These are very limited wines; we email once a year about them. They tend to sell-through quickly so please do take note.
Erik Longabardi and Benford Lepley are doing something just utterly soulful and inspiring and it registers, quite obviously, if you’re paying any attention at all – even if you don’t particularly care about Long Island, or wine, or preserving old apple trees inconveniently planted near strip malls.
It’s a deeply felt project, overseen with intelligence, purpose, and more than a little bit of passion. Both of these guys have other, full-time jobs. So far as I can tell they spend nearly all their free time working on this project, gathering people to help them work on this, feeding and supporting the people that help them with this. At the end of the year, while I hope they make a little bit of money, my guess is the hourly wages of all this would probably be calculated in cents.
In other words, through nearly any rational or economic prism, none of this makes any sense at all.
Which is of course part of what makes this project – Floral Terranes – so unique, so special. This is what we feel when we are near these wines, even if we can’t articulate it exactly… though I think the best word to articulate this feeling is maybe easy: “love.”
Anyway, it also doesn’t hurt that the wines are deeeeeeelicious and slightly alcoholic. There’s something to say about tasty juice and a little buzz, ya know?
This year the whole NY team (Cari and Collin and myself) went out to their Long Island garage on a rainy and cold Saturday morning to taste through the new collection, which this year is about as concise as it’s ever been: only five wines and no ciders. The natural swings of the apple production coupled with a nor’easter during the apple flowering and a mild drought meant that there were, for all intents and purposes, basically no apples. Thus no ciders.
Yet maybe the natural simplification of the year, the forced editing, has focused the pair a bit. The wines show their same character and charm, yet have more balance and spring to them. They have more confidence. It is a great vintage in Long Island, in general, and I think you can taste it.
Please find all the details below as per each wine. To order, or with any questions, please email your sales rep or orders@vomboden.com. Obviously lots of these things are really limited so please be patient with us as we try and allocate as humanely as possible.
THANK YOU, to everyone, for supporting this!
2022 Chardonnay ~$36
I believe this is only the second time they’ve released single-vineyard Chardonnay. Yes, this is basically Long Island Montrachet. As with the previous time, the grapes come from Matta Bella in Southold, Long Island. Again, the grapes had about three weeks worth of skin contact before going into barrel. This is a deep Chardonnay, with melon and spice, though there’s a lively green edge to the wine, a needle-fresh pine note that gives the wine energy and lift.
2022 Rosé ~$29
From a tiny unnamed site deep in Long Island, rich with clay and glacial deposits, comes this Merlot-based rosé. A perfect winter rosé, the wine has juicy red fruit with soil tones. It has a swagger, fresh, but sexy too, all herbal and savory, saffron and salt and mineral. I like the glowing quality of it – beautiful color. Soulful wine.
2022 Cabernet Franc ~$34
They direct-pressed about half of this wine (the other half had some maceration) and so the wine reads ultra-light and fresh. At 12% on the label, the wine reads more 11.5% – it is light and fresh almost like a white wine, though the palate is awash in a tart and soil-inflected red fruit. The back-end of the palate reveals the wine’s Cabernet-Franc-ness, with spice and pepper. Long Island meets Loire meets Savoie? Maybe something like this. Only 300 liters made.
2022 Petit Verdot ~$34
Erik and Benford are doubling down on Petit Verdot. I’d write something like, “Make Petit Verdot great again,” but my hope is that those jokes are finally done for. This is super compelling and if someone were to try and make an argument for Petit Verdot on Long Island, well, here you go. The wine is bull’s blood, dank near inky in color; the fruit profile matches these tones, with dark blackberry and plum edged by pepper, dried spices leather and dried tobacco. But what I really love about the wine is the energy, the satiny textural and super-fine tannins. This is a star.
2022 Merlot ~$34
Since the beginning Erik has had an obvious thing for Merlot – obviously Long Island has a thing for Merlot. Yet Floral Terranes always gives the wine its own signature. My sense is that this is the wine they baby the most, with daily loving punch downs, etc. What to say? This is deeply plummy and Merlot-y, textural yet there is also the brightness of red fruit, a wonderful bounce for such a mouth-coating and deeply satisfying wine. Yum.