One of the many things we love about wine is that it is so much more than just a drink. It’s an experience. Something you pair with food, you share with friends, you toast with at life’s very best moments. Wine is life.

For any wine lover, visiting a wine region should be an absolute must-do for your bucket list — touring Napa or Sonoma in California, visiting Bordeaux or Chablis in France, exploring the beautiful vineyards of Italy, any opportunity to see and taste where the wines are actually made!

But if jetting across the country — or to another continent — isn’t in your plans or your budget, there are still vineyards to explore that are practically in your backyard!

This weekend, we wanted to try a different kind of wine experience and so we headed out to the North Fork of Long Island, a place where wine is becoming a huge and very successful part of the economy and where it is catching the attention of wine aficionados and reviewers alike. 

A bit of background…

A little more than forty years after the first vineyard was planted, Long Island’s North Fork is one of the up-and-coming wine regions in the nation, producing crisp whites, fruity reds, light rosés and bubbly sparkling wines.

With more than 50 wineries in the region, there is a vineyard for every taste. But since we had limited time (and a liver to consider), we kept our tasting to just one vineyard: Raphael. 

We took the Raphael Winery Tour, which provides a fascinating behind the scenes look at the production side of a working vineyard, along with an opportunity to taste a variety of different wines grown and bottled on the 52-acre site. 

Our tour guide, Gabby (who, by the way was awesome), told us how the grapes are harvested by hand so only the finest ones make it into the bottle and showed us the machinery that prevents stems from ending up in the wine (giving it that overly bitter tannic taste). She told us about the sustainable growing methods favored at the vineyard (we’re big fans) and that Raphael’s Head Winemaker is named, Anthony Napa (sounds like wine is in his DNA). 

But one of the most interesting things we learned about, was a wine produced exclusively in Long Island’s Wine Country called…Merliance! Never heard of it? That’s ok, we hadn’t either, but it’s a great story about winemakers coming together…and it’s a pretty terrific wine, too! 

Merliance is the name given to the Long Island Merlot Alliance, a group of vineyard owners who commit to contributing to the only cooperative wine made on Long Island. Essentially each of the five vineyards: Raphael, T’Jara, McCall, Wolffer and Martha Clara contribute Merlot grapes from their respective vineyards, harvested on the very same day, and co-fermented to showcase the versatility of Long Island Merlot. If you head out to the North Fork, a bottle of Merliance is a must buy!

With dozens of vineyards popping up along the same stretch of road, visiting vineyards is an enjoyable way to make the most of summer and fall weekends. Each vineyard has its own distinct personality, some with chic tasting rooms and available foods pairings, others with outdoor tables and live music where you can sample bottles and enjoy picnics of your own making. There are great restaurants, quaint B&B’s, the gorgeous Long Island Sound, plus the Hampton’s beaches just a short drive away. If you’re a wine lover, make sure the North Fork is on your radar to visit.