For years, travelers to the southern coast of Brooklyn have focused on the tawdry amusements of Coney Island, the exotic Odessan ambience of Brighton Beach, and the tranquil suburb-within-a-city gentility of Manhattan Beach.  But Sheepshead Bay, the latest year-round travel destination in southern Brooklyn, is a former sleepy fishing village usually referred to in tourist guides as a “residential Fuhgeddaboudit.”  The Bay, as locals know it, is home to working-class families more likely to spend summer vacations in their postage-stamp sized backyards than exploring America’s vast network of national parks or traipsing across Europe.  Consequently, the Bay has maintained a low tourist profile and draws visitors only twice yearly.  Every May, fishing enthusiasts congregate alongside the Bay on Emmons Avenue for the annual Blessing of the Fleet and Bluefish Parade, and in late June, Brooklyn emigrants from Chechen-Ingush and Nagorno-Karabakh, dressed in colorful native outfits, gather on Knapp Street to celebrate the arrival of Pomegranate Season.

But hidden among the neat rows of attached brick homes and grand apartment buildings between Ocean Parkway and Ocean Avenue are treasures to rival the colorful hues of Caucasian pomegranates: rows upon rows of carefully tended vineyards that are attracting wine snobs, scene-makers, and casual drinkers to Sheepshead Bay for the rush of a heady harvest of herbaceous heaven.  And equally important – for the opportunity to pay rock-bottom prices for top-of-the-line boutique wines.

“There’s no accounting for taste,” said Mark Solomon, long-time Sheepshead Bay wine merchant, and publisher and editor of the monthly Overlooked Vintner, the journal of record for small residential growers.  In his crowded office, Solomon surveyed recent wine arrivals as he contorted his lanky frame to create a perfect right triangle in a nook of a rustic floor-to-ceiling wine rack carved from the trunk of a native Brooklyn Norway maple.  “Now I’m inclined to talk to you,” Solomon said with a hearty laugh, “so you should consider yourself blessed.”  Solomon then extricated himself from the wine rack to inspect a carafe of Seyval Blanc from the small Koehning-Stundt Vineyards at the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Avenue U.  “And this batch is a blessing, too,” said Solomon as he took a sip, swirled the sample around his mouth, and then spit out his tasty mouthful, narrowly missing my notebook.

Pointing to a map of Sheepshead Bay in his office, Solomon directed my attention to sites where small vineyards have been planted on residential blocks, and areas where mid-sized vineyards have replaced older bungalows and multi-family homes.  “The land is becoming more valuable as farmland than for condos,” said Solomon, throwing his hands up into the air, “and investors are buying tear-downs to put in new cuttings.”  Shaking his head, Solomon tells me that he’s torn between the two opposing forces at play in Sheepshead Bay.  On one hand, according to Solomon, there are working-class homeowners whose life savings have been poured into their properties, while on the other there’s the ever-expanding number of grape growers.  Suddenly, Solomon’s gaze fell on a recent vintage Gravesend Neck Road Zinfandel, and a smile sprouted on his face.  He carefully opened the bottle, sniffed at its contents, poured a small amount into a special tasting glass, and then took a sip.  He then swirled the liquid around his mouth, and finally spit it out.  “Sheepshead Bay is like Sonoma was twenty years ago,” Solomon confided to me after another sip and spit.  This time, however, Solomon hit my notebook, trousers and shoes.

Emmons Avenue, celebrated in the 2003 Woody Allen film, “Anything Else,” an elegant stretch of country road that hugs the Atlantic Ocean, is considered by local residents to be the heart of Sheepshead Bay, and is to this day the Bay’s chief attraction.  On the day I visited, I spotted dockside barkers shouting departure times for fishing boats with names like the Explorer, the Rapture, and the Godforsaken, and I watched elegant diners on their way to Lundy Brothers Restaurant, a block-long four-star seafood emporium, stopping to play with the last of Brooklyn’s herds of free-ranging miniature horses.  In recent years, the Emmons Avenue fishing fleet has attracted most of the tourists who make southern Brooklyn their primary vacation destination, but grapes and wineries may soon take the lead when it comes to year-round reasons to visit, and some local business owners contend the vineyards have wooed some visitors away from the fishing fleet.

“Not so,” says Captain Erica Burdon, the Chief Skipper of the Bay Fleet Association.  Burdon disagrees that vacationers are shunning the fishing fleet, and welcomes the new tourism that wineries have brought to Sheepshead Bay.  “The Bay fleet owners see no decline in ticket sales,” said Burdon, a tall, athletic, red-haired Bay fleet veteran, “because we work closely with area wine growers to cross-market each other.  Everyone knows that good wine goes with fish,” said Burdon, as she takes a hefty swig from a bottle of Voorhies Prosecco and shouts out orders to her crew on the Born Yelling, named after the noted feminist and Congresswoman, Bella Abzug.  Burdon is not the only woman captain in Sheepshead Bay, but she still gets occasional double takes when she commands the Born Yelling.  “Look,” said Burdon, “most of my clients are fisher MEN, and I realized long ago that all they want is a good time, a good haul, and confidence about their safety aboard the Yelling.  In fact, most of them wouldn’t know the difference between a soulmate, a cellmate, and a stalemate.  What I look like and what I wear is of no consequence to anyone, and these crotchless waders are simply for MY comfort!”

One of the Bay’s chief attractions for wine connoisseurs and tourists alike is the close proximity of its vineyards, making it possible to visit up to ten wineries within a two-day trip.  Betty Hudson operates the Sheepshead Bay Tour Company, which offers hayride daytrips through the Bay’s residential blocks, and Hudson prides herself in knowing where the best vineyards are located.  “This is the best way to get around the Bay,” Hudson told me, “and my hay wagon is pulled by specially trained free-range miniature horses.  These honeys have been trained to sniff out new vineyards.  So when you travel with me,” said Betty, “you’re gonna see everything, including the hindquarters of some of the most beautiful little honeys you’d ever want to see!”

It didn’t take long for Betty to discover that I knew next to nothing about the history of Sheepshead Bay.  To remedy this shortcoming in my education, Betty sat me down in her living room to view a self-produced video documentary on Bay history.  I’ll spare you the details, but it turns out that Betty’s family has been in Sheepshead Bay for almost four hundred years, and that she is in fact the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of the great-great-great-great-grandson of the nephew of the great English explorer, Henry Hudson.  As you may recall from your high school American history, Hudson arrived in the New World in 1609 aboard the Half Moon, a merchant ship outfitted by the Dutch East India Company, the most powerful mercantile engine of its time.  Hudson’s mission was to find the fabled Northeast Passage, sort of a shortcut across northern Russia to the Far East, but after failing to do so, the great British explorer guided the Half Moon westward across the Atlantic to the New World.  Hudson had a crew of twenty aboard his ship, and among them was his Dutch nephew and assistant navigator, Breukleyn Hudson.  After an extremely difficult Atlantic crossing marked by long stretches of stormy seas, food poisoning, recurring lice infestations and twice-daily floggings, the near-mutinous Half Moon crew executed a disciplinary turnaround when Breukleyn pointed to the shoreline and shouted with no small degree of bluster, “I have discovered the Passage,” and then guided the eighty-ton merchant ship into an inland waterway not far from the living room of the Hudson homestead. 

When the Half Moon crew heard that they found the Northwest Passage, they celebrated their discovery not with the world-class wine that Sheepshead Bay produces today, but with ale and extra rations of salt cod.  But one among them did not join in the celebration.  Apparently no one was more pleased with the discovery than young Breukleyn Hudson, who alone among captain and crew considered himself to be a great explorer and world-class navigator, and soon felt that the standing of the crew was beneath his.  In an unbecoming display of verbal bravado, Breukleyn then boasted to a shocked crew that he, Breukleyn Hudson, would soon be wealthier than the Medicis of Venice, and would in his lifetime be better known than his distinguished uncle, Henry.  Needless to say, this self-aggrandizement did not endear him to his uncle or the crew.  And sadly, after two weeks of exploring the inland waterway, it slowly dawned on the real great explorer that his nephew had found the entrance to neither the Northeast Passage nor the Northwest Passage, but had instead discovered Sheepshead Bay.  The crew of the Half Moon, quietly encouraged by their captain, and enraged that their voyage could now go on for months or even years, tossed Breukleyn overboard while Henry retired to his quarters, consulted his nautical charts, read aloud Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” to the cabin boy, and then slowly took stock of his career.  Soon thereafter, the Half Moon continued its search, without its assistant navigator.  So you could say, as Betty did at the conclusion of the presentation that “Breukleyn was the first European to put down roots in this area.” 

Once the video was done, I hopped onto the buckboard of Betty’s hay wagon as she gently prodded her prized charges into motion.  As we journeyed through picturesque Bay blocks shaded by leafy canopies of North American maple and Cornelian cherry dogwood, Betty pointed out local vineyards that tourists on walking tours or horseback would likely mistake for simple residences among the rows of attached brick two-family buildings.  When we reached Emmons Avenue, Hudson stopped to point to the exact spot where her British and Dutch ancestors arrived in the New World.  Betty and I then stepped down from her wagon to watch the crew of the Born Yelling untying the boat’s mooring lines.

We waved to Skipper Burdon as she navigated the Born Yelling away from the Emmons Avenue pier and guided her vessel toward the Rockaways Inlet for a day of sport fishing.  While we watched the dockside goings on, I asked Betty what ever became of Breukleyn Hudson.

Betty told me that Breukleyn was eventually taken in by Sheepshead Bay natives, members of the Reckowacky tribe, who were originally from what is today known as Arverne, the wine-producing region of the Rockaways.  Hudson also told me that the Reckowackys have their own unique connection to Sheepshead Bay that goes back more than a millennium.  In the seventh century AD, members of the Reckowacky nation in Arverne split over a thorny issue of religious doctrine that to this day has ramifications for Reckowackys everywhere.  In those days, fundamentalist followers of the wine God, Yayinmevushal, insisted that pure faith and respect for religious law alone were sufficient to become a spiritual adherent, or “affect” of God, while reform Yayinmevushalers held that ceremonial drinking was the one true pathway to become affected.  Yet a third group believed that Yayinmevushal could be understood by reason alone, but this group soon wearied of the religious bickering and left for what they called, “the New World,” and what we today call, “Bensonhurst.”

The schism came to a head on the holiest day of the Reckowacky calendar in the year 747 AD, the Day of Affliction.  Affliction Day is a day of prayer that commemorates the destruction of the first Reckowacky sweat lodge in 587 BC by Babylonians from nearby Suffolk County.  This particular Affliction Day began as all others, with petitions of forgiveness and the casting of chickens into the Atlantic Ocean, followed by daylong prayer in tribal sweat lodges.  The fundamentalists, led by their Prophet, Sheldon the Wise, waited patiently until the reformers were well into their lengthy afternoon service, by which time the ceremonial wine had them speaking in slurred tongues and bemoaning the destruction of the original sweat lodge.  The fundamentalists then entered the sweat lodges of the reformers, herded the besotted affects into canoes, and pushed the canoes out into Jamaica Bay.  According to legend, by the time the wine-loving Yayinmevushalers sobered up, Sheepshead Bay was discovered.  Legend also has it that the reformers would spend the next forty years searching for their beloved Arverne, but were led in endless circles by a series of false Prophets, each of whom insisted that the wanderers follow not the shortest path to their ancestral homeland, but demanded instead that they follow the road less traveled.

Betty dropped me off at the nearby Knapp Street Vineyards, known for its KSV family of wines and run by four generations of the wine-growing Keuka family.  I was greeted by Keny and Selma Keuka, who share the responsibilities of day-to-day operations at Knapp Street, and was taken immediately to Keuka Labs, where testing of last year’s Gewurtzaminer was under way.  “We’ve always been very scientific about our wines,” said Selma, as she pointed to technicians in crisp white lab suits taking Gewurtzaminer samples from nearby oak barrels for testing.  Selma told me that the sample wines are first blended with a proprietary mixture of carbolic acid and tap water, and then loaded into stainless steel water rifles.  Finally, the rifles are taken to a bacteria-free clean room where trained marksmen shoot the test solution at the eyes of senior citizens dressed as Franklin Ground squirrels.  “Franklin Ground squirrels,” Selma told me, “are known throughout the scientific community for their intelligence, as well as for their unique ability to detect subtle differences in grape types.  Even though the FDA prevents us from employing actual Franklins for testing, we like to think that our Senior Citizen Surrogate program is just as good as testing our great wines on the squirrels themselves.  Why else would we win awards for our grapes year after year?”

When I expressed interest in KSV’s testing protocol, Selma cautiously explained that the procedures were highly technical, that safety was KSV’s first priority, and that “only a small number of test solutions” are aimed at the eyes of the test subjects, and only when the senior surrogates are dressed as Franklin Ground squirrels.  Before I could ask follow-up questions, Selma led me to a wall of plaques from borough-wide and national wine-tasting competitions.  While I was admiring Knapp Street’s awards, four beefy emergency medical technicians raced past me carrying a stretcher into the testing area, and no sooner had they arrived than Selma’s husband, Keny took me to meet his children, his parents, his parents’ parents, and then led me to an outdoor range where an electrified fence contains a family of real free-range Franklin Ground squirrels ranging freely.  “Four generations, in the same business, and all under the same roof,” reflected Keny, “and then the seniors and those damn Franklin squirrels.  If it weren’t for the wine, I would’ve killed some of them long ago.”

Before I was able to ask Keny whether he was referring to family members, seniors or squirrels, he handed me a bucket of KSV wines, and quickly ushered me outside the Knapp Street Vineyards, and pointed me in the direction of a grand marble sculpture of KSV’s founder, Agamemnon Keuka.  With arms reaching to the heaven, Agamemnon rested on a marble bar stool, across whose base was etched the following legend, entitled, “Prayer.”

O Hyphenates, beautiful one, muse of conjunction, daughter of Zeus, sister to Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe and many other siblings too numerous to mention, too beautiful to behold, and to err is human, I come before you in awe and humility, to beg that you bless me with the knowledge of Dionysus and Demeter. 

While I pondered the link between ancient Greece and today’s Sheepshead Bay, I was greeted by local artist Bernard Zalon, current owner of the historic Sheepshead Bay General Store, located at the intersection of Ocean and Voorhies Avenues.  The General Store, which opened in a former Reckowacky sweat lodge in 1776, has been lovingly preserved by Zalon, a former architect and competitive bicyclist who purchased the store after learning that Native Americans used the sweat lodge not only to commune with the Great Creator, but to occasionally get away from their wives.  “I’ve always loved this store, and I thought it would be a great place to sell my etchings,” said Zalon, who spoke in a hoarse rasp reminiscent of long days spent in etching studios and long nights spent in neighborhood saloons.  Zalon and I walked over to Ocean Avenue, passing along the way a number of children frolicking with miniature horses in the late afternoon sun, and talked about his artwork, tourism and wine.  “When you walk into the store,” said Zalon, “it’s like walking into the past.  Not only do we have a wide selection of local wines, but we’ve got Reckowacky music on the jukebox, cafeteria-style dining, penny candies, big barrels of Kosher sour pickles, and all of your Bay favorites: Wu Tang fried clams, New England clam chowder, custom-made hoagies, and Native American dreamcatcher ices in all your favorite flavors, including Ojibwa, Cree and Navajo.”

I ordered a bowl of Zalon’s creamy clam chowder and a batch of fried clams, and then sat down at a picnic table beneath a rare American elm tree behind the General Store.  When the first spoonful of clam chowder hit my tongue — with its pungent blend of sea salt and spices, and hints of Barbera, Muscat and oak — I found myself transported back in time to a mid-nineteenth century New England fishing village, complete with flat-roofed cottages, women gathered in sail-sewing circles, school children salting cod, hearty woodworkers admiring their masts, swarthy blacksmiths admiring the hearty woodworkers admiring their masts, and a group of fresh-faced sailors swabbing deeply appreciative apprentice deckhands.

My chowder-reverie was interrupted by the ferocious roar of a pack of Harley-Davidsons revving nearby, so I decided to bid adieu to my fried clams and make my way back to Ocean Avenue.  When I arrived at the front of the General Store, I spotted a gathering of leather-clad bikers wearing the colors of the First Church of the Blessed Grape, whose insignia consists of two intersecting sets of hands: one pair cradles a bottle of wine, while the other is clasped together in prayer.  Noticing my interest, one of the bikers motioned for me to approach, removed his helmet, extended his hand in greeting, and introduced himself as Minister Howard Merlot, which he insisted be pronounced MERE low.  Merlot informed me that he and his wife, Peggy, had just spent a week with two dozen New Jersey Interfaith bikers volunteering at Koehning-Stundt Farms, a real working Sheepshead Bay vineyard.  “We like to spend a week of our vacation time each year giving back to the wine community,” Merlot told me as Peggy joined her husband, “and it’s a great way to meet other bikers who love the Lord … and love their wine, too!”  When I asked the Merlots what it was like to live and work at a vineyard, Peggy described the accommodations at Koehning-Stundt as “charming, rough-hewn, and minimal,” and told me that she had never before spent time at a working farm among Mennonites and Orthodox Jews.  “All we did for six straight days was pray and prune, pray and prune,” exclaimed Peggy, as husband Howard nodded in agreement.  “And on the seventh day,” Peggy added, “we prayed … and then pruned some more!  Now that our vacation’s up, however, I can’t tell you how good it feels to have made a difference in the lives of those vines.  And I’m so-o-o-o going to miss those miniature horses.  Aren’t they the cutest?”

Howard and Peggy positively beamed as they described the hardworking laborers they met while volunteering at Koehning-Stundt, and as they told me about their personal growth and renewed spirituality, I suddenly realized that a working vacation at a real Sheepshead Bay vineyard posed a number of intriguing questions.  How do volunteer vacationers get along with experienced field hands?  How do Mennonites and Orthodox Jews work together?  How does a boutique vineyard located in a borough of New York City survive?  I decided to take advantage of my newfound friends to find answers to these questions.  I asked Howard whether he’d be willing to give me a lift to Koehning-Stundt, and I soon found myself seated behind Howard as he and his wife gunned their Hogs in the direction of their blessed summer sanctuary. 

Within minutes we pulled up to the attached brick home that serves as the entranceway to the vineyard, and Howard and Peggy introduced me to Gabriela Garcia Koehning-Stundt, CEO and vineyard master of Koehning-Stundt Farms.  Gabby, as she prefers to be called, is a tall, blond, athletic woman who radiates old-world charm and possesses advanced degrees in geology, chemistry, horticulture, animal husbandry, wine science, metallurgy and rhetoric.  We said goodbye to the Merlots, and Gabby then grabbed her backpack and took my arm in hers as we walked through a maze of offices and laboratories, and then wandered out a back door into the vineyards.  A late afternoon sun cast a golden haze over symmetrical rows of vines heavy with rich, luscious grapes in majestic shades of crimson, and framed a storybook view of miniature horses cheerfully pulling carts filled with singing farm laborers. 

Gabby called out, “Dante,” and a chestnut miniature horse with blaze markings trotted up to us, and immediately began nuzzling Gabby’s thigh.  “Dante has been my spiritual guide and closest friend,” Gabby told me as she ran her fingers through Dante’s mane, “in addition to being our mascot at Koehning-Stundt.” Gabby then reached into her backpack to take out a handful of Brussels sprouts, and then handed them to me.  “Give them to Dante,” Gabby instructed me, “but give him the sprouts one at a time.  If he eats too many at once, Dante may have a harrowing gastronomical experience.  Dante watched as Gabby handed me the sprouts, and then jogged over to my side to await his treat.  I held out a sprout for Dante, and within seconds I had the tiny steed eating out of the palm of my hand. 

It was quitting time at Koehning-Stundt, and Gabby, flanked by farm manager Vergil Maro on one side, and Dante on the other, makes it a diurnal habit to greet the returning Mennonite and Orthodox Jewish field hands, caked with thick layers of soil and sweat after a hard day of fieldwork, as they walk hand-in-hand to the communal wine bath.  “This farm has been in my family for four generations,” Gabby told me, “ever since 1882 when my great-grandfather, Israel Koehning, a cantor from a religious family with strong ties to the Hapsburg Empire, and his Anabaptist wife, Emily Smuckler Stundt settled in Sheepshead Bay.  They narrowly escaped from the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the last gasps of a protracted internecine struggle over the translation of ‘Andromache’ by Euripides into modern Moravian.”

No sooner had Gabby uttered, “Euripides,” than a beautiful Sheepshead Bay late afternoon — filled with sunshine, the sweet smells of nature, a charming miniature horse nibbling at my fingers, hardy farm laborers chanting Reckowacky folk songs – dissolved into a meteorological nightmare.  The skies darkened, the winds picked up off the Atlantic, and the farm laborers began to run for cover as torrents of rain created gullies between rows of vines.  Gabby’s farm manager, Vergil hoisted Dante onto his shoulders, and then guided Gabby and me across a hellish river of muddy water to the safety of the covered porch of the original wood frame house that Israel Koehning built for his wife upon their arrival in Sheepshead Bay.  As we shook off the rain from our clothing and watched the downpour, we were joined by Vergil’s apiculturalist wife, Florence Geryon, who emerged from inside the Koehning-Stundt family home wearing white overalls, a pit helmet and bee veil, and who, from the looks of honey dripping from her breast pockets, had just finished cleaning beehives. 

Vergil introduced me to his beekeeper wife, a young athletic woman with a runner’s body, long brown hair, and nautical tattoos marking her muscular forearms.  Florence explained that the Koehning-Stundt house, built to resemble the raised split-level bungalows common in 19^th century Moravia, is in surprisingly good condition for its age, and doubles as a home for the bees used to pollinate K-S grape flowers.  “We renovated the house in 1997,” Vergil added as he took Dante down from his shoulders and placed the frightened horse in Gabby’s arms, “paying specific attention to historical details.  For example, the terraced Japanese Zen garden on the south side of the house captures the Enlightened Monarchial landscape style introduced to Silesia in the 18^th century by the dowager Empress, Maria Teresa of Austria, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, and mother of Marie Antoinette.  And the vines that Koehning brought from Moravia to the United States surround the family graveyard, located behind the house.  Those very vines provide the stock for Koehning-Stundt’s American hybrids.”

Florence added that while most grape rootstocks are self-pollinating, the secret to Koehning-Stundt’s success lies in the extra pollination provided by European honeybees (Apis mellifera) raised inside the K-S ancestral home.  While Florence described the benefits of secondary pollination to hermaphrodite grape flowers, the flash storm subsided, the skies lightened, the clouds parted, and a rare Theodoric rainbow (so named after the 15^th century German physicist and theologian, Theodoric of Freiberg, the first to chronicle rainbows that produced images of stairways ascending heavenward) appeared, and left us, Dante included, dumbstruck.  Except Florence, who used her captive audience to advance her theory that the recent disappearance of much of the nation’s honeybee population was not due to a version of APV (acute paralysis virus), nor was it due to cell phone signals, genetically-modified crops, the mind-numbing length of the primary season, or increased levels of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere.  “It is my theory,” Florence opined, “that the honeybees are not dead, but are merely organizing.  To a bee they are fed up with pollinating California almond crops, and have spent the past year working up contract proposals under the aegis of the United Automobile Workers.  Koehning-Stundt bees are union bees, and consequently possess health care insurance.  In fact, 97% of Koehning-Stundt bees have received the latest version of a vaccine for acute paralysis.  And most important, there are no almonds — or peanuts, pistachios, or even filberts – grown here in the Bay, so my bees are very happy indeed.  Contented bees are the best workers, you know!”

Vergil smiled proudly while his wife lectured us on apiary maintenance and organization, Dante nibbled on the last of the Brussels sprouts, and Gabby walked behind the house to pay her respects to departed family members, all while the late day sun scattered the few remaining clouds.  A warm breeze blew in off the Atlantic, and the last of the grape workers headed toward the communal wine baths, where the Koehning-Stundt Men’s Chorale performed a selection of popular songs from classic American film Westerns.  Just as the chorale segued from “Cat Ballou” to “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” I spotted General Store owner Bernard Zalon, Overlooked Vintner editor Mark Solomon, and KSV owners Selma and Keny Keuka headed in our direction in Betty Hudson’s hay wagon.

“You do remember that you left your bucket of KSV wines at the store?” shouted Zalon, as Betty pulled her wagon alongside the K-S homestead.  Sheepshead Bay is such a tight-knit community that it came as no surprise to your reporter to see that our little group was well acquainted with one another, and when Gabby returned from visiting long-gone Koehnings, Stundts and Koehning-Stundts, she suggested that we all head back to her office to sample the bucketful of Knapp Street Vineyards wines.  As we started back, Dante jumped into Florence’s arms, knowing full well that licking Florence’s breast pockets would yield sweet honey.  Vergil discussed this year’s Koehning-Stundt harvest prospects with Editor Solomon and the Keukas, while Betty, Zalon, Gabby and I brought up the rear.  When we reached the K-S offices, I let the others walk ahead of me while Dante and I took one last look at this picture perfect example of the many hidden vineyards of Sheepshead Bay.  “Dante,” I said, “Mark Twain once said, ‘Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.’  Buy I tell you, sweetheart,” I added as I scratched Dante’s right ear, “This is BOTH!”

Visitor Information:

John F. Kennedy Airport is 15 miles and approximately 30 minutes from the heart of Sheepshead Bay.  Many airlines have direct flights to Kennedy Airport.  Transportation choices are numerous, including yellow taxis, private car services, public transportation, car rentals and water taxis.

Sheepshead Bay area wineries are open on an alternate side-of-the-street basis.  On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, wineries on the north and west sides of streets are open to the public from 10:00am until 5:00pm.  On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, wineries on the south and east sides of street are open from 10:00am – 5:00pm.  Please contact the New York City Department of Transportation (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/home/home.shtml) for information on parking in New York City and Sheepshead Bay.

For a listing of Sheepshead Bay wineries, go to http://www.OverlookedVintner.com.

For a complete schedule of Sheepshead Bay hayrides, and to make reservations, contact the Sheepshead Bay Tour Company at Yo!HayRidesintheBay@Reckowacky.org.

Sheepshead Bay lodging options are plentiful and include Best Western, Comfort Inn and the Reckowacky Lodge.  Suites are also available above the Sheepshead Bay General Store, where you can also purchase artwork by Bernard Zalon.  Contact Zalon at http://www.geocities.com/etchings_by_zalon/home.html.