Martha Clara Vineyards in Riverhead, which for years made live music and entertainment a centerpiece of its business model, is no longer offering live music to its guests on weekends, winemaker Juan Micieli-Martinez said today. The new policy took effect this month.
“It’s time for us to evolve,” he said. “Nothing ever stays the same. Everything changes. If you don’t evolve you become extinct.”
Micieli-Martinez said the change is aimed at the vineyard getting to “the next level of sophistication.”
He was a member of the Long Island Wine Council committee that worked to develop recommended standards for the region to bring it to the next level.
“It’s about customer experience, making sure people know what to expect when they come out here,” he said. What to expect includes great wine, a knowledgeable staff, a nice atmosphere and a higher level of service, including table service in the pavilion on weekends.
“Our wines should be the focal point” of the customer experience, he said.
“For too long we’ve been doing whatever we can to get people to come out — you know, live music, petting zoos, whatever it might be,” Micieli-Martinez said. It takes time to build a wine region, to get people to come here.
“Now it’s going to be like, hey, let’s shift our focus to where it should be — on the great wines we are producing — not not so much what band we have playing this week,” Micieli-Martinez said. “That’s what’s really happening now.”
Micieli-Martinez said the vineyard will still host the FOLD festival and will likely be doing a live music program on Wednesday evenings. It might also have live music on the Mondays of the three-day holiday weekends.
“But that’s not our focus anymore. Our focus is what it should have always been, on the wine,” he said.
The first commercial vineyard was planted on Long Island in Cutchogue in 1973 by Alex and Louis Hargrave, who also opened the region’s first winery in 1975. Today, there are 60 vineyards planted and dozens of wineries draw more than a million visitors to the region each year.
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