Wine...old wine

Nearly 40 years ago the Hargraves said nuts to potato farming and planted a vineyard.  This was a time when land was cheap and the North Fork of Long Island was just waking up to the realization that it had something to offer other than potato chips (think of Long Island as an alligator with its mouth open and the top of his mouth is what is called the north forth - the lower half of his jaw is the "fab" Hamptons).  One got good land and the other got Lady Gaga. So life isn't fair in most instances.

Not wanting to sound like a tour guide but the North Fork now abounds in farms that survived and, well a 'bunch(es)' of Wineries (I'm out of grape analogies - you are safe for the time being).  Not the giant enterprises we imagine but more of a Napa feel without the affectionado-enthusiasts we in the east associate with that scene.  This is "day trip" country where families go to corn mazes, pick pumpkins, parents drop into one or two wineries for a sample or a memento of the day bottle to bring home and search for an affordable restaurant that serves kids.  It is what it is.

The two east-west roads on this top half of the alligator's jaw are jammed from now until the last brussel sprout is sold around Thanksgiving and a few of the tasting rooms stay open year round because you can buy wine there cheaper than at the liquor stores and they are always open on Sundays when sometimes the liquor stores aren't.  The quality is pretty good and inroads have been made into trendy NY City restaurants but mostly we are talking moderately priced wine that is a good bargain and we have our favorites.

So why this thread today? Other than getting caught in traffic for 2 hours to make the 25 miles from here to there on Sunday there is a little of the "twixt and 'tween" going on here. There are, plus or minus, 3000 acres in production...about 5 square miles.  Not much.  Until the supreme court made a ruling in I think 2008, New York restricted instate shipments to individuals so if your local store didn't carry a vineyard, you were out of luck.  Mostly the industry and area are influenced  by a certain provincialism that has a mission to avoid change.  That isn't all bad but it does put a damper on things.

Size seems to matter.  If it weren't for "associations" bonding for the common good (mostly political fights with the various towns and villages about activities) it would be completely a certain "let them eat cake" mentality big to small and an every man for himself way of doing business.  That perhaps isn't "fair" as assessments go, but again, they are so busy fighting city hall about a zoning exemption for live music for a wine and cheese that they sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture if indeed there was one to begin with.  The height of the folly was when a "wannabe" opened a production facility and tasting room in an old filling station in Greenport...right downtown and cleverly marketed it as "the last winery before the Orient (the last town on the north fork).  They applied for and received zoning clearance to do this but the opposition came from one of the big hitters who felt that the setting was "demeaning and an insult to the industry".  I immediately felt my time was better spent in other pastures and in truth at that point not because I didn't agree that a filling station perhaps wasn't apropos, but that a line had been drawn and a dictate was issued purely on the "merit" of I'm bigger than you are do as I say.

Well, if you have money to invest at more than a few hundred grand an acre and time to wait until you have a harvest that actually tastes like something, this is the place for you.  Just don't get lost in the corn maze. They don't help you out of it.