North Fork Adventure - Part I

I’m back!  With a recap of the awesome weekend I spent on the North Fork of Long Island!

This past December, I gave the bf an xmas gift of a day full of Long Island wine tastings and a night’s stay on the North Fork (*great gift idea if you have a wine loving significant other!).  We were waiting for spring weather and finally made the journey out east on Saturday morning.

I am a planner – in that, I love itineraries, plans and arrangements.  So obviously I planned every step of our weekend and decided we would start with lunch in Mattituck.

This is Love Lane Kitchen, fondly located on Love Lane in Mattituck.  The entire street is about one city block long and has a pharmacy, gourmet market, cheese shop, gift shops and restaurants.

We took advantage of outdoor seating since it was an absolutely perfect day.  This is the alley way bordering the outdoor seating area of the restaurant…the area was strewn with petals from this flowering tree. 

Between the menu and the blackboard specials, we had a hard time deciding what to eat…in the end we both chose salads and had a side of sweet potato fries.

His Cobb salad:

My blackboard special grilled chicken, avocado & mango salad:

And fries!

These were sweet and crispy with chipotle mayo dip on the side that had a nice little kick to it.  Both salads were so fresh…that is really the best word to describe them.  The combination of delicous food, great weather and the ambience of Love Lane was just lovely. 

Because of my excellent planning skills, we timed lunch perfectly to allow for a stroll around Mattituck (including a stop in the Village Cheese Shop) and made it to Shinn Estate Vineyards for their 1:30 vineyard walk.

Owner, Barbara Shinn, led us on a walk through the grape trees and talked about their organic and sustainable philosophy around growing grapes and producing wine.  It was so interesting!  Not only do they farm naturally and organically, but they are in the process of buildling a hundred+ foot wind turbine that will power the entire wine-making facility and they have solar panels that provide electricity for their bed & breakfast accomodations.  I could go on and on with my learnings from Barbara!

Although no grapes were growing yet, we did see flowers blooming on many of the vines (and a bee doing it’s job!).

After learning about the benefits of weeds, composting and irrigation, it was time to head in for a taste of Shinn’s wines.

Of the 4 pours we had, my favorite was the Coalescence, which Shinn describes as  “an all stainless steel fermented winemakers blend of chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, merlot blanc, and riesling, showcasing a refreshing style with a splash of fruit and a zing of acidity.”  The bf loved the Red blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah and took home a bottle.

After Shinn, we made a few more stops on our to way check into our bed & breakfast…at Castello di Borghese, Pellegrini Vineyards:

And Pugliese Vineyard, where we had our own little picnic, thanks to:

Thanks to Mattituck’s cheese shop, we grabbed a small piece of red pepper pecorino romano cheese and some crackers to have as a snack at one of Pugliese’s picnic tables.

I guess we enjoyed our snack time a little too much and made it to our last stop, Bedell Cellars, just as they were closing their tasting room.    Snapped some pictures anyway!

This was a beautiful property…guess we’ll just have to make another trip to taste their wines! 

All in all, Shinn was definitely the most personal tasting experience.  It was wonderful to meet the owner and see how passionate she was about making wine.  We didn’t even make a dent in the expanse of wineries there are on the North Fork so I can’t wait to go back and try more. 

This post has already gotten pretty long, so I’ll recap the rest of our afternoon and evening tomorrow!