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On dreary afternoons, Alicia Valle finds herself daydreaming about the summertime and chilled box wine—an odd choice for a Lieb Cellars tasting room manager and wine aficionado.
But, in this case, the negative connotation is merely pretense. When it’s quality wine, Ms. Valle said, all preconceived notions about the packaging dissipate.
With the opening of its third tasting room in East Hampton, the Mattituck-based winery is spotlighting a pair of three-liter variations of boxed wine that last up to seven times longer than standard 750-milliliter bottles.
“Of course, we still have some people who are a little wary, and don’t really get it,” laughed Ms. Valle last week at the new wine shop. “But I feel the best way for them to learn to love it is to actually experience using it. If people drink that wine out of a bottle and they love it, once they hear it’s in a box, they’re actually really excited. So, it’s a matter of trying the product, which is why we’re expanding.”
A year in the making, the new East Hampton Village tasting room inside the Waldbaum’s shopping plaza celebrated its first full week open on April 1. It is not only the first location on the South Fork for Lieb—which has tasting rooms in Mattituck and Cutchogue—but also the only tasting room in this part of the East End for a North Fork winery, period.
“We’ve been getting people coming in, but it’s still like, ‘What’s going on? What is this?’” Ms. Valle said. “And also, it’s still a little chilly. But it’s coming. We can feel the warm weather approaching. And when it does, we’re thinking—we’re hoping—it’s going to be very successful.”
Founded in 1992, Lieb opened its first tasting room in Mattituck in 2001, followed by the Cutchogue tasting room in October 2012. The East Hampton shop at 26 Park Place—previously home to a branch of the Bridgehampton National Bank—departs from the North Fork locations’ “rustic, barnyard chic vibe” with a beachy color palette, Ms. Valle said, though all three are harmonious through simple, clean lines.
“Really, ultimately, it’s about the wine. So you don’t want to distract any of the customers from what they’re here to do,” Ms. Valle said of the décor, “which is to try our delicious wine.”
This summer, the vineyard will add new vintages of white merlot and chardonnay to its repertoire, which includes seven white wines, seven red wines, two sparkling wines and one rosé. Bottles range from $14 to $40, while the Bridge Lane red and white blend box wines—which contain the equivalent of three bottles each—are $46. Additionally, a number of Lieb’s wines are available in tall, slim kegs: 26 bottles for $260.
Both the boxed and kegged wines are already catching on among the younger demographic, Ms. Valle said, as well as the eco-friendly generation.
“It’s just part of progress and keeping up with the times,” she said. “I think that, slowly but surely, it’s gonna come down to what we need to do for the environment. We don’t expect to be putting box wine in restaurants. We understand the limitations of those things. But we think people will warm up to it. A lot of our older clientele are traditionalists, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We are also traditionalists, which is why our reserve wines stay in bottles. And they still have corks.”
The entire Lieb portfolio will be available at the East Hampton shop, including four flights—white, red, reserve and a director’s cut—ranging from $10 to $14 each, and daily complimentary tastings of three featured wines.
“If we’re feeling like it’s a day when bubbly should be served, we’ll do that. If it’s a rainy, cooler day, we might put a red wine in there,” Ms. Valle said. “If it’s a bright, sunny summer day, we’ll do a sparkling and a rosé. We really want to tailor it to what we feel is appropriate for that time.”
Last Friday afternoon, Ms. Valle ignored the drizzly mist dotting the windows of the East Hampton tasting room as she poured three glasses of rosé—one for each of her co-workers, Julianne Mundell and Laura Ross, and the last for herself.
They raised their glasses and clinked with a “Cheers!”
Each woman smiled after she took a sip. It tasted just like summer.
on Apr 8, 2014