HISTORY
Comtesse Thérèse has been producing wine commercially
for nine vintages (2001 - 2009). Starting in
2001, fruit was procured from other North Fork of
Long Island vineyards, supplemented from 2005 onward with an increasing amount of grapes grown at the estate vineyard, Le Clos Thérèse, in Aquebogue. Total annual
case production started in 2001 with 550 cases, growing to 1100 cases for the 2008 vintage.
PREMIUM
WINE GROUP
Starting
in 2005, Comtesse Thérèse began making
small quantities of hand-crafted wine at the estate vineyard in Aquebogue,
New York. However, the majority of the winemaking is done
at Premium Wine Group (PWG), the custom production facility
in Mattituck, Long Island. Similar to the Napa Valley Wine Co. in California, PWG makes no wine of its own, but provides state-of-the-art
facilities, equipment, and personnel for the making of
fine wines by its clients. Founded in 2000, it is the only such facility on the east
coast of the US. PWG clients supply the grapes, yeasts,
barrels, bottles, labels, and explicit winemaking instructions
to PWG, which provides the labor, equipment and space.
Russell Hearn
is the Director of PWG, which has seven full-time employees
and 110 wine tanks. PWG processes over 1,000 tons of fruit into 60,000
cases annually, for about 15 vineyards on Long Island,
upstate New York and New England. At 20 tons, Comtesse Thérèse comprises about 2% of their annual wine volume. See their website at www.premiumwinegroup.com
WINEMAKERS
Theresa Dilworth, home wine and beermaker for several
years and self-taught in commercial winemaking, is Head
Winemaker. From 2002 through the 2009 harvest, Bernard Cannac was the Consultant Winemaker. Bernard
received his Oenology degree
from the University of Bordeaux II. In fall of 2009, he moved to the Finger Lakes in upstate NY to take a winemaking position there.
Winemaking consultant Alie Shaper, getting a wine sample at Premium Wine Group
As of January 2010, Alie Shaper, owner and winemaker of Brooklyn Oenology (BOE) in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, is Consultant Winemaker for Comtesse Thérèse. In addition to making the wines for her own label, she also acts as consultant winemaker for Castello di Borghese in Cutchogue. Alie formerly worked in the lab at Premium Wine Group. Her line of wines is sold at The Tasting Room in Peconic and includes the cleverly named Motley Cru (a red blend) and a viognier, among others. In addition to her winemaking and consulting, Alie is in the process of setting up her own tasting room in Brooklyn, expected to open in late spring 2010.
Alie Shaper, in the lab at Premium Wine Group
WINEMAKING
As
a general rule, the red wines undergo primary fermentation in stainless steel tanks. Indigenous, natural "wild" yeasts naturally occurring on the grape skins are used for
primary fermentation. Cool temperatures are used for red wine fermentation.
Malolactic or secondary fermentation
is also allowed to take place spontaneously, using the malolactic
bacteria naturally present in the wine. The malolactic fermentation takes place in the steel tanks, and then the wines are moved to barrels for aging for six to 18 months. The red wine is not fined or filtered.
The
chardonnay is 100% barrel-fermented in Russian and Russian-French oak barrels using wild yeasts, and may undergo partial malolactic fermentation, depending on the vintage.
The rosé and the blanc de noir, made by the process of saignée,
or bleeding off the clear juice from red grapes, are steel-fermented.
The type of barrels (oak species, forests, toasting levels,
cooperage houses), length of barrel aging, frequency of
racking, and other aging techniques vary according to variety
and vintage. Comtesse Thérèse is one of the
few wineries in the US to use Hungarian oak and Russian
oak barrels, in addition to French oak and American oak, and is the first on the East Coast of the US to use Canadian oak barrels.
