Recently my parents and I had the opportunity to visit one of Williamsburg's hidden gems, the Brooklyn Winery. This urban winery sources grapes from the Finger Lakes, the North Fork of Long Island and California and, under the direction of winemaker Conor McCormack, crafts a number of outstanding wines on the premise. The nose on the 2012 Cab Franc is extraordinary. I love being able to recognize a wine without taking a sip. This wine, made by 100% Cab Franc grapes from the Finger Lakes region, is, on both the nose and the palate, the most pure expression of Cab Franc I've ever had the pleasure to taste. The 2013 reserve Merlot, made from grapes from Long Island's North Fork, is medium bodied, with excellent depth and structure. While still tasting of traditional dark fruits, this Merlot is neither over-oaked, nor a fruit bomb, making it a very food friendly wine. The richest and darkest of the wines we tried was the 2013 Old Vine Zinfandel. Made from grapes from Lodi Calif., known for some of the oldest vines (and awarded 91 points in the Oct. 15 issue of Wine Enthusiast), this is a big layered wine.

It exhibits good fruit on the nose and some lovely smoke on the finish. We also had the chance to experience the 2013 Blanc de Blancs. Made from 100% Finger Lakes Chardonnay and made using Methodé Champenoise, this wine is an exquisite celebration wine. One can easily taste the care put into this wine. There were two Rieslings my mom enjoyed, one barrel fermented and one crafted in stainless steel. While the stainless steel version outshone the barrel Riesling, the reds were far more spectacular. While the winemaker is clearly gifted, the chef is also brilliant. The Crispy Brussel Sprouts made with toasted pecans, smoked paprika, candied orange, red pearl onion and maple butter was the best thing I've ever eaten. We also had a cheese plate with a French blue cheese that should be required eating with the red wines. The space, full of roughhewn and repurposed wood, is a warm and welcoming step back in time. Old-fashioned typewriters, (oh gosh — all typewriters are old fashioned now aren't they?), large antique radios and black and white photos on sepia-colored wallpaper add to the warmth and ambiance.

No visit to Broklyn Wnery would be compklete without taking one of its tours. We were able to see the fascinating winemaking process firsthand, and Sean, who gave the tour, was fun, friendly and very knowledgeable about not only the process, but also the space — and the area of Williamsburg. Both Sean and James, who was behind the bar, made our visit to Brooklyn Winery very special. You can also order their wines from their website online, but I'm guessing you can't order their Brussel Sprouts. Linda Delmonico Prussen is a Long Island-based, award-winning journalist passionate about all things wine. For more DAILY VIEWS, The News' contributor network, click here.Posted in New York Most people have no idea that the Brooklyn Bridge was once the swankiest party spot in the city. And no, we’re not talking about raging fetes that happened on the bridge itself – there are actually massive wine cellars hidden beneath one of New York’s most iconic landmarks. However, you’ll probably never get to lay eyes on these secret chambers.

Before the Brooklyn Bridge was even open, these wine cellars were filled with the city’s finest bottles. The engineer who designed them hoped that building the cellars would keep the wine dark, cool and secure. The cellars are so large that they are connected by a series of twisting passages named after French roads. A statue of the Virgin Mary once stood at the 60,000-ton granite entrance, along with the inscription “Who loveth not wine, women and song, he remaineth a fool his whole life long.”best recipes for wine tasting Another inscription on the walls of the legendary cellars reads: “Legend of Oechs Cellars: These cellars were built in 1876, about seven years prior to the official opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883. best way to package wine for shipping

From their inception, they housed the choicest wines in New York City.” When Prohibition took hold, the caverns were turned into newspaper storage areas. Though they briefly reopened to the public after alcohol came back into vogue, World War II led the city of New York to take over permanent management of the cellars and close them to visitors. Almost no one has been permitted in the extraordinary caverns since. The cellars remain empty and forgotten by the thousands of pedestrians and motorists who cross the Brooklyn Bridge every day.best place to buy wine in houston tx Check out this incredible footage of the Brooklyn Bridge as it was in 1899.wine and food magazine recipesArmed with their arguments, the two pizza sellers appeared last month in rabbinical court, known as a beth din. best dessert wine under 20

There, things proceeded like a Hasidic People’s Court, with the judges — three rabbis — dressed in traditional all-black garb, facing the litigants. At one table, the plaintiff: Daniel Branover, an owner of Basil Pizza & Wine Bar, a popular upscale kosher restaurant in Crown Heights that opened in 2010 and offers specialty pies as a menu staple.At another table, the defendant: Shemi Harel, who this month opened Calabria, a pizza shop directly across the street from Basil.With its graffiti-style décor and casual, pay-at-the-counter dining, Calabria is very different from sleek, modern Basil, where weekend diners often wait two hours for a table.best wine tasting around los angeles But it was Calabria’s menu that set off alarms for Mr. Branover, whose customers pay as much as $24 for individual pies. Mr. Branover took one look and saw a threat to his thin-crust, sauce-laden business plan: Calabria was offering a similar product at a lower price, mere steps away.

“I just couldn’t look the other way,” Mr. Branover said. “He didn’t want his customers. He wanted my customers.”While some may see this as mere capitalism, Mr. Branover considered it a violation of Talmudic law on unfair competition by a new nearby business — in Hebrew, hasagat gevul.So he sued in rabbinical court, claiming a case of “one business hurting the livelihood of another business.” Mr. Branover said he had helped transform dining in the neighborhood by opening Basil, where Hasidim, local Caribbean immigrants and newly arrived professionals could mix over good kosher food. Now here was this upstart interloper encroaching on his business. “They did everything that was against Jewish code, and that’s the reason I went after them,” said Mr. Branover, whose partner at Basil, Clara Perez, said that Calabria’s owners had stealthily debriefed employees about Basil’s most popular pizzas and how to make them. She also accused Calabria’s owners of poaching customers while they waited outside for Basil’s tables to clear.Mr. Harel dismissed the accusations as nonsense, saying that his restaurant’s look, menu and pizza were clearly quite different from Basil’s.

The case provides a window into a merchants’ dispute rarely heard in rabbinical courts, vestiges of a religious legal system established in ancient times and prevalent today in Orthodox communities as an alternative to the civil court system.Beth dins are better known for mediating and adjudicating religious bills of divorce, kosher certifications and conversions to Judaism. But on occasion, they also rule on more enigmatic points of Jewish law, such as claims of ruinous competition. In 2006, a State Supreme Court ruling upheld a rabbinical court decision blocking one Hasidic-owned bus company from copying another’s route schedule from New York to Washington. And in 1993, a group of kosher restaurants in Teaneck, N.J., asked a rabbinical court to stop a nearby restaurant from expanding and stealing its customers. The pizza ruling was issued in mere days, in Hebrew, with certain citations of the Torah and the Talmud in ancient Aramaic. The rabbis sided largely with Mr. Branover, finding that Calabria was so close both geographically and in food style that it jeopardized Basil’s livelihood.

Calabria was told to switch to offering “regular pizza,” which the court defined as “New York-style pizza,” though it did not provide any further guidance. Since the ruling, however, the case has fallen into a murky divide between ancient Talmudic law and the conventions of a classic New York slice. To Mr. Branover, the ruling means Calabria must stick to basic pizza parlor rules: round pies, sliced into wedges.Mr. Harel called the ruling unfair and mystifying. He said it would hinder his pursuit of the top kosher certification, critical to attracting customers. To follow the court’s New York-style pizza edict, Mr. Harel said, he searched online for the best dough recipe that fit the bill. He quickly revised Calabria’s website to call its pizza “New York-style.” But he continued to sell rectangular slices.Mr. Branover accused Calabria of making nominal changes in a cynical attempt to flout the ruling. He is prepared, he said, to file a civil suit, using the rabbis’ ruling as leverage.Mr. Harel said Calabria was a family business that cost “in the high six figures” to open and had required a sizable loan.

Mr. Branover said that of his annual gross sales of roughly $3 million, pizza sales accounted for roughly $50,000 a month, but that pizza was his biggest attraction for customers. In an interview, the rabbis who heard the pizza case said they had considered Calabria’s location, as well as Mr. Branover’s substantial investment in his restaurant and the reputation it had won. While Jewish law does not oppose competition as a rule, “there were exceptional circumstances unique to this case, including the similarities in appearance and concept” in pizza offerings, said Rabbi Reuven Alt, the senior member of the Borough Park panel.Like many rabbinical courts, the Borough Park panel is set up like a simple civil courtroom, akin to a traffic court in that it has no gallery, bailiffs or court reporter. Cases have plaintiffs and defendants, and proceed in Hebrew, with witnesses, evidence presentations, questions from the rabbis and cross-examinations. In the pizza case, the rabbis took the unusual step of visiting the restaurants, using an Uber car to drive them there.“