Winery Assigment

For this assignment I decided to go to Bedell Cellars located in North Fork of Long Island. Before I went to the Vineyard I did a little bit of research on the history of the vineyard and I found very interested things about the vineyard and the team that runs this beautiful place. The Vineyard is 30 years old and is owned by Michael Lynn and his family. Lynn is a film producer and also responsible for creating the labels for their wine. Another members of the team are Rich Olsen Harwich who is the winemaker and Molly Deegan she is the SVP Marketing & sales Development, Wine club Director. She has over 18 years of experience in marketing. Before she started working on Bedell Cellars she used to be work for Cosmopolitan Magazine. I also have to mention that in my visit to the Vineyard I had the pleasure of meeting Deegan, she welcome me very nicely and since I looked a little lost she directed me where I needed to go.

They only do tours on weekends and since I did my visit on a week day there was no tour available for me, but Lisa an employee at the tasting room was kind enough to answer my questions and give me more details about the Vineyard. She told me that they grow many different grapes: Malbec, chardonnay, Syrah, sauvignon Blanc, merlot, gewürztraminer, cybernetic franc, and viognier. Unfortunately I couldn’t see the grapes in the vine because they had just harvested the day before and for that reason too I couldn’t talked to the winemaker because he was very busy making the wine, but I asked Lisa and she was able to answer. I asked her what makes their wine so special and she told me a couple of things that surprised me. She said that the Vineyard was under the Long Island Sustainable Winegrowing and I asked her what does that mean. She said that sustainable viticulture is a concept. This concept is composed of three parts environmental Stewardship, Social Equity and Economic Viability. This concept basically teaches winemakers how to plant quality grapes without compromising the ecosystem. This program is been working for almost 40 years and their goal is to produce high quality fruit and take care of the planet at the same time. Their slogan is basically that you don’t have to damage you ecosystem to make something good.

While walking around the place I saw the tanks were they keep the wine and she told me that they fermented all of their wines in steel tanks like the viognier and sauvignon Blanc. With a few exceptions like chardonnay which is fermented on French oak barrels. The most planted grapes are cabernet and merlot, chardonnay is one of the oldest vine they have which was planted on 1980. After that is viognier which was planted in 1994. In this vineyard wines are fermented from six to eight months in barrels. That particular area of Long Island has a maritime climate and it rains a lot. I also took some pictures of the beautiful 2 floor tasting room they have. For me this assignment was very fun because I felt like I was a tourist in my own city and I will try to plan a trip to Bedell Cellar again so I can have a tour.

Citation

Home. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.lisustainablewine.org/

Home. (n.d.). Retrieved December 03, 2015, from http://www.bedellcellars.com/

Long Island Wine Country | Wineries, Events, Shopping, Accommodations, Dining, Attractions. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.liwines.com/