MANHATTAN, March 2, 2020

There was definitely a feeling of anticipation as the eight winery representatives and ten members of the trade sat around the communal table in the private dining room of Craft Restaurant in early March. Nine wines, three savory courses, three wines per course was the setting. The room was quiet and remained so throughout much of the lunch. Attention to detail was the angle at this tasting because it’s not often that anyone is able to taste nine Long Island red wines with a minimum of ten plus years of bottle age as the entry criteria.
 
Any serious drinker of red wines should be excited by this opportunity, but New York red wines are not ubiquitously in the lexicon that includes “do not drink until” language. But that will change and is exactly why we’ve done this, now two years running.
 
I must applaud each of the NY Drinks NY participating Long Island wineries and any New York winery who keeps a library of their wines. By being able to show the fine wine trade how your wines age is perhaps the best tool for selling current vintage reserve, rare, or more expensive bottlings. Even better if your library is large enough to sell some of that inventory to, say, a restaurant with a highly visible wine program. (All it takes is one bottle to be listed.)
 
It’s actually easier than one might think to read about the past vintages of New York. Many of the wines tasted at this lunch -- which ranged from 2010 and back to 2001 -- have been well-reviewed in the most important wine periodicals. But really, the only way to assess these wines is to taste them now because reviews, while often helpful, are never absolute.