Wine made in New York, Art made in Brooklyn
By Alie
Our farmers’ market presence has always been a bit scattered. One weekend we’re in Queens, the next in Midtown. Well not anymore. Aside from being in all those wonderful places, we now have a permanent tent at the Park Slope Farmers’ Market. Starting this Sunday (Oct. 11th from 11am to 5pm) and running through December, you’ll be able to taste, chat and of course purchase all our wonderful juice. We look forward to being part of the Slope community! See you guys there!
Speaking of great Markets, we’ll be pouring and and selling at the Union Square Green Market this Friday, October 9th from 9 am till 6pm. Come on by and pick up a couple of bottles to have with your local leeks!
By Alie
Being a part of NYC’s Green Market scene is nothing new here at BOE, but I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about this one-of-a-kind market experience. BOE is proud and excited to be part of this unique event, the New Amsterdam Market. The brainchild Robert La Valla and Cerise Mayo, the market takes it’s inspiration from some of the world’s most historic bazaars, Les Halles and London’s Borough Market. It’s also a celebration of one of New York’s first economies. The setting, situated on South Street between Peck Slip and the Foulton Fish Market, is in the same spot as the original South Street Market, where some of the city’s first residents procured produce, cheese and meat from farmers who ferried their wares in from across the river in Brooklyn.
Following in that tradition (although we’ll be driving, not boating), BOE will set up shop amongst some other great local wineries (Paumanok Vineyards, Bridge Winery). We’ll be pouring samples, so come by and try before you buy! The market will run one Sunday (starting this Sunday, September 13th @ 11am) a month through December. Check the website for more dates and information.
See you there!
www.newamsterdammarket.org
New Amsterdam Market Video
By Alie
Its hard to imagine, but summer is almost over. We here at BOE are heating up as the weather cools. We’re going to be all over town in the coming months, including several in-store tastings, as well as green-markets. Please swing by the following places and say hello (and take home some BOE!). Keep checking in for updates.
.In-Store Tasting @ Red, White & Bubbly: Sept. 11th, 5pm-8pm, Park Slope
.In-Store Tasting @ Big Tree Bottles: Sept. 12th, 4pm-7pm, Bushwick
.New Amsterdam Market @ Fulton Market: Sept. 13th, South Street Seaport
.In-Store Tasting @ Astor Wines and Spirits: Sept 18th 6pm-8pm, 399 Lafayette St.
Speaking of heating up, Brooklyn Oenology took home several awards at this year’s New York Food and Wine Classic! Wines from all over New York State were submitted and tasted by a panel of experts. Of the dozens of wines in the competition, BOE garnered the following medals:
.Motley Cru 2006 - Silver Medal
.Social Club White 2007 - Bronze Medal
.Viognier 2007 - Bronze Meadal
And…Motley Cru 2006 was selected as Best of Appellation, from Appellation America!
That’s a lot of metal folks!
By Alie
Check it out - we’re going to be sampling the wines, and SELLING the wines at two farmer’s markets this weekend!
First, BOE is the featured winery at the opening weekend of the brand-new Fulton Stall Market, in what was the Fulton Fish Market at South Street Seaport. The Market is opens on Friday, May 22 and Saturday May 23 from 10 AM to 6 PM, and we’ll be at the New York Winestand pouring samples and selling bottles amongst our neighbors from New York and New Jersey. At the market you’ll find coffee, flowers, artisan breads, sauces and chutneys, cheeses, seafood, produce, and CUPCAKES!! I know where I’m headed for my break… heh heh. Visit the Fulton Stall Market website for more deets on the vendors.
Then, on Sunday yours truly will be at the Carroll Gardens Farmer’s Market from 10 AM to 4 PM for a repeat performance; more tasty samples and tasty bottles for sale. It’s located on Carroll Street between Court and Smith Streets, just a block from the Carroll Street F-train stop.
At both markets, we’re offering a special discount to celebrate Memorial Day Weekend, and springtime, and sunny skies… buy any three or more bottles and get 10% off! And have yourself a damn fine long weekend. Hope to see you out there!
By Alie
Oh, yeah… It’s official! BOE wines are now being distributed in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C.!
This is thanks to Andrew Stover, sommelier extraordinaire for OYA Restaurant & Lounge and SEI Restaurant & Lounge in Washington DC. Andrew found me at the New York Wine Expo last year, and then took on the Chardonnay and Social Club White for his two restaurants, so we’ve been working together for a year now.
Andrew has started up a portfolio called Vino 50, the Fifty States of Wine, which represents wines from all around the country, and not just from CA, OR, and WA. His portfolio also includes wines from Idaho, Colorado, Michigan, Arizona, Virginia, and New York, and soon from many other states too. BOE is his New York selection, and the entire portfolio is being distributed by Siema Wines throughout VA, MD, and DC, and taking BOE with it!
Who knows… maybe BOE will end up in the White House??
By Alie
Hello all. There has been an item on the list of wines available out there in the world that has been bugging me - specifically, a wine whose marketers have been trying to promote it as something that relates to Brooklyn.
It’s a line of wines called Green Point. Green Point Wines are from Australia, people - nowhere near us. And, to boot, it’s imported by the great French luxury brands conglomerate, Louis Vuitton - Moet Hennesey (LVMH). LVMH happened upon a wine from halfway around the world that happened to have a similar name to one of our neighborhoods, and has been trying to purport it as a wine that has something to do with this part of the world.
Needless to say, this irritates the crap out of me. This wine, this Green Point wine, has nothing at all to do with Brooklyn, not even New York, let alone the United States.
I first came across this wine last year at Summer Screen in McCarren Park Pool; they had this well-produced video montage of rolling green vineyards, alternating with stark view of the urban landscape (presumably from somewhere in Brooklyn), with lovely drippy phrases like “from the lush hills… to the sophisticated city… ” scrolling through the scenery, trying to elicit a connection between this winery and our Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint.
This really frustrates me, because BOE is my little company, with which I’m trying to do something genuine and meaningful to Brooklyn and our local area. Many people I’ve spoken to about this wine hadn’t at all realized the truth about this wine until I told them. So, I bring the news to you - beware the imitators!
By Alie
Well, here I go bragging again. We’ve won more medals. We dun good.
This time, the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition at the end of March. We got four:
- SILVER - 2006 Motley Cru (yee-aah!!! Motley’s first medal!)
- BRONZE - 2007 Chardonnay
- BRONZE - 2007 Viognier
- BRONZE - 2007 Social Club White
The great thing about this competition is that all the proceeds go to benefit Camp Good Days, a retreat in New York’s Finger Lakes for children and families who suffer from cancer and other major diseases - all all of the camp’s services are free to these families. So, it was about a lot more than just winning prizes. Make a donation at their website!
By Alie
This week, Appellation America announced their results on their Best-of-Appellation (BOA) evaluations of New York wines, and they awarded us four gold medals!
- 2007 Chardonnay —- Gold
- 2007 Social Club Red —- Gold
- 2007 Social Club White —- Gold
- 2007 Viognier —- Gold
Appellation America (www.appellationamerica.com) is a website dedicated to American wines, and is a detailed resource for understanding the great variety of wines produced in North America and their characteristics as influenced by the terroir in the growing number of AVA’s, or American Viticultural Areas, in the U.S. Appellation America regularly conducts comparative regional tastings, the purpose being to not only define a set of characteristics that represent the terrior of that particular area, but to also identify the area’s producers whose wines best showcase those characteristics and the quality of the area’s craftsmanship in the region.
BOE’s wines will be featured on the website’s Best-of-Appellation Wine List as wines that define the quality and identity of the region!
By Alie
On Thursday evening these week, I teamed up with Beatriz from Brix Wine Shop, and Terrence the Cheese Monger from Brix’s sister cheese shop, Barnyard, to put on the second of their Cheese School classes.
The evening was titled “American Artisan Wine & Cheese”, and so, we focused on the night’s discussion and tastings on crafty little cheeses from the home turf, and paired them up with the Brooklyn Oenology wines. From tasting these cheeses, you would think that they were from France or elsewhere in Europe with a much longer milk-fermenting history.
The class was also a casual lesson in cheese and wine pairing. There were some cheeses and wines purposefully matched together, but towards the end of the class we just started mixing and matching to just see what would happen. We started with a gem called “Bijou” (OK, OK, that means “jewel” in French - bad joke), which is a goat-milk soft-ripened little dot of cheese from Vermont Butter and Cheese Company. I could have put the whole thing in my mouth and eaten it all up, and probably would have if I were not in polite company. Alongside it we tried the Social Club White; while the cheese had a bit more pungency than the wine could stand up to, the wine’s acidity was a good match for the inner creaminess.
Next we had a thicker-rinded, mold-washed raw cow’s milk cheese called Constant Bliss from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. LIke the Bijou, it had a softer boundary underneath the rind and a denser center, but the rind was that much more powerful, and while not a double creme, it had the weight of one. We matched that up with the Viognier, and, let me tell you, that Viognier keeps on surprising me. It keeps on developing in the bottle; it’s a medium-bodied very light-colored wine, but don’t let that fool you; it’s flavors are robust. It’s packed with peaches, pears, citrus, and passionfruit, and when it’s matched with a funkier cheese, those flavors stand out even more.
Viognier surprised us again with our fourth cheese, the Bayley Hazen Blue, also from Jasper Hill Farm. As Terrence puts it, it is a Stilton-styled cheese (which is a funk-erific cheese if ever there was one!) that is “fudgy and dense” - again, the Viognier fruit really stood out. The Bailey Hazen also sang here too; it’s pungent spiciness popped towards the end of the palate. Before we tried this combo, we had tried the Bayley with Motley Cru. I liked this pairing too, because the Motley Cru black pepper somewhat softened the blue in the cheese, and the wine’s red fruits were accented nicely. The wine also had enough acidity to counterbalance the cheese’s fat content. But, in this pairing, I felt the cheese took a back seat; it didn’t get to express itself as strongly with the Motley as it did with the Viognier. This was counter-intuitive at first, since one might expect a stronger wine to match more evenly to a stronger cheese. Upon discussing it, Terrence and I agreed that the Viognier pairing was akin to making that classic match of a dessert wine to a blue cheese, but that it was minus the sugar - somehow these two just worked together!
The most versatile cheese of the night was the third one, Thomasville Tomme, a buttery, semi-firm, cheddary raw cow’s milk cheese from Sweet Grass Dairy in Georgia. It paired well with just about all of the wines (we didn’t get to try it with the Social Club White, ‘cuz we polished that off right at the start of the class…ahem.). First we tried it with the Chardonnay, and it was great; the wine’s acidity again was a good match for the butter-fat of the cheese, and interestingly, the wine started out fruity in the beginning, then the cheese’s tangy flavors presented themselves, and then it finished with nuttiness from both the Chardonnay and the Tomme. Cool! After this point, once the fourth cheese arrived, I set out the Social Club Red and 2005 Merlot, and we just passed these around the table and did a big mix-and-match session of the reds and the remainder of the whites. Both the Social Club Red and Merlot were good matches for the Tomme. I really liked the Merlot with the second cheese too.
Terrence is as passionate about cheese as I am about wine - maybe even more so! It’s fun to hear him talk about the history of American cheese making; he’s also very knowledgeable about the history of the American dairy industry, and how the demise of small dairy farmers actually drove the artisanal cheese industry into existence. Once big agribusiness consolidated much of the dairy farms, smaller ones turned to cheese making to created an added-value product that would command a higher profit margin to bring more cash flow into the farm. But, not having any recipes at hand, they turned to European recipes to get started, and then infused the recipes with their own twists to make a their own distinctive style. That, combined with American flora that feeds the herds, gives the American artisanal cheese industry its own identity. Go visit Barnyard one day and hit up Terrence for a Brief History of Cheese, and you’ll hear a very interesting story.
Anyway, I’d like to thank Terrence and Beatriz for having me a their guest wine speaker, and to thank the attendees - we had a blast! Below is the graduation photo:
brixcheeseschool.jpg
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Graduation! Terrence the Cheese Monger is third from the left; I'm on the right.
By Alie
Wow - I almost forgot to announce this! BOE 2007 Chardonnay is now available at The Four Seasons Restaurant in mid-town. I am so amazed about this!
I went to Four Seasons on the Friday afternoon just before the New York Wine Expo started that evening. It was the soonest appointment we could get, and I thought, well, the earlier I can try to make this happen, the better - even though I had the Big Show coming up in a few hours. The Four Seasons was worth it.
We met with the venerable Julian Niccolini, the sommelier and a managing director. He is such a gentleman, so stylish, and a perfect fit for this 50-year-old legendary establishment of the power set. If you’ve never gone there, do - it’s got great decor, which I think is largely unchanged since the 60’s, and it’s so James Bond cool and timeless, like a woman of great style (check out the website for pix). Anyway, he was a lot of fun to chat with. When he said yes to the Chardonnay, that just set me afloat of on top of an already great day. Try it by the glass at the bar.
