In the winery, our philosophy is low-touch, though not taken to dogmatic extremes. We do not subscribe to the current vogue in which wineries claim not to intervene at all in the natural process of winemaking. If a wine needs an acid adjustment, it gets it. If reduction threatens a sulphide problem, we fix it. If it needs filtering, we filter it. And we use cultured, not wild yeast to start the fermentation. Beyond that, we want the wines to express the character we've brought out in the vineyard by developing full "varietal ripeness".

In the cellar, we use French oak exclusively, not liking the characteristic "Crayola" aroma imparted by most American oak barrels.

One important facet of our approach is the "estate" element. We make almost all our wines "estate bottled". Legally, that means the wines are made entirely from grapes grown in our own vineyards or vineyards under our own direct care and control. More generally, it signifies an approach that eschews winemaking-as-chemistry. We never use grapes grown outside the North Fork of Long Island designation and we almost always use grapes that we grow ourselves. We never add concentrates, flavor or coloring, even where it is technically legal to do so.