People of Sayville: Barney Loughlin, vineyard owner

It's the people that make a community come to life. As part of the Town Focus series, Erin Geismar is reporting life in Sayville with quick interviews of everyone from community leaders to everyday people on the street.

Barney Loughlin
Owner of Loughlin Vineyards

How long have you lived in Sayville?
I was born on the estate. So, 86 years.

How long have you run the vineyard?
Twenty eight years. There’s 61 vineyards out east and we were No. 10 on Long Island, I think. We would sell our grapes in the beginning and then we decided to start to bottle about 20 years ago.

Are people surprised to find you here, away from wine country?
Yeah, people mostly come from Nassau, Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn. We are the closest to the city. But it’s the same here as anywhere else. No difference between us and the ones out east.

What made you want to make wine?
I just did. It was an interest. I bought the property in ’46 when I came out of the service. I just started doing it.

How did you learn the process?
How did you learn to write? You just did it. Now, we make the wine here too. We do everything here -- grow the grapes, make the wine, bottle the wine. On rainy days we sit here and put labels on the bottles. My daughters all work here too, Mary Ellen, Elizabeth and Patricia.

Tell me how you ended up growing up here on the Meadow Croft Estate.
My mother came over here from Ireland when she was 17 and she hooked up with the first cousin of Teddy Roosevelt. Then she met my father and went back to Ireland. They had two children in Ireland and then came back here, and my mother took care of Mrs. Roosevelt’s two sisters that lived here. They were caretakers for the estate.

Why did you decide to stay in Sayville all this time?
I like it. It’s a nice place to live. You have the ocean and the bay.