The winemaking culture on Long Island: style, savoir-faire, superb sipping and gastronomic delights. All at a barrel tasting at Peconic Bay Winery.
Food Grazing, Barrel Tasting
Last weekend I indulged. I nibbled on the Four Seasons Restaurant’s cerviche of wild salmon with passion fruit, accompanied by a rich, nectarous riesling from Peconic Bay Winery. I enjoyed coffee and anise smoked Long Island duck breast with caramelized fig relish, prepared by Tom Schaudel of CoolFish in Syosset, while sipping a dryer, more sprightly riesling.
I chose a mellow, fruit-scented Peconic Bay merlot to go with braised beef short ribs with fresh gnocchi, celery leaves and blue cheese, from Chef Steven DeBruyn’s kitchen at the Polo Restaurant at the Garden City Hotel. And with the Seafood Barge’s Chef Michael Meehan’s lobster pan roast, I drank a buoyant and sunny chardonnay.
That’s only a sample. I also had chateaubriand with marscapone and thyme polenta from the La Cuvee Wine Bar and French Bistro in Greenport; oyster pan roast over cheddar cornbread from the Bellport restaurant; seared sea scallops with lemon thyme from Tierra Mar in Westhampton Beach; and from Chef Terrance Cave of Docks Oyster Bar and Seafood Grill in New York, foie gras torchon—all matched with appropriate complementary wines.
No, I did not rent a limo and do an intense and expensive restaurant tour of the area. I simply took a leisurely drive with two ferry crossings to Cutchogue, on the North Fork, for a sumptuous food and wine event. It was the second annual Thanksgiving Barrel Tasting, hosted by Ursula and Paul Lowerre, proprietors of Peconic Bay Winery. The name of the event seems overly modest. It is considerably more than a barrel tasting, although that is an essential part.
The restaurants prepared ambitious dishes, many with local ingredients, for grazing of the first order, and each dish was matched with a wine made right there at Peconic Bay. It was social, of course, but it also had a beneficent purpose. The afternoon honors a Peconic Bay Winery scholarship program at the New York Institute of Technology Culinary Arts Center. Besides the important financial boost for the young recipients, the program, according to Mr. Lowerre, helps bring these promising chefs into the highly creative, professional world of New York food and wine.
Julian Niccolini of the Four Seasons restaurant presented two Long Island student chefs with scholarship checks. David Rosengarten, noted for his cookbooks and television show, hosted the ceremonies. Greg Gove, winemaker at Peconic Bay, dispensed barrel samples of his 2002 cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, and merlot. Though release dates are in the spring of 2005, and the wines of course need time to mature, they displayed intriguing hints of what is to come.
I’m keeping my eye open particularly for what might be a full-bodied, refined and supple cabernet sauvignon. Mr. Gove is one of our most accomplished winemakers, and I plan to sample a number of his wines in progress and report on them now and then. I hope it will give us all some useful information prior to release dates.
The importance of last weekend’s event for me is at least partly symbolic. It demonstrates that winemaking on the East End is not just an industry. It is a culture, with its own conventions and decorum, with admirable style and great savior-faire. It is a culture that stimulates us to good conversation and brings us back to humanistic values that are basic, sensible, and enduring. Good wines, I believe, combine naturally with good food and interesting people, usually people who nurture a certain quality of life.
Afternoons such as the one I spent at Peconic Bay are in the end about much more than wine and food. They are about awareness and caring and tradition in a world where we are sometimes too busy to remember. Among other things, they remind us of our very special surroundings here on the East End. I am grateful to all the people involved with winemaking on Long Island for bringing this kind of pleasure back into our lives.
