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Vineyard market growing
BY MARK HARRINGTON
Newsday Staff Writer

June 13, 2006

Another East-End grape grower, Schneider Vineyards, has put its Roanoke Point Vineyard back on the market after a year's hiatus, but opinions were mixed yesterday about whether the recent spate of for sale signs in the wine region constitutes a glut.

The 21.5-acre Roanoke Point property in Riverhead was put on the selling block for $1.65 million in 2004 - two years after owner Bruce Schneider, his wife, Christiane Baker Schneider, and private investors bought the former Ziknick potato farm for $433,000 in 2002. It was taken off the market in 2005, Bruce Schneider said yesterday.

Roanoke Point joins a stable of vineyards, including Ackerly Pond Vineyards, Castello di Borghese Vineyard & Winery, Gallucio Family Wineries and a handful of others that have indicated they'd sell at the right price. Ternhaven Wine Cellars of Greenport sold its five-acre vineyard to a home buyer earlier this year, and two others, Charles John Vineyard and Broadfields, sold to a holding company, Leucadia National Corp., in the fall.

The Belle Brittany vineyard, which is owned by developer Bruce Barnet and is adjacent to the Long Island National Golf Club in Riverhead, has been on the market for the past year and a half, said broker Louisa Thomas Hargrave, who cautioned against reading too much into all the recent activity.

"I don't think you can generalize," said Hargrave, former co-owner of the pioneering Hargrave Vineyard and now director of the Stony Brook University Center for Wine, Food and Culture. "I think all these situations are very separate. These things kind of go in cycles."

But Theresa Dilworth, owner of Comtesse Thérèse vineyard in Aquebogue, disagreed. "If you look [what's for sale] relative to the market, there's a lot out there," she said. "There's been a lot of turnover."

Complicating matters, she added, "The pool of investors who want to buy [a vineyard] on Long Island is very small. It's an expensive industry to be in, and people realize you need deep pockets, really deep."

Bruce Schneider yesterday said the decision to put the vineyard back on the market was a personal one that stemmed from a desire to spend more time on his consulting business and with the couple's 4-year-old daughter. The $150,000 increase in the asking price from 2004 reflected inclusion of the Potato Barn brand, he said.

Schneider said he will continue making red wines from his Estate Vineyard in Mattituck, which is planted with 11 acres of primarily Cabernet Franc grapes. "I plan to continue making wine on the North Fork for a very long time to come," he said.

Schneider said he viewed his plan to sell somewhat differently than the other, larger vineyards on the market - most including wine-making facilities and listing for millions of dollars more. Roanoke is "for someone looking for a vineyard that can produce very high-quality wines on a manageable scale," he said.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.