Lenz Winery
2006 Gewürztraminer
Not before it’s ready.
By Eileen M. Duffy

Winemaker Eric Fry may call it his albatross, but ask him about the gewürztraminer he makes at the Lenz Winery in Peconic and be prepared for a dissertation.

After making the wine there for 20 years from 30-year-old vines, he has a decidedly set notion about when gewürztraminer is ready to pick, how to ferment it, when to release it and what to drink it with.

It all starts with a girl.

Fry’s ex was from Alsace, which is known for its gewürztraminer. Visiting her family, Fry had the opportunity to taste a lot of gewürztraminer in its natural home. The cool climate in Alsace produces grapes, and wines, that are light but flavorful and packed with the aromatics that make gewürztraminer one of the most distinctive wines in the world. It can smell of lychees and rose petals, but in riper years takes on the flavors of honey and caramel.

At Lenz, with the tail end of the 2005 vintage nearly sold out, Fry has the opportunity to show what the varying climate on Long Island can do to the grape, because the 2006 is ready for release.

(But first a word about when to release the wine. Fry believes gewürztraminer needs at least one year in bottle before it starts tasting like gewürztraminer. “When you first bottle a gewürztraminer it kind of tastes like riesling,” he says. “But after the first year, it kind of opens up like a flower. And it’s pretty consistent.” This he knows after 20 years. “It just becomes full-bodied and full of flavor,” he says. “It’s thin before and rich afterward.”)

Showing the two wines side by side is a dramatic demonstration of how all farmers are servants of Mother Nature. 2005 was a very hot year, marred, of course, by a monsoon in the beginning of October that lasted more than a week. But most of the wineries had picked their white grapes before the deluge. So the 2005 Lenz Gewürztraminer has a honey, caramel richness that almost makes the wine taste sweet when, in fact, Fry ferments all the sugar out of his gewürztraminers. If this is your style, get it now.

The 2006—from a much cooler, and wetter, year—has what Fry says is much more pineapple; the perception of sweetness is not there, and the acid makes the wine fresh and zippy. This is the style Fry likes. At a recent dinner, he says the attendees were split about 50-50 in their preference.

To make both wines, Fry ferments the juice in two different batches. In one he uses a yeast that enhances the fruitiness of the grape. In the other, he uses another yeast strain that concentrates the spiciness the grape can achieve. He then blends them together. He also leaves some CO2 in the wine, because he likes a little bit of spritz.

In the end of September, when this tasting took place, the rosy rust-colored gewürztraminer grapes were still hanging on the vines, just outside the entrance to the winery. When will he pick?

Forget about numbers, says Fry, the sugars levels, the total acidity. He decides when to pick by tasting the grapes.

“We pick when it tastes like gewürztraminer,” he says. And if you go home with a bottle? “Eat it with something spicy!”