West Side Wine

It gets pretty quite around NYC in these last days and weeks of summer. So Ellen says, “Hey, AB, why don’t we take advantage of this and get out of town?”  Hard to argue with that, so that’s what we did this past weekend. Some friends of ours have a weekend place in Sullivan County N.Y., and it just so hapened there was a wine festival at the nearby Bethel Woods Performing Arts Center. I never miss a chance to hit one of these, and this one was featuring a bunch of wineries from the Hudson River Valley and the Finger Lakes. 
Now, I know there is a lot of mediocre-to-bad wine from NYS, but there is also a lot of really good stuff that often gets overlooked. We all know about the blueberry, peach and strawberry “wines” that get made up there, as well as the Vidals and the Seyval Blancs.  Not my cup of tea, but they sell a ton of it, and it pays the rent. What gets overlooked are the Rieslings, Gewurztraminers and Cabernet Francs, which are first-class. 
A few wineries to ask for from your local wine guy would be Anthony Road (Riesling, Pinot Gris, and a fabulous rose of Cabernet Franc), Swedish Hill (really nice Traminette, which is a gewurztraminer hybrid, and the winery was just named NYS Winery of The Year), and Fulkerson (a drier Traminette and not a bad Pinot Grigio). 
Other wineries from upstate that were not at the festival, but should be sampled, are Red Newt, Millbrook, Herman Weimer and Dr. Konstantin Frank (killer Rkatseteli).
Enjoy those dog days…not many left!

I know Sally Field will never live that line down but, in fairness, sometimes it works. Thanks to all of you and your faith in what we’re doing, we’ve made it again this year into the 2009 NYC Gourmet Shopping and Entertaining Guide with TOP SERVICE (EXCELLENT) ratings for the second year in a row. It means a lot that you recognize and appreciate that we take what we do very seriously, although we’re not geeky-serious. We leave that to other places with higher priced wines and snooty staffs. We always keep in mind that you have a lot of choices as to where you get your wine, and that keeps us on our toes. That’s good for you, because we’re always on the lookout for the best wines you’ve never heard of for a very friendly price. Enough of the commercial, but every once in awhile we just have to toot our horn. Thanks again, and we promise to keep up the good work. You guys are tough, but that’s good.  Easy is no fun.