Page Six showers wine country with love

The New York Post’s iconic gossip column and magazine has a lot of good things to say about the Long Island wine region.

In the latest Page Six magazine, one writer dubs our North and South Forks “The New Napa,” and she makes a good case for it.

Not only is the region unique in how it joins farmers, winemakers and a robust fishing industry in a relatively small geographic area, she says, but more and more respected New York City chefs and foodies are settling there, and establishing business. At the same time, wines are picking up esteem (and a few more celebrity fans).

From the write-up:

Barbara Shinn of Shinn Estate Vineyards in Mattituck agrees. “There is nowhere else in the U.S. that has fish, shellfish, produce and wine within such a small area like here in Long Island wine country,” she says.

Now a growing number of tourists are falling for the allure of Long Island wine country—even in winter. Just 90 miles east of Gotham, a quick two-hour drive will get you to the North Fork. Once there, driving from one end to the other takes just 30 minutes and a ferry can shuttle you to the South Fork, meaning you can easily cover more than 4,000 acres of vineyards, interspersed with farmlands and beaches, spread across Long Island Sound and Peconic Bay. No wonder celebrity chef Rachael Ray is a regular—she’s often seen at favorite wineries Paumanok near Riverhead and Lenz in Peconic. Senator Hillary Clinton spoke at the Long Island Farm Bureau dance fundraiser at Martha Clara Vineyards this July. And the annual Jazz on the Vine festival—six weekends of more than 60 free jazz performances at wineries and restaurants that takes place February 14 to March 22 next year—doubles the number of visits to wineries by boldfacers and regular folk alike.

Vintner Roman Roth was one of the pioneers of the Long Island wine wave—the Germany native has been in charge of Wölffer Estate Vineyard in Sagaponack on the South Fork, one of the area’s established wineries, for 20 years. High-profile fans such as hotelier André Balazs and Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander have recently commissioned the winemaker to create private bottlings for them. For Roman, the recent changes have been “dramatic. The wineries are producing much higher-quality wines; the vineyards are more balanced, and, like the winemakers, they are older, which has pushed the bar higher.”
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