The Cork Club April 2024 Selections
A look at the "other" white grapes of the North Fork of Long Island AVA
I’ve partnered The Cellar d’Or, a great wine and cider shop in Ithaca, NY, to create a one-of-a-kind wine club that delivers some of the most delicious and unique wines from the Eastern United States right to your door. These aren’t bin ends or mass-produced, factory wine garbage. These are real wines made by real people. They are the wines I’m drinking myself — from producers you’re probably not going to find in any other wine club.
Chardonnay is the most-planted white wine grape within the North Fork of Long Island AVA — my home wine district. Sauvignon blanc is perhaps the most important today in carving out a unique regional style — a style that can’t (and shouldn’t) exist anywhere else. I think an all-sauv blanc club shipment might be interesting later this year, but today I want to highlight some of the continued experimentation happening in my hometown wine region.
This month’s shipment includes four wines from Bedell Cellars and the winemaking team of Rich Olsen-Harbich and Marin Brennan, who recently took over as head winemaker. This four-pack also features four “other” whites being grown and made here on the North Fork. All also happen to be from the 2023 vintage.
First up is the Bedell Cellars 2023 Melon de Bourgogne. I think this is the only melon being produced on the East Coast and it’s a grape you may or may not know, but it’s the grape that Muscadet is made from in France’s Loire Valley. This locally-grown example is a bit fruitier than the mineral-driven French examples, but it does showcase a saline edge.
Speaking of saline edges, Bedell Cellars 2023 Albariño has some of that too, along with all of the fruity-floral notes you’ll find in Iberian examples. This is a grape that is growing in popularity up and down the Eastern seaboard — and this is one of the best examples. This is benchmark-type stuff.
Viognier is fairly widely grown in Virginia. There was even a time when those marketing the state’s wines anointed it as the signature grape of Virginia (that was a mistake). This Bedell Cellars 2023 Viognier has all of the exotic aromatic impact of the more southern-grown examples, but much more freshness and acidity — and thus, balance. Viognier doesn’t always taste like this up here, but when it’s right, it’s right. Fresh-cut melon and honeysuckle aromas and flavors explode here.
Part of Bedell’s “Small Batch” line of wines grown in the Corey Creek Vineyard, Bedell Cellars 2023 “Small Batch” Aux (short for the grape it’s made from, auxerrois). I know of a tiny bit of this being grown in the Finger Lakes, but it is best known in the Alsace region of France, even if it’s grown throughout Europe. I admittedly don’t have much experience tasting Old World auxerrois, but this Long Island example is extremely aromatic with citrus and quince fruit and terrific acidity.
And there you have it — my picks for the April 2024 Cork Club shipment. I know you’re going to love these wines as much as I do.