Industrial Winery in Oceanside Brings Variety to Long Island

Rockville Centre NY

24 January, 2022

2:11 PM

Description

OCEANSIDE, N.Y. – Located on the edge of Oceanside's industrial zone, a new winery, Insieme Wines, was abuzz Sunday afternoon with patrons sipping reds and whites while seated at high top tables lined alongside oak barrels stacked on racks. Co-owners Massimo DeVellis, the head winemaker, and his lifelong friend Joe Divino were busy serving their fourteen varieties of wine produced in-house with grapes they purchased from regions across America. Their four white varieties are a dry riesling made with fruit sourced from the Finger Lakes, a pinot grigio from Long Island's North Fork, and a sauvignon blanc and a chardonnay from California's Suisun Valley, near Napa. Most of their 10 reds come from the same region, while others are from Yolo County in California and Wahluke Slope in Washington state. "I get to make the things that really speak to me, that I really love, that represent my style of winemaking, and I can take my time making those particular things," DeVellis said about making his wines in an industrial setting. Opened in December at 3333 Lawson Blvd., Insieme Wines is billed as the only full production winery with a tasting room in Nassau County. The 3,100-square-foot brick building, which once housed a printing business, is far cry locationally and aesthetically from the rolling, lush green vineyards dotted with white gazebos, barns and tractors on the rustic North Fork. The winery has three 1,000-gallon stainless steel fermentation tanks, a bladder tank that compresses the grapes and other heavy manufacturing machinery. Without a farm, a winery of that kind must operate in an industrial zone. There, the owners can produce up to 3,500 cases of wine annually and sell bottles ranging in price from $26.99 to $59.99 DeVellis and his wife, Jessica, aim to create an inviting atmosphere for patrons who can conveniently visit year round rather than drive two hours to visit the pastoral vineyards out east to drink wine ideally under the summer sun. Jessica, who manages the winery, was instrumental in its design. In the main tasting room, floor-to-ceiling lockers filled with wine bottles line one wall. The other walls feature murals by a Massapequa artist, including a flowery piece at the wine bar. "If we don't have grapevines, then we hope that the place and the ambiance is so good you can come out and visit us whenever you want," DeVellis said. "It doesn't have to be good or bad weather, it could be any time. And hopefully that the wine and food are so good that people don't necessarily focus on being in a vineyard."Jessica grew up working at her family's traditional Italian deli in New Hyde Park, a background that helps the winery further distinguish itself with the cheeses and meats it serves. Already popular with patrons are the charcuterie boards of prosciutto, speck, goletta salami, coppa and Italian sausage, all delicacies imported from Italy.While DeVellis may not farm grapes, he has cultivated a lifelong passion for wine and winemaking from his days going to elementary school with Divino in Rosedale, where his family produced homemade wines. Later, DeVellis worked in finance, married Jessica in 2000, and the couple became hobbyists who produced wines at their Massapequa home for themselves and Divino and his wife, Ghislane. The couples often dined and drank wine together, which inspired their winery's name "insieme," which means "together" in Italian. In 2004, the hobbyists turned more serious when they started to buy grapes from California vineyards and stepped up their production from one to multiple barrels. "We were taking the bigger approach of getting different grapes," Divino recalled. "We wanted to get involved in making higher quality wine just for ourselves." Their winemaking took a significant leap forward in 2008, when they rented space at a Hicksville warehouse and obtained the licenses to sell their wine wholesale to restaurants and wine shops. That year they also produced what became their signature wine, a heavy, bold ricordi blend of cabernet, merlot and malbec. After the blend matured for three years, they started giving away bottles of it to their friends, fellow wine club members and restaurateurs. It received rave reviews. "That's kind of what sparked the idea that maybe we should look a little deeper into making this a real thing," Divino said. After the COVID-19 pandemic hit in spring 2020, an opportunity arose for an industrial space in Oceanside. Their final step toward opening a tasting room was born when the couples signed a lease in August of that year. They opened more than a year later, after reconstructing the facility and clearing bureaucratic hurdles. Now, DeVellis works full time on the new business. "I reached a point in time where I was looking for a change in career paths," he said. "I had been cultivating a change to this for a long time. Having worked in finance for the better part of 30 years, it just got to the point where I wanted to do something different and be self employed."