Slide show: Catch of the day as the fall scallop season opens on Long Island’s North Fork

As the Peconic Bay scallop season opened Monday on Long Island’s North Fork, dozens of boats converged on a cove to dredge for the coveted shellfish. They included commercial and recreational fishermen who customize their boats in all manner of styles, such as the one above. Most boats pull four or more dredges over the bottom, scooping up the scallops.  I joined them, as I do most years, and we were rewarded with a bountiful catch (at least on this first day) and gorgeous Indian-summer weather. Although the water had dipped to 48 degrees, the air temperature was in the mid-60s.

Scalloping is all about finding the sweet spots that hold the greatest clusters. On one haul, my dredge was loaded with more than 40 of them.

After a couple of hours or so, I approached a half-bushel, the daily recreational limit.

Shelling and cleaning them is a time-consuming and messy business …

… but well worth it. I wound up with about two-and-a-half pounds of scallops, enough for several great meals based around the sweet delicacy, which, when I checked, was selling for $17 a pound at one of the local fish markets. I like to sauté them in a little olive oil and butter until golden brown; perhaps another night I’ll combine them with tomatoes and some fresh tarragon over pasta. As for wine, white Burgundy or subtly oaked chardonnay from California or Long Island’s North Fork come to mind to complement the richness of the scallops. What would you serve?

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Sips: From Long Island, Shinn’s ‘Red’ is inexpensive and over-delivers

Long Island’s North Fork is not the first place that comes to mind when I think of value wines in the under-$15 category, especially reds. The region’s relatively small producers necessarily have to ask quite a bit more for their estate-grown wines. So I was surprised when a friend brought over a bottle of Shinn Estate Vineyards’ “Red,” a non-vintage blend that still had the  $13.50 price tag on the bottle (it lists for $15 on Shinn’s website). I’d forgotten that Shinn, which is located on a quiet old farm road in Mattituck, 90 miles or so east of Manhattan, even made an entry-level red (the winery produces some of Long Island’s most distinctive merlots, cabernet francs, malbecs and Bordeaux-style blends). Its Red is a blend of 52 percent merlot, 26 percent cab franc and 22 percent syrah, with a least some of the fruit sourced from other North Fork vineyards.

The wine shows a lot of bright red fruit notes, good tannic structure and has an impressively long finish. Sipping it with  a casual meal (think chicken, grilled salmon, burgers, pizza) is an altogether pleasant experience that doesn’t invite over-analysis, simply enjoyment of it, which is exactly what a wine at this price should do. I’ve never had a house wine – too many new releases to taste – but if I were in the market for a red, this would  be high on my list. And for those of us in or not far from the area, the fact that it’s locally produced might just seal the deal.

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Sips: A sampling of top Long Island wines for summer drinking

When the editors of a new website, Metrofocus.org based here in New York, asked me to contribute a piece on New York wines,  I decided to focus this first article on the wines of Long Island’s East End, particularly the North Fork, where most of the region’s 60-plus wineries and vineyards are located.  The wines, which I have been following closely for many years, are worth seeking out for their elegance and relatively low levels of alcohol. Among others, you’ll find lots of crisp, fresh whites that are perfect for summer drinking. Click here to read my article, which includes a list of five top Long Island wines I found in my tastings. Wines received as press samples.

Technorati Tags: McCall Wines,Long Island wines,North Fork wines,Long Island East End,Edward Deitch,Croteaux Vineyards,Lieb Cellars,Channing Daughters,Jamesport Vineyards,New York wines

Sips: Long Island’s ‘Early Wine’ and ‘Right Coast Red’ stand out

I’ve been tasting a range of wines from the East End of Long Island in recent weeks, mainly from the North Fork, where the vast majority of the region’s 60 or so vineyards and wineries are located.  Among others, two under-$20 wines stand out for  casual, warm-weather summer drinking.

Macari Vineyards’ 2010 “Early Wine” Chardonnay brings to mind green apples and lime and may be this region’s best answer to Portugal’s Vinho Verde with its fresh and fruity style and, as far as American wines are concerned, its relatively low alcohol, which is listed as 11.5 percent. It was harvested by the winery in Mattituck late last August, fermented without oak and bottled less than six weeks later. Served quite cold on a warm and humid evening, it was a delightful apéritif and will serve well accompanying local fluke, either sautéed or marinated into ceviche, or with fried calamari or clams. Production was 1,045 cases. $17.

When friends invited us over last weekend for grilled pizza, the best of several wines we tried with these delicious homemade pies was Lieb Family Cellars’ 2008 Right Coast Red, an easy drinking yet interesting blend of 45 percent merlot, 20 percent cabernet sauvignon, 20 percent cab franc, 12 percent malbec and three percent petit verdot. Lots of red and dark fruit here, with blackberry, blueberry and raspberry notes, a subtle overlay of cedar and a peppery note. Yummy wine. The $30 price tag surprised me, but I guess that’s part of the price of drinking “local.” I also like that the bottle has a screw cap. Alcohol is 13.5 percent. Wines received as press samples.

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Video: Five great summer white wines

Last night I joined Chuck Scarborough on his NY Nightly News program on WNBC’s New York Nonstop Channel to talk about five exciting white wines for summer. For detailed information about the wines, see the post just below this one.

View more videos at: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/

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Sips: Five Top White Wines for Summer

When I was asked to put together a summer wine segment and appear on WNBC’s New York Nonstop channel, I immediately thought of lighter whites that are easy to drink, match well with a variety of simply prepared foods and are good values. Beyond that, I wanted to introduce viewers to some wines they might not have heard about that are very much worth exploring. With that in mind, I chose five wines from five countries, each made from a different grape. What unifies them is that they are refreshing as both aperitif and food wines, especially with fish and simple chicken dishes, and are made without fermentation or aging in oak. Although I have nothing against chardonnay, I decided to keep chardonnay out of the mix this time around because it is so well known and popular. So, enjoy these five whites with your summer dining. I’ll have many more to share in coming weeks.

Channing Daughters 2010 Sauvignon Blanc “Mudd West Vineyard,” Long Island. $20. Light, delicate and elegant sauvignon from this Bridgehampton winery. The wine is made from grapes grown in a North Fork vineyard and shows subtle green apple, herb and citrus notes.

La Cala 2009 Vermentino di Sardegna, Sardinia, Italy. $12. A delicious example of this Mediterranean variety, this is an easy-to-drink yet interesting wine that will pair well with a variety of foods. Pear and apple notes and a good deal of minerality. A natural for linguine with white clam sauce. Imported by Palm Bay International, Boca Raton, Florida.

Domaine Félines Jourdan 2010 Picpoul de Pinet, Languedoc, France. $13. One of my favorite wines of the summer so far. Picpoul de Pinet is the name of the grape and it’s grown only in Languedoc very close to the Mediterranean Sea. The domaine, which I visited last month on a tour of Languedoc, overlooks oyster farms, and the wine, in fact, is just perfect with oysters. Very fresh with a little brininess, good acidity and lots of complexity. Notes of lemon, herbs, a little honey and vanilla and a good deal of minerality on the finish. Imported by Gabriella Importers, Bohemia, New York.

Viore 2010 Verdejo, Rueda, Spain. $9. I’ve been tasting a lot of verdejos in the last month or so and was newly impressed with this variety, which is the most important white grape in the Rueda region. This one is quite racy and almost jumps out of the glass. Complex with notes of apricot, tangerine, some herbs and smoke on the long finish. Imported by Vintage Wines, Staten Island, New York.

Trapiche 2010 Torrontés, Mendoza, Argentina. $8. Torrontes has become a new darling among fresh and lively white wines, and I saved this one for last on tonight’s TV segment because it’s the most aggressive of the five whites. The variety is highly aromatic and this one, beyond the flower notes, is like biting into an orange. It’s a warm-weather thirst quencher and a real bargain at just $8. Imported by Frederick Wildman and Sons, New York.

Book review: Evan Dawson’s memorable ‘Summer in a Glass’ on Finger Lakes wine

World-class riesling is produced in the Finger Lakes. Wine people know that. But to much of America and the world, the region is a wine outpost, a remote area in west-central New York a couple of hundred miles or so from New York City and, consequently, well off the radar of most consumers, retailers, restaurants and wine writers – in New York and beyond. Evan Dawson’s splendid new book, “Summer in a Glass: The Coming of Age of Winemaking in the Finger Lakes,” (Sterling Epicure, $19.95) is likely to change that.

I have to admit that before I received the book for review, I wasn’t particularly drawn to the region. One can find Finger Lakes wines here in New York, but they compete for shelf space and attention with wines from the rest of the world and are not well promoted (the wines of eastern Long Island do slightly better in this regard, benefiting from the region’s proximity to the city). Now, however, I look forward to a deeper exploration of the region and the wines.

Dawson, a television news reporter and anchor in Rochester and an editor of New York Cork Report, a wine Web site, chronicles the evolution of the Finger Lakes as a serious wine area through the experiences of a dozen winemakers and growers who have shaped – and are shaping – the region. Most of the stories begin with a clever narrative device, a flashback to a turning point that put the winemaker on course for the Finger Lakes. There are pioneers of the region such as Hermann J.Wiemer, the German who disdained other Finger Lakes winemakers and who, by simply putting the word “dry” on his labels, changed the perception of riesling as only a sweet wine; and Dr. Konstantin Frank, the Ukrainian immigrant who introduced vinifera grapes to the cool-climate region and became obsessed with trying to eradicate its old hybrid varieties.

Then there’s Sam Argetsinger, a woodsman and grape grower on Seneca Lake who embraces Iroquois culture and its respect for the land. “I was about to find out,” Dawson writes, “that Sam Argetsinger’s grapes tasted unlike any other wine grapes in the Finger Lakes. He spoke of them like they were his children, and he couldn’t understand why most growers douse their vineyards with chemical sprays and fertilizers. ‘Think about that,’ he said as he picked a bunch of Riesling grapes. ‘We’re killing five or ten things to make one thing grow. You think that’s balance? That’s not balance – that’s crazy.’” We also hear about Tom Higgins and his quest for the perfect piece of limestone-based land on which to grow his pinot noir, and Tricia Renshaw, a novice whose gifts of taste and smell were discovered by the veteran winemaker Peter Bell of Fox Run Vineyards, who made her his assistant and an overnight wine prodigy.

Dawson weaves into these tales a good deal of drama, some suspense and, here and there, just the right amount of explanation about wine making. On a practical level, the book will serve as a guide to some of the best wineries and wines in the Finger Lakes and will be a great read while traveling and tasting  in the region. (One small criticism: there are repeated references to Champagne as “French Champagne,” which is, of course, redundant, but also an unnecessary nod to the outdated practice  by some wineries in the region of calling sparkling wine “Champagne.”)

“Summer in a Glass” is a compelling tribute to a region’s visionaries whose passions, struggles and small triumphs make the book about much more than wine.

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Swirls: A defense of genuinely cool-climate wines from a pioneering winemaker

Back in the 1970s, Louisa Hargrave and her husband Alex were the pioneers of wine on Long Island, proving that very good wine could be grown in the cool, maritime climate of Long Island’s East End, particularly the North Fork. Since then, a thriving  industry has developed, with some 60  wineries growing grapes on thousands of acres that were once farmland. I partly attribute my own interest in wine to occasional visits to the Hargrave Vineyard in Cutchogue over the years and to tasting and enjoying many vintages of Hargrave wines.

A good number of the older wineries and vineyards in the region have changed hands, including Hargrave, and newer wineries have established roots in the region, perhaps most prominently Shinn Estate Vineyards in Mattituck, which is now producing some of the area’s most exciting wines and is a pioneer in its own right as the first Long Island property to move toward organic and biodynamic  farming.

As for Louisa Hargrave, she is now a consultant and writer (her 2003 memoir, ‘The Vineyard,” is worth reading), and what got me thinking about all this again was her most recent column in the Suffolk Times, the local North Fork newspaper. In it, she makes a compelling case for cool-climate wines from such regions as Bordeaux, Burgundy, Collio in northern Italy, the North Fork and genuinely cool-climate areas of California, where the so-called diurnal shift between the day’s hottest and coolest temperatures is least pronounced.

It is in these regions, she reminds us, that the most balanced wines are produced over long, even growing seasons -- wines not dominated by massive fruit (and alcohol), wines with good natural acidity that doesn’t require adjustment in the laboratory. Although “big” wines “often score high points with wine critics,” she says, “I often find something lacking in them. What’s lacking is energy — the very element that makes wine come alive on the palate, that makes it evolve as you drink it.” For me, such wines have what I like to call “soul” and provide a life-enhancing connection to the earth and climate from which they came. You know these wines when you taste them. They are robust but not overpowering, complex yet elegant, refreshing and also interesting. They are, in a word, irresistible.

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SWIRLS: wine as top investment, iPad wine lists, iPhone bottle opener, Long Island wine in China, Joe Bastianich

SWIRL: As an investment, fine wine, as in top  Bordeaux, has  outperformed all other asset classes for a second straight year, beating out gold, oil and stocks. Decanter.com has the full story.

SWIRL: A Chicago steakhouse is among the latest restaurants to offer iPad wine lists – 40 of them at a cost of $700 each, according to an AP article. Let’s see: that comes to $28,000 in technology. How do you feel about this emerging trend? Will it be good or bad for ambience to see people all over a restaurant stroking their iPads in search of that perfect bottle of wine?

SWIRL: We saw this first with certain brands of sneakers – a bottle opener built into the soles that would do the trick in a  pinch. Well now, you can buy a protective case for your iPhone 4 with its very own bottle and can opener. There’s a picture of it on NewsFactor.com.

SWIRL:  Newsday reports that wine-crazed China has started to  import small quantities of wines from a number of Long Island wineries, including Peconic Bay Winery. It didn’t hurt that the importer spent weekends in the Hamptons while living in New York for the last four years before moving back to China. Read the full story here.

SWIRL: Joe Bastianich, the wine and restaurant impresario,  discusses his life in food and wine (plus weight loss and marathon running) in an interesting Q & A with Bloomberg’s John Mariani.

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Swirls: New York Jets wine; direct wine sales; storing wine

AT THE NEW MEADOWLANDS STADIUM over in New Jersey yesterday, the New York Jets unveiled a commemorative wine, tied to the opening of the new venue, called Jets Uncorked. The wine is a red, of course, a cabernet sauvignon, naturally. (Can you imagine the flak they’d get if it were a  merlot?) It’s the creation of a California winemaker (Marco DiGiulio) and a  California lifestyle marketing company (Wine By Design), and on that note I am not the only one wondering  whether a New York wine, say from  Long Island, which makes very good wines and where the Jets are all but worshipped, might have been more appropriate and original. In any event, the wine is a 2008 Napa Valley cab described in a Jets press release as a “premium-quality yet affordable blend that captures the essence and spirit of the team and its fans.” It will sell for $27.99 and 8,000 cases were made.

THERE’S A GOOD DISCUSSION in the Washington Post on the value to wineries of direct-t0-consumer sales. One context is the current debate in Congress on a controversial bill to strengthen the three-tier distribution system and weaken direct sales (H.R. 5034) that’s backed  by the wine wholesale industry. Oregon’s Adelsheim Vineyard has found a successful blend, so to speak, with a dual strategy that incorporates both traditional distribution and direct sales and has seen sales grow, even in this tough economy. Read the full article.

THE ISSUE OF WINE STORAGE is explored in a useful article by California wine writer Dan Berger, who reviews the best methods for storing wine at home and in stores and finds conditions at some retailers highly questionable.

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Swirls: following up on the bubble wars

Since writing an initial piece on the continuing battle over the use of “Champagne” as a generic name for sparkling wine, I looked more deeply into the issue for my monthly Reuters column that came out today. Among other things, I explore whether a U.S. government restriction on misusing Champagne and other place names on labels also applies to advertising, and I interview a sparkling wine producer on his rationale for using “Champagne” on his outdoor signs. Read the full story.  And let me know what your thoughts are on the issue.

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Swirls: the sparkling wine wars

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the confusing world of wine labeling, from the challenges presented by place-specific labels on most French, Italian and Spanish wines (Montrachet, Chianti and Rioja, for example)  that require a good deal of knowledge to know what’s actually in the bottle, to the continuing misuse of the word “Champagne.” The last time I checked, Duck Walk  Vineyards had not joined Pol Roger, Moët or Bollinger as a genuine Champagne producer.  No, Duck Walk makes a sparkling wine on Long Island’s North Fork, and when I came across this sign on the road the other day, it made me curious about the state of the sparkling wine war that has been going on for decades over the use of  the Champagne name.

“The misuse of place names to sell wine is as old as the American wine industry,” Carol Robertson noted in an excellent article on the subject in Business Law Today, the American Bar Association’s news magazine. “Borrowing the name of a well-regarded wine was a shorthand way for new winemakers to impart some of the cachet of a better-known beverage to a new American product.” Korbel, she points out, has been using “champagne” to describe its California sparkling wine since 1882.

In 2005, after years of negotiation between the United States and the European Union, Congress passed legislation banning the future misuse of Champagne and 15 other wine place names, but it did not stop the practice by wineries using the names before the new law, so the Korbels of the world were “grandfathered” in. Then, just a few months ago, the Long Island wine region became one of the latest  signatories to the Joint Declaration to Protect Wine Place & Origin, “a global movement aimed at ensuring wine place names are protected and not abused or miscommunicated to consumers,”  as a press release by the coalition described it. Champagne is also among the 15 wine regions on the list.

Duck Walk must not have gotten the memo. What’s interesting about its use of the Champagne name is that it seems to be doing so only in its outdoor advertisements. A look at its sparkling wine bottles reveals that they are simply labeled “brut,” the common  designation for dry sparkling wines, with no Champagne reference. So, while Duck Walk is following the Joint Declaration as far as its labeling is concerned, it clearly still  believes that “borrowing” the Champagne name is a useful advertising tactic aimed at drawing in tourists who drive past its winery.

I described this to Sonia Smith, who heads up the Champagne Bureau, the region’s lobbying group in Washington. “When people drink a wine they need to be able to trust what it is,” she told me, reciting one of the group’s key message points. “It’s about a sense of place. It’s about authenticity.” She continued: “To be honest, there are wonderful sparkling wines made in the United States, except that they’re just not Champagne. The winemakers of Long Island should be very confident of the sparkling wine they make and should be confident about advertising it as sparkling wine.”

By the way, there’s another another winery not far from Duck Walk that makes only sparkling wines, and its name happens to be  Sparkling Pointe.

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Long Island wine

I am always looking for expressive, leaner wines that aren’t dominated by over-extracted fruit and excessive levels of alcohol. One can find these wines in Europe, of course, but in California it’s a rather tall order. Another place to look is the North Fork of Long Island, about two hours from New York.

I recently became more familiar with the wines of Shinn Estate Vineyards, which, in only a decade, has become one of the area’s leading properties and uses mostly organic farming practices. That’s David Page, one of the owners,  in the photo above. For an in-depth look at Shinn, take a look at my latest column on MSNBC.com.