Floral Terranes Chardonnay 2021
Location: United States, New York
Winemaker: Erik Longabardi & Benford Lepley
Grapes: Chardonnay
Soil: sand, gravel, clay
Winemaking: the fruit sees about one week skin contact, then goes into barrel and racked three times Then split into two barrels to finish and encourage oxidation.
From the Importer Vom Boden: I could be wrong but I believe this is the first time Floral Terranes has released a single-variety Chardonnay bottling (the “Abracadabra” this year has some Chardonnay, along with Merlot). So that’s cool?
The grapes come from Matta Bella in Southold, Long Island; Christopher Nicolson who you may know from Red Hook Winery, or Iliamna Fish Co., or better yet both, made the introductions. The wine had about a week’s skin contact before going into barrel. It went through some reduction early on and so they, uniquely, racked the hell out of this wine – a full three times just to get some oxygen in the wine. They then decided to split the wine into two barrels and to let it finish with even more oxidation; to lean into the oxidative properties as it was.
Honestly you don’t read that oxidation all that much – this does not taste like the Jura. There is for sure a complex herbal play, wily phenolics that mimic mint and floral oils. On the palate the wine is full, rounded but not heavy, with a melon mid-palate ever so slightly honeyed. After this pleasant midpalate stroll with various warm fruit tones, the finish is more herbal, like a good gin and tonic just mated with an orange wine. Yum.
Erik Longabardi and Benford Lepley’s Floral Terranes project is a beautiful act of cultural preservation, art and agriculture. And it’s delicious. And it will give you a buzz.
Long Island was, not so long ago, an agricultural oasis that supplied Manhattan with food. The latter half of the 20th century redefined this landscape, with Robert Moses and others using the heavy hand of machinery to lay motorways through the Hempstead plains and beyond. This direct line to the city quickened the transformation from farmhouses to mansions, and then later the subdivision of mansions into suburban sprawl.
Thus an agricultural history, centuries old, was largely erased from the landscape (and our collective memories?) within the span of a few decades.
It became “suburban terroir” as Erik would say.
Two Long Island natives, Erik and Benford, have been slowly and quietly searching out this landscape – or what remains of this landscape – using Erik’s 18th century home in Rosyln as their base and (literally) garage winery. It begins with an act: making a turn down a random road, inspired solely by the sight of a solitary old apple tree. It grows by connecting with landowners and building relationships with the community. A mall is built, yet the fruit trees still grow. Where the highway wanders, fruit trees grow. Nature has a way of persevering.
As it turns out, often the agricultural remnants have been saved as part of institutional landscapes. Thus Erik found 28 assorted apple trees sprinkled at Banbury Farm, part of the Cold Spring Laboratory complex. (The human genome and natty cider, all from one place.) Seminaries and monasteries tucked away on huge tracts of land, with the remains of agriculture, apple trees and grape vines, slowly being integrated back into the wild landscape, make up a serious part of the Floral Terranes terroir.
What matters most to Erik and to Benford is saving this land. The logic is easy enough: if we had no idea this land existed, how would we know to save it? Knowledge is the beginning. The beverage, in this case, is the beginning.