See our Facebook page: Comtesse Therese Vineyard and Bistro
Patrick Clementz, Consultant Winemaker
HISTORY
Comtesse Thérèse has been producing wine commercially
for twelve vintages (2001 - 2012). Starting in
2001, fruit was procured from other North Fork of
Long Island vineyards. From 2005 onward, grapes have been supplied by the estate vineyard, Le Clos Thérèse in Aquebogue. Total annual
case production started in 2001 with 550 cases, growing to approximately 1000 cases annually.
WINEMAKER
Theresa Dilworth, home wine and beermaker and self-taught in commercial winemaking, is Head
Winemaker.
The Consultant Winemaker is Patrick Clementz, since September 2011. Working at Premium Wine Group since early 2010, he spent the preceding six years as Assistant Winemaker at Wolffer Estate Vineyards in Sagaponack, working with Roman Roth. A native of Germany, Patrick is from the Alsace region, where some of Theresa's ancestors are from.
Before that, Patrick worked as an assistant winemaker at WG Auggen in Auggen, Germany. He has a Master's degree in Winemaking from Lehr und Versuchsanstalt, Weinberg, Germany. His family owns vineyards in Oberrotweil, Germany, where he has been involved since childhood in the growing and upkeep of grapevines as well as the picking and selling of grapes to local wineries.
Theresa Dilworth and Patrick Clementz at Premium Wine Group with the first harvest of syrah grapes from Las Côtes, October 15, 2011
From January 2010 through September 2011, Alie Shaper, owner and winemaker of Brooklyn Oenology (BOE) in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was Consultant Winemaker for Comtesse Thérèse. In addition to winemaking and consulting, Alie opened her own tasting room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in October 2010 and is now focusing on wine sales and growing her business.
From 2002 through the 2009 harvest, Bernard Cannac was the Consultant Winemaker. Bernard
received his Oenology degree
from the University of Bordeaux II. In fall of 2009, he moved to the Finger Lakes in upstate NY to take a winemaking position at Heron Hill Winery .
PREMIUM
WINE GROUP
Starting
in 2005, Comtesse Thérèse began making
small quantities of hand-crafted wine at the estate vineyard in Aquebogue,
New York. However, the majority of the winemaking is done
at Premium Wine Group (PWG), the custom production facility
in Mattituck, Long Island. Similar to the Napa Valley Wine Co. in California, PWG makes no wine of its own, but provides state-of-the-art
facilities, equipment, and personnel for the making of
fine wines by its clients. Founded in 2000, it is the only such facility on the east
coast of the US. PWG clients supply the grapes, yeasts,
barrels, bottles, labels, and explicit winemaking instructions
to PWG, which provides the labor, equipment and space.
Russell Hearn
is the Director of PWG, which has seven full-time employees
and 110 wine tanks. PWG processes over 1,000 tons of fruit into 60,000
cases annually, for about 15 vineyards on Long Island,
upstate New York and New England. See their website at www.premiumwinegroup.com
WINEMAKING
As
a general rule, the red wines undergo primary fermentation in stainless steel tanks. Indigenous, natural "wild" yeasts naturally occurring on the grape skins are used for
primary fermentation. Cool temperatures are used for red wine fermentation. Malolactic or secondary fermentation
is also allowed to take place spontaneously, using the malolactic
bacteria naturally present in the wine. The malolactic fermentation takes place in the steel tanks, and then the wines are moved to barrels for aging for six to 18 months. The red wine is not fined or filtered.
The
chardonnay is 100% barrel-fermented in Russian oak barrels using wild yeasts, and may undergo partial malolactic fermentation, depending on the vintage. The rosé and the blanc de noir, made by the process of saignée,
or bleeding off the clear juice from red grapes, are steel-fermented.
The type of barrels (oak species, forests, toasting levels,
cooperage houses), length of barrel aging, frequency of
racking, and other aging techniques vary according to variety
and vintage. Comtesse Thérèse is one of the
few wineries in the U.S. to use Hungarian oak and Russian
oak barrels, in addition to French oak and American oak, and is the first on the East Coast of the U.S. to use Canadian oak barrels.
Russell Hearn, Director of Premium Wine Group
Estate-grown chardonnay from 2011 vintage, producing carbon dioxide from sugar in mid-fermentation
Bottling line at Premium Wine Group
