Updated: 10/3/2008 - 12:17 PM

Welcome
to Long Island Wine Country

As another growing season draws to a close, Long Island's vineyards are looking great. We had some heavy rains, but there were enough sunny, breezy days in between to dry out the grape clusters and keep moisture-caused disease to a minimum. Vineyard managers — with their fingers crossed, as always — are looking forward to a crop of ripe, healthy fruit. Assuming the good weather we're enjoying in mid-September holds out through the harvest, 2008 promises to be another fabulous vintage for Long Island.
Fall is an especially exciting time here on the East End, with many of the wineries offering harvest festivals and other seasonal treats. In February and March, Long Island Winterfest reprises “Jazz on the Vine,” those fabulous, free, weekend concerts that jazzed up wine country last winter. See the Calendar of Events in this issue for more about this not-to-be missed series, including some new twists on last year's success.


Every season is beautiful in our little corner of the world, but fall is my personal favorite, and not just because October is my birth month. There's a poignancy, a bittersweetness, about fall that makes it infinitely precious. As the days grow shorter, the hard, flat summer light turns gentle and crisp and, at sunrise and sunset, each dying leaf is haloed by golden light.
Fall is a time for reflection, for looking back on the waning year, coming to terms with its sorrows and regrets, savoring its joys and triumphs. It's a time for stacking wood and cleaning out the fireplace to welcome the cozy fires of winter. It's a time for yellow school buses and hot cocoa, popcorn balls and apple cider, Halloween treats, Thanksgiving feasts and football games. It's a time to slow down, take a deep breath of the cleansing air, and enjoy the great privilege of being here on the bountiful East End.
Here, from one of America's best-loved authors, are a few autumn words to live by:

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious
as autumn sunshine by staying in the house.
So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.
– Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Good health!
Jane Starwood, editor