2004 Borghese Barrel Fermented Pinot Noir

Region: Long Island

Country: U.S.A.

Alcohol: 12.5%

Price: €22.00

Closure: Cork

I recently spent some time visiting a friend in New York. The wine freak in me meant that a visit to Long Island was always going to be on the cards. The Long Island wine region is around 90 kilometers from New York city and at around 25 years a relatively young wine region. The region has warm, humid summers and cold winters with moderating influences in the form of the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island Sound and Peconic Bay.

Castello di Borghese Vineyard & Winery (formerly known as Hargrave Vineyard) is located on the north fork of Long Island. The vineyard, established in 1973 by the Hargrave family, has 84 acres under vine and produces around 10,000 cases per year. With the selection of Pinot Noir as their flagship wine the owners, Ann Marie & Marco Borghese, have gone away from the trend of using Merlot and Cabernet Franc grapes as primary red varieties.

This wine is the Barrel Fermented Pinot Noir, a wine that I was most impressed with when tasting at the winery. Here is what I thought of it:

Light cherry red in turning to orange at the glass rim. Lovely nose of red berry fruits; primarily cherry along with hints of strawberry and toasty oak. On the palate it is quite earthy revealing the lovely crisp, fresh cherry and strawberry fruit along with some hints of tobacco. Fine, almost powdery tannins give the wine some backbone. Decent length completes a really interesting, well balanced wine that I thoroughly enjoyed drinking.