Thirty-five wineries part of next New York event on Dec. 6 in Lower Manhattan

Have occasionally chatted with executive director Jim Trezise of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, so I don't mind snatching from his weekly e-letter when I see item pertinent to my audience. Here are a couple entries from the one that arrived this morning.

VINTAGE 2009 is one of the longest, slowest, and latest in recent memory, but is also surprisingly good under the circumstances (particularly the fall harvest season), according to the final edition of the “Veraison to Harvest” e-newsletter published by Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) and underwritten by the New York Wine & Grape Foundation.

Statewide Extension Enologist Chris Gerling wrote an excellent wrap-up with comments by winemakers in various regions like Christopher Tracy of Channing Daughters on Long Island: “What we have will be super, there’s just not that much of it” (reflecting a smaller than normal crop). The weekly e-newsletter is a timely and valuable resource for grape growers and winemakers alike, and now CCE is launching a sequel called “The Cellar Dweller” to provide up-to-date information for winemakers on cellar techniques to maximize wine quality.

The research and extension provided by Cornell University and the Geneva Experiment Station have been a vital part of the dramatic improvement in quality of New York wines, and we are delighted to support their efforts.

-

2,500 WINE GLASSES disappeared yesterday at the New York State Fairgrounds. That’s great news: Everyone who attended the first-ever Pride of New York Harvest Fest in Syracuse got a complementary “Uncork New York” wine glass, which means over 2,500 consumers attended in just one day. We had to put in an emergency order for 2,000 more to cover today’s anticipated crowd, having thought the original 2,500 would cover Friday through Sunday.

The Department of Agriculture & Markets, State Fair, and New York Wine & Grape Foundation partnered on this venture, which far exceeded our expectations. With about 50 wineries and 50 food producers scattered in the spacious Horticultural Building, it was hard to judge the size of the crowd, so the wine glasses gave us the most accurate count. To my knowledge, this was the largest single-day crowd of any event we’ve ever been involved in, and there’s still today!

The “locavore” and “locapour” trend seems alive and well in the greater Syracuse area, as people were not only sampling but buying, stocking up on New York wines and foods for the holidays. Between my seminars (Wine & Chocolate, Wine & Cheese), I sampled a wide array of wonderful local foods—cheeses, chicken meatballs, sausage, sauces, pastries, wine ice cream—which reaffirmed that New York Farm Country is a gold mine for fabulous fare.

Now we just need to have consumers ask for New York wines at liquor stores and restaurants, and New York foods at grocery stores. New Yorkers supporting New Yorkers: It just makes $en$e.

-

SIP, SAVOR & SHOP AT CITY WINERY is our next event on the afternoon of Sunday, Dec. 6 in lower Manhattan. More than 35 wineries from throughout the State will be joined by a dozen artisanal food producers and several restaurants to give participants a taste of New York while listening to a popular jazz trio from Long Island.

Tickets are only $45, and available at www.citywinery.com/events/40934. For more information on the participants, go the home page of www.newyorkwines.org.

No Nouveau, but the old standbys should make visitors plenty happy at Pinnacle Ridge

Lehigh Valley Wine Trail will be among several in the state that will hold Nouveau Weekend NEXT weekend, a day or two after the Beaujolais from France is released in the state stores. You probably recognize the term even if you pay little attention to wine. Nouveau is, obviously, new wine that only a month or two ago was hanging out in clusters on the vine. All nine wineries will be participating in the promotion, which will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the 21st and noon to 5 p.m. on the 22nd.

-

Pinnacle Ridge Winery will be one of those wineries, indeed open until 6 both days, only you won't be getting the Nouveau when you exit the Krumsville exit of I-78 and drive the half-mile or so to the tasting room. Had a chance to bust on winemaker and owner Brad Knapp on Thursday about Nouveau Weekend without the Nouveau, since he decided not to make it this year after producing it since 1995. The reason? Simple. Lots of effort for minimal reward.

"I had made a few from Chambourcin," Knapp said by phone, talking about the grapes he incorporated into his previous Nouveaus. "Which is troublesome because it's so late [to harvest]. It's hard to get the wine made in time. And then I was purchasing some Dornfelter, which is an early ripening German red variety, which works reasonably well. But I was not real happy frankly with the sales of that style."

Knapp said that he and wife Christy were touring wineries on Long Island when they entered Macari Winery, which "put out a wine called early Chardonnay, I think it was called. And it was an oaked wine, released very early. I think it was November. And they did very well with it and we decided to try it. They pitched it as an Austrian pub wine. . . . the taverns around Vienna will serve this newly fermenting wine in the fall. So we pitched it that way, that this was an Austrian-style Nouveau. And that actually did well. Slightly sweet and very fruity."

But, he added, no matter what he made, it was a lot of work to produce a small quantity of wine that just didn't have much appeal. "The bang for the buck was low, let's put it that way," Knapp said.

So what you'll get instead will be a few of Pinnacle Ridge's award-winning line of wines paired up with Turkey Day foods. They'll match up their 2008 Chambourcin and slightly sweet, fruity 2008 Chambourcin Rose with smoked turkey breast piled on lightly toasted baguettes. Those will be topped with a variety of Robert Rothschild spreads: Caramelized Onion Balsamic Spread, Champagne GarliC Honey Mustard or Raspberry Cranberry Horseradish Sauce.

-

Check out the Web site to see the wide array of food to be served at Customer Appreciation Weekend on Dec. 5-6 and the chocolate and red wine pairing event the following weekend. Knapp said there have been plenty of customers to appreciate this year.

"Our business is phenomenal," he said. "We're doing great. My take on it is that most of us, myself included, there's a strong element of entertainment. And we're inexpensive entertainment. And we're local entertainment. So folks are getting in their car and driving around the countryside and spending a few bucks on buying a few bottles of wine instead of hopping in a plane to go somewhere or doing something more expensive."

Soups, pasta highlight menu at two Maryland wineries this weekend

Wanted to loop in a couple of events going on at Maryland wineries the next couple of weekends before focusing on what's on tap in P-A. Soup in the Cellar starts tomorrow (Saturday) in the 1830s wine cellar at Boordy Vineyards in Hydes, and coming off several days of rain and chilly temps, the timing couldn't be better.

This event will run from 1 to 5 p.m. the next three Saturdays. In addition to the wine and soups pairings and organic bread, you'll get a tour of the winery, some music, and a chance to toast marshmallows over an open flame cauldron. Expect a choice of the following soups: Southwest Shrimp and Corn Chowder, Tomato Cheddar Bisque, Mulligatawny, and Double Smoked Bacon & Black Lentil Soup. The winery is located 15 minutes north of the Baltimore Beltway.

Over in Frederick County, the already multi-decorated Black Ankle Vineyards has plenty cooking heading into the holidays. The year-old winery that already has produced Maryland's "wine of the year" in 2008 and 2009 Governor's Cup judging will be serving as host of another in a series of wine and dinner pairings at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Chef Paul Dongarra of Dionysus Kitchen will produce a three-course meal including pasta that will pair up with Black Ankle wines. Cost is $35 and $8 for a kid's plate. You can find out more by e-mailing Melissa Schulte at melissa@blackankle.com or calling 619.203.8230.

Next weekend the winery will have its chefs on location to answer questions about Thanksgiving foods and the wines that go best with them, plus Maryland-based artesian chocolate company Parfections will be in-house to build customized boxes of truffles for folks wanting to add some sweetness to their dinner table. A unique promotion called Family Photo at the Farm ($25 per session) will take place the day after Thanksgiving.

Owners Ed Boyce and Sarah O'Herron note on their Web site that supplies are dwindling on several of their wines, including their medium-bodied red blend called Passegiata (two cases left), their 2007 white blend called Bedlam (a winner of the 2008 Maryland Winemasters' Choice award, there are four cases left), and their white varietal called Gruner Veltliner (3 cases left of the '08 vintage).

Finally, back to the business of blogging

Forgive the lapse in posts. One week vacation seems to translate in almost two weeks out of pocket with all the work that accumulates.

Wanted to start anew by first thanking those who sent recommendations, etc., to me for our trip to Paris last week. Ate at a couple of the restaurants, saw a few of the suggested sites. I'd go back in a heartbeat. We didn't run into a single case of the rudeness that has long been associated with traveling through France. Whether it's the new climate created by Barack Obama or the fact it was the offseason or just, well, things have changed, I don't know. Maybe the global economic meltdown has softened the edge. But all our questions were politely met with the answers we needed to get where we need to go.

Had two restaurants I wanted to recommend, one with a name I'm still trying to track down. The other was La Varangue in Rue Cler, near the Eiffel Tower. Offered up as a place to go in Rick Steves' Paris book, it's a tiny eatery along a side street that seats around 25 on five or six tables. Philippe Mollay, who ran a French catering shop in the Philly suburbs for three years during the early part of this decade, brings over his chalkboard and reviews all the offerings for the evening in detail. Steves wrote that the cuisine is simple and cheap, and he was right on both counts. Add a thumbs up for the house wine and the chocolate cake, which Phillippe makes. And if you stop by, you might run into Phillippe's daughter, who pitches in as a waitress.

Have plenty of entries to post; some from interviews that go back a few weeks. See if I can't clear my notebook by the end of the weekend.

Galloping Goose can't keep enough Cabernet Franc on the shelves during first weekend

Told from across the Mason-Dixon Line that several wineries should be opening in Maryland over the next few months, according to the executive director of the Maryland Winery Association. Kevin Atticks wrote in an e-mail Monday that Galloping Goose Vineyards in Westminster sold out of its Cabernet Franc at its grand opening this past weekend.

-

He noted that late winter/spring opening include Knob Hall Winery in Hagerstown, DeJon Vineyards in Hydes (in Baltimore County, near Boordy Vineyards), in addition to two others on the mid/lower Eastern Shore.

Turkey's on table for class at Chaddsford

So what's going on at Chaddsford Winery? You could probably ask that question year-round and get some sort of answer. Pretty much the busiest of all the regional wineries is cooking up an event called Turkey Tastings for the next three Sundays, beginning Nov. 7

Its wine educators will pair dry white wines, dry red wines and some sweet wines with honey brined turkey, herb stuffing, roasted yam wedges, seasonal vegetables, cranberry relish and pie. In essense, it's your pre Thanksgiving laboratory all for the cost of $20. For reservations, call 610.388.6221.

At the bottom of Eric Miller's always-interesting vintage notes is a short piece about the origin of a new wine recently released called Essence. He writes of a trip that he and Lee took to Priorato, Spain, last June. "There, Alvaro Palacios was kind enough to allow us an extraordinary tour of his extraordinary vineyards and winery. There we experienced his [costly] magnificent blend of Terroir, what his mountainous, oddly planted mix of varieties could transform into a landscape of smells and flavors. There I tasted an immaculate picture where no one could say this image had too much sunset, too much heat of the day, too much Cabernet, too little Syrah. There I dreamed of my own landscape reaching beyond any single grape variety, deep into an unrestrained pure finesse of intrinsic geography and climate.

"And so, the day after we got home, I began blending a simple percentage mix of the best '07 grapes grown on the Miller Estate and vinified in my hands. We bottled it this spring and I truly feel it expresses the essence of what I can do as a winemaker with my dirt and my grapes and my lifetime of winemaking experience. It might not surprise you that we have named this terroir blend 'Essence.' It is a very small lot (71 cases), a blend of five reds grown on our estate and two additional reds from the region. I hope you’ll try it and lay down a bottle or two in your cellar."

Manatawny puts Meritage on sale for November

It's called Manatawny Creek Winery for a simple reason: the winery sits alongside the Manatawny Creek in central Pennsylvania, sporting a mailing address of Amityville. Manatawny is a native American term that the winery's Web site means: "Where we meet to drink." Well, I'll take their word for it.

Our one visit with another couple lasted a couple of hours, what with the snacks to nosh and the many wines that owner and winemaker Joeanne Levengood produces. I found my share of dry reds and whites to savor; and if you don't like those the line runs from sparkling to fruit to sweet to several end-of-the-evening beverages that will rock you quietly to sleep.

Levengood's newsletters are always a mix of tasting room sales and vineyard education, definitely worth sharing. They'll have their 2006 Meritage reduced by 30 percent for November, with an additional case discount. Perhaps a sign of what's going on today, this is the first time that the Meritage has ever been on sale. Meritage is a dry, oak-aged, red blend of the Bordeaux varieties that includes Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot.

Manatawny's annual wine and soup day is scheduled for next Saturday, the 7th. A beef and vegetable soup (and vegetable soup alone for the veg-heads) will be on the menu and paired with Chambourcin.

Levengood noted in her e-letter that rain has curtailed plans to use volunteers to pick, similar to a number of other wineries throughout the region. "This Saturday looks like a washout again," she wrote, "so it looks like the remaining grapes will get picked on weekdays. Sorry to everyone who wanted to help us pick on the weekends this year! It was so odd how it rained (or rain was predicted) on almost all of the weekends this fall."

And then there's my favorite part, the question of the month. Can wine bottles be reused.

Levengood: "We get lots of people wondering if they should bring back their empty wine bottles for us to reuse. We cannot do that because wine bottles need to be sterile when bottling. The bottles arrive to us from the manufacturing plant in a sterile condition, because very high temperatures are used to make glass wine bottles. The amount of time and energy required to sterilize a used wine bottle is prohibitive for us. So what should you do with your empty wine bottles? Give them to your home winemaking buddies. Or if you’re creative, check out the web for all kinds of ideas including wind chimes, candles, pourers and even cutting in half to make drinking glasses. And if you’re not creative or drink a lot of wine like we do, put your empty wine bottles in the recycle bin to get reused elsewhere."