Dr Vino's wine blog

In a further sign of how our currency is rapidly becoming the American peso, the wine list at The Modern restaurant on West 53rd Street (below MoMA) in Manhattan now lists the euro equivalent pricing.

During lunch there yesterday, I asked if they actually accepted euros for payment. They said it is for informational purposes only to help their European guests make the conversion. Must be a pretty picture for the Europeans! The only catch for them as they order their magnums is that the price on the menu does not include service and tax as is the norm in Europe, which could lead to a 25 percent upside surprise when the check comes.

Last week was the final session of my six-week NYU wine class. The grouping of people was very fun and hopefully everyone is a little more wine savvy.

One of the things that I do in the class is poll people on whether they like each wine. They’re free to love them or hate them and we generally have some fence-sitters too. Some people love certain wines (“smell the terroir!”) that are hated by others (“smells like terroir!”). Oddly enough, the expensive wines are not always the most popular since they have either too much individuality or too much conformity to please everyone.

But some wines are unanimously enjoyed. Below is a list of those wines. Incidentally, I poured about 35 wines (blind) spanning many places and styles. One week I was away on parental leave and recruited Mollie Battenhouse to help me out. Mollie, the former sommelier at Tribeca Grill and a candidate for the Master of Wine (all she has left is her dissertation), is starting her own wine business in NYC that is a first of its kind. More on that on a future date…To the wines! Read more…

Red Hook, Brooklyn, will be the home of a new “urban winery” later this year.

Abe Schoener, excellent and unconventional winemaker from California, told DrVino.com yesterday that he will open the winery in a building on Beard Street sometime late in the summer 2008. Schoener’s partner will be his Brooklyn-based distributor for the NYC area, Mark Snyder of Angel’s Share.

The wine-making facility represents a first for Schoener. Although the former Greek philosophy professor makes compelling and hugely serious wines under his Scholium Project label from California, he does not have a winery there. The Red Hook winery will make exclusively wines from New York State grapes, purchased from vineyards up the Hudson River Valley and from Long Island.

With a slip outside the building, Schoener said yesterday that some of the grapes will be shipped to the new winemaking facility. Not for carbon footprint reasons, mind you, but just because the slip is there easily presenting that option.

Even though the space will be dramatic, with 60 foot ceilings behind door 15 the huge complex on Beard and Van Brunt, it is not yet determined whether it will be open for visitors like the Bridge Urban Winery and Tasting Room in Williamsburg.

The Schoener wine label is currently unnamed but will have a historic reference. It will not be part of the Scholium Project wines.

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SIPPED: discussion!
Eric Asimov of the NYT had a thoughtful article in Wednesday’s paper about exposing teenagers to wine in the home. It’s great to see a constructive discussion (325 comments long!) on his blog about fostering wine enjoyment in the home rather than the usual discussion of excesses. Related: we’ve discussed kids at wineries and how appropriate is the drinking age of 21 here. [NYT]

SIPPED and SPIT: NYC wine bars
Closing tonight is Divine Wine Bar East. Zagat reports they have having the Mother of All Happy Hours tonight to liquidate (ha) the inventory. Opening: Bowery Wine Company and the new wine lounge at Le Cirque. See the action on the NYC wine bar map!

SIPPED: The audacity of nope
French President Sarkozy, a self-proclaimed teetotaler (although see here and here for evidence to the contrary), has the nerve to ask to see the wine list at Windsor Palace before a state dinner. [Times of India]

SIPPED: resveratrol
“Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown for the first time that resveratrol, a natural antioxidant found in grape skins and red wine, helps to destroy cancerous pancreatic cells by crippling the diseased cells’ mitochondria, the minute organelles found in the majority of living cells which provide them with energy.” [FT.com]

Image: fair-use is made of a reduced size crop of an image that appeared in the NYT attributed to Lisa Adams.

I briefly dropped by Terroir wine bar in the East Village yesterday during its first hour of being open and I can confirm that it is, indeed, now open! The wine list is compact, focusing only on a handful of terroir-driven wines. Four wines are available at $2.75 for a three-ounce pour and $5 for a six-ounce pour–real inflation busters! Other wine btg goes up to $19 for Bovia Barolo 2003 and all conform to the bigger, heartier seasonal style Paul Grieco outlined to me previously…The staff were outfitted in t-shirts bearing the image of the now-deceased, crochety iconoclast from Barolo, Bartolo Mascarello, in a Che-like image…The wine list is in a three-ring binder, which the designer described to me as being like the school notebook of “a 16 year-old boy whose obsession is not with cars or girls but obscure grape varieties,” including one with Aglianico written on it multiple times… Very tempting small plates available in the 550 sq ft space (a former bike shop) but I had to run–more anon as I’m sure I’ll be back…Here are some pix with more after the jump:

Read more…

Terroir, the new 500 sq ft wine bar in the East Village opens “at the end of February.” I caught up with Paul Grieco and talked about what the plan is for the new place. Here are some key words and phrases: edgy, Riesling, sense of place, gonna piss people off, Riesling, terroir, uber-terroir, open their minds, and…Riesling! Sounds like great stuff!

For those who don’t know him, the Paulster won a James Beard award for wine service when he was a Gramercy Tavern in 2002, then he and Marco Canora started Hearth in the East Village and later Insieme on 51st and 7th. Both the restaurants have great wine programs but this is their first wine bar! Read on for my Q&A with Paul! Or map Terroir at 413 E. 12th St. Read more…

Are you interested in climate change and wine? How about a free tasting of natural and organic wines? Then you need to put March 18 at 7 PM on your calendar and come to West 26th St.

I’ll be joining a panel to benefit The Nature Conservancy. Dominique Bachelet, director of climate change science at The Nature Conservancy, and Scott Pactor, owner of Appellation Wine & Spirits, and I will be on the panel. The wines will be provided courtesy of the excellent importer/distributor Michael Skurnik.

Even though the event is free and open to the public, you’ll need to register because space is limited. I hope to see many of you there!

“Message in a Barrel: Drinking Wine in a Changing Climate.” Details and registration.

In other Dr. Vino green news, there are still a few spaces left in my afternoon seminar at UC Berkeley (but held in their SF SoMa location) on Saturday, February 23. “Red, white and green wine: can you taste the difference?” Image: istockphoto.

In 2006, Astor Wine moved from Astor Place. Granted, it didn’t move far–just one long block away. The store’s owner was able to buy space in the handsome De Vinne Press building so they should be there a good, long while.

I visited the store when it first opened (and many times since then), but I recently went where I’d never been before: underground! Through a secret stairway behind the cognac display if you push the wall on the third shelf from the bottom…OK, there’s actually an open staircase with a conveyor belt on the side of it right behind the tasting bar.

The basement storage area is even larger than the store and extends under Lafayette Street! Lesley, my guide, said that the storage space at the previous location was even bigger, extending multiple levels below ground.

A room in the cellar is climate-controlled and they put the good stuff in there. Another walk-in, restaurant-style fridge has the sakés in it.

To power the cooling units as well as the store and portions of the building, Andrew Fisher, the owner, has purchased two Capstone microturbine generators. In short, they are powered by natural gas and produce both electricity and heat, allowing the store to live off the grid. Mayor Mike likes microturbines.

Despite the mayor’s enthusiasm, city bureaucracy has kept the microturbines unhooked for over year since they were installed. The gas meter has not been connected and the gas turned on. “Every time we ask ‘when,’ we get an answer of 2 weeks,” Fisher wrote me via email. Do turbines improve with age? Doubtful.

More photos after the jump. Read more…

Welcome readers of the New York Times who saw my op-ed today. If you’re looking for some bullet points and discussion of my research with Pablo Paster on wine’s carbon footprint, check here. Consider subscribing to the site feed or the monthly email updates on the right sidebar.

If you’re a regular reader and wondering what I’m talking about, surf on over to the NYT where you can check out my op-ed in today’s paper. I suggest drinking local this New Year’s Eve if you are making it a resolution to turn a new, greener leaf in 2008. Local wines have a small carbon footprint because of minimal transportation, which is carbon intensive. And, heck, locavore is the word of the year according to the Oxford English Dictionary, so it’s trendy too!

Be sure to check out my maps of NYC wine shops and NYC wine bars if you’d like info on where to find local wines in the city. If you’re looking to find the Lieb blanc de blancs, click here to find it at stores.

But since it is a big bar night, a few places specialize in local fruits of the vine. The two branches of Vintage New York pour exclusively the wines of New York. Borough Food & Drink, which opened this past summer at 12 E. 22nd St., highlights–you guessed it–food and drink from the Empire State and has about 40 NY wines on its list. Home Restaurant (20 Cornelia St.) is a cozy West Village restaurant focusing on local food and wine and is owned by the couple that owns Shinn Estate Vineyards. The wine list has 30 selections from New York State, including two sparklers.

If you have some favorite places for finding local wines in the City or are a big fan of a certain local winery, feel free to hit the comments. And whatever it is you raise in your glass tomorrow night, may it be a happy new year!