Long Island Wineries

While we love all that NYC offers, every now and then, we think it is worth it to jump in the car and enjoy the area outside the city. Invariably, when we are plotting one of these escapes, we think of Long Island, and of the great wineries concentrated on the North Fork. Here is a alphabetical list of places we've visited on these tours:

Bedell Cellars
36225 Main Road (Route 25)
Cutchogue, NY
Phone: 631-734-7537
The Bedell Cellars group now includes three vineyards (Bedell Cellars, Corey Creek Vineyards and Wells Road Vineyards), two tasting rooms (at Bedell Cellars and at Corey Creek), one winery, and a commitment to world-class wines. Founder Kip Bedell is often called "Mr. Merlot" because of his belief that Long Island's North Fork has the perfect climate and soil for producing great merlot wines.

Broadfields Wine Cellars
275 Clearview Avenue
Southold, NY
Phone: 631-765-6403
Broadfields is an artisanal winery exclusively producing handcrafted red wines from estate-grown grapes. The husband-and-wife owners are lifelong wine lovers with a vineyard management philosophy that emphasizes low crop yields and hand-harvesting of the best fruit at the last possible minute to capture all the flavors of the season. You'll find Broadfields wines available for tastings and purchase at The Tasting Room.

Comtesse Therese
Union Avenue & Route 105
Aquebogue, NY
Phone: 631-871-9194
Theresa Dilworth, one of the owners and the chief winemaker at Comtesse Therese, is an international tax attorney who obviously knows a lot about good wine: her relatively new winery won plenty of awards and accolades right out of the gate. But while her merlot is getting the media's attention, it is her big, oakey chardonnay that we fell in love with. You'll find Comtesse Therese wines available for tastings and purchase at The Tasting Room.

Corey Creek Vineyards
45470 Main Road (Route 25)
Southold, NY
Phone: 631-765-4168
Now part of the Bedell Cellars group (see above), Corey Creek remains a boutique vineyard nestled next to the Corey Creek, an inlet that feeds into Peconic Bay. You can taste their wines at Bedell Cellars or at their own tasting facility, which has a lovely deck overlooking the vineyards.

Laurel Lake Vineyards
3165 Main Road (Route 25)
Laurel, NY
Phone: 631-298-1420
Laurel Lake Vineyards blends one of the oldest vineyards on the North Fork with one of the newest winery buildings. Their emphasis is on light, drinkable wine at affordable prices. Their colonial-style building and adjoining wrap-around porch is the setting for live music most weekends during the summer.

Lenz
Main Road (Route 25)
Peconic, NY
Phone: 631-734-6010
Year after year we look forward to Lenz's sophisticated, well-balanced wines. We agree with the Lenz promotional materials that declare Lenz produces "outstanding food wines which is what we think a great wine should aspire to be."

The Old Field
59600 Main Road (Route 25)
Southold, NY
Phone: 631-765-0004
The Old Field sits on farmland that has been family-owned and operated for five generations. Look out for the hens and roosters that strut around the barnyard as you make your way to their cozy tasting room. Enjoy some of their Pinot Noir jelly on the crackers you nibble between tastings of their premium red and sparkling wines.

Osprey's Dominion Vineyards
44075 Main Road (Route 25)
Peconic, NY
Phone: 631-765-6188
Named after the majestic fish hawk that graces the summer skies, Osprey's Dominion Vineyards touts their products as "wines that soar above the ordinary." We agree. Their pleasant tasting room/store is adorned with art featuring their namesake bird. They also have a nice outdoor area where they hold music events throughout the summer.

Paumanok Vineyards
1074 Main Road (Route 25)
Aquebogue, NY
Phone: 631-722-8800
Walt Whitman featured the North Fork region often in his poetry, describing the caressing winds of the Atlantic, the "healthy air and soil" and the beauty of the "Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine." His love of the earth and his use of the Indian name, Paumanok, for Long Island ("Starting from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born") provide fitting inspiration for Paumanok Vineyards, where the owners believe in "growing the wine" with an emphasis on the intense care and development of the vines in the fields. The result is award-winning wines that are helping put Long Island on the wine-lovers' map. The winery is a renovated turn-of-the-century barn surrounded by a spacious deck that overlooks the vineyards.

Peconic Bay Winery
31320 Main Road (Route 25)
Cutchogue, NY 11935
Phone: 631-734-7361
The General Manager of Peconic Bay once said, "We want to stay small so that there is enough time to taste every single barrel and segregate the higher quality lots from the rest." His philosophy is evident in Peconic Bay's consistent production of award-winning and critically acclaimed wines. Tastings are done in a Dutch Colonial-style barn that also houses a pretty assortment of wine-related gift items.

Pellegrini Vineyards
23005 Main Road (Route 25)
Cutchogue, NY
Phone: 631-734-4111
The first thing you'll notice about Pellegrini is the clean lines and crisp design of its winery building and its label, testament to Bob Pellegrini's graphic design background. Although you may be tempted to go straight to the tastings, don't miss the chance to follow their self-guided tour around their production center to learn about their winemaking philosophy. Your new knowledge will pay off in an appreciation of their elegant wines.

Pindar Vineyards
Main Road (Route 25)
Peconic, NY
Phone: 631-734-6200
Enjoy Pindar for what it is: the producer of commercial (rather than artisanal) wine and the host of some really fun events.

Pugliese Vineyards
Main Road (Route 25)
Cutchogue, NY
Phone: 631-734-4057
Pugliese is small and friendly with beautiful bottles hand-painted by one of the owners. We are especially fond of their ports and dessert wines.

Raphael
39390 Main Road (Route 25)
Peconic, NY
Phone: 631-765-1100
We love Raphael's glitzy, Mediterranean-styled winery: the tasty room is magnificent (it would be fun to host a special catered event here) and the store offers a dizzying array of wine-related products in addition to bottles of Raphael wine. Perhaps with all this splendor, it is no surprise that we are always seduced into buying more bottles of their wine than we really should, given the prices here in relation to other area vineyards. Unfortunately, we invariably get the wine home and wonder why we liked it so much.

Ternhaven Cellars
331 Front Street
Greenport, NY 11944
Phone: 631-477-8737
As the most easterly winery on the North Fork, Ternhaven proclaims that they are the "last winery before France." By even the standards of Long Island producers, Ternhaven is tiny (their production goal is 600 to 700 cases a year) and their location in a former gas station/garage hardly seems to have the pedigree of all the 100-year old barns they compete with, but their wine is well considered and worth the extra miles.

Wolffer Estate
139 Sagg Road
Sagaponack, NY 11962
Phone: 631-537-5106
Wölffer Estate calls themselves "an American winery in the classic European tradition." You'll see the European influences in the Tuscan-style building and the imported French oak barrels. The American influences are reflected in the emphasis on merlot and chardonnay wines.

Directions
To visit the North Fork wineries, take the last exit off the Long Island Expressway (#73) to County Road 58, which becomes Route 25 (Main Road). Green "Wine Trail" road signs will guide you to the wineries.

To visit the South Fork wineries (the Hamptons Wine Trail), take the Long Island Expressway to exit #70, then drive south along County Road 111, which connects with Route 27 East. Continue, following the winery signs.

To avoid backtracking, you can travel from one Fork to the other using the ferry boats which link Greenport, Shelter Island and Sag Harbor. You'll use Route 114, no matter which direction you are coming from.

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