*The Long Island Wine Classic - under the Grand Prix tent at the Hampton Classic Horse Show.
The Long Island Wine Classic, where we are now
Remember local potatoes? And I don’t mean designer spuds, the fingerlings or purple potatoes you can pick up at farmstands now. I remember when the plain old russet or Long Island potato was occasionally celebrated, as in a seriously intended bumper sticker around 30 or 35 years ago saying “Something good that’s good for you.” Local people as well as longtime visitors can certainly remember when our landscape consisted of long vistas of potato fields, even on streets like Further Lane. Many of those former farms are now exceedingly expensive housing tracts, and even where the fields exist, market farms, vineyards and horse farms have replaced the lowly potato.
So a celebration of Long Island as it is now—its wine, produce, seafood and poultry—seems timely. Celebrating it in an equestrian setting seems inspired, connecting all the dots. The Hampton Classic Horse Show, now 28 years old, Long Island’s premier equestrian event, and perhaps the most prestigious hunter and jumper show in the country, lends authority and credibility to a wine industry of approximately the same age. For the Classic, the affiliation with the wine group demonstrates the marketing ingenuity that attracts and holds their corporate sponsors.
Many Long Island wines have been individually honored and most of the vineyards are well respected in the world of viticulture. As Carissa Katz recently pointed out in this newspaper, Long Island is the fastest growing wine region in the country, and about 400,000 tourists come each year to visit the island’s wineries and farms. Recognition of the region and of the collective accomplishments of the winemakers is a cumulative process. We are now witnessing another step along that route.
In these evolutionary years we have also seen a growing earnestness in the cultivation of produce on Long Island, and of course in the preparation of food—both at home and in the many fine restaurants in the area. When I say Long Island, I am actually thinking more locally, of the East End, where much of the farming and winemaking take place. So bringing all this together seems to me less a promotional event (which it decidedly is in some ways) than a well-deserved high sign to a number of concurrent and complementary movements. It is the symbolic endorsing the sensual, an acknowledgment of what we eat and drink, and the good lives we are able to lead here.
The celebration is called The Long Island Wine Classic, and will take place under the tents at the horse show on August 23rd , the day before equestrian events get started. The Grand Tasting, scheduled for 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., has an impressive list of restaurants offering samples of their food, and all 28 wineries that are members of the Long Island Wine Council will be pouring their wines.
At an evening gala dinner and auction following the tasting, each course, catered by Robbins Wolfe Eventeurs, will be paired with the best Long Island wines, to be chosen soon by an independent jury of experts. Local winemakers are already buzzing about it, and the wineries will no doubt be submitting their finest wines to this panel for recognition.
It ought to be a memorable wine dinner, one that could mark a milestone in the Long Island wine world, particularly with Wine Spectator as the event sponsor. . The Grand Tasting is priced at $150, and the complete evening at $400. Proceeds will go to three area hospitals: Southampton Hospital, Central Suffolk Hospital, and Eastern Long Island Hospital. Southampton Hospital, as usual, will be the beneficiary of the horse show itself.
