Long Island Winery Built by Entenmann Sells for $15 Million

(Bloomberg) -- A Long Island farm owned by bakery executive Robert Entenmann -- with a winery, tasting room and a five-bedroom house -- sold for $15 million in the priciest residential deal on the North Fork in a decade.

Entenmann’s family operated Martha Clara Vineyards, named after his mother, on the 205-acre (101-hectare) Big E Farm in Jamesport. The winery will stay: The buyer was the Rivero Gonzalez family, wine producers from Mexico who plan to expand their operations to the U.S., said Sheri Winter Clarry, the Corcoran Group agent who handled the sale.

The farm, owned for a generation by the family whose baked goods are ubiquitous on U.S. supermarket shelves, was first listed for sale in 2014 for $25 million, Clarry said. The price was later cut to $17.5 million. Robert Entenmann died in 2016 at the age of 88.

“It’s a piece of history,” Clarry said. “The house had a commercial baking kitchen that he used.”

The property includes 113 acres of vines, horse pastures, nine barns and an event space, according to the listing. The “manor house” has five bedrooms and 10,236 square feet (951 square meters) of living space.

The purchase price was the second highest in North Fork history, behind only a $19.5 million waterfront sale in 2008, according to Corcoran Group.

Maria Rivero, chief executive officer of the winery that bears her family’s name, said the farm’s vines were as important as the property itself in deciding on the purchase. The family has hired a master planner to figure out how best to use the home -- a bed and breakfast is a possibility -- and the wines to be produced are also still up for discussion, she said.

“We’re very much into listening to what the soil is good at,” she said. “We’re at the stage where we’re analyzing which grape is better here in terms of the fruit itself, and in terms of expression.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Oshrat Carmiel in New York at ocarmiel1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Taub at dtaub@bloomberg.net, Christine Maurus

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