Tasting one particular sort of wine over the course of many vintages is like reading a series of books by the same author. Their quality may vary, but they will all enlighten.
Such a deep dive, known in the wine world as a vertical tasting, helps to convey how a wine expresses the different conditions of each vintage, and shows whether it articulates a consistent sense of place despite the yearly variations.
Recently, however, I attended a tasting that examined neither a particular wine through the years, nor a specific site. Instead, it was a vertical of one man’s journey through the wine business, making cabernet francs in New York State over 25 years, both on the North Fork of Long Island and in the Finger Lakes.
The man, Bruce Schneider, is not particularly well known, but he has done a lot in wine, from farming to production to marketing and sales to innovation, foreseeing more ecologically sustainable methods of selling and transporting wine.
He has had to be especially resourceful, as he came to the trade with few financial assets.
But most of all, he has made some really good wines over the last 25 years, wines that not only demonstrate the potential of cabernet franc upstate or down, but that also parallel the voyage of winemaking in New York over that time and indeed the evolution of American wine styles.
Mr. Schneider and I met in mid-December at the NoMad Hotel in Manhattan, where we tasted 25 cabernet francs he had produced from 1994 through 2018.
The wines included his first efforts for Schneider Vineyards on the North Fork, perhaps grandiosely named by Mr. Schneider and his wife-to-be in 1994, Christiane Baker, as they owned no vines at the time.
They included bottles from Onabay Vineyards, also on the North Fork, where he is the consulting winemaker; from Gotham Project, in which he and his partner, Charles Bieler, have pioneered selling wine in reusable steel kegs, now in more than 40 states; from Schneider & Bieler, their label for Finger Lakes cabernet franc; and from Empire Builder Return & Reuse, a forthcoming project involving reusable bottles.
Why the focus on cabernet franc? It was an early sign of Mr. Schneider’s confidence in his talent for identifying what might not be an obvious winner, but one that could pay off in the long run. Such assurance comes from a family background in wine.
Mr. Schneider, a boyish-looking 50, grew up in Springfield, N.J., the grandson of a bootlegger and the son of a wine-and-spirits distributor. Winemakers from around the world passed through the household, Mr. Schneider recalled, with plenty of stories to tell.
Something clicked, and for a high school work-study program, with help from his family, he interned in Burgundy, where he learned from Becky Wasserman, the noted American wine broker; Chartron & Trebuchet, a producer; and François Mikulski, then a recent wine school graduate who has gone on to establish his own Burgundy domaine.
“It gave me an appreciation for making something from the land,” Mr. Schneider said.
He went on to Washington University in St. Louis, where he studied history. He got a job working for the New York State Democratic Party in Manhattan by day, taking wine classes by night. Through his political work he met Ms. Baker as well as Carol Gristina, a party board member who also happened to own a North Fork wine estate, Gristina Vineyards.
In 1992, he and Ms. Baker visited Gristina and a few other North Fork wineries. The most interesting wine they tasted, he said, was a 1988 cabernet franc from Hargrave Vineyards. Back then, cabernet franc on Long Island was typically used as a blending wine, supplementing merlot or cabernet sauvignon. Almost nobody bottled it as a varietal wine.
But ’88 was a generous vintage, and Hargrave had more cab franc than it needed. So it bottled the excess wine, and Mr. Schneider found lifelong inspiration.
“That was the beginning of the idea for Schneider Vineyards,” he said.
Back in New York City, he quit politics for wine, first working in public relations and at Garnet, a wine retailer on the Upper East Side. There, he met David Lillie, a wine buyer who introduced him to cabernet francs from the Loire Valley. Mr. Lillie went on to open Chambers Street Wines with a partner, Jamie Wolff. It has become a top New York shop and a leading source for great Loire wines.
In 1994, Mr. Schneider was determined to make his own wine. He and Ms. Baker scraped together $20,000, bought a few tons of grapes, which they picked by hand, and persuaded a Long Island producer, Kip Bedell of Bedell Cellars in Cutchogue, to help them make the wine, using the Bedell facilities.
“Kip did all the work,” Mr. Schneider said, “but we knew we wanted to learn, and we did, hands on.”
Bordeaux, the other major source of cabernet franc wines, wielded far more influence over the American wine trade back then, and Mr. Schneider was no exception, despite his affinity for Loire cabernet francs. His ambitious aim was to make a wine like Cheval Blanc, the great St.-Émilion, which is roughly half cabernet franc, half merlot.
That ’94, the first Schneider vintage, was no Cheval Blanc, but 25 years later it was light and pretty, with earthy, berry aromas. The ’95, also made with Mr. Bedell’s help, was a step up in depth and concentration. Those grapes came from a different source, and Mr. Schneider suggested that the farming had been superior, accounting for the differences.
They continued to work with Mr. Bedell through 1999, and while the vintage characters differ, the wines all seemed to me a little rustic, perhaps because of a touch of brettanomyces, a nettlesome yeast that can add flavors that range from barnyard to Band-Aid. In small quantities it can add complexity; too much, and it can be overbearing.
In 2000, they started working with Sean Capiaux, a California winemaker who also consulted on Long Island. And they started to make their wines at Premium Wine Group, which provides equipment to small producers who do not have their own facilities.
Mr. Capiaux used different techniques, Mr. Schneider said. He blended the wines early, and put them in barrels with their lees, the remnants of yeast after fermentation is complete, which can help protect the wine from oxidation as well as affecting texture and flavor.
“Sean had more of a Burgundy mind-set,” he said. The 2000 was quite different: less rustic and more concentrated, yet lighter on the palate, with finer tannins and savory flavors of dark fruits and herbs.
Another change came in 2001 when Mr. Schneider decided to make a Loire-style 100 percent cabernet franc. He called it Le Breton, a Loire synonym for cabernet franc, and, unlike his blended cab francs, which received prolonged barrel age, the Breton was bottled before the next harvest.
The 2001 was delightful 18 years later, lively, energetic and joyous, with pretty flavors of dark fruits. With this wine, Mr. Schneider was ahead of his time, anticipating the American stylistic swing a decade later toward lighter wines based on acidic liveliness rather than on the power of fruit and oak.
In 1998, Mr. Schneider and Ms. Baker, who by then had married, bought a potato farm in Riverhead and planted it with numerous clones of cabernet franc, as well as some cuttings of cab franc and merlot that had originally come from Vieux Château Certan, a famed Pomerol estate.
The 2003 Breton was the first wine I tasted made entirely from fruit grown in their vineyard. It was earthy, minerally and savory, not concentrated but lasting on the palate. The ’04 Breton was cool, breezy and delicious. Then came 2005, a landmark Long Island vintage.
“It was the most crazy, freaky, incredible vintage I’ve ever experienced,” Mr. Schneider said. At one point that October, it rained 17 inches in eight days, leaving the grapes swollen with water. Then, miraculously came 10 clear, dry days, which dried them out. Mr. Schneider, who at this point had taken over most of the winemaking, made several unusual cuvées that year.
La Bouchet, his Bordeaux-style wine, was complex, rich and earthy, with fine tannins and lovely red fruit flavors. He also made a one-off, La Cloche, made exclusively from the Vieux Château cuttings, a floral, pretty, high-toned wine that was structured yet delicate. I thought it was superb. Both these 2005s have years ahead of them.
“I’m stunned by the youthfulness of the ’05s,” Mr. Schneider said.
By 2005, however, Mr. Schneider and Ms. Baker had already decided to sell the vineyard. With a daughter, Chloe, they preferred to live in New York City. As good as the vineyard had turned out to be, it was also too much for them to manage.
The 2007 Breton, balanced and pleasing, was the last wine in the tasting made from estate fruit and the last vintage sold under the Schneider Vineyards label. The new owners tore out the vines to create a horse farm.
Mr. Schneider then took a job with Onabay, which had bought a vineyard on Peconic Bay in 2006 and replanted seven acres using Mr. Schneider’s research on cabernet franc. Soon it was making two cuvées of cab franc, Night Heron in a Bordeaux style, and the Loire-style Côt-Fermented, in which cab franc was fermented together with a little malbec, or côt, as it is called in the Loire.
Tasting both, I preferred the Loire styles. The 2011 Côt-Fermented was earthy and juicy, while the 2012 Night Heron seemed a little oaky. The ’14 Côt-Fermented had flavor of dark fruits, while the ’16 was especially lively and pleasing.
In 2010, Mr. Schneider began Gotham Project with Mr. Bieler, selling wine in reusable kegs to restaurants. Their idea was that kegs could improve the quality of wines sold by the glass because kegs preserve freshness longer than bottles. They are also more eco-friendly.
Gotham originally emphasized New York State wines, but it now includes wines from around the world, shipped in 24,000-liter soft tanks and kegged in Gotham’s facility in Bayonne, N.J. The partners also began bottling cabernet franc from the Finger Lakes in 2015, a move west that came as the Finger Lakes were becoming the most exciting place in New York for wine.
The ’15 Schneider & Bieler cab franc was a gorgeous wine, with flavors of red fruits and herbs, and was lighter than the Long Island versions. It’s a signature Finger Lakes style.
Cabernet franc is now a leading red grape on Long Island and in the Finger Lakes. It cannot be attributed to Mr. Schneider alone, but he has been among those who have demonstrated the grape’s potential.
