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BEHIND THE BOTTLE

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November/December 2009

Photograph: Courtesy of Hudson-Chatham Winery

Back to the Land to Make Baco

Hudson-Chatham Winery 2007 Baco Noir Reserve, $19.
By Amy Zavatto

It’s one thing to stand in the tasting room of a winery, gazing out upon rows
of vines, pretty and pregnant with their heavy, round fruit, and get drunk on
the notion of ditching city life to tend acres of Vitis vinifera or labrusca. It’s
quite another to actually do it.

Carlo DeVito hadn’t planned on living out “Green Acres.” He was moving and
shaking in Manhattan’s publishing world at Running Press, an enthusiast
whose interest in wine led him to become the in-office expert on the topic
and, eventually, to oversight of RP’s wine books. He even shepherded a series
of Wine Spectator tomes from notion to shelf. But he started spending
weekends and vacations hitting local wineries and wine-growing regions with
his wife, Dominique. Then he wrote his own book on East Coast wineries.

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Then, well… then he found the 14-acre parcel, once part of the old Brisklea
Farm up in Chatham, which, until about 30 years ago, was home to some of
the finest Ayrshire dairy cows in all the land. And that, pretty much, was that.

“You see all these advertisements for wine and it looks like a great big party
and you think, ‘Oh, we’re going to have a ball!’— no!” says DeVito. “It’s the
hardest thing, but there’s a sense of accomplishment, a sense of doing
something good for and with the earth that I can’t explain, but I’ve found
nothing else to replace the experience.”

The whole family—DeVito, Dominique, and their two sons—moved up into the
circa 1780 farmhouse and started the hard work of turning fallow, shale-rich
soil into vineland; abandoned, dusty rooms into a home; and a Manhattanite’s
kooky dream into a life’s work.
Edible Events

“In our first year, we did about 200 cases. Last year, about 1,200. This year,
Showing events after 11/6.
we’ll do 2,000 to 2,500 cases.” While at first De-Vito was trying his hand at Look for earlier events
different varietals and buying grapes from other spots until his own vines Tuesday, November 10
6:00pm "Farm City: The Edu
were ready, a night spent tasting older vintages of the French hybrid baco
Thursday, November 12
noir with the man who would become his winemaker brought his direction
6:00pm Thursday Oysters a
into focus. He’d been buying some old-vine baco from Steve Casscles, Friday, November 13
formerly of Ben Marl, who grows the grape on the four or five acres 11:00am Brew Master's Dinne

surrounding his home and, at that point, was only making some for personal Thursday, November 19
6:00pm Thursday Oysters a
consumption. “They are wonderful old vines that he takes care of like a
Thursday, November 26
mother hen, walking around talking to his plants and fussing over them,”
laughs DeVito. “He’s a gifted and talented winemaker.”

An invitation to dinner at Casscles’s home led to a late night of tasting that

showed DeVito the grape’s potential. “He pulled out these 15- and 20-year-old
bacos that were standing up beautifully, and I thought, ‘This is where I want
my wine program to go.’” A year after buying the farm, DeVito and Casscles
made the first 100 cases of Hudson-Chatham’s 2007 Baco Noir Reserve.
“When I opened this bottle, my husband’s cousin, Alessandro, was visiting
from Lombardy, Italy; he grew up helping his dad press, ferment and fill
bottle after bottle of rustic reds, so I was curious to see what he’d think. We
sat at the dining room table, popped the cork and sipped. ‘You know,’ he said,
‘it really reminds me of a Barbera,’ and I immediately understood what he
meant.” With its zippy acidity and medium-light body, DeVito’s 2007 baco noir
carries aromas of blackberry and black cherry, and has a wild, brambly quality
that added a rustic edge, making me hanker for a long-simmered, tomato-y
veal stew.

This year DeVito planted a few acres of his own baco and invested in another
vineyard a little farther south, with an eye toward growing cabernet franc, and
the source of what will be his vineyard selection baco noirs. “It’s really about
terroir. That’s why we want to do a vineyard-designate program. It’s all about
local, as far as I’m concerned,” he says, pointing out the little area’s artisanal
cornucopia: two neighboring organic beef farms, a cheese maker a mile down
the road, a microbrewery and more wineries slotted to open.

DeVito gets gallons of excitement from being part of this community. He

waxes rhapsodic about their tomatoes, which they simmer into marinara

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(using their wine as a secret ingredient, of course), the maple syrup they make Copyright © Edible Manhattan 2009 All rights

reserved.
each winter, the balsamic vinegar, the port. “This is really part and parcel to
what we want to do: to make true, quality wines,” he says. “We want to turn the
clock back.”

Wine, spirits and food writer Amy Zavatto just got a new stove and named it
Teresa after her Calabrese grandmother who, despite coming from a family of
home-winemaking Italians, preferred bourbon Manhattans.

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