Pass the Cork, Please!
Off-the-path wineries start a trend
By Erin Schultz
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Instead, she found a quirky but effective use for them that would boost the business of nearly a dozen North Fork wineries and encourage camaraderie among winemakers.
Ms. Smithen is the founder of “Passing the Cork,” a marketing strategy that creates an incentive for wine drinkers to explore wineries off the beaten path and results in a snowball of referrals for winery owners.
She said the concept arose from a conversation with Barbara Shinn of Shinn Estate Vineyards — also “off the path,” on Oregon Road in Mattituck. The corks, they planned, would become tokens for a free tasting of dessert or sparkling wine, a taste of wine straight from the barrel, or just an extra splash of someone's favorite.
For a while, Ms. Smithen and Ms. Shinn were the only two “passing the cork” through customers, back and forth to each other's vineyards. But one day the two women discussed how they could network this way among all the vineyards on the North Fork.
“Give guests a cork to have in their pocket so they'll remember us,” said Ms. Shinn. “We thought that would be cool, and it's not something that has to be totally formalized. It's created a camaraderie ... and it's always nice to have people walk through the door on Wednesdays.”
In recent months at Sherwood House, Ms. Smithen said she's seen corks pop up from Peconic Bay Winery and Castello di Borghese, Roanoke, The Old Field, Jamesport, Macari, Laurel Lake and Croteaux Rosé vineyards.
“It's caught on great,” Ms. Smithen said. “It's a grass-roots kind of thing. I wanted it to be like Macy's sending people to Gimbels and Gimbels sending people to Macy's.”
Brian Sckipp — a part-time employee at Sherwood House and a high school teacher farther west on Long Island — said the program not only boosts business for individual wineries, but educates wine drinkers about the whole region.
“You have a better sense of what you're getting from Long Island wines,” he said. “You know what to look for.”
PHOTO BY JANE STARWOOD
“Passing the cork” worked for Jennifer Hagan, 32, and Jennifer Manley, 31, two Brooklyn women who said they decided to check out Sherwood House at the end of a week-long vacation one muggy August afternoon because of a cork they got at Shinn Estate.Jennifer Manley (left) and her friend Jennifer Hagan get a cork from Sherwood House proprietor Barbara Smithen.
Armed with a bottle of Sherwood House Chardonnay and “Merliance” from the Long Island Merlot Alliance (see ‘Simply Merlot Paradise'), Ms. Manley said she thought the thought the program was great.
“And we're on our way to Waters Crest right now!” she added.
Jim Waters, owner of Waters Crest in Cutchogue, said he's been passing the cork for about two years. He agreed with Mr. Sckipp that the program has not only helped wineries with marketing but “gives people perspective on what's going on” with North Fork wines.
Mr. Waters said he directs people to other wineries based on what kind of wine they're looking for and which way they're headed. “And that's key, because it's never about one winery; it's about the whole region,” he said. “The cork is a little extra incentive to go to other places. It's a great idea that started out in a very simple format and has expanded drastically.”
Ms. Smithen said she hopes “passing the cork” will help everyone in the food and wine industry — especially in a small region like the North Fork — look at each other more as “the three Cs: comrades, collaborators and colleagues,” than as competitors.
And partly because of her own simple idea, Ms. Smithen said business at Sherwood House has picked up to the point where she has to open her tasting room every day, from noon to 6 p.m.
“I've never been open every day,” Ms. Smithen said, “except during this season. I never think they'll find us, but they do.”
Even so, she noted that she doesn't pass the cork to just anybody.
“I have to know that you're interested in wine, not just a free tasting,” she said.
Erin Schultz is a staff writer at Times/Review Newspapers.