Wine Libel

Last weekend I was out on the North Fork of Long Island with my brother. After doing what we needed to do, we stopped at five or six wineries. I had a long drive back, so wasn't up for much tasting, but just wanted to pick up some wine. I was a bit taken aback by the cost. Most were 18 to 25 dollars or more. At first I thought that these must be exceptional wines, until I tasted one producer's 26 dollar pinot noir that had me looking for water. Okay, okay, I was told that pinot noir grapes don't do well on the North Fork. So I tried the 38 dollar pinot noir -only slightly better, but sour still comes to mind. Let's go in a different direction, how about a merlot? Ack! Even at 18 dollars, it was far worse than anything I'd buy for $10 at a wine shop in NYC. The taste host (is that the name?) then told me they just got a new winemaker this year. Oh, so you know these wines suck. I honestly don't know much at all about wine, but I know when I want to keep drinking one. I suppose I discovered why this winery was offering its tasting for free.

We went to Pindar, probably Long Island's best known winemaker. A few years ago I saw a Pindar sign on some upstate vineyards, but the woman behind the counter insisted, at first, that when it says L.I. estate wines on the label, it's from the North Fork. I was asking because I wanted to know why we would be paying such high local wine prices if the grapes are being trucked in from who knows where. She later told me it could be 10% from somewhere else. I relented.

Here is where I show an amateur's connoisseurship. I couldn't stand the labels on the Pindar wines and I simply couldn't buy any that had those graphics (a good example). Probably stupid, but since all of their lower priced wines had these labels, I simply passed. I bought their most understated label Merlot at considerable markup, and have yet to drink it.

There has been research on how the suggestion of high quality affects people's positive reaction to the product. Label graphics are as powerful as someone's suggestion. Is that what is going on here? I have no idea how these wines taste, but my graphic taste simply refuses cheesy graphics. I find those above acceptable, if not absolutely favorable. I have yet to taste three of the four wines I purchased that day. Betsy and I did twist our tongues around the Pellegrini Cabernet which we thought was all tannin, needed to breathe heavily, and couldn't have been worth $25 a bottle but for the local price mark up.

Local doesn't always make better. Full disclosure: When I was in grad school I painted cheesy graphics on bottles of over-priced wine sold in a tourist town in New Mexico. I received two dollars a bottle and they went like hotcakes. The wine wasn't memorable.