Author Archives: Janice Guo

Beautiful Bedell

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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.

Trunk, cordon, cane, spurs

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/

 

Hunters Point Wine & Spirits

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Tannat red wine from Uruguay, a region I did not know makes wine

Sparkling wine from Tasmania, Australia. Not only did I just recently learned that Australia makes wine, but that they make sparkling also!

Sparkling from Italy

Red (Garnacha and Carinena) from Priorat, Spain

 

Shelf talkers includes everything from name of wine, region, grape, tasting, and pairings

Located in Long Island City, Hunters Point wine and spirits is the perfect mix of the friendly neighborhood liquor store and a knowledgable wine provider.

Walking into the store, you are greeted by the two sales person on the left, where the checkout counter is located. All the liquor is located behind the register, whereas everything else is completely wine. The first room where you first enter has a few selection from different regions presents on the shelf. A small tunnel leads to the room in the back, which is domed and gives off a nice medieval cellar vibe. There is a sink and a station for sampling located in the back also. All of the wine on the shelves are incased in their own wooden section for each bottle, preventing other bottles from being mixed behind one another on top of the clean, organized wooden interior design. Each of the regions are labeled with a gold plaque on the very top of the shelf, and majority of the wine consists of its own “shelf-talker.”

The shop is very orientated towards serving the customer base of the surrounding neighborhood. Marko, one of the sales associate, answered any questions that I presented, and was extremely knowledgable about the wine and the process behind it’s vinification. Unable to make a trip to a wine shop without bringing home some wine, I asked Marko to suggest both a red and white with specific qualities such as a low acidic, floral white and a low tannins medium bodied red. He was able to suggest many different bottles according to my requests, but also narrow things down with contributions based on his experience. Marko was also even able to recommend certain wine due to the way it was made, such as a red that the grapes were let out to sun dry, creating more densely packed flavors and aromas. When it came to finally deciding which white, he ultimately pushed a certain bottle that one of his regular’s daughter constantly buys because of her dislike towards acidity. It just so happens that the regular was also present in the store, checking out at the counter, in which one of the bottles was the very same one he was recommending. When checking out, Marko requested if I would like to leave my name to create an account, this way my purchase history is on file if I would ever need to pull up a purchase that I would like to repeat. One can definitely tell that Marko not only knew his wine, but also the clients that comes into the shop.

Hunters Point Wine and liquor shop as a whole has many strong points. The store is welcoming, organized nicely and appealing to the eye and the senses. They offer a nice variety where one can explore the different wines available and have some tastings to help with the decision making process. Many of the selection are different from the generic ones offered at some other local wine shops (i.e. yellowtail, barefoot, etc…), which is great for any drinkers who are open to explore new options or want to be surprised. Almost half of the wine comes with a shelf talker, which helps non-experienced and even experienced wine drinkers on what to expect within the bottle. Wines are categorized based on region, and offered in all sorts of price ranges. The only thing that could be improved on would be the organization between the red and the whites. Usually being one of the first categories a guest uses to refine the type of wine they would like to purchase, having to look at all the bottles to locate either a red or white wine amongst regions does take some time and can cause people to miss some bottles from the constant eye scanning. Having reds with the reds and whites with the whites within a region helps a big deal. Although understandable that it could take some rearranging with change in inventory, it should be taken into consideration. Overall, the wine shop was a pleasant experience and makes me wish I lived in the area so I can constantly visit the shop to bring home a new bottle to explore every so often.