Benmarl Winery

Benmarl Winery
156 Highland Avenue
Marlboro, New York
USA 12542
Phone: 845 236 4265
http://www.benmarl.com/

Contact: Victor Miller
Email: [email protected]

When the Miller family bought the Caywood property in 1957 and re-named it BENMARL, it had outlived all of its early contemporaries to become America's oldest professional vineyard. The Millers rebuilt its steep terraces, replanting them with excellent European wine grapes, hybrid and vinifera, carrying on Caywood's private experimentation at a time when New York's wine industry was at a low ebb and long before New York State officially began experimental wine study.

To help them support their work, the Millers created the Société des Vignerons, inviting friends interested in perpetuating the Valley's viticultural traditions to become "vicarious vignerons" by taking on the annual support of two or more of Benmarl's experimental grapevines and receiving in return their produce in the form of wine.

The Société caught the imagination of serious wine lovers. Its work in the vineyard inspired many regional farmers to plant better wine vines. Its innovative work in the cellar has helped to give eastern winemaking new dimensions never before considered possible. In only a few years the Société has seen its earnest crusade to bring about a renaissance of our country's first vineyard region evolve into a veritable fountain of astonishingly fine wine enhanced by a regional character which sets it apart from any others in the world.

Benmarl was very fortunate to have its wine well received. Judgment of the quality of wine is, of course, a very subjective matter. One drinker's preference may be another's anathema. In order to gain general acceptance a new wine, like a new idea, must overcome a formidable series of barriers to acceptance representing a tendency in all of us to resist change. The very idea of wine as a part of our American cuisine was resisted for a long time and even now when we are at last learning to use wine at our tables many people are still reluctant to accept wines which are not grown in a famous region. With this in mind it would not have been surprising for the wine from this little known vineyard to be disparaged for its regional differences or simply to be ignored. But happily it met quite the opposite reaction. There has perhaps been no other American vineyard, during the past few years, which has received more attention from those who write about, think about, and enjoy good wine than tiny Benmarl.

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