Zip. Nadda.
But I did have 2 Lenz reds once upon a time (c.1999) that were not bad.
I attended 2 different tastings of LI wines over the past couple of years. From what I was told these were some of the best LI had to offer. There wasn’t one wine I would consider buying to drink again.
Wow - did you get all this knowledge from books there David - or just self taught?
Charles, Ursula, Kareem (and his other son whose name always escapes me) is always my first stop (and often my last) when I go tasting out east. His story about the french intern who saw the chenin blanc growing and thought it was something special. Charles was planning on pulling them out and she insisted and convinced him otherwise. His chenin blanc ($25+ 750 ml)and late harvest resling (40+ 375ML) are the two best whites made on the island. HOWEVER-- at those prices I can get a much better bang for my buck.
That being said I truly enjoy goingto Paumanok, grabbing a chenin blanc to startand a few glasses and finding a spot on the back deck overlooking with vineyard around midday. By the midway point of the 2nd bottle the sun is setting and is always a great sight. The romance of the tasting room I tell yah!
This is better than what it was like in 2004 and 2005 on eBob when we organized the famous shoot out that Jamie Kutch reported on so well at the time. Perhaps it can be accessed here: http://dat.erobertparker.com/bboard/showthread.php?t=45025
As suggested above Long Island is no different from other wine regions. We have some excellent wines, some good wines and some bad wines as well. Those that have seriously visited and tasted know better as suggested by various posts. Then there are always those who of course know better even if they have tasted only a few wines.
For whatever it is worth LI wines could not be as bad as some have suggested when restaurants like Le Bernardin and Gramercy Tavern pour them by the glass and when perhaps 80% of Zagat top 50 restaurants have LI wines on their list. In fact NYC restaurants have become some of the best outlets for LI wines.
That being said we welcome anyone who wants to really find out what LI wines are like. They are not like CA wines as our weather is cooler. That preserves acidity and in general it is considered that for that reason they are excellent with food.
Charles Massoud
Paumanok Vineyards
Hey Charles,
I understand your point, but don’t you think the Quality of the region should as a whole be much better? It just seems that by now we should be seen in a much better light than the perception seems to be. The replies on this supposedly knowledgeable site does not bear this out.
I proposed to my wife out on the North Fork so we bought some bottles for sentimental reasons. In each of the 3 or 4 bottles we’ve had from our cellar we’ve made it through half a glass and moved on. Agree the prices for anything that seems to be semi-ok out there there are insane. For $60 - $75 a bottle there is just alot better juice to be found.
Ah yes. My first offline.
I have tasted my share of Long Island wines. Some are good and some are excellent. However, some of them are disappointing. My strong preference is for the whites. I think the Paumanok Grand Vintage Chardonnay is world class. I recently had a 1992 Leflaive Puligny Montrachet Les Pucelles blind and one of the wines that it evoked was the Paumanok Grand Vintage Chard that I opened in September 2011 for my 60th Birthday. It was so wonderfully fruity with a floral nose that none of the people there thought it was chardonnay and even after it was revealed, they insisted that you cheated. I recently drank another one of your chards with Kareem (I do not remember what it was) and it easily stood up to the Wind Gap chard that I brought. Blind, I think I would have preferred the Paumanok. I have had other whites from Long Island that are also good, although I think yours are the best. I have not tried Channing Daughters, which is supposed to be excellent. I’ve tried to go to the winery twice and I’ve gotten lost both times.
I have served your late harvest Riesling against some of the best dessert wines in the world. It is often comparable or better, and it has never been embarrassed. I really like the ability to pack in the acidity to balance the sugar.
The reds on Long Island, on the other hand, are, let’s say, more difficult. As I understand it, there’s barely enough sum in the average year to get reasonably ripe grapes. As a result, the winery has to either drop a lot of fruit, which decreases yield dramatically and increases price, or not drop the fruit, which creates wines that are just weakly flavored and bitter. I organized a blind tasting of a two LI reds against a very inexpensive comparable French wine at about half the price. One of the LI wines was just grossly outclassed and the other was better than the French wine by a vote of about 10-7, but it was twice the price.
And then there’s Long Island pinot. Everyone I have had deserves a YUK. I know Paumanok doesn’t make one, and I suggest that you keep it that way. I do not know why pinot doesn’t do well on Long Island - I just drink the stuff - but unless I have just selected the wrong ones to try, they get a thumbs down.
For the second time today I find myself defending a region that I’m somewhat ambivalent about. Where do you get $60-$75 a bottle? There certainly is plenty of crappy wine available from the North Fork at that price point, as from many other regions. However, you can find wine from there that is much better than “semi-ok” and at a much lower price point than that. Paumanok is a prime example - virtually all their wines come in much lower, and the quality is very good.
Now, if all you want is big and bold a la Screaming Eagle, you’re probably right, but I don’t think big and bold is something anyone in the North Fork should attempt in the first place. And this can be said of many other wine regions that do make great wine - the Loire for example.
Before I start to sound like a cheerleader, I do agree with Allan’s point above as well, and I do wonder if the North Fork has the dirt for making great wine. If they don’t that’s fine, not all wine has to be, can be, or should be great. Let’s say you magically relocated the North Fork as some little peninsula in the boondocks of Europe that produces for local consumption the types of wine that (for example) Paumanok makes. Anyone visiting would find the place lovely and the wines charming. Unless, of course, you parachuted in a bunch of investment bankers who proceeded to attempt to recreate Napa Cabernet on sandy soil in a moderate maritime climate.
If you are looking for some LI wines to try check out Red Hook Winery (disclaimer - I work for the distributor in NY/NJ that distributes these wines). They have some cool stuff. Abe Schoener makes a set of the wines and Bob Foley makes the other. The winery/tasting room is in Brooklyn and worth a visit. They source fruit from LI - mostly the North Fork. From all that I’ve tried I have been very impressed and many of our customers have been as well.
Would relocated Paumanok charge $75-100 for single vineyard bottlings and put Parker reviews on their website? Part of the problem on LI is indeed the context.
My wife and I were just there a couple weeks ago. We enjoyed our trip and found the wines to be good at Bedell, Paulmanok, and Croteaux. The better wines aren’t cheap though and don’t offer great value. We were not as impressed with Shinn as we thought the wines were too oaky and truthfully what we had expected to find in the area.
Later in the weekend I had a Bedell Merlot with Duck Confit at Noah’s in Greenport and it paired very well with the food. I was pleasantly surprised with the wine.
Overall we would go back, but we did not buy any wine while we were there. It was more a matter of pricing than the quality of the wine. For $40 to $90 per bottle, I’d rather buy Bordeaux, Burgundy, Brunello or Barolo.
Charles, I enjoyed chatting with you in your tasting room.
In fact, I don’t think I have ever tasted a Long Island wine.
I’ve had some I’ve liked but none that seemed worth the tariff.
One winery I’d like to try which I’ve heard good things about is Channing Sisters.
I have the same number of LI wines as I have NJ wines. None
I rarely fish in those waters and, yes, when I do it’s not on the North Fork, so I’m not familiar with those wines, which are probably less than 1% of their total cases. That said, given the quality of their regular offerings I would expect the wines to be decent. But while I haven’t had those wines, you (presumably) have and you don’t like them. That’s fine. It doesn’t have a lot to do with their regular cab franc and merlot which I do think are good quality, though not a great QPR. Not to mention their whites which, as was pointed out earlier, are their best offerings.
And a relocated Paumanok might do limited bottlings from a special vineyard every few years when the climate gods are particularly kind. They would probably keep a few for friends and family and put the rest out front at high prices to sell to tourists. As for what they put on their web site, what a winery has to do for marketing purposes is indeed contextual, but doesn’t necessarily have a lot to do with what’s in the bottle.
They grow grapes on Long Island?
And make wine, not jelly from them?
[quoteBut long island is the same latitude as Bordeaux!!!][/quote]
MN is either the same latitude as Bordeaux or Burgundy but I am too lazy to look that fact up. I am sure there is really good similar latitude land in South Dakota also.
Bordeaux is at the same latitude as the northern border of New York south of Montreal, just a bit north of Plattsburgh. Growing red wine in that region seems laughable. On the other hand, the Washington State cabernet vineyard that some people argue create wines that are too ripe and intense are at a higher latitude than Bordeaux, so I suspect latitude is not all that important on a micro level.
I enjoy Paumanok Chenin, Water’s Crest Cab Franc, Roanoke Cab Franc and in recent years more and more white grape varietals. Perhaps the whites are suited to the cool climate, soil characteristics all benefitting from good levels of acid available. I am thoroughly enjoying the northern Italy varietals from Channing Daughter. Also in hotter growing seasons (2010 comes to mind) I enjoyed some reds from WC and Roanoke.