On May 5th, 2018, I went to Martha Clara Vineyard with a group of friends and 2 parents. Prior to our visit, we called and emailed to let them know who we were and why we were there. Martha Clara Vineyard is located at 6025 Sound Avenue, Riverhead, NY 11901. Knowing it will take hours to arrive, we departed early and arrived at the vineyard at 11 am; exactly when they’re open.

This vineyard has a spacious parking lot and an old ranch-styled building. Past the entrance is a gift shop with some customers looking around and a few employees working. Once we entered, we told one of the employees that we sent an email having a tour in the vineyard. She left and a few minutes later, another employee said she’ll like to check the email because she wasn’t told about us; her name is Margaret. After confirming with the email and our identity, we proceeded into the building and into the vineyard.

The left side of the giftshop; different wine bottles for gifts

The gift shop was beautiful. It has plethora of decorated or designed wine glasses used for gifting.  There are also some crackers available for purchasing when you want to do wine tastings on the inside.

Once you get past the gift shop, there’s a huge area with two long wine counters with employees behind it. It looked especially spacious since there’s not much customers in the morning. Continuing on to the inside, there’s a private tasting room up the stairs.

Past the gift shop

Afterward, Margaret guided us to the public wine tasting room; it looked amazing. However, if you want table service, you need to get a reservation first.

Tasting Room with table services

Outside where customers can drink wines

After we were done touring the building, Margaret told us about the history of the vineyard.The Martha Clara Vineyards property stretches out to 200 acres and 100 acres are all vineyards. There are approximately 14 different varietals grown in this vineyard. Across from the outside tasting area, there’s sunflower fields but it’s still too cold for them. The climate for this area is Maritime because the vineyard is surrounded by the Long Island Sound and in the north and the Peconic Bay. Summer is cool and winter is warm. The warmth during fall helps reduce the frost in the winter. Other vineyards further in the Nassau County is warmer so they have the oak and maple blooming. At this point, the manager, Gina, came out to greet us.

There’s about 60 vineyards in the entire Northfork area and it’s been 30 years since the opening of Martha Clara Vineyard. This vineyard was originally owned by the Entenmenn’s family; the manufacturing company known for their pastries and other baked goods. He originally came here to raise some horses but there were vines already growing here so he opened up Martha Clara Vineyard. The name Martha Clara is actually the name of Entemenn’s mother. This vineyard has been operating nicely by the Entemenn’s but, they sold the vineyard to Rivero Gonzales after Entenmenn died last year. This vineyard continued to operate under his ownership and this wasn’t a problem because Mr. Gonzales had some vineyards back in Mexico so he had some experiences running this business. According to Margaret, they brew wine at a place called Premium Wine Group which 2 miles down the road. We asked her, among the 14 different grape varietals, which wine does she prefer? Margaret said it’s different for her everyday but right now she would like to have some Cabernet Sauvignon with some steak. When we asked if someone can take us into where the vines are, unfortunately, there’s no one available to actually guide us into where the vines are so we only walked around it and took some pictures.

We were unable to go past a certain point so we zoomed in the camera to take pictures. Even from afar, we can tell that none of the vines have buds yet; only able to see their cordons. I forgot to ask whether they graft the vitis vinifera onto the vitis lubrusca. Afterward, we went back to the giftshop to take a look at the wines again and did some shopping.

Entrance to Premium Wine Group

Sign for Premium Wine Group

Some vines outside of Premium Wine Group

We drove 2 miles down the road and found the brewery, until we discovered that this wasn’t the production facility. This building was smaller than the other one and it only has a tasting room. I asked the employee if we could get a look at the production area and the equipment. She told us the don’t brew wines there; they brew it at Jamesport. This tasting room is small but they have seats and tables outside so I believe this tasting room is where people reserve for different events because there was a DJ outside near the parking lot. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go visit the brewery at Jamesport because there wasn’t enough time.

Overall, I wouldn’t call this a bad experience because i want to go back after it gets warmer. All the employees here are knowledgeable about the wines and vineyards and has great customer service skills. The shop here has a plethora of wines so i will purchase it after I am over 21.

Reference:

JOIN THE FAMILY. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://www.marthaclaravineyards.com/