Winery Spotlight: Channing Daughters profile
Web Page: http://www.sommelierjournal.com/articles/article.aspx?year=2011&month=01&articlenum=52
An Old-Fashioned Wine Harvest
At one Long Island winery, they crush the grapes the way the Romans did—with their feet. Sophie Menin on what this means for their wine.
Picture a 180-pound man at a vineyard in Bridgehampton wearing waders and standing on top of a ton of whole grape bunches beneath a billowing white tent that might otherwise be used for a lawn party. With music blaring through the earbuds of his iPhone, he stomps his feet to crush the fruit. Five minutes later, he is up to his thighs in liquid that is quicksand thick. He works up a sweat. The juice bubbles and gives off heat as it begins to ferment.
This is not a remake of the classic I Love Lucy episode, “Lucy’s Italian Movie.” It is a portrait from the annual harvest at Channing Daughters Winery on Long Island’s South Fork, where Christopher Tracy, the exuberant and slightly manic winemaker, insists that the age-old custom of donning waders and stomping on clusters of whole grapes is the gentlest extraction method for red grape varieties in a cool-climate region.
“It’s a conscious choice about style and structure,” he says. “There is one person per bin to express the juice. We don’t crush everything. We want whole berries. The goal is to make wine that is structured, supple and sexy, which means minimizing the extraction of green unripe tannins.”
Tracy’s ability to look at the winemaking process with freedom and draw upon techniques that have fallen from fashion comes from being part of a team of winemaking iconoclasts operating in a region free from historical constraints. The North and South Forks of Long Island may have sunlight and soil reminiscent of the Loire Valley, but 40 years ago there were potato fields where vineyards are now planted.
The vineyard’s founder, Walter Channing, a sculptor who works with discarded tree trunks, is the founding partner of C.W. Group, a venture-capital business with a focus on health care. Tracy’s mentor Larry Perrine, Channing Daughters’ CEO and co-owner (known affectionately as “the guru” in winemaking circles), earned advanced degrees in soil studies, microbiology, enology and viticulture, concentrating on the interaction of soil, climate, and wine on Long Island. A partnership with the viticulturist Steve Mudd provides access to North Fork Vineyards planted in the 1970s. Tracy founded a theater company before attending the French Culinary Institute, working as a pastry chef, then going on to earn a sommelier certificate and a diploma from the International Wine Center. He's a Master of Wine candidate.
With 7,000 bottles spread over 26 bottlings, Channing Daughters fuses the creative energy of experimental theater with the hand-made values inherent in artisanal winemaking. Tracy plants the classic international grape varieties Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Chardonnay and Petit Verdot, along with more esoteric Austrian and Italian varieties such as Blaufränkisch, Dornfelder, Lagrein, Refosco, Pinot Bianco, and Malvasia. He ferments white wines with their skins on and calls them "orange wines." He ferments wines using indigenous wild yeast and lets the barrels sit outside. He co-ferments white and red fruit. He creates field blends by growing several grape varieties in one vineyard then harvesting and fermenting them together. He uses gravity bottling. He blends freely—in a wine called Sculpture Garden the sweet spice and bramble flavors of Blaufränkisch flesh out the plums and blueberries of Merlot.
—Sophie Menin
Venturesome Whites
Channing Daughters, in Bridgehampton, specializes in venturesome whites with complex scents and flavors that shift as the wines are being drunk...
Web Page: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/nyregion/08vinesli.html?_r=1&ref=long_island
Rose Wines for Summer
Wine columnist Jay McInerney says some of the best rosés are from Provence—and Long Island.
Channing Daughters 2009 Rosato di Merlot is selected as a top pick in a tasting of 2009 Roses from around the world.
Web Page: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282682495695468.html
Nothing Rings In Summer Quite Like Pretty-in-Pink Bottles With Local Roots
Coming Up Rosés
Channing Daughters Rosati amongst the Roses featured in this article...
Web Page: http://www.hcandg.com/jun0110/wine.php
Long Island Wine: No Longer a Long Shot
When I last reported on the wines of New York State - in Issue 165 - it was as someone who had only recently become seriously acquainted with viticultural Long Island. As I made clear then, the quality of the best wines issuing from what might seem like the unpromisingly supine finger that juts far into the Atlantic east of New York City is impressive..
Impressionism in a Glass
...complexities suggest the dabs and streaks of colors in Impressionist paintings...
Christopher Tracy has turned the Bridgehampton cellar in which he makes Channing Daughters whites into a kind of artist’s studio. Even when simple, these dry wines aren’t monochromatic; their complexities suggest the dabs and streaks of colors in Impressionist paintings.
An experimenter, Mr. Tracy addresses each vintage’s unique characteristics by shifting the proportions of the grapes used in blends and by calibrating the flavor relationships and accents, seemingly in restrained fashion. These wines have uniformly long aftertastes.
This approach explains why, year by year, Mr. Tracy’s portfolio of boutique whites, influenced by food-oriented styles in northern Italy, is Long Island’s most ambitious.
Channing Daughters’ prettily aromatic, appetite-whetting 2008 pinot grigio ($20), made with a dollop of chardonnay, has an elusive mintiness. The attractively hearty 2008 tocai Friulano ($24), produced from grapes from the Mudd West Vineyard, on the North Fork, evokes a late-summer melon.
Mr. Tracy’s zippy, creamy, palate-cleansing 2008 Scuttlehole chardonnay (a good buy at $16) is faintly figgy and pearlike. Produced in steel, it avoids the oak-barrel influences that have diminished the popularity of overly wooded chardonnays.
Channing Daughters’ 2008 Sylvanus ($24) is a masterly field blend: it uses muscat ottonel, pinot grigio and pinot bianco grapes that were farmed, picked and fermented together. The wine has a charming flower garden scent and flavors swirling with subtleties.
The weighty, refreshing 2007 Vino Bianco (a $20 bargain) is a triumph of blending: tocai Friulano, sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio and grapes from two different chardonnay clones. It delivers a sweet bouquet and, in the glass, hints of honey and herbaceousness.
—Howard G. Goldberg
Web Page: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/nyregion/18vinesli.html
Rosés and Sauvignon Blancs
Howard Goldberg writes up Channing Daughters' 2008 Sauvignon Blanc and 2008 Tre Rosati.
Grassy young sauvignon blancs evoke springtime, and vivacious young rosés herald summer afternoons. Last month’s blast of premature hot weather induced me to sample both from the 2008 vintages of Macari and Channing Daughters.
At its best, Macari’s spirited sauvignon blanc can be wonderful. The latest version, called Katherine’s Field ($21.99), is delicious. Like top-flight New Zealand sauvignons, this wine delivers a seductive cut-grass aroma and flavor. The scent and taste are also redolent of melons, and a gooseberry-like tartness suggests a sophisticated gin-and-tonic.
Channing Daughters’ winning Mudd Vineyard sauvignon blanc ($20), the color of pale brass with a greenish cast, is subtler. Soft and round, clean and zippy, it tastes slightly of asparagus and green beans. It would make a fit accompaniment to hot or cold pea or sorrel soup.
Almost all rosés are frivolous, but some are seriously frivolous, especially at Channing Daughters.
In cool growing seasons like those of 2008, the acidity in grapes at harvest tends to stay high — a boon for the refreshing rosés that James Christopher Tracy makes there.
Taking his cue from the food-friendly wines of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in northeastern Italy, he produces three dry $17 rosés, each from different grapes. He calls the program Tre Rosati.
The cabernet sauvignon rosato, from Mudd grapes, is almost a red wine. Its aroma brings summer roses to mind; its flavor, baby strawberries. The merlot rosato (also Mudd) is soft, a little plush and easygoing. The cabernet franc rosato, from Croteau Farm Vineyard fruit, has an almost sweet aroma; it is lean, feather-light and graceful.
Web Page: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/nyregion/long-island/10vinesli.html
Risk-taking Artistry
Conceivably, Channing's 2006 Mosaico is one of the most sophisticated dry whites ever created on Long Island...
Long Island: El Vinedo de Nueva York
In his column in this important Spanish wine magazine, Jose Penin writes up his visit to Long Island.
Excitement in a Bottle
In his March 9 column, Howard Goldberg calls Channing Daughters the East End's most cutting-edge estate and it's 2006 Meditazione a “masterly feat of blending.”
Channing Daughters aptly names one of its white blends Envelope. The Bridgehampton winery’s Web site explains, “We will continue to push the envelope of what is possible in our vineyards, our cellar and our region.”
Its grape-growing, grape-buying and experimental cellar work has made Channing Daughters the East End’s most cutting-edge estate. Its winemaker, James Christopher Tracy, who is also a partner, brings his sensibility as a trained chef to blends that are exciting when they succeed and interesting even when they do not.
Although I last wrote about the winery in December, I could not ignore the latest releases.
The appetite-whetting 2007 Mudd Vineyard sauvignon blanc ($20), named for the fruit’s source in Southold, is lightly herbaceous and delivers a kiwi-like bite. It consists of 97 percent sauvignon grapes and 3 percent chardonnay musqué grapes. (Musqué is a strain that yields a seductive muscatlike scent.)
Though disjointed, the brass-colored 2006 Envelope ($40) is provocative. Its 30 percent gewürztraminer overwhelms its 70 percent chardonnay. The wine is splashy, spicy and raisiny.
Channing Daughters takes inspiration from the zippy, fruity whites of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a region in northeastern Italy. Mr. Tracy’s Meditazione ($40) mimics vino da meditazione — meditation wine, designed to woo the intellect as well as the digestive system. The 2006 edition, a liquid fruit salad, is a masterly feat of blending. Consider these percentages: tocai Friulano (36), pinot grigio (25), sauvignon blanc (17), chardonnay (10.3), muscat ottonel (9.5), viognier (1.2) and malvasia bianca (1).
Mr. Tracy has written that Meditazione smells and tastes of dried apricots, citrus oil, crushed rocks, white flowers, light caramel and brown spice, with notes of chamomile tea and cider. That might be an understatement.
Channing’s wines sell out fast; walk-in customers are limited to two bottles of Meditazione.
Taste for Wine Can Be Taught
The Southampton Press writes about winemaker Christopher Tracy and the class he will teach this spring at Stony Broook University Southampton campus-the first ever class the internationally recognized Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET) will be offering on the East End.
According to James Christopher Tracy, “The funny thing about wine education is that, ultimately, it’s about pleasure and enjoyment.”
And he should know: The energetic young winemaker, who was recently enlisted by the Center for Wine, Food and Culture at Stony Brook Southampton to teach a new wine course this spring, made the comment recently during an interview at Channing Daughters Winery, where he is both winemaker and partner.
He had been delivering a rapid-fire account of the course and its creator, the prestigious British-based Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), when he cut to the heart of the matter, mindful perhaps that in his enthusiasm for the course’s highly professional approach and many fine features, the point of it all might be missed.
Yes, he acknowledged, studying wine has its “very esoteric, very specific” aspects, but in the end, he asserted, “it gives you the understanding and knowledge that enhances the potential for pleasure.”
Mr. Tracy, who has pursued his own wine studies to the highest levels, is well positioned to offer this assessment. Born in California, where his family had a vineyard, he came to Manhattan to study performing arts but soon found himself drawn back to his roots. While
working as a chef, he completed studies for a sommelier certificate, after which he went on to pursue the WSET curriculum to the top, earning its highly regarded diploma.
Then, last fall, he decided “to bite the bullet,” and go for the no plus ultra in wine world distinctions as a candidate for the Masters of Wine.
It could be argued that when Mr. Tracy and Stony Brook’s Center for Wine, Food and Culture Director Louisa Hargrave teamed up on the WSET venture, the partnership represented a depth and breadth of experience unrivaled anywhere.
Ms. Hargrave, who is well known on the East End for having established the first North Fork vineyard with her husband Alex in 1973, spent the next 27 years farming the land, learning the hard way but learning well. That expertise led to her leadership of Stony Brook’s Center for Wine, Food and Culture, where she created a wine education program that took a variety of forms before she decided last year to go for accreditation from WSET.
Ms. Hargrave explained that decision in a conversation last week at her Stony Brook office, noting that WSET is known all over the world. “They teach this very well structured series of courses,” she said, “and the student gets a certificate that is recognized worldwide in the wine business.”
She said she expected that the course would appeal to sommeliers, restaurateurs and wine retailers as well as to those who are simply interested in becoming more knowledgeable about wines and refining their tastes.
It was not easy to become accredited by WSET, she said, “It required all kinds of documentation.” And once the coveted “Approved Programme Provider” designation was obtained, there were strict guidelines to follow. The test that students take at the end of the eight-week intermediate course (the only level, so far, that the Center is authorized to offer), “is freighted in from London and must be kept under lock and key,” said Ms. Hargrave. The completed multiple choice exam is then sent back to England for grading.
At the intermediate level, “almost nobody fails,” said Ms. Hargrave, “If you go and you read the stuff, you pass. The advanced level is much harder and the diploma is really hard.”
Ms. Hargrave said she is looking ahead to possibilities for expanding the offerings with more advanced WSET courses and perhaps a one-day intensive course that would be “really introductory.” The series would fill “a real need on the East End,” she said, “... really on Long Island, and we are very excited about it.”
Exciting was also the word Mr. Tracy used to describe Southampton’s link with WSET. “This is a great program,” he said, “an internationally recognized program.” For people working in hospitality, retail and wholesale, “the credentials have weight,” he said.
Like Ms. Hargrave, he was eager to show off the stylishly produced packet of materials each student will receive and to laud its contents. The study materials are indeed impressive, not just for their artful graphics but for their clarity of approach. They include tasting guidelines, for example, that advise on what to look for in a wine’s appearance, its “nose” and palate.
Students also are exposed to factors influencing a wine’s style, quality and price, and to grape varieties, key wine-producing regions of the world and much more.
“It’s a very professional approach,” said Mr. Tracy, “a great fundamental education in wine style, production methods, tasting techniques.”
But can people without any particular sensory gifts really hone their sniffers and palates to new levels? That is a question many are likely to have pondered and to which Mr. Tracy has a one-word answer: “Absolutely.”
Of course, he conceded, there are some whose sense of taste or smell is superior at birth, but, he insisted, “education can make you a competent taster and evaluator of wine. That can absolutely be learned, taught, studied.”
Ms. Hargrave agrees and goes further, suggesting that if anybody can prove the point it is Mr. Tracy himself. “Chris is my dream teacher,” she laughed. “He is so charismatic, knowledgeable, and has one of the best palates I have ever encountered. People who take his course are the luckiest people on the planet.”
The course, which will meet on Tuesday evenings beginning April 1 in Stony Brook Southampton’s Chancellor’s Hall, costs $650 per person, which includes materials, text, tastings and exam. Online registration is at www.stonybrook.edu/winecenter.
East End's New Editions
In Howard Goldberg's year end New York Times column he writes that In the stream of East End white wines tasted this year, the most consistently vivacious ones came from Channing Daughters in Bridgehampton...
In the stream of East End white wines tasted this year, the most consistently vivacious ones came from Channing Daughters in Bridgehampton. This South Fork boutique and its winemaker, James Christopher Tracy, have delved so deeply into vineyard and cellar experimentation that every vintage brings new expectations.
Mr. Tracy, a trained chef, acutely understands how wines must be fashioned to heighten interest in meals as aperitifs and accompaniments.
Channing Daughters’ principal partners, Walter Channing and his chief executive, Larry Perrine, evidently have let Mr. Tracy have his way. His whites, which never disappoint, pointedly are inspired by the light-bodied but complex style of their counterparts in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a wine region in northeastern Italy.
A downside is that many of the Italian-style whites can be difficult to find; they sell out fast. Overall annual production of all Channing Daughters wines, white and red, comes to a modest 7,000 cases; many are allocated to members of the estate’s wine club, who agree to buy two bottles six times a year.
Other consumers need to stay alert, checking www.channingdaughters.com for news about periodic releases and quickly visiting the tasting room or wine stores and restaurants that stock bottles from the portfolio.
Despite vintage variations, the quality and style of these whites have remained dependable. If you lose out on a release, the next one in the genre will probably taste good.
An abundant supply of the widely available 2006 Vino Bianco ($29) is most likely to carry over well into the new year. In 2008, look for new editions of three blends — Sylvanus, Mosaico and Vino Bianco — as well as the Mudd Vineyard sauvignon blanc, regular sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio.
Wine Matters: Long Island
Can Long Island Make World Class Wines? Lettie Teague visits Long Island and reports that the wines she tasted at Channing Daughters were some of the best she'd tasted at any American winery.
Uncorked: North Fork Surprise
Jay McInerny visits Channing Daughters and Long Island Wine Country and reports that Long Island wine making has definitely arrived with some excellent whites and a few very good reds...
For the past 20 years, I've been visiting the East End of Long Island—one of the most beautiful, and expensive, landscapes in North America—but I have so far refrained from writing about the local wine. Despite periodic announcements of breakthroughs and blind-tasting triumphs, I wasn't convinced that Long Island wines were ready for prime time, or for my table. It hardly seemed like a positive indicator for the region when the vines at well-regarded Schneider Vineyards were ripped up to make way for a horse farm. But after spending the summer tasting and visiting wineries, I'm newly optimistic about what's happening in my own backyard.
Long Island winemakers haven't had it easy. Developers covet their land; the local wildlife covets their fruit. As I write this, I'm looking out the window at seven deer munching the lawn. Deer love grape vines. Eastern Long Island is also on the flight path of numerous migratory birds, most of which love grapes. Fencing and netting are an expensive necessity here, but there's no defense against Hollywood. The fact that merlot is the grape on which most Long Island vintners have been betting the farm seemed at first unfortunate in the wake of the 2004 film Sideways, in which that grape was cast as a cheesy villain. And yet the reds that really got me excited this past summer were, in fact, merlots: the 2001 Lenz Old Vines Merlot and the 2001 and 2002 vintages of the Grapes of Roth, made by Long Island veteran Roman Roth. These wines represent a happy medium between fruity California and earthy Bordeaux. Cabernet franc also has its proponents here, but the real news, for me, is the quality and freshness of the white wines and the rosés.
The East End of Long Island looks a bit like a lobster claw aimed at France. Along with fishing, potato farming was the backbone of the local economy on both the upper and lower parts of the claw. In 1973, Louisa and Alex Hargrave planted the first vinifera vines on the North Fork, where the two were soon joined by Kip Bedell and several other incurable optimists. Five years later, Hamburg-born playboy-entrepreneur Christian Wölffer bought a potato farm on the South Fork, which he turned into Sagpond Vineyards.
Geologically and meteorologically, the North Fork and the South Fork are fairly similar, with their sandy soils and their marine-influenced weather. Culturally, they are as dissimilar as Fitzgerald's East Egg and West Egg. The South Fork encompasses the Hamptons, the summer playground of Manhattan's plutocracy. The North Fork, home to some 30 wineries, has a certain Mayberry RFD ambience, an agricultural vibe that reminds some transplanted Californians of Napa Valley b.m. (before Mondavi).
John Irving Levenberg, the diminutive winemaker at Bedell Cellars, is one of those transplants. "We have a chance to do something unique in the wine world," he says. "That's why I came here." When he was working for Paul Hobbs in Sonoma, Levenberg produced super-ripe alcoholic chardonnays that weighed in at more than 15 percent alcohol. Long Island, with its cooler climate, produces wines with higher natural acidity and lower alcohol, and Levenberg is not the first to suggest—and hope—that the wine world is moving in that direction.
Flying in the face of the local merlot mania, Channing Daughters Winery, in Bridgehampton, specializes in white varietals and white blends, which are garnering good press and finding space on Manhattan wine lists. "We believe Long Island is a white wine region," says winemaker Christoper Tracy, another California transplant. "We also believe in blending, because we think we can make more complex wines." The blends are partly inspired by the whites of Italy's Friuli region, the climate of which Tracy finds similar to the East End's. My favorite is the Mosaico, an exotically aromatic, viscous, and complex blend of pinot grigio, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, Tocai Friulano, gewürztraminer, and muscat. Tracy also bottles single-varietal examples of Tocai Friulano and pinot grigio, both of which may be the best new-world examples I've encountered, and they're both great with the local littleneck clams. He also produces three excellent rosés, which cost about a third of the Domaines Ott rosé, the fashionable quaff here in the Hamptons.
If Channing Daughters' Mudd Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc is any indication, that varietal would seem to have great potential on the East End. In fact, the most impressive white wine I've tasted in months is Paumanok Vineyard's botrytised, late-harvest 2005 sauvignon blanc, an exquisite nectar that resembles a German eiswein.
Like several East End wineries, Channing Daughters also produces chardonnays in two styles, one lean and racy (Scuttlehole) and the other (L'Enfant Sauvage) fat and buttery—what I call lobster chardonnay. Despite the abundance of lobsters out here, I think the unoaked style is best suited to the climate. Long Island will never be able to compete with Napa and Sonoma in the Pamela Anderson School of Chardonnay. But as Long Island winemakers hone their craft, they are offering an increasingly attractive and sophisticated set of alternatives to the muscle-bound cabs and buxom chards of the West.
A Liquid Symphony
Michael Braverman says...It takes a lot of skill and a sophisticated approach to winemaking to get it right, and Mr. Tracy, with each succeeding vintage, has been turning out increasingly original, engaging, and well-made blends...
Most wines we drink are blends of some sort. Even a single varietal wine may contain up to 25 percent of other grapes. Winemakers do this to enhance color and aroma, to adjust such things as acidity, alcohol, oakiness, and tannins. But an even bigger challenge to a winemaker is to create an original blend, a nonvarietal wine based primarily on flavor and taste.
I recently sampled some blends produced by Christopher Tracy, the winemaker at Channing Daughters Winery in Bridgehampton. It takes a lot of skill and a sophisticated approach to winemaking to get it right, and Mr. Tracy, with each succeeding vintage, has been turning out increasingly original, engaging, and well-made blends.
In a way, it is like creating a recipe for food. Proper ingredients are essential, and the way they are combined must be balanced and precise. It should come as no surprise that Mr. Tracy trained as a chef before moving on to the cellar, and that he is drawn to sophisticated blends.
We tasted blends from the 2006 vintage that have recently been released or are soon to be released. I’ll comment in this column on two of those blends.
Vino Bianco is a deceptively simple name for a wine that is intricate and subtle. It is inspired by the white wines of Friuli in northeast Italy, an area that Mr. Tracy often visits and that has greatly influenced his winemaking style. It is composed of 27 percent tokai Friulano, 26 percent sauvignon blanc, 22 percent pinot grigio, 19 percent of a chardonnay clone called Dijon 96, and 6 percent of a different chardonnay clone called musque.
The result is a wine with clean, delicate characteristics, but with body and depth and layers of taste. Floral aromas, along with citrus, tropical fruits, and hints of spice, greet your nose, followed by minerality and a touch of what I can only call austere sweetness.
Tocai is a lovely grape native to Friuli that Mr. Tracy has used over the years in both blends and varietals. It is rarely grown outside Italy; Bridgehampton is an exception. The European Court of Justice has forbidden Italy to use the name Tokai Friulano, ruling this summer that only Hungary is entitled to use that designation for Tokay or Tokaj, a sweet wine.
The Friulians are fighting the ruling, and I hope they win. Of course we can drink and enjoy the same wine under a new name, but why should bureaucratic trade policies wipe out 800 years of history and tradition?
Most blends emphasize the traits of the grape varieties or the method of winemaking, but a field blend, where grapes are grown in the same field and then harvested and vinified together in the same tank, emphasizes terroir. The rationale is to capture and express in the taste the location and season in which the wine was created.
I can’t draw a direct line from field to glass, but I can say that Mosaico, an extraordinary new wine from Mr. Tracy, is absolutely sensational. Its composition is 34 percent pinot grigio, 33 percent chardonnay, 14 percent sauvignon blanc, 7 percent tocai Friulano, 6 percent gewurztraminer and 6 percent muscat Ottonel, all having spent their lives together.
When you sit down to analyze it you realize that each element adds something important to the complete wine. Allison Dubin, the general manager of Channing Daughters and wife of Mr. Tracy, pointed out that there is a symphonic nature to Mosaico.
She hit upon the perfect way to describe it. There is a lot happening, but it all works together harmoniously and seamlessly. The Channing tasting notes say, “This wine is a mosaic of grapes and a mosaic of vinification techniques, it is a mosaic of ideas and people, and it is inspired by the mosaic that is America as well as the mosaic of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.” It is a mosaic indeed, and a gorgeous one.
Vino Bianco and Mosaico sell for $29 each at the winery.
Web Page: easthamptonstar.com
Lured By Long Island
Howard Goldberg writes up the current wine scene on Long Island, highlighting Channing Daughters Winery.
I Can't Believe It's Not California
"I don't think anybody looks to long Island for white wine," Paul Grieco, wine guru of N.Y.C.'s Insieme and Hearth says. "But that's changing. There are few white-wine makers better than Chris Tracy at Channing Daughters."
Wine, Water, and Long Island's Wealth of Wines
Although going for only 30 years, Long Island's increasingly self-confident and self-critical producers now offer distinctive wines from 30 varieties. David Scheldknecht offers a guide to the region's top producers and wines.
You Say Roses, They Say Rosati
Howard Goldberg writes up the new 2006 Tre Rosati and calls the 2006 Mosaico one of the most sophisticated dry whites ever created on Long Island and one of New York State’s great 2006 wines.
Although most wineries are content to produce one rosé, or none, Channing Daughters in Bridgehampton offers a handful of rosati, to use the Italian term the winery favors.
In keeping with his preference for dry food-oriented wines characteristic of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, James Christopher Tracy, the wine maker, labels them Tre Rosati — three rosés — to emphasize that they form a trio. Each is $17, and each is distinctive, using grapes from different North Fork vineyards, separately vinified in steel tanks to preserve fruitiness and pizazz.
All three are enticing and, with a glowing salmon-pink color, strikingly decorative in sunlight. A light chill brings out the fruitiness; iciness would waste everything. The tiny production — about 800 cases were made altogether — almost certainly will vanish by early summer.
My favorite, by a shade, is the merlot rosato, from McCall Vineyard (Cutchogue) grapes. Almost a light red wine, it is round, creamy and redolent of strawberries. Mr. Tracy, a former chef, recommends pouring it with wild striped bass, shrimp, roast chicken, grilled sausages and tomatoes with mozzarella.
His cabernet franc rosato from the Croteau Farm Vineyard (Southold) offers a charming aroma and flavor. Its piquancy shows off a light raspberry-strawberry flavor. It begs for casual sipping; Mr. Tracy suggests serving it with oysters and clams, white-fleshed fish, vegetables, salads and ham.
The cabernet sauvignon rosato from Mudd Vineyard (Southold) is virtually full-bodied and carries the strength of a light red. Its aroma of tea roses is beguiling, and fresh acidity gives it digestive power. Pair it, Mr. Tracy says, with “heartier fare from the grill”: beef, lamb, chicken, pork, lobster, salmon, tuna, vegetables and mushrooms.
As beguiling as the rosati are, none of them matches the culinary artistry of Channing Daughters’ newest wine, Mosaico, one of the most sophisticated dry whites ever created on Long Island and one of New York State’s great 2006 wines.
This thrilling and technically daring $29 blend consists of pinot grigio (34 percent), chardonnay (33 percent), sauvignon blanc (14 percent), tocai Friulano (7 percent), gewürztraminer (6 percent) and muscat ottonel (6 percent). It’s a ritzy fruit salad in a bottle.
