40th Anniversary Valentine To Long Island

I’ve been writing a regular wine column since 1999, and every year around this time, I suggest wines that are appropriate for Valentine’s Day—either to celebrate love, or to assuage the lack of it. But this year, I’d like to offer, instead, a Valentine’s Day toast to the Long Island wine region itself, and to the extraordinary community of people who, with open minds and generous hearts, made this wine region a vibrant reality.

In the spring of 1973, my then-husband, Alex Hargrave, and I bought the former Zuhoski farm in Cutchogue and planted 17 out of 66 acres with more than 10,000 rooted pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc cuttings. Ours was Long Island’s first commercial planting of European wine grapes.

The vines looked like dead sticks and it took a couple of weeks for them to bud out and prove that they were alive. I held my breath the whole time as we had committed all our energy, all our devotion, and all our money to this venture. I was 25; Alex was 27.

Except for some sauvignon blanc grapes that were devoured by rabbits, the vines thrived, and so did we. And then 27 years, two children, acres of vines and about 200 wines later, Alex and I sold Hargrave Vineyard. By then, there were almost 3,000 acres of grapes and dozens of other vintners, equally inspired to make great wine here.

Many deserve credit for the region’s success, but today, my valentine goes specifically to a few who got us through those early years when no one knew if it would succeed. Cheers to:

• Cornell professor John Tompkins, who in 1972 suggested we visit John Wickham’s table grape experiment in Cutchogue. He connected us to viticulture specialists whose work in our vines proved the viability of vinifera here, contrary to 300 years of prior East Coast failure.

• John and Anne Wickham. John spent hours driving us around the North Fork explaining why its climate was so perfect for grapes, then warned us, “pioneers pay twice.” They introduced us to friends and neighbors, involved Alex in Farm Bureau and me in the League of Women Voters, and whumped us at Scrabble. In 1975, John drove his bulldozer through a blizzard to see if we needed provisions for our infant daughter.

• Art Kilborn at First Pioneer Farm Credit, who believed in our elaborate business plan although we had never before farmed.

• Our relatives who realized that they, having encouraged and educated us to think for ourselves, were partly responsible for our success. My father called our vineyard “the pea patch,” which pretty much tells you what he thought. My mother brought her friends to pull out the giant weeds that threatened to overtake us the first year.

• Charlie Hargrave, who helped plant the first vines and returned, for 13 years, to tend them with consummate grace.

• Gail Wickham and Eric Bressler. Gail was a college intern in her father, Bill’s, Mattituck law office when we bought our farm in 1973. She and her husband Eric became our trusted friends and advisors. With a combination of brilliance and discretion, they saved our necks from unwarranted troubles and helped us turn crises into opportunities. They taught us that the best defense is a good contract with saved records. When we divorced in 1999, they negotiated the sale of our vineyard while remaining loyal to both of us.

• Jean Zuhoski. She walked down our long driveway the day we arrived, carrying a pie to welcome us, and told us where to swim in the Sound. I don’t think I would have survived my first years in Cutchogue without an evening swim at Duck Pond.

• Mike Koloski, our next-door neighbor who grew potatoes and experimented with shallots, melons and watermelon, just because he liked them. Without Mike, we would never have learned how to farm. Mike was our guardian angel, always watching over our fields, willing to abandon his own work to help us, welcoming us into his family for meals, celebrations, or consolation.

• Stanley and Leslie Tuthill. Leslie sold us eggs every week while Stanley welcomed me into their coffee klatch of crusty old farmers who met every morning at 9 in his kitchen, sharing stories of the olden days.

• Jane Minerva, Cutchogue Library doyenne, who ran the library as a life resource. From those shelves I learned Lamaze, understood colic (infant and equine), acquired tourist Italian, followed Jane Fonda, discovered Dick Francis and found New York’s divorce code.

• Troy and Joan Gustavson, owners of the local weekly papers since 1979. Their honest, genteel reporting, with an understanding that our farmland land and seas are both valuable and vulnerable; their friendship and discretion, backed us up all the way.

And for the hundreds of others also instrumental to the region’s success, a rousing huzza!