Dr Vino's wine blog

Ray Isle has an cute article called “Holiday Wine Survival Guide” in the December issue of Food & Wine, which landed with a thud in my mailbox on Saturday. He offers many tips for the holidays including how much wine to have on hand (whoa, Ray, invite me over and send for the F&W stretch hummer afterward!), wine gifts, and some tips for temperature.

He also brings up the issue of renting or buying glasses for a big party. The appeal of renting is easy: it’s can be less than $1 a stem and you can often return the glasses unwashed. But then there’s the downside: generally poor glass quality, potentially high minimum charges for delivery, and, obviously, you’ve got nothing to show for your expenditure when the party’s over.

So break out the rent or buy calculators! My own calculations were just about finished when I saw that Ray recommended a decent-looking $3.95 stem from Crate and Barrel. But then I saw that it said “hand wash.” Whoa! Talk about a buzzkill cleaning several dozen glasses! I’ve had good luck with the Tritan Forte, which can be found for under $10 a stem, goes in the dishwasher, and is impact resistant (note: NOT break-proof).

What do you do for glasses at parties?

Economists love to point out that there is no free lunch. But there is something else nearly as good: fine dining for lower prices at lunch time.

On a vacation with your partner or family, splurging on lunch can have many benefits, first of which is clearly money. Many top restaurants offer lower prices for lunch than for dinner. Consider Paris, where a quick scan of some top spots shows the spread: Taillevent has a 70 euro lunch compared with 140 or 190 euro dinner menus. At the summer dining room at the Hotel Bristol, there’s a 90 euro lunch menu as opposed to the more expensive a la carte in the evening. And at Pierre Gagnaire, it’s 90 euro prix fixe lunch vs 225 for dinner.

You might have noticed that this is still dropping over $100+ on lunch–and we haven’t even gotten to the wine yet (tax and tip are included, however!). But I chose these high-end restaurants because they illustrate the cost-savings that are available at many restaurants in Paris and beyond.

In New York, reasonable gourmet lunches abound and are a fraction of Parisian prices. Read more…

Liquid assets
“I’d bought the wine before it was even bottled, as futures, for $350, and I unloaded it for enough money to purchase a car.” Elin McCoy on her 1982 Chateau Lafleur in a piece on the wine market today. The bluest blue chip? Lafite. But could a correction be coming? [Bloomberg]

Blog buyout
Gary Vaynerchuck, video blogger and owner of the store Wine Library in Springfield, NJ buys out the social networking site, Cork’d. I wonder what Dan and Dan are uncorking tonight? [via Lenndevours]

BYOB in NYC
NY mag has a list of six BYOBs with decent wine shops conveniently located around the corner. [NY mag]

Crank it up to 11
“Another barroom brawl on the BB…hey, is that what BB really stands for?” -Commenter in the fray about point inflation over on eBob. Keep scrolling (post 242) to when Mark Squires compares Parker to Galileo! [eBob]

Related: “Lake Wobegon wines” [Dr. V]
Map of New York City wine shops [Dr. V]

With 44 million tourists expected in the Big Apple this year, not everybody can fit into the Met or go up the Empire State Building. Some might just want to do some wine tourism. So here is a suggested itinerary for 36 hours in…New York City for wine lovers!

You arrive from the airport late Friday afternoon. Because few hotels offer us wine lovers anything distinctive, you can roll the dice with Priceline. In this scenario, our home for two nights will be…The Pod on E. 51st Street. Remodeled recently, it now targets the “stylish and spendthrifty traveler” so sounds good. And thanks to Priceline, you scored it for under $200–more to deploy on the wine budget!

Drop off your bags and head up or down. The rooftop area has a bar; on the ground floor is Le Bateau Ivre, a good little bistro/bar to get your evening started on a wine note.

Then head down to 20th street to dinner at a vaunted wine destination, Veritas. If you want to keep the vino flowing before getting there, drop by Moore Brothers wine shop on the same side of the street. With the store constantly cooled to 60-some degrees, and bottles always open for free sampling in the rear of the store.

Then it’s off to dinner at Veritas. Ask one of the sommeliers to help you navigate the wine list and choose from one of the 100,000 bottle inventory. Prix-fixe menu of New American cuisine is $76–how much you spend on wine is up to you.

If you aren’t too weary from your encounter with the TSA on this travel day, an optional stop afterward is Flute champagne bar across the street.

Saturday morning: no rest for the winey! It’s up bright and early to pick up your paddle and start bidding at auction! Acker, Merrall regularly holds auctions on Saturday mornings at the venerable wine restaurant Cru (190 page wine list). You can browse the catalogue and bid or just soak up the 70-lot-an-hour pace and enjoy the yummy (free) coffee.

Next up, lunch at Fatty Crab in the West Village. Try some of the excellent noodles, crispy pork, skate panggang skate with the well-crafted, concise wine list.

Then it’s down to pick up some wines for dinner in Tribeca. Chambers Street Wines is a great neighborhood wine shop that specializes in the Loire, Champagne and other wines from boutique producers. The staff will help walk you through some great options for your dinner.

All right, you said you want some rest? Well stroll over to Delluva day spa and soak up the wine with their “vinotherapy.” If there’s one thing us wine lovers like besides drinking wine, it’s bathing in it–right?!? Well, maybe not. But you probably need to put your feet up so why not let someone rub grape waste into you while your doing it.

Then it’s back uptown to Read more…

Landmarc at the Time Warner Center is Marc Murphy’s brand new bistro, an extension of his location in TriBeCa. The math is different: he’s shooting for a high volume model to pay the hefty rent. By what I saw there yesterday, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Home to many top restaurants, the Time Warner Center is a highly polished locale (btw, I saw Time Warner CEO and vineyard owner Richard Parsons ambling toward the Mandarin Oriental as I got off the escalator, so there really is Time Warner there somewhere lest anyone think it was simply naming rights). It needs Landmarc TWC since the Bouchon Bakery has all the atmosphere of airport dining and Whole Foods is a grocery store, albeit a nice one.

Landmarc’s 300-seat environment is spacious and stylish. There’s a big, curved bar in the center, a private dining room on one side, a waiting area with low, wood-block stool thingies at a long table, and some cool, semi-circular nooks for semi-private dining.

The menu (available here) is similar to the TriBeCa location with salads, daily special pastas, and steak in a variety of cuts.

But the wine is why I went. The word on the street is that it is priced “near retail.” Not always true. While it is affordable and interesting, it’s not always near retail. For example, I bought the Vavasour Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand last week at a store for $18; at Landmarc, it’s $29, or 50 percent higher. The D’Arenberg Footbolt 2004, a $13 retail wine, is available for $28. The Dr. Loosen “L” 2006, an $8 wine a store, is available for $26.

But what all those wines have in common is being reasonably priced. Wine under $30? Many. Wine under $50? Practically the whole list. Though there is a 1995 Pétrus for $1500 for those who mistakenly wander over from Per Se. And the Ridge vertical of Monte Bello (1990, 1991, 1992) sounds interesting, even for $675.

Along with affordability, the list scores big points in my book for diversity. Pinot noir from Tasmania. Arneis from Giacosa in Piedmont. Clos Sacrés from Nicolas Joly in the Savennières. Garretson syrah, “The Caric.” Fun stuff.

And the half-bottles are a fantastic idea. They say the list changes frequently, but here are a few of my suggestions from the half bottles that I saw yesterday:

Pieropan, Soave Classico, $14 Soave doesn’t have a great reputation as a whole, but this could change your mind. A great aperitif wine. (find this wine at retail)

Domaine Sorin, Provence rosé, $14. This is a wonderful dry rosé from a biodynamic (organic plus) producer. Great acidity makes it very food friendly–try with the calamari fritti. (find this wine at retail)

Nicolas Potel, red Burgundy, 2005, $16. A fantastic vintage, a top producer, this is a no-brainer for entry-level Burgundy character. (find this wine at retail)

Terrabianca, Croce, 2003, $26. Hugely tannic, fun wine to try with a cheese course. (find this wine at retail)

A final note: if you end up ordering more wine than you can finish, thanks to New York State’s doggy bag law, you can ask them to recork it, bag it, and take it home (providing that you ordered a meal).

Related: Landmarc, web site, Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, 3rd Floor. 212-823-6123
“Battle for the bottle at Time Warner Center” [Dr. V]
“Eater Inside: Landmarc TWC” with photo [Eater]

Is smaller sometimes better? At the Time Warner Center, it might just be that way for wine lovers.

Per Se, Masa, Cafe Gray, and Porter House New York all pour big, pricey magnums. Landmarc now pours reasonably priced splits half-bottles.

Chef Marc Murphy and his wife have just opened their 300-seat bistro in the space formerly reserved for Charlie Trotter in the glitzy TWC. Amazingly, they have opened one week ahead of schedule!

Their Tribeca location has astonishingly low pricing for restaurant wines. They basically don’t have wine by the glass, instead stocking a wide selection of half-bottles.

And if price weren’t set to make this the most accessible venue in the TWC, Landmarc will be open from 7 AM – 2 AM, even longer than Whole Foods!

Whether this business model will be able to make the million-dollar-a-year rent of the TWC remains an open question. But no doubt many wine bottles will head to the recycling as we find out.

UPDATE: restaurant phone is 212.823.6123

Related: “Will Landmarc’s Downtown Cool Play Alongside Its Ritzy New Neighbors?” NY Mag

There’s an adage in the restaurant business that the reputation is made in the kitchen but the profits are made at the bar. Perhaps that should be refined to “wine cellar” instead of merely “bar” for the world’s top restaurants. The highest profits seem to come from selling wine, not mere booze.

In a fascinating and lengthy profile of Chef Gordon Ramsay in the New Yorker, Bill Buford let this nugget drop about the operations at Gordon Ramsay at the London:

“The [food] prices—the best value in New York—had been deliberately set low, Ramsay told me, to encourage people to spend more on wine, an upmarket restaurant’s greatest potential profit (no overhead, no spoiled ingredients).”

So is wine the REAL profit center at restaurants? One time Mrs. Vino and I were dining at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago with another couple, one of whom ordered a gin and tonic. The waiter frostily told her that the restaurant serves no cocktails. Apparently it’s in the name of gastronomy since alcohol can deaden the palate. Chef Thomas Keller does not serve cocktails at the French Laundry in Napa either, although it has something to do with allegedly not being able to get the proper license.

Are gourmet restaurants pushing diners toward wine? In the New Yorker story, Buford reports on a group of hedge fund managers at the exclusive “chef’s table” who ordered $10,000 worth of food and wine. Another group from Goldman Sachs was set to take the table the following night: “budget not important,” was the word in the house. And at Petrus, a Ramsay restaurant in London, investment bankers famously ran up a $63,000 wine tab a few years ago (they later had to resign over it). That’s a heck of a lot of gin and tonics even at $20 a pop, the price at Per Se.

So is wine the real profit center at high-end restaurants? If this secret gets out, maybe mid-tier restaurants will start upgrading their wine programs. A wine geek can but hope.

* * *

On a related note, Gregory Condes, who oversaw the acquisition of $750,000 worth of wine for Gordon Ramsay at the London, has been fired according to the Sunday Mail after a wild night. It could be an April Fool’s spoof, but it seems too harsh.

In case you missed Tony Boudain’s hilarious rant against the Food Network, it has been making its way around “the internets.” New York magazine got into the action, rushing to the defense of the Food Network saying that Michael Ruhlman, who published the Bourdain rant on his blog, specializes in cheap shots. Ruhlman fired back calling NY Mag “wankers” and told them to buy his book. Good stuff. I can’t wait for the TV version to come out (though probably not on Food Network).

Now we get this sent to the Dr. Vino world headquarters from a trusted source with insider knowledge (emphasis added):

Interestingly, [the Bourdain critique] is not a big deal at the Network at all. They are a media company first and they try to appeal to the masses as much as possible. It’s part of the business model if you will and a byproduct of being available in over 90 million homes. As a side note, the fact that they’re in 90 million homes is why it is very unlikely to ever have a show on wine or even organic foods on the air. They don’t want to alienate any of the non-drinking viewers or preach to anyone about the wonders of organic foods, especially if they can’t afford the extra cost or find them easily. As an extension of that, the Network doesn’t necessarily want to alienate the “non-chef/home cook” too much either and that’s why they need people like Rachael Ray and Paula Deen. But… they also need the balance provided by a Mario Batali and Bobby Flay.

Wine alienates viewers?! Organics are offputting?! Call or write your cable or satellite channel, demand a wine network!