Red Hook Winery

Red Hook Winery
As part of a growing trend across the country, urban wineries are sprouting up on concrete without vineyards onsite. Red Hook Winery in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood located on Dwight Street in an old munitions plant within walking distance to IKEA is a good example. Since there isn’t any large scale grape farming yet in Brooklyn, grapes come from the Long Island’s North Fork. California vintners Bob Foley and Abe Schoener utilize a mix of traditional and technologically advanced methods. Most large-scale producers choose to use additives but here they add pure yeast inoculates and crush grapes by hand four times a day and then put them into barrels to ferment.

Red Hook Winery is restoring Brooklyn’s faded winemaking tradition once practiced routinely in kosher wineries and Italian-American basements. Only around 500 cases will be produced, so be ready to pounce. The first cases to be distributed outside the winery are set to hit the market late this spring or early summer. The whites should start appearing this summer and the reds in the fall at restaurants like The Good Fork, Momofukus, Union Square Cafe, and stores like Crush Wine and Union Square Wines. Vintages available on site now and available for tasting include spirited Chardonnays, herbal Cabernet Francs, and power packed Gewürztraminers swirling with hints of Asian spiciness. And in case you want turn it into a pub/wine crawl, Sixpoint Craft Ales is right across the street.