Baiting Hollow Farm Vineyard

The horses are not a marketing angle, they are the business model

The 2011 Northforker profile that documents the rescue gives a horse count for 2011, and we are not repeating that figure as though it were current. What that profile and a 2017 Riverhead News-Review piece both describe is consistent. Sharon Rubin Levine takes in horses that were headed for slaughter, and the rescue was funded out of vineyard revenue in its early years.

Sam Rubin bought the land in 1988. Wine production began around 2002. The property runs to 17 acres on Sound Avenue, which is small for a North Fork producer and normal for a farm doing two jobs at once.

For a couple, the practical read is this. A wedding here puts money into an animal rescue, which some people will care about a great deal and others will never think about again. It also means there are horses on the property, which changes photographs, changes what children do for two hours, and is worth asking about in terms of access and boundaries on the day.

A tasting house with a public calendar through November

The tasting house is open Friday to Sunday from 12:00 to 6:00 PM, with live music on Saturdays and Sundays from 1:00 to 5:00 PM, and the music calendar is published through November 2026. That is how we confirmed the place is operating rather than coasting on an old website.

It also tells you what a Saturday looks like here by default. Live music from one o'clock, a public room, a beer garden and a frozen drink bar called Wine-A-Ritaville, and paying visitors coming and going until six. A wedding on a Saturday afternoon either buys that room out or happens beside it, and the vineyard publishes nothing about which.

The private events page does not state a seasonal limit on events. A tasting house schedule is a schedule and not an events policy, so do not read Friday to Sunday tasting hours as a Friday to Sunday events calendar without asking.

Two hamlet names for one address

The homepage gives the address as 2114 Sound Avenue, Calverton, NY 11933. The events page gives the same road and the same zip code as Baiting Hollow, NY 11933. Same place, two hamlet names, one of which is also the name of the vineyard.

This is not an error worth holding against anyone. Sound Avenue runs through both hamlets and the boundary is the kind of thing only the post office and the assessor care about. It does matter for two practical things: what you print on an invitation, and what a guest types into a phone at seven o'clock on a Saturday evening.

Pick one version of the address, use it on the invitation, the direction card and the car service booking, and confirm with the vineyard which one their own mail and deliveries use. Then check that both versions land in the same place on a map before anything goes to the printer.

Nothing at all is published about a wedding here

We went looking for the ordinary figures and came back with nothing. No per person rate. No site fee. No food and beverage minimum. No guest minimum. No service charge. No capacity, for the backyard or the tasting house or any other space. No end time. No rain plan. No statement about one wedding at a time.

The gap is not confined to the vineyard's own site. The Knot and WeddingWire both carry listings and neither publishes a number either, which is unusual. For most Long Island venues at least one marketplace leaks a starting price.

So the honest position is that this page cannot tell you what a wedding here costs or how many people fit, because nobody has published either. What we can tell you is what the property is, what runs on it, and exactly which questions are still open.

What to establish before a site visit

Start with capacity, because everything else depends on it. Ask for the seated number in the backyard with a tent and without one, and the seated number inside the tasting house. Ask whether the tasting house closes to the public for your event, at what hour, and what that costs.

Then ask about food. The vineyard says it supplies wine, local beer and cider, specialty cocktails, catering options and an on-site food truck. It does not say whether an outside caterer is allowed, whether there is a kitchen, or whether the food truck is the kitchen. Those are three different weddings.

Last, ask about the dogs and the horses. The vineyard runs regular adoption and dog events and describes itself as dog friendly, which is charming and is also a variable on a Saturday in June. You want to know what else is scheduled on your date and how close it comes to your ceremony.

Ask about power and noise while you are at it. An outdoor wedding on a farm needs a generator plan, a lighting plan and a sound limit, and not one of the three appears anywhere on the vineyard's pages.