One of the highlights of the evening was walking the grounds. We checked out the greenhouses and their neat rows of every leafy thing imaginable, and made some new furry and feathered friends (none of whom were featured on the menu). Here’s a little photographic tour, with pics courtesy of my better half:

Up close and personal with an actual Blue Hill Stone Barns chicken. Bet he’s all like “this backyard urban chicken trend is total BS. Country chicken livin’  is where it’s AT.”

We got into a staring contest with some sheep.

And woke up the sheepdog. Sorry, buddy.

Me, posing awkwardly in front of a greenhouse. Feel like I’m in that scene in Talladega Nights where Will Ferrell doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

Idyllic, no?

Until last night. It was a warm and humid, Paul was firing up the grill, and rosé seemed like the perfect choice. It was just what I was in the mood for, something clean, crisp, fruity, and not too complicated. I opened the bottle, poured out a heathy dose of the salmony-pink wine, and stuck my nose in the glass. What I smelled was anything but clean and crisp. There was a little vanilla, a hint of brown sugar, something vegetal, and, if I really searched for it, a layer of ripe red fruit underneath. What, exactly, was going on here?

In a word: oak. Turns out this wine is barrel-fermented and aged for five months in French oak. This adds some heft and richness to the wine, not characteristics normally associated with rosé. It’s a pretty unusual approach, although not entirely unheard of. (López de Heredia, an ultra-traditional producer in Rioja, ages its Viña Tondonia rosado in barrels for four and a half years, for example.)

Located in Southold, on the North Fork of Long Island, Croteaux Vineyards specializes in rosés, offering a number of still and sparkling variations on the theme of pink. In yet another unusual move, they name several of their wines after the variety of clone they’re made from–hence “Merlot 3.” (Clones are basically different “types” of the same grape. Producers choose what kind of clone, or clones, to use depending on a number of factors, including growing conditions and the characteristics they’re looking for in the wine.)

In my heart of hearts, I prefer the crisp, dry and fruity style to this oak-inflected one, but there’s lots to admire here. The toasty notes would make it a happy partner for smoked chicken or pork chops, and $18 is a decent price for a wine with this much personality. I’d be curious to see what happens to this wine with a little age on it. Rosés are usually meant to be drunk young, but the oak treatment here could provide some staying power. Mostly, I like this wine for what it represents: namely, that rosés aren’t monolithic, and there’s tremendous versatility and variety in this category.

1. Chilean wines and the earthquake. This weekend’s earthquake in Chile occurred offshore of Maule, one of the country’s wine regions. According to reports I’ve read, (this is one fairly typical) there have thankfully been few casualties, but there has been a lot of damage to the wineries themselves and stocks of wine. Traditionally a source of mediocre bulk wine, in recent years Maule has been shifting to higher quality wines. One can only hope that this earthquake hasn’t set their progress and prosperity back too far. Yes, of course, right now there are much more important things to think about than wine. But once everyone is accounted for and the rubble is cleared, people will need jobs. And money. Which is why I’ll be picking up a bottle (or several) of Chilean wine this week, and I encourage you to do the same. Watch this space for some tasting notes.

2. Pinot Noir (fake). I spend a lot of time defending the wine industry from people who think it’s shady, devious, and out to get the average consumer. Sometimes though they’re right. Take the recent Red Bicyclette scandale. Earlier this month, a dozen wine producers and executives in the Languedoc in Southern France were convicted of selling fake Pinot Noir (it was really a blend of other, cheaper, grapes) to U.S. wine behemoth E&J Gallo, who bottled it as Pinot Noir under the Red Bicyclette brand. Now the US Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is looking into it as well.

3. Pinot Noir (real). I recently discovered that a high school classmate of mine, Serena Lourie, started a winery called Cartograph Wines in northern California. They’re sourcing Pinot Noir from a variety of top vineyards and trying their hand at Gewurztraminer and Syrah as well. They just bottled their first vintage and I can’t wait to try their wines. When I’m not overcome with insane jealousy, I love following their exploits on their Facebook page. (A Web site is coming soon.)

4. Wine in NY supermarkets. New York’s train wreck of a governor, David Paterson, recently re-introduced legislation that would allow supermarkets to sell wine and liquor. A recent poll shows that most New Yorkers support it — and so do I. Yes, it would put the squeeze on some of the small wine shops that I like to frequent. But I’m in favor of anything that makes it easier for people to purchase wine alongside food. After all, we consume them at the same time — shouldn’t we be able to buy them at the same time, too?

I had a few successes. Silver Thread Vineyard, a winery in the Finger Lakes, makes very pretty Rieslings, a fine Gëwurztraminer, and a Cabernet Franc/Cabernet Sauvignon blend, “Blackbird,” that ranks among the best reds I’ve tried from the Finger Lakes. (OK, granted, I haven’t tried all that many.) All the wines come in under $25, and the winery is practicing organic, although not certified as such. (Timely, given my last post: certified organic vineyards must have a “buffer zone” between them and any adjacent plots of conventionally cultivated land. Silver Thread lost that buffer when a neighbor expanded.) I also tasted an old favorite, Lieb Cellars Pinot Blanc, a soft and smoky wine that is incredibly versatile.

I hate to sound like an ungrateful guest, but I didn’t like the City Winery house wines on tap. They have an on-site winemaker who works with fruit brought in from California. The Van Dam Zin had an odd tomato sauce aroma, and the Pinot Noir smelled like stewed meat sprinkled with potpourri. Even worse, the staff pouring the wine came off as clueless, recommending that the guy next to me try the Syrah because he said he liked “really sweet” wines. (The Syrah was many things, but sweet was not one of them.) Bad wine guidance is one of my pet peeves. It’s hard enough to learn about wines without having people mislead you in order to push product.

Determined to end on a high note, and kind of wine-d out, I hit two stands that turned out to be the winners of the afternoon. First, I visited Red Jacket Orchards, a Finger Lakes orchard and juice company that makes my new favorite non-alcoholic beverage: tart cherry stomp, a blend of tart cherry and apple juice that was puckery, crisp, and thirst-quenching. (The black currant was pretty good, too.)

The day’s highlight, however, was my visit with Paul Holm, owner of the Long Island Meadery. The guy is clearly smitten with mead, a ye olde fermented honey wine that was popular in the Middle Ages. If you squint at the picture below, you can just make out the awesome LI Meadery logo on his t-shirt: a bee in a suit of armor.

He takes honey, dilutes it with water, adds fruits and spices, and ferments it into some of the most unusual drinks I’ve tasted in a while. The wines aren’t as sweet as you might think, and they retain some of the musky/smoky/bitter quality that distinguishes good honey. The black raspberry was the driest one I tried, and the sweet/tart flavor combo would make it a nice match for BBQ. The raisin clove, the sweetest one on offer, smelled like Christmas, and flirted with being a bit cloying. (Admittedly, I’m not a clove lover.) My favorite was the pear cyser (that’s cider to you), a fragrant pear wine that I bought and can’t wait to serve with one of my favorite desserts: a poached pear drizzled with honey and served alongside a nice hunk of Parmesan. I’d serve all of these wines chilled–and hide the bottle and ask your dining companions to guess what they are.

The wine is 95% Merlot, with the rest coming from Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. There’s no vintage on the label, although all the fruit is from the 2007 vintage. The nose is raspberry, earth, and black cherry, with a hint of cinnamon and mint. On the palate it’s medium-plus bodied, with soft, pretty cherry fruit and a surprisingly long finish for a $16 wine. It’s one of the riper-tasting Long Island wines I’ve had in a while, and I think this bottle would do a good job of convincing the skeptic that New York can make the kind of well-made, easy-drinking wines that California, Australia, and Chile churn out in vast quantities.

Well done. Now if only they could fix the packaging.