Raphael

Plenty of North Fork weddings end up under a tent. Raphael put its room inside a building instead, and the building is the point. John Petrocelli modelled the winery on the Italian monasteries of his family’s ancestral region, then sank the cellar twelve feet into the ground so the wine could move by gravity and the earth could hold it at 55 degrees. It is a serious piece of construction with a room in it.

Built by someone who cared more about the wine than the party

The Petrocellis planted in 1996 on land in Peconic, and per the Long Island Press, of the 50 acres they bought, 40 are permanently preserved as farmland and the winery sits on the remaining ten. Another twenty acres came in 2006. Paul Pontallier of Château Margaux consulted on the design. Richard Olsen-Harbich made the first wines; Anthony Nappa took over in 2012.

Their own story page says roughly half the crop is dropped every year to get the rest properly ripe, and that the whole harvest is done by hand. That is not marketing language you can fake, and it tells you what the glass at your table is going to be like.

One room, fully indoors, and no published price

The wedding space is the Renaissance Room, done in cherry and mahogany with vineyard views through the windows. Raphael’s own private-events page names the room and the two in-house event coordinators but publishes no capacity and no fee. Northforker, reporting in June 2025, puts it at up to 175 guests, entirely indoors, with an exclusive on-site caterer working from a dedicated kitchen and chairs, tables, linens, china, glassware, flatware, valet and security included.

Indoors is the trade. You lose the open-sky vineyard ceremony that Sparkling Pointe and the tented properties sell, and you gain a September date that does not depend on the forecast. Worth knowing before you book: harvest runs through September and October, so ask what the crush does to your access and your parking.