My wife and are I are grade to Chatham, Cape Cod in 2 weeks for several days of ‘unplugged time’. Trip will take us from our place in MD to our place in NJ and then up the coast. We have been doing that trip a lot lately as my wife’s son goes to college outside of Boston. So, we are looking to do something different and spend 1-2 days on the North Fork of Long Island on the way up.
So…would appreciate any recommendations for accommodations, restaurants, and of course wineries in the area.
Paumanok is one of the first places you see on the North Fork. 1074 Main Road Aquebogue, NY 11931 (631) 722-8800. Charles Massoud is a board member. He was very gracious when I contacted him. We spent 2 hours on the rear deck sampling multiple red/white and sweeties. If you google him or his winery, you’ll find threads with information. I came upon Charles when I was on the parker boards. They wrote about him in such a way that I just had to stop. I’m particularly fond of his whites and sweeties.
The North Fork is very laid back. Must be the way Napa was in the 60’s. Nothing fancy, but a nice experience.
Channing Daughters is doing lots of interesting things with different grapes (tocai, blaufrankish, lagrein, etc) and winemaking techniques (skin fermenting, etc). No idea how good the wines are, but I’ve heard good things. I think they are on the south fork though. From previous visits to the north fork, I recall also enjoying Shinn Estate, Bedell, and Lenz, and disliking Pindar, though I haven’t been out there in 3 years. There is a great seafood shack somewhere around Southold but i can’t quite remember the name…
We picked the North Fork given that we are looking to take a ferry over to RI the next day and then continue our trip to Cape Cod from there. If there is enough reason to, we could switch and go to the South Fork instead. Thoughts?
Most of the wine action is on the north fork. Greenport, on the eastern end, is a cute town to explore in a 1995 way. If I’m not mistaken, the ferry departs from Port Jefferson, so you’ll have to double back. Port Jeff is a cute town too. The south shore is where the Hamptons are located, so if you’re doing that route, you’ll have to really doubleback. Take a look at a map.
Appreciate the feedback. I should have been more clear in my last post. We have some flexibility in our schedule, so we were looking at possibly extending our stay on LI by another day and given that, were considering whether there was more we wanted to do and see on the North Fork or the South Fork.
We have put Paumonok and Channing Daughters on the short list. Appreciate any other suggestions, to include places to eat.
John - Shinn estate has a bed and breakfast inn attached to their winery which is nice…Farmhouse Inn - Rose Hill. Their wines are quite good as well. My spouse and I had a nice dinner at the Frisky Oyster in Greenport … The Frisky Oyster - Restaurant in Greenport, NY . As mentioned Paumanok is a great stop to enjoy their wines and to sit outside with lunch(you bring) and a glass of their wine. I had a very good 2007 cabernet sauvignon from Roanoke Vineyards. Wines there can be very good but the tasting room experience was low on my appeal meter. …Gary
I know the North Fork very well. I would recommend you limit your trip to just the one fork if only one day, but there is no doubt that Channing Daughters and Wolffer (both on the South Fork) are nice stops). On the North Fork my recs are Shinn, Bedell, Sparkling Point (for bubbles), Croteaux (for Rose), Paumonack, Lieb, McCall and Raphael. Avoid Pindar, Jason’s and Duck Walk at all costs (IMO).
For accommodations, the Harborfront($), and The Greenporter are both in Greenport, and are highly recommended. Within the town there are several great restaurants including the previously mentioned Frisky Oyster (I cant recommended this high enough), Noah’s, The North Fork Oyster Company, and Scrimshaw’s. And if you are in town on a Saturday afternoon and the weather is nice, you can head to the pier at Claudios for good live music & cold beer in a great setting.
FYI, Greenport is about 15 minutes from the Orient to New London ferry as Tim mentions.
Good luck and have fun. You may also want to look here for more info: www.liwines.com.
Last minute trip over to the North Fork for a couple of days to visit with vineyard and winery ITB folks. Stopped in to say hello to Charles Massoud(Paumanok). As always he was generous with his time which promoted great discussion and advice while tasting his new wines. When I asked how his young small cluster cabernet sauvignon clone was performing he pointed us to the cellar to taste the first harvest from barrel. This young wine was stunning from the barrel and follows in a lineage of terrific red wines made by the Massouds. I will be very interested when this reaches the bottle. I find the Massoud family provides a terrific atmosphere to enjoy well made wines that are consistently very good to excellent even in those years that mother nature throws a curve ball. During our visits with others(Steve Mudd, Barbara Shinn, & Russell Hearn) we were consistently urged to visit Sparkling Pointe. Luckily they were on the way back to the ferry at Orient Point. We had just a short time and were greeted by SP’s general manager Michael Falcetta at the tasting bar. As standard practice for this sparkling only producer they change champagne flutes between tastings…very classy. It was clear that these sparklings wines are produced by a absolute gem of a winemaker. Michael is an ethusiastic manager that works to make the experience memorable. He insisted we take a quick trip into the winery/cellar, with final tasting glass in hand, where we met up with winemaker Gilles Martin. Gilles has assisted many wineries get started in the North Fork with still and sparkling wines. He is very knowledgeable and discusses anything about viticulture and winemaking. He’s a terrific person with a very talented winemaking touch. Stop by Sparkling Pointe and enjoy Martin’s wines along with small food plates that accentuate the high quality of these sparkling wines. Here’s an intro to Gilles…I do remember Todd doing this as well…Cheers, Gary
Still in Cape Cod, but wanted to post some notes on our quick trip through the North Fork on our way here. Very much appreciated the recommendations, especially from Dan, Paul, and Gary. We basically had a little over 24 hours (Sat afternoon to Sun afternoon) before boarding the Ferry from Orient. I will post more detailed tasting notes in the wine talk forum when we return.
We stayed at the Harborfront Inn based on the recommendations here - thanks again. Nice place with a great location. We had dinner at the Frisky Oyster as it within walking distance from the hotel. W had a good meal after a long day and then stumbled back to the hotel. My wife had the scallops with asparagus (local) risotto and I had raw oysters as well as their oyster ‘friskafella’ which is oysters baked with garlic spinach, chipotle, and parmigiana aioli. All enjoyable, although the garlic overwhelmed the oysters too much for my taste in the last dish. We enjoyed a bottle of Lieb Cellars (local) Pinot Blanc with dinner.
Between Sat and Sun, we got a chance to stop by Paumonok, Shinn, and Sparking Pointe. The stop at Paumonok was first, and we enjoyed that one the most. Getting to sit in the relatively warm sun on the rear patio may have had something to do with that. We tasted through a number of the wines. The whites made a better impression than the reds, in particular the dry and semi-dry Rieslings which seemed to have the best balance of what we tasted.
We got to Shinn around 5pm on Sat. It’s nice that the tasting room is open until 8pm. We tasted a number of their wines and enjoyed a cheese plate to hold us over until dinner. A number of their wines were not available to taste. I was pleasantly surprised by their Brut Sparkling wine which is 100% Chardonnay. Our tasting ended on a bit of ‘sour’ note when a couple decided to bring their small dog into the tasting room and sat at the table next to us. The dog had miserable gas which is not really the tasting room experience. I saw one of the co-owners on the way out and mentioned that their winery was recommended on this forum. He said he did not know what a ‘wine berserker’ was. I recommended he check it out.
On Sunday, we had breakfast at Erik’'s near Sparking Pointe. Good, local, fresh food. We then did a tasting at Sparking Pointe. Interesting place. Large ‘lounge-like’ tasting room. Unfortunately the rear patio was under construction and so we were relegated to taste inside on a beautiful day. They had a number of sparkling wines to taste. The most enjoyable to me was their entry level blanc de blanc wine.
One last interesting point. At all three places we asked what it was like to visit in the summer as we have avoided that to date.All three people told us that they didn’t know as they had all been only working at the different places for less than a month. Must be the ramp up to the season.
I will be on the North Fork next weekend (10/19/12 - 10/21/12). I’ve read through all the threads I could find, including this one. All were very helpful. Thank you! I’ve also read the recent WS profile of the North Fork. So I feel like I have the basic outline of the weekend down. But if anyone has any ideas or recommendations for winery visits that may not have been mentioned or where you’ve had recent positive experiences, great restaurants/bars/markets, etc. I’d love you hear them. Thanks in advance.
I agree with many of the places mentioned on this thread, namely Paumanok, Bedell and Croteaux for Rose. I know this may sound a bit odd, but if you find yourself at the tanger outlets in Riverhead, they have a shop called Empire State Cellars. It is a big store and caters only to NY state wines. They have most of the producers from the north fork bit also an incredible selection from the finger lakes. They do tastings right out of the shop. I visit it regularly nowadays (I have a house in jamesport) and have found some terrific local and finger lake wines.
Re restaurants, I would definitely recommend Jamesport Manor Inn.
For personal reasons I’ve been on the North Fork of Long Island every weekend recently, and at one point searched and found this thread when wondering if it was worth visiting any of the wineries I’ve been driving past. Funny thing, I got Paumanok (highly recommended in the thread) confused with Pindar (specifically mentioned to avoid in the thread) and had a free hour on the way out to the Orient Point ferry today so stopped at Pindar. I actually thought it was pretty good! The Gamay Noir (2021) and Cab Franc (2019) were decent, and the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Barrel Select Reserve was especially good. I actually bought a couple of bottles of it! I have no idea if it will age, but it’s drinking nice right now.
So I know this thread is a decade old. But I figured I would update it and throw in a good word for Pindar after my experience today. Maybe they have improved in the past decade? Or perhaps I’m a Neanderthal of a taster.
