Alice and Pascaline Head to LI for a ShinnVin Visit

Pascaline takes orange juice and strong coffee with no milk in the morning and she gets me into all sorts of trouble. When she was staying on my couch she said, 'I have to go into the vines.' And that's how we ended up on a sunny Sunday morning driving east on the long Island Expressway. Guilty as charged: I ignore my local wines. My biggest excuse is that I was brought up on Long Island, and let's just say, I was a vine planted to the wrong soil. In fact, I view myself as a survivor of the experience. But it isn't merely that. I am not sure what this shallow sand bar has to say for itself when it comes to the grape. I'm still listening, even if I don't turn on the radio station to hear the music all that often. I keep on remembering what Louisa Hargrave told me when we discussed wild yeast fermentation on the Island, she said she wasn't sure you wanted the taste of the land to come through. A very interesting thought. But then you are what you eat, and for a long time Long Island soil 'ate' a different crop, what was true then, might not be true in the future. Especially with attentive farming. I've been trying to find some information on geological studies of the area. Coming up with little absolute. The problem seems to be that the island (and the soil) is too wet to have preserved the evidence, but mostly Long Island is essentially a pile of sand and gravel left behind by a series of glaciers a couple of thousand years ago. The soils are not very deep, and just seemingly not complex. I pulled this from a very detailed Woodshole study Barbara chooses grass and clover cover over plowing. The clover is the chosen cover crop for those who work according to Fukuoka, it aerates the soil very much like plowing and forces the vine roots down beneath the fine clover root, creating a webby and deep root structure. The soil, as a result, was not impacted and dead like almost all the others we saw but spongy and quite perky and beautifully alive. (like in Champagne the naysayers say organic viti is impossible here.) We skirted around a moment of friction when twiddling my toe in the sand, I posed my belief that while Long Island, if worked as the Shinn/Page team works, can make enjoyable wines, it can't make profound wines. And that's okay with me. A credible wine of place, makes me happy enough. Sometimes profound is overwrought. There has to be room for well-priced lovely, unconfected wines to knock back. Not every wine has to be Nabokov. RIght? When David and Barbara told me about the rocks in their soil. I knew I had to back pedal. I wondered , if I hadn't taken lunch with them, would I have been so reticent about pressing my point? Was I bought for the price of a fritatta? Did I sell my point of view for a bowl of lentil stew? I kid. A little bit. But I still believe if they make a wine, a simple wine, that can deliver joy and a sense of place, isn't this enough? The Shinn/Page's are slowly reaching towards natural. Like most who choose that route, they are a little fearful, but making wine with no adjuncts is going to be their path. At that lunch, we drank the new release First Fruit (Sav Bl. with a smidge of semillon), which was quite pleasant and no reason why it shouldn't be a summer sipper. in the barrel room, the wines were successful, some to me marred by too much American oak, but mostly impressive. The best reds for me where their malbec and the petite verdot (and would really like the latter if not plunked in American oak). Why does everyone has to grow merlot? Because it's a grape Zelig? Merlot, like mint, takes to most places.But there are times, like on this Sunday, I think, you know? Even if the grape--whether in Bordeaux or Long Island, it is never my first choice, this merlot is okay. One thing we all agreed on, the wines they made with no yeast additions were far superior, displaying more nuance. This in particular told me heaps, that with the proper vineyard work, native yeast even here, is a positive and Barbara's vineyard work is effective. But for sure, great or quaffable, their's might be the most interesting address for wine on Long Island. Undoubtedly, if an when I write a wine list with room for a Long Island wine, Shinn will be on it. And if you're headed out that way for an overnight, their attached B&B is also one of the best addresses for lodging. For more on the visit, check out Pascaline's new blog