WINE & SPIRITS

SUPERIOR WINES ARE IN OUR OWN BACKYARD

This winter I received a bottle of 2005 Cabernet Franc from Bedell Cellars. Sniffing and tasting, I was awe-struck. The wine was full of vivid aromas with red and black fruit (raspberry, blueberry) layered on hints of graphite and game. It was balanced, well-structured, complex, juicy, mouth filling—in a word, delicious. The next morning I phoned the winemaker to find out just what was going on at Bedell.

The winemaker himself is what's going on. John Irving Levenberg, previously of Paul Hobbs Winery in Napa, has been in place at Bedell for over a year. The new 2005s are his first red vintage. "We're very excited about the reds of 2005," he said when I reached him. "It was a gorgeous growing season, hot and dry." That near-perfect grape growing summer, he continued, was followed by a sudden panic just before harvest, when the tail end of a hurricane brought eight straight days of pounding rain. Fortunately, the vineyard's canopy was in superb shape and all the fruit survived.

"You've just tasted what I came here to do," he said. "To combine the unique fruit forwardness of a California wine with the mid-palate and structure of a French wine." In layman's terms, Levenberg wanted to create a wine that hits your palate in all the right places at once, giving you a full sensory experience. The result is a wine that's not a high-alcohol California fruit bomb, but more nuanced and age-worthy with great texture and a long finish.

Weeks later I tasted Levenberg's just-released merlot. Once again, I was incredulous. It had a nice structured complexity with berry, tobacco and olive notes. I called Levenberg. "These wines are in a position to change the wine industry, and I don't mean just the Long Island wine industry," he said proudly.

Levenberg has the clout to make those kinds of claims. He's made wine in St. Emilion in France, and in Marlborough in New Zealand.