay to like, though it would probably be okay with oysters or with seafood in a rich white sauce.

Wines are served in good glasses.

2. *2007 Tre $39

A blend of three wines—hence the name—including 65% merlot, 20% cabernet sauvignon and 15% cabernet franc, this should be similar to a Bordeaux. We had really enjoyed the 03 Tre, so we had high hopes for this one. Eh. Brambly aroma, some earthiness, a taste of prunes, some tannin.

3. 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon $25

Hmmm…is wet laundry a wine word? Because that’s what this wine smells like! It is dry, with some blackberry, but would not enter the pantheon of great cabernets, especially as the finish is somewhat sour.

4. 2009 Cantina $18

We’ve liked Cantina in the past, as it is a good Italian table wine, a blend of half merlot and half cabernet franc. A few years ago we signed up for a barrel tasting with Sal and found ourselves and our guests—my brother and sister-in-law—as the only customers. We got into such intense and interesting conversations about wine that my notes stop after the first barrel, the 07 cabernet franc, but we really liked that. However, we find this Cantina somewhat on the thin side, with some earthiness, some tartness, and some fruit. It would be better with pasta than as a sipping wine.

5. *2002 Merlot $31

The tasting menu proudly proclaims that this is a New York State Gold Medal winner, and indeed it is our favorite of the wines we’ve tasted so far, despite a definite aroma of acetone again. We note a good berry taste, nice legs, and not much tannin. It also seems to get better as it sits in the glass, and we like the second taste better than the first.

6. 2009 Syrah $20

This wine would also, we decide, be better with food than as a sipping wine, as it lacks some of the richness and depth one expects from a syrah. The aroma is metallic, and I taste pomegranate. However, we opt to buy a bottle of this and one of the Cantina, as buying two bottles means the tasting is free, and we often need reds to go with Italian food.

Reasons to visit: Sal’s cooking and the chance to chat with him about his wines or food or any other subject; a pretty tasting room; opera instead of the usual folk/rock/jazz music; the 2002 Merlot. An apple orchard is right down the street, and we highly recommend both their apples and their warm cider. One note: prominent signs indicate No Children and No One Under 21 Allowed, so be forewarned.

The piano is not just for show, but gets used by performers.

Channing Daughters Winery February 2, 1213

Posted by nofowineaux in Tasting and tagged with Blaufrankisch, cabernet franc, channing daughters, dornfelder, Due Uve, merlot, Mudd, muscat, North Fork, Over and Over, Parrish Art Museum, pinot grigio, Ramato, Sag Harbor, Sculpture Garden, South Fork, Sylvanus, syrah, Tocai Friuliano February 4, 2013

http://www.channingdaughters.com/

We decided to celebrate Groundhog Day with a visit to the South Fork, especially since such a trip is easy in the winter, when we don’t have to contend with the traffic on Route 27. We started with a visit to the new Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. Designed to be reminiscent of a typical Long Island potato barn, it is a long one-story building, with a soaring roof and multiple skylights, letting in plenty of sunlight on this cold but bright day.

We particularly enjoyed a gallery devoted to William Merritt Chase and his lovely paintings of Long Island scenes as well as his classic portraits. Another room full of Fairfield Porter paintings was also interesting. We then headed to our favorite winery, Channing Daughters. I did write about a visit there last summer, but then we only concentrated on their roses. This time we decided to do a standard tasting.

Channing Daughters is located on Scuttlehole Road, a charmingly rural road just outside of Sag Harbor (which we used to call the un-Hampton, though it is getting more and more Hamptonized). Down a pebbled driveway one comes to the small cozy tasting room, which looks out one side to the vineyard and the other into the cellar, where one can see the huge vats of future wine. The owner of the winery, Walter Channing, named it for his four daughters. He also has decorated the tasting room and the grounds with his wood sculptures, many of them made from whole trees, with the roots on top, carved into various shapes. Here’s one from the parking lot:

On this cold winter day, there were only a few small groups in the tasting room. The very well-informed servers noted that they do not allow bus-loads! The standard tasting that day included six wines for $10. As wine club members our tasting was free, and we could have chosen any wines from a list of about 20, but we decided not to.

1) 2010 Sylvanus $24

Sylvanus is named for the legendary Green Man, the Roman equivalent of Pan, the god of woods and fields, and also for the field where this wine’s grapes are grown. One of the aspects of Channing Daughters we like is their interest in experimentation, and for this wine they used all grapes grown in one field, for a blend of 60% muscot, 30% pinot grigio, and 10% pinot bianco. An aroma of oranges and perfume precedes a nicely dry wine with pleasant fruit and a hint of almond flavor. I would like this wine better with food, rather than as a sipping wine, and it would pair well with local oysters or other briny seafood.

2) 2010 Tocai Friuliano $24

Fermented almost completely in stainless steel, with only a hint of oak, this lovely wine has an almost honey-like texture with a hint of grapefruit at the end. I could see sipping this on a nice summer afternoon, perhaps with some tomato crostini. We also notice that, unlike some places, the wines here are not too cold, and the servers confirm that this is indeed the policy. We like this because when a wine is too cold you can miss the nuances of its taste.

3) 2010 Ramato $34

As a transition from white to red, we sample what is called an “orange” wine, a white pinot grigio fermented on its skins to give it a subtle orange color and interesting complexity. I detect a faint aroma of orange candy and, not surprising given its 6 months in oak, a taste of oak. We decide its somewhat unctuous texture does not make it our favorite, though it would pair interestingly with lemon curd or lemon meringue pie (which, my husband notes, he never eats!).

4) 2010 Due Uve $22

Due uve means two grapes, and that is what this wine contains–syrah and merlot. Because of Long Island’s climate, you’re never going to get “big hot wines,” says the server, and agrees that this wine exhibits the typical local earthiness which some people “go crazy for” and others dislike. We like some earthiness, but not when it overwhelms. This wine has nice fruit–berries–and some hints of black pepper, and just a hint of earth. It spends 16 months in oak. I’m thinking it would be good with pasta with a short ribs sauce.

5) 2008 Sculpture Garden $27

Given that there actually is a sculpture garden on the grounds (ask the server for directions), and that the oldest vineyard (planted in 1982) is named Sculpture Garden, it was perhaps inevitable that one wine would be named this. Plus the merlot grapes in it come from that vineyard. I could see wandering the sculpture garden on a nice warm day with a glass of this easy-drinking wine in hand, but it’s too cold today! A blend of 95% merlot and 5% blaufrankisch, this wine has a pleasant berry aroma and cherry tastes, with some earthiness, some pepper, and not a lot of depth.

6) 2007 Mudd $40

No, the name is not a misspelling of mud! This wine’s grapes come from the North Fork vineyard run by Steven Mudd, a well-known vineyard manager who works with a number of wineries. Terrific wine! This is a Bordeaux blend of 60% merlot, 21% syrah, 9% dornfelder, 5% cabernet franc and 5% blaufrankisch with an aroma reminiscent of a pine forest, and lots of black fruits and plum flavors. Definitely yummy, and would be good with roasted lamb shanks, as its dryness would cut the fat of the lamb while it has enough fruit not to be overwhelmed.

Extra! Because he has it out, the server asks if we would like to try the Over and Over. We would.

7) Over and Over–Variation 5 $37

It is hard to explain the method used to make this wine, so perhaps the best I can do is refer you to Channning Daughters own web site, where it is explained in detail, but basically this is made using the “solera” method, where some wine from various years is combined with wine from other years and then fermented together. We had tried one iteration (probably 3 or 4, muses the server) we did not care for, but this one is definitely a success, with blackberry flavors and aromas. Nice.

http://channingdaughters.com/wine_order/index.php

Reasons to visit: One of best wineries on Long Island, with lots of interesting experiments. In addition to the above listed wines, I also love their L’Enfant Sauvage, made with wild yeast, their Scuttlehole Chardonnay, which is basically our “house” white, and their Research Cab, a good red.

Bedell Cellars 8/7/12

Posted by nofowineaux in Tasting, Uncategorized and tagged with bedell, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, first crush, gallery, merlot, musee, North Fork, petit verdot, rose, syrah, viognier, wineaux August 9, 2012

http://www.bedellcellars.com/

If someone ever gives an award to a winery for attention to design, Bedell should get it. From the pretty flower-surrounded parking lot to the attractive type-face of their signs to the arty labels on their wines, it is clear that someone is paying attention to appearance, and doing it very well. The tasting room is well-designed, and the outside veranda lovely. Even the servers wear a “uniform”–checked shirts with the Bedell logo. Happily, the wines are equally well-designed! We are here on a warm late summer afternoon with our daughter, son-in-law, and a now 14-month-old distraction, so not all of my notes are as comprehensive as they could be. However, many of the technical details of their wines are readily available on their web page.

There are two tasting options (as well as the usual ability to buy wines by the glass or the bottle): The Estate tasting includes 5 wines from their lower priced line for $10, while the Premium tasting gives you 5 tastes of their higher priced wines for $15. We opt for one flight per couple, with one pair trying the premium and the other the estate so we can taste all ten wines. The pour is small, but since we are there at the end of the day (4:30), a couple of times we get the benefit of a little extra to empty a bottle! The servers are very knowledgeable and pleasant, and we also enjoy chatting with another young couple with a baby in tow, and our granddaughter enjoys meeting the calm and very friendly golden lab who is allowed into the room just to say hello.

Estate Tasting:

1) 2010 First Crush White $18

This is a mostly steel-fermented blend of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling that is light and tart and refreshing. The aroma is of mineral and chalk, and the fruit is subtle but there, with a pleasant dryness.

2) 2011 Chardonnay $25

The server explains that this wine spends some time in neutral oak barrels (in other words, in barrels that have already been used for previous fermentations, and so have lost much of their oaky taste) in order to give the wine a better texture, and indeed, it does have a pleasant mouth feel. The tasting notes also point out that beach stones are used in the casks, which we learn help to keep the cask full. How much, if anything, they do for the flavor is debatable. The flavor is pleasantly citrusy.

3) 2011 Taste Rose $18

This is a light, fairly nondescript blend of Merlot, Cab Franc and Cab Sauv. Can’t compete with Croteaux’s roses.

4) 2010 First Crush Red $18

This is a Beaujolais Nouveau style of light red, and would be nice slightly chilled with a roast chicken. The aroma has some of that North Fork earthiness, but it tastes better than it smells.

5) 2009 Merlot $20

Nice berry aroma, and a typical Long Island Merlot, though without the earth flavor that is sometimes too prevalent.

Premium Tasting

1) 2011 Sparkling Rose $35

This is NOT a champagne-style sparkling wine, but rather one made by injecting CO2 into the tanks. It is a refreshing blend of Cab Sauv, Cab Franc, and Merlot, but tastes a bit too much like a pink soda to me.

2) 2011 Viognier $35

Winner! This is a delicious white with lots of citrus and pleasing amount of complexity, despite a somewhat funky aroma. Since I have no earlier notes on this wine, my guess is it is a new one for Bedell.

3) 2010 Gallery $40

The Viognier grape also appears in this blend, which adds Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc to the mix. The aroma reminds me of lemon candy, and the taste has a sweetness of ripe fruit to it, but it is a pleasant wine.

4) 2010 Taste Red $35

Yum. The server notes that this was aged for 12 months, and is a Bordeaux-style blend of Merlot, Syrah, Petit Verdot, Cab Franc, and Malbec. The aroma is intensely berry berry, and the taste is lovely, with lots of fruit but dry. Good tannins.

5) Musee $75 (!)

This rather pricey wine is also a Bordeaux blend, with an aroma of coffee and plum. It spends 14 months in a combination of oak and old oak, and is a blend of Merlot, Cab Sauv, and Petit Verdot. Though it is a good wine, with some complexity and good fruit flavor and a nice finish, we feel it is not worth the price.

Our son-in-law buys the First Crush Red, a good choice, we all agree.

Reasons to visit: beautiful room and attractive labels; good though expensive wines; First Crush Red.

NoFo Wineaux

Wine notes from Long Island's North Fork

Tag Archives: syrah

Corey Creek September 15, 2013

Diliberto Winery April 13, 2013

Channing Daughters Winery February 2, 1213

Bedell Cellars 8/7/12