The Fizz #52: Gabriella Macari is investing in the future of quality Long Island wine
In this issue, Gabriella Macari and I talk through Macari's history, focus on sustainability and growth, and investment into the future of their vineyards.
For the 52nd issue of The Fizz, I had the pleasure of speaking to Gabriella Macari, General Manager of Macari Vineyards on the North Fork of Long Island, New York. Gabriella is involved in every aspect of winery life, from working in the vineyards and supporting winemaker Byron Elmendorf, to overseeing the tasting room and sales functions of the winery. Gabriella’s grandfather and father started the vineyard together, and much is in the process of changing.
In this conversation, Gabriella and I talk about Macari’s roots in sustainability, their focus on soil health, and the experiments that are bringing on a new vision in the vineyard. From a major replanting effort to experiments with natural yeast, Macari is poised for a revolution. We also touch on the Long Island winemaking scene, and Gabriella’s vision for a region of collaboration and research. Long Island has mostly been known for produce and vegetable farming, but winemaking is alive and well in the region—Macari has been around for 27 years.
Margot: What kind of work do you do at Macari?
Gabriella: That's the most difficult question. Macari is a family owned business, all hands on deck. I planted the vines with my dad in '95, my brothers and I planted the vineyard. I worked stocking and helping bottle. I went to college and studied marketing and business. Today, I’m involved in overseeing winemaking and viticulture with my brother and our winemaker Byron. I’m managing hospitality and the tasting room, the wine club, and direct to consumer sales. There's a lot going on. I'm sitting in a new tasting room that's been closed for a couple of years that we're reopening hopefully, fingers crossed, this summer.
Margot: What’s the terroir like where you are?
Gabriella: When we first started, Cornell University told us to plant Merlot and Chardonnay because they were comparing the Merlot to Bordeaux and the Chard they were telling us to plant because it grows easily everywhere. They were comparing the sandy soils and climate to Bordeaux. At this point, we feel uniquely ourselves finally. It was a big experiment for us to plant Sauvignon Blanc, for example, and it’s doing incredible things and we're really excited for the future of it here. It could be pushed even further with more focus in the vineyard, and taste even better. We always want to keep pushing forward.
We obviously are an island that protrudes out into an ocean and the Long Island Sound. We are in the hurricane path. It's a rainy Northeast climate, there’s a lot of humidity, which brings a lot of viticultural challenges. We lost an entire block to mildew last year. It just happens. It's something that we cannot avoid.
Most people would answer this question by saying we are blessed with really sandy soil, so when it rains, everything drains really quickly. We are located on the water, so there's this gorgeous breeze—it's a constant breeze from the Long Island Sound. The bodies of water that surround our vineyards are the only reason we can produce quality wines. The water moderates the temperature, so it's never freezing in the winter. It's super hot in the summer.
Margot: Many New Yorkers don't know that there's wine coming out of New York. What is the scene like in your area?
Gabriella: The scene I would say is that finally people are supporting local. Finally everyone's eating local oysters and tons of organic and biodynamic farms are popping up. I'm super excited for the Northeast. Very farm focused. I'm a board member on Slow Food, and it feels like people are finally really supporting their local backyard food and wine makers.
Margot: That's really cool to hear. Considering that the region is still fairly new, do you collaborate with any other winemakers? How does that relationship to work—do you share information?
Gabriella: I think it could get better. There's a lot of room to improve collaboration. There was a Merlot coalition that came together recently. A challenge is that we have a ton of agritourism. Because we're two hours away from the city, we just get slammed Memorial to Labor, and then even busier September, October—we just get so many apple and pumpkin picking winery visitors. These people are engaged, they're super excited, they're buying local wine, they're signing up for the wine club. It’s a lot of time for us to physically work, and I think a lot of people are a little tired, you know?
There’s less collaboration than I would like to see. I think that would be something for the future, but we are all short-staffed and reacting to the agritourism.
Margot: That's a really interesting problem to have. What kind of collaboration would you hope to see in your dream?
Gabriella: Cornell does a great job with their research vineyard. You should check it out at some point. It's really cool. Alice Wise has a ton of incredible hybrids and vinifera that you don't hear about every day planted. I’d love to be working more with universities and seeing what the potential is. This family winery, we’re 27 years old, but we're still figuring out what does well and why. We're embarking on a bit of a replant plan now and it’s going to be a 10 to 20 year plan. Do we really like this clone of Cab Franc? Is it showing the character we want it to show, or should we find a new clone? Do we selection massale and propagate our own vines? [Selection Massale is a term that denotes propagating new vines from a selection already existing in your vineyard. Learn more about the practice here.] We’re figuring all of that out—I’d love to have a bit more time to work with our research teams in the vineyard.
Margot: Can you tell me about what some of the challenges are in your region?
Gabriella: Mildew, lots of humidity, and rain. I guess they’re all tied into one. The rain can make or break the vintage. We were just reflecting about last year and I noticed the Sauvignon Blanc yield was down and I just remembered oh, it just kept raining. We had fruit on the vine, but we lost a decent amount to rot.
When it's dry, it's really amazing here. So 2010 and 2015 were incredible. Last year, it rained in the beginning of the season and then dried out in October. Some winemakers pulled all their fruit and we just let some of our fruit hang. We got some stunning Cabernet which, we really can't ripen Cab that often, but we were patient and it’s a really pretty Cab. It's kind of a gamble financially. Are you willing to take the risk?
Because it rains, weeds frequently get into the fruiting zone, so if you don't have the labor to manually weed, you get backed up and that increases the disease pressure. We do not use herbicide, we strongly are opposed, and we've been this way forever. As a winery that does not use herbicide, the weeds are a challenge.
Margot: On that topic, can you give me a sense of your vineyard practices?
Gabriella: When he first started, my dad was approached by people that would drop off catalogs of chemicals to spray. They would tell him that his kids couldn’t be in the vineyard for a few days after they’re sprayed. My dad didn’t like that, and he found this man named Alan York, who sadly passed away a couple of years ago, but he was a pioneer in biodynamic viticulture. He would like sleep on our couch and he was so cool. The first thing he did was tell us we need to get a cow. Okay, so we raised cows. We started with Longhorn and now we have a mixed herd, and the manure from the cows goes into our compost pile.
We make our own compost, which is incredibly unique and costs a ton of money [laughs], but it's a labor of love. We use manure, the local fish market will drop off fish scraps to get the compost going. We just started working with Stony Brook University—they donated kelp. They had an experiment to grow kelp locally in shallow water. The idea is could you be a kelp farmer without buying a boat? The answer, it sounds like, is yes. We got this gorgeous pile of kelp donated to enrich our compost, which was really awesome. We really focus on soil health.
We don't have to compete for water. We don’t have to till. The best way to farm is to keep the natural native grass cover. Wineries in drier areas have to get rid of that native grass because it competes for water with the vines, but for us, we're super lucky. The native cover does us well by taking some of the water to reduce the excessive vigor in the vines. There are challenges every year. We're not certified. We have about 150 acres planted. It's a large property. I know we're doing the best we can and we really feel strongly about keeping the vineyard glyphosate free.
Margot: That's great to hear. It sounds like you are practicing with some organic methods, but you’re not seeking the certification?
Gabriella: Yeah. It's hard. There's fungus—I mean, it's really difficult. We do use the Bordeaux mixture—sulfur and copper. Copper is an issue. It doesn't break down in the soil. My dream would be for something to come out and help us with mildew that is totally natural. There are studies that algae is eradicating mildew and vineyards in Bordeaux. I haven’t seen those results, but we're waiting for this moment. People are using whey, from cheese and milk. It would be amazing if there were something that could help us with mildew.
I want to be organic, but I also want to sell a wine at the end of the year, you know? There are good products out there—like you can spray fungus on the fungus to stop the fungus.
Margot: Absolutely, I really sympathize with that. Can you give me a sense of your cellar practices, your winemaking practices?
Gabrielle: Byron Elmendorf just joined the team. He's outstanding. We're super excited about the wines in the 2020 vintage and on. We are getting a feel of what the future will look like. It's very difficult for us in the fact that there's so much vintage variation where there'll be a year like 2018, where we just didn't even release the red. Then to 2021, where we have these beautiful, gorgeous concentrated, long living reds that we'll be releasing. We’re incredibly attentive, we're experimenting. We have some concrete eggs, so we have a line of wines that are made in concrete.
We're not changing what we've been doing forever, but we have some Sauvignon Blanc sitting on the skins from October. We're going to see what happens. We did a piquette for fun, and who knows where that will end up. We really love bringing people on the team that are curious to learn—we bring in interns every year. We're focusing a little bit on sparkling too. I love sparkling wine, and I think that this is really something we could look forward to in the future.
Margot: That’s awesome, it sounds like you’re in a really good place right now. As that fruit gets brought in, are you fermenting with a wild yeast, or are you selecting a strain that you really like, a mix of both?
Gabriella: We actually just had a call with someone from Cornell who came by last season and isolated some of our yeast and is sending us a version. In 2020, I started a bunch of pied de cuves out in the vineyard. I've got buckets everywhere between the vines. Once that non-saccharomyces was taking over, it just made me a little nervous, some of the aromas were not enjoyable, but there's this stunning rose petal tone to all of the fermentations that started naturally!
With Byron joining the team, we've continued inoculating, but we strongly feel like we need to discover what is outside of that. If a wine comes in and starts fermenting on its own and it smells okay, we let it go, but there's really no real way to tell where the yeast is coming from if you’ve inoculated in the past. The saccharomyces from previous yeas on the equipment or on the air just take over.
Margot: That’s really exciting to hear about the rose petals flavor. Super cool. Sustainability-wise, you’re not spraying if you don't have to, you have animals on the farm—I'm assuming you dry farm?
Gabriella: Yeah, we don’t need to water. There's an irrigation set up for the baby vines, but we don’t really use it. We don’t need irrigation. In the Northeast, you want the competition in the grass. We're adding nitrogen back into the earth in the form of compost. We’re not adding chemical nitrogen. A lot of that chemical nitrogen leeches out into the water table. That’s the point of the kelp—it’s cleaning up the nitrogen, and we’re adding it back into the compost, providing macro and micronutrients when the soil needs it.
In 2019, it was super hot and there was just this buzz around town, and people were saying “oh no, the clusters are so small. There's no water. It hasn't rained in a while”. I'm just sitting there looking at our vineyard, thinking well our vines are happy and healthy and what's going on? Why are people talking about small clusters? Because we compost, the sandy soils retain more moisture. Composting is a lot of work, but it’s worth it.
Margot: Absolutely. What are you excited about in Macari’s future?
Gabriella: Sparkling wine for sure. I tasted a sparkling Cabernet Franc at Diner in Williamsburg in 2013 and just lost my mind and called my family. I said well, we have to make a sparkling Cabernet Franc. They were like, you're crazy. There was this block that was rotting because we had run out of nets and it was right next to our pigs. My dad said hey, you can have the rotting block for a little sparkling experiment. We hand sorted and made this sparkling wine.
For years we thought about doing a traditional method sparkling. Finally, Byron arrived and we decided to make a pet that. We wanted to make it easy and fresh, that didn’t require long aging. That wine has opened people's minds to a sparkling, and a rosé sparkling. The shocking thing is it's analytically dry and people love it. So this idea that all Americans have this sweet palate—they'll drink sweet wine if it's in front of them, but this is a bone dry pét that is just flying.
Margot: That's interesting on the sweet comment—do you ferment all of your wines to dryness?
Gabriella: Almost everything. We make a Chardonnay in which we stop the fermentation, there's a little residual left. There's certain people that just have fallen in love with that wine. Unless we're adding dosage to a traditional method, everything is analytically very dry.
Margot: Gotcha. What would help you grow in the next five years? What would help you do your best work?
Gabriella: I think what you're doing is awesome because Americans need to know that there's great wine being made in their backyard. I just had this meeting with our distributor in the city last Friday, and I told them you have such an incredible opportunity because New Yorkers are finally understanding that we're making wine locally.
If we could get together and talk about how great wine is just only traveling two hours instead of hundreds of thousands of miles, that would be really incredible. Something I keep mentioning to people is the more you support small family owned businesses that have a mind to focus on the future of viticulture and wine making, the better the wines will be right here. We are not going to take profits and run away and close the business. We’re taking profits and putting them back into the vineyard. We're starting a replant plan, you know? The more you support, the higher quality these wines will be. I think that it's just a matter of getting the wine into people's glasses.
Margot: I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you so much—so excited to see where your path takes you!
You can support Gabriella and Macari Vineyards by going out there for a visit, buying their wines, and following them on Instagram.
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