Sparkling Pointe's 2021 Topaz Imperial Rosè Wins Best in the State

For your next trip to Long Island’s wine country, you may want to consider stopping at Sparkling Pointe in Southold, where you can try the best sparkling wine in New York State.

That’s not an exaggeration. Sparkling Pointe’s 2021 Topaz Imperial Rosè was named best sparkling wine in New York State in the 2024 Champagne and Sparkling Wine World Championship, and Sparkling Pointe’s label received particular recognition from world-renowned wine writer Tom Stevenson. It’s an award that coincides with Sparkling Pointe’s 20th anniversary: They were founded in 2004 by husband and wife duo Tom and Cynthia Rosicki, who still own the vineyard.

“The Topaz Imperial, we won this award before, from him,” Cynthia Rosicki said. “He’s the man. He wrote a book about the best champagneries around the world, and we’re in there.

“The color [of the Impèrial Rosè] is lovely and everybody likes that. And it’s just delicious. We make 12 different kinds of methode champenoise, and we also make a brandy as well.”

This is the second time Sparkling Pointe took home this prestigious award; they last won it in the 2018 competition for their 2016 Topaz Impèrial – and they’ve won several smaller awards in this competition through the years as well.

“It’s a reflection upon what we really do,” Tom Rosicki said. “What we do is nothing less than methode champenoise, the method of double fermentation with the original grapes used in France. To do that is a painstaking project, because double fermentation requires us to do the first fermentation from late August in the summer, through the through the fall, through the winter, through the spring, the first fermentation is in our tanks, and then in the spring it goes into bottles with yeast and sugar for the second fermentation. The second fermentation can last anywhere from two and a half years to nine years. So it’s quite a process.”

The pair met at the Waldorf Astoria at a debutante ball in March of 1987, and fell in love immediately, with a shared love of champagne being a part of it. Cynthia and Tom married that August. They both grew up on Long Island and enjoyed visiting the North Fork in their childhoods – and saw the region transform into wine country that rivals Nappa Valley. Cynthia and Tom are both attorneys by trade, but enough trips out to the North Fork convinced them that they should join the business.

“And so, we bought our first 12 acres where our winery building is now with the cellar, the tank cellar, and over the course of the last 20 plus years, we built the building, we bought all of the additional equipment and acreage,” Cynthia said. “It was a dilapidated nursery with a small old barn, and in the Town of Southold you need a minimum of 12 acres in order to build something. after about two years of our vineyard manager taking care of the property and he said, ‘Okay, you guys, we could decide, come on out here. We’ll, we’ll take a walk on the land and decide what you want to do.’ So we really hadn’t thought about it, because we had like 500 people in our law firm. That was really our main priority. And then we came out here, we met with him, we walked the land, and he said, ‘Do you know what you want to make, so I know what kind of grapes to plant?’ At the same time, we both looked at each other and said, ‘Champagne.’”

The rest is history, they say. Sparkling Pointe has become a fixture on the North Fork wine scene, largely due to their creative monopoly on Sparkling Wine.

“The reality is, it’s a minimum of like three years to make our most basic champagne, and most people who are in business don’t want to put that kind of time, or can’t afford to put that kind of time into making a bottle of wine,” Tom said. “We just happen to love champagne so much. There was no question that when we started this, that was the only thing we wanted to make.”

What keeps Sparkling Pointe going strong, for 20 years now, is the Rosickis’s love of champagne, their customers, and of course, each other.

“There’s a lot of love going here at Sparkling Pointe,” Tom said. “We love our guests, we love our staff, we love our products, we love our reputation, and we love this business. And aside from that, more than anything, we love each other.”

Sparkling Pointe is located at 39750 County Road 48 in Southold, and can be reached at 631-765-0200. They are open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.