Long Island Wine Country Legacy Dinner to Celebrate Bedell Family

Long Island Wine Country will honor Kip and Susan Bedell of Bedell Cellars for their contributions to the Long Island wine community during the trade group’s legacy dinner on Nov. 14 at the North Fork Country Club.

Running for over five years, the legacy dinner connects members of the wine community to celebrate their accomplishments for making the East End flourish. The legacy dinner was originally started to commemorate the original owners for the wineries that started about 50 years ago. Now that many of those people have either died or left their businesses, the legacy dinner gives an opportunity to acknowledge the achievements they’ve earned in the community.

“We’ve decided we’d have a community effort to have most of the vineyards on Long Island congratulate some of these people for starting out, leading the way and making good wine,” said Russ McCall, co-chair of the event and owner of McCall Wines.

This year’s honorees, the Bedells, began their wine journey about 45 years ago and have since sold their business. They started hosting tastings back before they were wildly popular, offering a chance for people to stop in and discuss wine together. Although the vineyard is in new hands, it still holds the Bedell name.

Every vineyard that comes to the event will bring their own bottles of wine to share with the tables, offering everyone a little taste of everything. The event will be hosted by other wine contributors who will introduce the Bedells and describe how wineries began to grow on the East End. Kip Bedell is expected to discuss his journey and what it was like for wineries back in the beginning.

The wineries on the East End have formed their own community within each other.

“It’s kind of a farming community. You go through the winter together and everybody is pruning and out in the snow. Everybody makes better wine and everybody congratulates each other, they’re all kind of in the same business,” he said, “Here you have a farming community that is still involved with each other and likes to promote looking back on what they’re doing.”

These wineries have thousands of people who come out every year to get a taste of their creations.

“It’s another dimension, it’s not going to a restaurant. You can go and have a different kind of experience,” he said.

Since then, wineries on the East End have taken off.

“It’s bigger and bigger. The good thing is, it’s provided a lot of hope and land on Long Island,” McCall said.

The legacy dinner is not to promote any businesses, it’s simply to celebrate the beautiful tasting they’ve created over the years together. The event is expected to begin at 6 p.m. Nov. 14 and tickets cost $150 a person with passed hors d’oeuvres and a four-course meal with delicious wine.

For more information visit their website, liwines.com/event/liwc-legacy-dinner-3