BEDELL CELLARS
36225 Main Road, Cutchogue, New York, 11935, USA

Crow’s nest view of entire vineyard

 

Located in North Fork of Long Island AVA(American Viticultural Area), Bedell Cellars is home to artisanal and sustainable quality wine. Spanning over 80 acres, the friendly team at Bedell Cellars offers tours, tastings, and even event planning to host the perfect dreamy wedding. Family owned and critically acclaimed, this estate winery exhibits nothing but the best: wine, environment, service, aesthetics.

Consisting of three vineyards; Bedell, Corey Creek, Wells Road; sustainable practices throughout all ensure that the land and all surrounding it are protected. Certified sustainable for many years by the Long Island Sustainable Winegrowing organization, Bedell Cellar takes prides in all it’s viticulture and vinification practices. Grapes are grown without pesticide, hand picked for what is only needed, then made into small batches of wine. All the grape seed and skin is then composted back into the land with all the vine cane prunings to use as natural fertilizer. With these processes, there are minimal chemical affecting the land, the grapes, the farmers, and the society.

North Fork Long Island AVA consists mainly of terroir derived of glacial soils surrounded by a cool maritime climate (LIWCNY, 2015). Bedell Cellars portrays that exact of its’ AVA, with vines planted into loam and sandy gravel. Typical to the grape varieties of Long Island (Harris, 2015), Bedell produces wines from Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec, and even some unique varieties such as Viognier, Petit Verdot, Albariño, Pinot Gris, and Syrah. Most of their wine features a light to medium body, moderate acidity and refreshing taste, that of the North Fork style. To make their wine a bit more interesting and unique to North Fork, Bedell uses 100% natural yeast indigenous to the land, derived from local fruits and flowers. Everything is hand produced, from harvesting to sorting to juicing, using solely gravity to produce wine such like the ancient times. Musts are then aged in 3 different barrels, oak barriques, stainless steel inerts, and imported clay vessels, also known as qvevri (Weltman, 2018). For blends, over 50 batches of different vintages are created to carefully and meticulously create their distinct taste. In the end, all of their wine beautifully portray North Fork’s terroir and climate, refreshingly crisp and slight mineral taste.

Aging room view of oak barrels and stainless steel tanks

View of qvevri in aging room

Arriving upon the vineyard, guests are greeted by the large and open tasting room located in their main building. Walls are shelved to hold their collection of bottles for sale, along with other merchandise such as honey specifically bottled for Bedell and souvenir items. To the right of the entrance is where the office is located, along with stairs that lead up to the intimate fire place and crow’s nest. View of the aging and bottling room cause be seen through glass panels, along with a panoramic window view of the entire vineyard. Guests are welcome to enjoy their tasting in any of these areas, along with the bar where all the wine and snacks are served.

Local honey specially made for Bedell Cellars

Stairs leading to fireplace & crow’s nest, office on the bottom

Tasting Room

Display of all wine for sale

Display arrangement consists of shelf talkers for each bottle

Bedell offers a tasting flight of 5 wines for $20. Additional wine are offered for tasting at $5, with the option of a full glass, take home, or enjoying in site, all at additional charge. The tasting flight includes a rose, 2 white varieties, and 2 red varieties. A menu of snacks is offered as they do not allow outside food, but do provide the basics such as cured meats and cheese or popcorns. The tasting room personnel is extremely knowledgeable with the practices of the vineyard and how everything is done.

Many of Bedell’s bottles are labeled with beautiful artworks, while some were not. Asking the tasting personnel, he was able to explain that only the blends are labeled with an artwork, while the single grape varietal wines were just labeled as is. Furthermore, the artworks come from the owner’s private collection in the MoMa museum, thus chosen to make its presentation onto the labels.

Although the tasting room personnel was extremely helpful with any questions regarding the wine and the vineyard, there were some detailed questions that he was not able to confirm. The vineyard does offer a tour at $100 per person, in which one would have to reserve 24 hours ahead of time. For people who are not able to afford such a tour, information might be missed due to this fact. No one was able to fully describe in detail facts about the vines or give a walk through of the aging and bottling room. Even so, guests are still able to self tour around the vineyard and sit at their patio and enjoy the place. Overall, Bedell cellars is an extremely picturesque vineyard and winery but also produces quality wine that all can enjoy, having a little something for everybody.

One of their many vines

Close up of the spurs on the canes

Each row is numbered

Viognier (My favorite) 2 ways

“Artwork” of an old vine

100% proof (or 28 proof in this case) at the vineyard

Citations

Harris, M.. (2015). Inside New York Wine County. Wine Folly. Retrieved
from https://winefolly.com/review/guide-to-new-york-wine-country/ .

N.A.. (N.D.). Long Island Wine Country. Retrieved from https://liwines.com/terroir/

Weltman, P.. (2018). Why Ancient Winemaking Technique is Making a Comeback. Seven Fifty Daily. Retrieved from https://daily.sevenfifty.com/why-an-ancient-technique-is-making-a-comeback/

This is me at Circa Brewing Co. I’ve blurred my face since I don’t like taking selfies.

For my project, I went to Circa Brewing Co. The person I spoke to is Drew, who is the head brewer. He has taught me a lot about beer and the malt used for making it.

Circa likes to stay local, so they try to get their supplies from local vendors rather than large chain suppliers.

This is how malt looks like up close.

This is malt. It is a grain and can be replaced with wheat or oats. There should be a 10% moisture level to maintain quality. If you eat it just like that, you’ll taste a burst of sweetness for a few seconds. After that, it starts to taste bitter due to the tannin. The malt has a smooth texture on the outside. When you chew it, its rough like cereal. Malt tastes dry.

Inside of roller mill.

Outside of roller mill.

This is the inside and outside of a roller mill. The aren’t any see through parts on the outside so I couldn’t get any other pictures of the inside. It grinds the malt and separates the shell. It is hooked through a pipe into a hot liquor tank.

Hot liquor tank

This is the hot liquor tank. This is where the ground malt goes to. It is important to know that a lot of water is invested into making beer. An example would be needing 2-3 cups of water to make a cup of beer. Since there is so much water being wasted (low yield), Circa tries to reuse that water for things like washing. The water can also be sterilized so it can be reused. Recycling is a big factor in the beer industry.

The mashing process takes place in this tank. For this certain tank, it can make about 200 gallons each time. The mashing process is mixing hot water and grain. It’s basically like tea, but pulling out the sugar instead of a tea bag. This process takes around an hour or so.

Brew Kettle

Above is a picture from Circa’s website. I’ve circled the kettle in red. There are slats at the bottom inside the kettle. The slats allow water to drip out. After the sugar is transferred, it becomes what we call wort. The residue left behind is sugarless and rich in protein. You can mix it with water and eat it like porridge. The kettle is hot, so it also sterilizes the sugar water. After the kettle is done processing the sugar out, you get wort. That wort is ready for hopping and boiling. The kettle takes about 30-60 minutes. It can make the beer have higher alcohol content, because it makes liquids/mixtures more concentrated.

Heat Exchanger

This is called a heat exchanger. It is hooked to a tube, which can transfer beer into the conditioning tanks. The exchanger helps keep the temperature of the beer the same while it is being transported. Wasted water goes back into the hot liquor tank. The beer in the conditioning tanks are left for aging. Co2 is hooked to the tanks and the smaller the bubbles, the easier it can be absorbed. The Co2 is for the carbonation levels. From there, the beer can be canned or put into a keg.

There are 2 categories of beer, which are ales and lagers. Ale beers use top fermenting yeast, which is good at 68 degrees and lager beers use a different type of yeast at 53 degrees. A major difference between these two is the time required for production. Ale takes 11-14 days while lager takes 30. You can put the yeast to sleep at 33 degrees. The yeast can be used for several generations, but don’t use the same batch too much or you’ll get mutations. Yeast is used for fermentation.

Drew mentioned something called the NY State farmville brewery bill. This bill serves to help increase demand for local products  and encourages local businesses. One of the rules on the bill is “January 1, 2024, no less than 90% of the hops and 90% of all other ingredients must be grown in New York State.” As you can see, this has a major positive effect on locals.

Circa practices the grain and hop farming. Hop can come from Yakama Valley (Located in Washington), Idaho, and other areas.

In terms of quality, some beers are cheap and others are more exquisite. The quality can affect taste and aromas. Some can taste like bourbon, water, etc. Essential oils in hops can give fruity flavors in cold beers, which people seem to love. Not only to the tongue, but beer can also be fruity to the nose. These flavors aren’t present in non-cold beers, because the flavors evaporate if boiled. Beer can have different styles and can be full-bodied, light, or etc.

There is a beer judge certification program (BJCP) for judging beer quality.

Circa is special because it has some of the freshest beer in NYC,strives to make something enjoyable, but not too overwhelming, and wants to have something for everyone.

Sources

Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://bjcp.org/

The vineyard my classmates and I decided to visit for this project was the Franklin Hill Vineyard located in Bangor, Pennsylvania. The vineyard belongs to the Lehigh Valley AVA and features a mesoclimate similar to that of northern Europe giving way to produce French-American hybrid grapes. Their climate is mainly “influenced by the area’s proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake inlet” (Simon, pg. 132) that ultimately moderates the climate of the AVA. Despite the size of the AVA, only about “500 acres are used under vine despite the AVA growing steadily” (Sokolin, pg. 56). Initially however, as explained to us during our tour there, the land that Elaine Pivinski, founder of the vineyard had bought in 1976 was actually not suited for grape production. The land’s main issues were the soil of the area as well as the land being too flat and plain-like featuring no hilly features to expose the grapes to sunlight evenly. Luckily enough, she was able to discover Cornell Geneva’s vineyard experiment program which helped her with starting up her business by introducing her to their grape experiments allowing her to grow in these areas. Despite the risk behind running her business based on these newly invented grapes, she went through with her goal of producing wine in Pennsylvania successfully producing 3,500 gallons of wine in her first year. She was then hit unfortunately with a long period of lack of rainfall as well as a struggle to sustain and expand her business with no viticultural experience and virtually just working by herself. Through meeting with Bonnie Pysher and recruiting mothers at school bus stops, she was able to obtain the help she needed and pull through these times. Today the winery has expanded from where it once was producing around 55,000 gallons annually.

The “old vines” at Franklin Hill Vineyards. The trickle irrigation system in place was used in times where rainfall was lacking.

During our tour, Helen who was our tour guide showed us just how much Franklin Hill Vineyard really had grown since 1976 showing us the “old vines” which were the surviving vines from 1976, and showing us the trickle irrigation system that they had implemented in order to sustain the vines during the period that had no rainfall. She then showed us their more recent vines featuring a five-acre field of 7-8-year-old grape vines and another fifteen acres they are currently working on. She explained the importance of the shale like soil used to grow their grapes as it eliminated the competing grass and greenery from stealing their resources as well as allowing the grape vine roots to grow more openly. During our visit there we were able to observe the very beginning of the bud break stage of the vines and was told that harvest of these grapes usually occurs during the 2^nd week of September. They grow a variety of grapes including Vida Blanc, Chambourcin, Cayuga, Chardonnay, Zinfandel, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon.

The original vinification facility for Elaine featuring the stainless steel tanks, filtration system and destemmer.

A handmade bottling tool that they used back when the vineyard just started.

An automatic bottling tool that replaced their old handmade tool and caps their bottles with screw caps.

We were then bought to their vinification facilities where again we were able to see just how much the vineyard had grown as a whole. The facility was split into multiple rooms and were essentially in order of when they were added. The first room featured Elaine’s first processing area featuring multiple tanks and filtration systems as well her “refractometer and the more old fashioned hydrometer” (Ewing-Mulligan, 2006) they used to measure the Brix levels of their grapes. She explained that the vineyard produces red, white, fortified and rosé wines on top of their specialties and uses stainless steel tanks for their fermentation, where they found that ultimately using neutral barriques in the past wasn’t able to sustain them through the demand for their wine. Most of their wines are blends and feature an alcohol level of 10-12% except for their port wines which fall around 20% alcohol level. Before obtaining their additions to their production facility, Elaine had produced all her wine in just that one room containing a singular destemmer, multiple stainless-steel tanks and a filtration device they had obtained from Germany after finding our just how unsustainable using paper filters were. When they had initially started, they bottled everything using a handmade bottling device and corked each of them by hand until obtaining their bottling machine and switching to screw caps. We were shown pictures of Elaine and her crew punching down the cap and Elaine learning how to use cold stabilization for one of their wines called Evanswood which featured tar traits and also how they use oak staves and chips as well in their wine production.

Storage room for Franklin Hill Vineyard.

Finally, we arrived at the tasting room where we were able to taste six different wines. The wines I chose were the White Jade, Katie’s Creek, Redhead, Sir Walter’s Red, Catawba and Cake. Out of these six the one I enjoyed the most and found the most interesting was ultimately the Redhead which was a blend of Chambourcin and Merlot and was dry to the mouth with a strong vanilla and oak taste to it. Another wine that was also interesting was their vineyard’s most popular wine called Sir Walter’s Red which featured a blend of Cabernet Franc and the Concord grape producing a grapey acidic wine that tasted like strawberry jam.

Sitting in for a wine tasting at Franklin Hill Vineyard.

After visiting Franklin Hill, we also visited M&M vineyards as well afterwards which was about a 10 minute drive away. While much smaller and newer than Franklin Hill, the owner Mohinder Sidhu and his wife who were both previously microbiologists pushed themselves to achieve their dream of opening a winery prepping their land for 7 years after an initial 2 years of research. They were able to transform the corn field that they had bought into their dream winery using different soils as well as creating 15 degree slopes to provide equal sunshine as well as grafting different vines to the rootstocks they had established.

Standing in front of the vines at M&M Vineyard.

Wines sold at M&M Vineyard.

Overall, visiting the vineyard really put into perspective everything we had learned in class and learning about the of history behind Franklin Hill was definitely an experience. Being able to meet Bonnie and listening to her stories of how she and Elaine self-taught themselves how to survive in the business as well as learning all there is to know in the winemaking business was truly phenomenal and is definitely someone you should talk to when visiting Franklin Hill vineyards.

References

-Certified specialist of wine: Study guide 2017. (2017). Washington, DC: Society of Wine Educators.

-Ewing-Mulligan, M., & McCarthy, E. (2006). Delicate differences make New World Pinots difficult to identify but an adventure to try. Nation’s Restaurant News, 40(15), 50. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.citytech.ezproxy.cuny.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hjh&AN=20497331&site=ehost-live&scope=site

-Simon, A. L., & Allen, H. W. (1972). Wines of the world. London: McGraw-Hill.

-Sokolin, W. (1987). Liquid assets: How to develop an enjoyable and profitable wine portfolio. New York: Macmillan.

I had an amazing chance to visit a vineyard and not just any vineyard, Millbrook Vineyards & Winery located 26 Wing Road, Millbrook, NY 12545. 1121. Upon my arrival I was greeted warmly and I was welcomed with warm arms. Millbrook is apart of the Hudson Valley AVA, which is one of the newest AVA’s established in New York State. The techniques that they use are standard industry procedures. They harvest grapes at brix level between 21% and 23% because it gives them the yield 12% to 13% on their wines. Everything is hand harvested straight to the crush pad, then inflate bladder which is pushing the juice out from the grapes.

There are multiple grape varieties grown: the white grapes are: Traminette, Riesling, Chardonnay, Tocai Friulano, and Pinot Grigio (which is not grown there, but in California). These grapes are pressed, and then brought inside for cold fermentation and this process is slower without the addition of yeast.Unlike the white grapes the red grapes are all grown there and they are: Pinot noir, and Cabernet Franc. The red grapes are harvested just the same but they incorporate the crushed grapes with the juice to perform maceration (23 days to 7 weeks) depending on what they want it to look like. The rose process goes through saignee which is also known as the bleeding process which goes through one press. Oaking smooths out rough tannins and polished acicity. If oaked it goes to the oak barrel after fermentation. Partially oakes shas one acreage which contains Tocai Friulano which is located on their (Lollipop Hill) and oaked for 6 months lightly. All their reds are fully oaked. Fully oaked, fermented, and straight from crushed to barrel (for 8 months) are their reserved chardonnays. Every single cork is natural from the bark of cork oak trees. TCA (Trichloroanisole) is somethings that detects a taste of “corkiness.”

Special Attributes AVA, Millbrook is known for hudson Valley Cabernet Franc. The owner is John Dyson, and he founded HVCF. Pioneer of Farm Winery Act Passed in 1976 which has helped aging farm to winery. This gives additional tax breaks.

The importance of barrel aging in that there is a combination of mostly French and American oak (mostly neutral oak) which is more than three years old and less than ten (no longer imparting flavor into wine). Barrel aging also helps malolactic fermentation and converted into lactic acid which is for a mouth feel (what you taste v.s what your brain recognizes. Battonage is the process of starting lees. This is a special metal baton that stirs the lees bag into the aging wine. Battonage and lees are important for malolactic and malolactic is second fermentation. This could be a base wine where you put into barrel to age and add flavors.

I visited Millbrook Vineyards & Winery.

The wine tasting set up per guest.

One of the wines for sale that my mom ended up buying.

Equipment used for making the wine.

The grape vines.