At 132 Front Street, Greenport, NY 11944, Greenport Wines and Spirits is the most complete and knowledgeable source for fine wines for every budget. Mon-Thurs 10am-7pm, Fri-Sat 10am-8pm, Sun Noon-6pm.
Open later during the holidays.
Phone 631.477.6701 We deliver.
Being a "Swell" or being a member of the "swells" was once applied to folks of the gentry set - you know - inherited wealth, 9am risers, white slacks, Gatsby. There are other types of swells as well and they are small "s" swells. Christian Wölffer of the Vineyard is a swell but one who is a swell by "adjective" (remember adjectives modify nouns??) and a swell person by hard work; a swell person by all accounts and we are pleased to have the Vineyards wines for our tasting today. In this and many cases, being a lower case "swell" is highly preferable.
That is very true of so many of the vineyards in the area. Persons with grit and nerve making a go of it when the old return on investment (ROI) is somewhere past over the rainbow and the end of the earth. That takes the "long view" and we admire that. It can't be easy. So if Christian here in the photograph appears smiling in the kitchen, well all our swell friends with vision smile in the kitchen.
Enough of the platitudes for our vineyard owners. We are just glad to have Wölffer Vineyards in our shop for the tasting. Today, 3-6pm. Good for him. Good for us.
We are in the rhythm now. Shoes on. Ready to dance. See ya' later.
After such a hot day (temperature wise for certain), it is good to be home, feet up, getting psyched for for the Wölffer Vineyard tasting tomorrow. We have to fit into our elegant shoes in the morning that's for certain.
March yourselves over about 3p to our shop on Front Street in Greenport. You don't have to be Fancy Dans about it. Just come with a smile and an appreciation for 7pm in the summer evening with friends and family, a little Cole Porter in the background and a sip of something really really nice.
We put on our chic shoes this morning in anticipation of the Wölffer tasting Saturday. We like their wine very much and we like them.
Vineyards in our area are pretty neat places. They are entertaining and informal/formal/down to earth/elegant and easily so. Nothing seems strained.
As we are not "just wine", we think that this little number might be a good starter cocktail before the dinner wine This is very "Hamptons". It goes well with grilled salmon and tomato/basil/mozzarella on grilled bread slices...not diced up but thin sliced. Served very cold. Stimulating the tongue and the mind.
Of course after the 2nd "summer in a glass" it could be bluefish and Velveeta for all you'll care or for that matter, remember.
About 600 years ago, give or take, the Italian painter Botticelli composed this masterwork - The Birth of Venus. A hundred years ago, another Italian master, Respighi, composed a piece of music inspired by the Botticelli work.
It is a heavenly morning; cool, crisp, blue and a day to think thoughts of great things, beauty and good will.
So we walked into our shop this morning early because we have our usual Saturday wine tasting from 3-6pm (132 Front Street in Greenport NOT Main Street and to those two dozen people who waited outside last week on the wrong street - well you should have known better) and found a phone message that said, simple "Martha confirms that she will be there for the tasting".
We got all excited because we were thinking, Flag Day and Memorial Day recently and all that patriotic stuff that well it could be that Martha --- or, with stars in our eyes for a celebrity sighting it could have been that Martha.....
Or it could be Martha Clara Vineyards - our favorite Martha. Note to staff: A little clearer message writing wouldn't kill anyone.
We like these folks a whole lot. They are nice people and the wine is very good. We invited them to pour at our tasting Saturday (3-6pm - 132 Front Street, Greenport opposite the post office) and they are coming and we are glad. You will be too.
One thing that we do like about Martha Clara is the name. Mom's name. Too often vineyards take on weird names for their marketing - things that some PR firm dreams up and they are often good wines masked under a cutesy label; so cutesy that customers sometimes don't take them seriously. Of course there is a place for that and most of them do pretty well because the wine is often a very good label but we appreciate something straight forward. It disarms our customers by saying "here it is. named after mom".
You'll like this tasting. A whole bunch. And vitis vinifera is the grape the family first planted when they got the "wine bug". Nice choice. Besides you gotta love their choice of music (below).
So we have gone for days - weeks actually - without so much as a warm day let alone a scorcher. It doesn't seem fair. Now someone has to trek to the garage or the corner of the basement, find the air conditioner, clean it up, get it in a window and cool down a 10x10 area where everyone crowds together.
If this doesn't break by Saturday, you know where to come. The wine tasting is free from 3-6. 132 Front Street, Greenport. Opposite the cactus.
Long time back the locals figured out that the soil here produced pretty good if not great grapes for wine. Little, I'd guess you'd call them orchards, abounded and over time those who prefer a bit more organization moved nature's free form to a bazillion feet of organized rows. To be honest, we like it both ways as Long Island wines are super and the farmers had the elegant free forms that filled the family needs. By the way, our tasting today (3p-6p 132 Front St., Greenport) has a nice variety of what we think of as really good "organized" wines.
We don't dislike the looks of the vineyards one bit. In our opinion, that order and symmetry is borderline fantastic. The single plant, spaced well from its neighbors looks all the better for it. Distinguished. Solitary. Elegant.
Sunday is father's day. He wants to
1. sleep
2. play golf
3. go fishing
4. 1-3.
You want
1. a nice dinner, romantic and all that stuff
2. to join him in his activities
3. let him please pick all 3 of his wishes and pack him a lunch.
We offer the above solution. Our tasting is 3-6p Saturday. Long Island wines. Best of our stock. You can find something to reel him in with. Hook line and sinker.
Sunday is Father's Day (every day is father's day we are told). Seriously, one of our regulars popped in yesterday right about closing and he had a lot to say on the subject let me tell you. His center of observation was that Father's Day came about as a result of Mother's Day and was the work of those with an interest in selling gifts suitable for fathers. We always thought that both were the dream child of the greeting card companies but they seem Johnny-come-latelies to the game and it was the tie, pipe, fishing pool types who were the early supporters. Mom gets her flowers, a bottle of wine for a special dinner, and oodles of choices. Dad gets a new tie. Hmmm. Commercialism is the father of all ideas.
Not so actually. There appears to be on altruistic person in the midst of this; one Sonora Dodd who lead the movement. We looked it up. But some things our friend observed rang true and we, in our store, notice the changes over time and particularly over our lifetime.
Our friend noted that in his earlier days it was inconceivable that someone would buy Dad a bottle of wine for Father's Day. He noted that in his lifetime he doubted that he ever saw his dad drink a glass of wine with dinner except at Thanksgiving and then it was Mogen David. Now there are plenty of people bustling in to bring some of dad's favorite wine over to visit on Sunday or if his taste is to heartier spirits, what used to be years back a fairly small variety of really good spirits is now a smorgasbord of interesting tastes and not so much for drinking a strong drink but to taste a good taste and purchases for Dad are viewed that way.
We have two lives or so I think anyway. One is the led life; that day to day grind and mix of pleasures and pains, yin and yangs. The other is the one in our heads; equally mixed of course with primal screams in the car, sighs, and remembrances and daydreams.
The morning feels perfect to the touch, breeze barely stirring, birds doing their thing and some quiet time. Was visiting a while ago this morning with a friend who was planning a small brunch, crepes, fresh fruit and mimosas. One card table to hold everything and a nice setting to walk around, down to the beach to hear the lap lap of the smallest waves, and just a few chairs so to force folks to stand and mingle and not just glomp onto a chair and become a statue.
My friend was all dithery about what music to play inside so it would spill outdoors. We mentioned that nature was doing pretty well on its own and didn't need much help.
We daydream about such things as a leisurely brunch, 'swells' in Gatsby-white garden attire, croquet on the front lawn, pleasant chitchat that doesn't tax the mind.... It is a nice idea but we'd much rather just take a minute on this gorgeous Sunday morning and go out, sit down with coffee and let it all just overwhelm us.
Anthony Nappa from Anomoly Vineyards will be our host at the Saturday tasting. To say the least, this is one hot wine and he is bringing 4 for us to sample.
I'm not going overboard here in saying you'll like this a lot. 3-6p Saturday 132 Front St. opposite the post office (and the clock in the park doesn't work so I'll remind you again tomorrow).
Ever notice that when you wake up in the morning and hear some music or think of some tune you can't get it out of your head? It just sticks around all day. Some days you get lucky. Other days, well, not so much.
Belmont is tomorrow during our tasting no less. How dare they?!? Father's day is next weekend - not that you need reminding.
I'll go back to minding my own business and listening to my brain play music.
Babe Ruth retired on this day so we asked him to come over to the tasting - kinda a celebration or remembrance I guess you'd call it. He claimed he was busy but when we told him the Queen was leaving after the dinner and flying over he said sure. But NO Red Sox fans. Said it was ok. Were were serving white at the tasting. Not sure what the Queen likes but pretty sure we have something for her. Heard she is pretty down to earth.
We've had a series of these mornings and it is pretty much ideal. Just takes your breath away.
A friend visited with us for a minute and we commented on the harbor and water. He opined, however, that the perfect day for him was a dawn like today's following by a cool, breezy day then around 5 or so, the fog would come up, a little mist perhaps and night would come on with streetlamps glowing in mist, the streets damp and that cool freshness we get living by the sea. In otherwords, a reverse image of sunrise.
He isn't a "gloomy gus" or anything, he just stated that he liked to have all of it in one day and it started and ended with a "fade to light, fade to night" thing.
Have to think about it some. It may be a big city thing or a jazz thing. We like that idea of nightfall.
