One of the most exciting domestic projects is happening right in our backyard, at FLORAL TERRANES: hyper-local (foraged!) cider and wine made by Erik Longabardi (a teacher for children on the spectrum) and Benford Lepley (a photography retoucher).

From their garage-turned-winery, we caught up with Erik and Ben this weekend while they put a three-week macerated Merlot to press.

Together, they are restoring local traditions of all-things-fermented; and in the process, restoring the perception of what is possible east of Brooklyn.

What was your entry point into cider/winemaking?

Erik: For me, it was fermentation. I started fermenting ginger beer and kombucha and things of that nature, then I started playing around with apples, and then wine. It was the interest in fermentation at first, and still–always is. 

Benford: Similar for me. I initially learned about fermentation through Sandor Katz’s book Wild Fermentation; so I was making a lot of like, wild fermented sodas via his ginger beer recipe, and I was living in a dry county at the time–so to obtain alcohol, my friends and I figured out that we could just knock on people’s doors and pick pears. Made perry. And my interest in cider grew, I ended up working with Aaron Burr’s cidery and moved to upstate NY to work with him.

So you went into this with some experience.

Benford: We’ve learned a lot through experience; between the two of us we have almost 20 years of fermentation experience, and we’re lucky to work with really good fruit. Compensating for bad material–we don’t have to do all of that, so we can work really simply in terms of technique. For the cider fruit, the learning has been more like, how do we manage to check all these places, maintain these relationships, what order are we going to have to pick stuff in…those logistics, nobody really taught us that. All the nuanced things, a lot of that is stuff you just pick up on the fly and build over time.

What did you originally set out to do here? Was this just a personal project, or was it always about making something consumer-facing?

Benford: my impression is that–you were just compelled to do it, and there wasn’t really a plan… 

Erik: I was interested in plants, gardening…

Benford: You were interested enough to get a license and get this started. 

Erik: Floral terranes in my mind isn’t for everybody, it just can’t be. We both work full time and have family, kids–it’s a lot of work. To do it on an even larger scale just doesn't make sense; I like how we have to think about this, and be structured, and organized and work incrementally–we make baby steps every year with this project, small steps that we hope make the wines and ciders better.

Benford: The scale we’re at for working in this space–there is a sweet spot in the relationship between producing in a small space, being as close as we are to the city, working with a distributor; and the realities of that trifecta, is so influential for what we’re able to do. We’re at that edge where if we moved out of this garage, it would put us into a completely different ecosystem. The way it is now, we can be lean, and especially with the ciders we make–you can’t exponentially grow with that. There’s a finite amount of that fruit.

Erik: It would challenge the actual goal of this; it’s really important that there’s some holistic element to this.

Benford: Our goal is to stay this scale but get more and more efficient in how we work and how we build our equipment up to match that. So we can source fruit for grapes that we really like and work with it in a way that it’s not breaking our bodies or spirits.

Right–there’s no cider this year. And that was driven by the weather?

Benford: It's a combination of things. But apple trees that aren’t maintained will give you a more significant crop every other year. And the combination of last year being a huge apple year–people refer to it as a mast year–that means the trees this year are not as prime to put on blossoms. There actually was a good bloom on Long Island but we had a nor'easter right in the middle of it in May, and whatever made it through that was just wiped out by the drought after that.

So back to cider next year?

If all goes well, yeah. 

Erik: I miss picking fruit at Restoration Farm this year and the seminary, and all of the different spaces [we pick in].

Restoration Farm! I need to get over there.

Erik: They’re farming in a way that is pretty righteous; we don’t have too many outlets for agriculture in Nassau County, especially in the way that they’re doing it, which is high quality - that’s why we support them and do their CSA. You want to enforce that because if you’re not taking part with your neighbors…everyone needs help. Making sure they get that recognition. It’s a win-win situation.

Benford: [laughs] Yeah for the NYT article, I was trying to drop everyone we care about–get everybody in!

Erik: We used to have this–in terms of agriculture–long ago, and everyone says “I used to” or “There used to be this place down the street” and well, it’s not there anymore.

People now don’t generally think of Long Island as being about history, and agriculture.

Benford: That’s all such recent history, too, it’s interesting…I have a friend who grew up in Bellmore, in the 1950s, there was a cow pasture in front of her house - I can’t picture that. Long Island ecosystems are extraordinarily special, it’s a very unique place in terms of the landscape–it’s a shame to see a lot of that get lost behind big box stores.

Erik: Coming here felt like an opportunity, because so many people were moving upstate, or around the city–and it was like, there wasn't really anyone doing anything here. I felt that it was hard to be here, but also felt that there was opportunity. You could build something out of nothing here. Things that are untapped around here, that I found even more so working with Benford…things that were not being used to their fullest extent, places forgotten in time. The gold rush went upstate, I didn't picture myself doing that.

There’s authenticity to be found here, that you maybe won’t walk down the street and see in an obvious way.

Erik: There is a likemindedness–it exists, but you have to get in your car and search for it. I feel like I have more of a voice out here; I mean that in a way that’s humbly said, but there’s an opportunity for us to talk about this place because we grew up here, we have mixed feelings about it, we decided to move back here. I feel really good about this place. I’m glad that I'm back here and I get to share it with my own family.

Benford: People’s perceptions of Long Island–everybody has a story, and it’s just stories. And the reality on the ground is never actually these snap judgments that people have. There are all these exceptions to the rules. Make what you want of it.

All of the apples are foraged?

Benford: We do purchase some fruit–but most is foraged. Uncared-for trees that were intentionally there at some point, and now we’re working with the owners to put it back to use. We'll check in with people, there are some sites we’ll prune so we’re there in the winter. If possible, we’ll call them up and ask, do you see fruit on the ground? How is it tasting? But other times we’ll take a whole day to drive to 5-6 different places. One of the worst experiences is fruit just disappearing all of a sudden. If you’re not having your eyes on stuff, it disappears; sometimes a big storm comes through and blows all the fruit down, and it gets eaten by deer. 

Like with Ida last year?

Benford: Ida dropped 9 inches of rain out here, and there were apples dropping in the first week of September that should only be getting ripe in mid-october. So we picked what we could…it was such a big apple year, very quickly the garage filled up with fruit. Both of us were really skeptical because it was so underripe, but it turned out to be one of our favorite ciders. We let it sit and ripen as long as we could, about 2 weeks. Early apples tend not to store well, and these were straight up premature fruit. The seeds here hadn’t even developed yet.

How did Ida (the cider) turn out?

Benford: I find it pleasantly tart and salty, we did put some pears in there, which added some body. It has nice weight and structure to it. It makes me think of salty herbs, like if you walked by some mugwort growing by the ocean; it picked up on more of those savory tart apple characteristics.