After Hurricane Gloria, a wine ahead of its time
A bottle of Hurricane Gloria Candlelight Burgundy, bottled in late 1985 at Hargrave Vineyards of Cutchogue from grapes harvested and fermented around the time of Hurricane Gloria that year. Credit: Vivino.com
I was working in the tasting barn at Hargrave Vineyards in September 1985 when a winemaker rushed in one day, handed me a pair of pruning shears and told me I was on harvesting duty.
Hurricane Gloria was barreling up the East Coast toward Long Island. The seasonal waiting game to harvest the vineyard's grapes was over.
Earlier that summer, as a directionless 19-year-old college dropout, I'd taken a job at Hargrave. The Cutchogue winery was planted only a dozen years earlier by Louisa and Alex Hargrave, the founding pioneers of the Long Island wine industry.
Working for them was an education. I learned how to conduct tastings with visitors. I learned that the rhythms of nature still guided the seasons of agriculture. And I learned that, despite advances in farm technology and pest control, we were participating in work that was largely unchanged for thousands of years.
The 1980s were decades before the East End's party bus traffic jams, drunken bachelorette parties and corn mazes. On slow days when no one stopped for a taste, I'd wander out to the fields as flower buds became grapes, and grapes ripened. In late August, I picked chardonnay grapes to accompany the sandwich lunch I'd brought from home in Riverhead.
Today, machines are used to harvest the grapes. But in 1985, Hargrave's grapes were picked by hand by laborers, with help from a loyal band of Cutchogue housewives who returned year after year.
Red wine grapes play an annual game of chicken with the weather. The best vintages spend long September days soaking up the sun. Days without rain allow the sugar content to soar and the flavors to deepen.
However, with Gloria heading north, the vineyard's owners and every other able body pitched in urgently to save the crop of merlot grapes. There was a feeling of companionship that veered into giddiness. We picked grapes at break-neck speed -- one eye on the wall of granite dark clouds approaching. There is no technical expertise required in picking grapes -- crouch, grab and snip. Put them into a crate and move on. On this day, the process was like a sped-up training film, clippers flashing and grapes flying as we picked an entire field of merlot clean in hours.
Gloria struck Sept. 27 -- 30 years ago Sunday -- and devastated Long Island. There were days and days without power. Communities endured severe flooding and wind damage. I was lucky enough to suffer nothing more than boredom and inconvenience. At the vineyard, drenched vines were stripped of leaves, but some chardonnay and sauvignon blanc survived on the vines.
At my house in Riverhead, there were trees down and power out, but no structural damage. I played cards with my father by candlelight.
Dad told us about past storms, especially the "Great Hurricane of 1938." He recalled running home from the Roanoke Avenue School in Riverhead as rain fell and winds blew. He waited out the storm with his brothers and recently widowed mother. They were spared any significant damage.
I thought of my father's mother more than once as I rushed to pick grapes that day at Hargrave. She was born in 1887 on an Aquebogue potato farm. I loved her stories of the challenges of farm life. In the days after Gloria, I felt close to her memory as I sat in the dark tasting barn, reading Victorian novels while the Hargraves created a wine they named Hurricane Gloria Candlelight Burgundy. They jokingly put on the label, "Share it with friends and survivors."
Reader Christine Palmer lives in Jamesport.
