Shout out from Detroit

Sandra Silfven, who has been writing about east-of-the-Rockies wine for nearly 25 years, gave the Long Island wine industry some space in her column in the Detroit News this week. She mentions Jim Trezise, executive director of the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, and the upcoming symposium “The Art of Balance: Cool Climate/Maritime Wines in a Global Context,” which will take place at Southampton College of Stony Brook University next week. I’ve bought my ticket and look forward to an interesting two days.

Mucho airén

Cool packaging is one way this company is trying to breathe new life to airén, the most planted grape variety in Spain. Pronounced eye-ren, this wine, from Second Story Selections, smelled faintly like honeysuckle, was crisp and fresh with a lime peel finish. It was long on the palate and a light lemon color. Not fancy, not complex, good summer drinking wine that should be on the shelf for $9.99.

Dropping fruit

The last week of July will be remembered as the week of the big thunder/lightening storm. On Sunday it rained and thunder cracked just outside the house for a good hour and a half. My mother, who lives in Quogue on the south shore, said she got some hail.

Not here though (that would be bad.) The sun is back and vineyards workers at Bedell Cellars are busy pulling leaves and dropping fruit on the reds.

Donna Rudolph, assistant vineyards manager, says the winery has 10 workers out and figures they can clear the fruit zone of about two acres per day.

One flight up

Second Story Selections bills itself as a boutique importer/distributor of “wines with the energy, depth and complexity that might come from artisanal practices such as organic/sustainable viticulture, small hands-on production and uncompromising commitment to balanced aroma and structure.”

Wines that “might come from …”? Second story’s portfolio makes a point of indicating which wines come from “sustainable” vineyards. This, however, is a term of art rather than science.

What’s open now

Castello di Porcia 2006 Traminer Aromatico

Traminer aromatico is another name for gewurztraminer. This wine is from the Friuli Venizia Guila region of Italy, in the north east corner of the boot, kind of behind the knee. According to the Oxford Companion to Wine, the grape’s origins are from a neighboring region, Alto Adige, around the village of Tramin. This grape, first noticed circa 1000 AD, was a pale comparison of the heady, perfumed gewurztraminer we know today. It also has as a parent, pinot. Tasting note after the jump.

BYOB

The Roggis were in on Friday night and brought with them some of the most delicious California chardonnay. The couple has an extensive collection of California wines and relationships with a lot of the winemakers. I’m now kicking myself because I didn’t write down the vintage of the DuMOL. If I remember correctly it was a 2004.

Burgman

Michael Feuerstein’s in town. Zooming around in his white Mini Cooper and Rambo-red crocs. This time he showed up with — guess what? — Burgundy, the only wine he believes has the mid-palate essential to well-made wine.

He brought two wines from a new-to-me producer, Devevey. We tasted the 2005 Borgogne blanc and the 2006 Volnay. Both are made from purchased grapes. Devevey also has its own vineyards.

The blanc is a good value, and should retail for around $25. It has a fresh meaty nose of red apple, and I wrote it was crisp meaty and minerally on the palate.

The Volnay is a $50 bottle of wine and I found faint culinary herbs behind a red cherry nose. with fine grippy tannins and a long finish.

Also in the group was the Sylvain Pataille 2005 Passetoutgrain. Which should retail for about $20.

Guerrilla dining

Last night Matthew Boudreau, the executive chef at the Ram’s Head Inn on Ram’s Head Island on Shelter Island, was taking a busman’s holiday. He was in the restaurant with three friends at the end of a two-day experiment in guerrilla dining. As far as I understand it, the group hit up as many as three restaurants each night ordering bottles of Champagne and appetizers.

At the Frisky, they got my second-to-last bottle of Agrapart & Fils “Les 7 Crus.” That link is in French. More info on the wine from the importer’s website.

The Leap

One of the focuses when studying for the Diploma in Wine and Spirits is to be able to determine, through practiced tasting and writing a tasting note that conforms to the WSET standards, if the wine you’re drinking is a quality wine. In one class Lisa Granik, MW, gave us an acronym — BLIC. Which stands for balance, length, intensity and complexity. This is easy to remember. But in practice, it’s not enough to say the wine is balanced. You have to say the high acid is balanced by the intensity of the fruit, or the high alcohol is balanced by the high extract. Or all the structural elements — acid, alcohol, tannin — are at medium levels; one’s not out of whack.

Local chard sold locally

The Patio restaurant in Westhampton Beach has contracted with Raphael to make private labels. Starr Boggs, another restaurant in Westhampton sells wine under its own label that’s made by Lenz.

Starr Boggs is a great restaurant; the Patio, a venerable Westhampton institution, has new owners. My sister and I are going to check it out tonight.

The last time I visited Rich, the winemaker at Raphael, he gave me a sample of the red and the white. The white, 100 percent chardonnay is very good. It’s simple light wine that is made to go with food from the excellent 2007 vintage. It’s a light lemon green color, with a clean youthful nose and medium pronounced aromas of crisp apple. It’s dry, got medium alcohol, medium acid and medium pronounced flavors of apple and some citrus with a medium + finish.

I decided to practice writing a WSET-approved tasting note, which is the standard when studying for a diploma in wine and spirits. The information in the note is then used to determine the quality of the wine and anything else you can discover: variety, region, age, etc.