Park Slope Reader

Natural Selection (wine)

Good Wine, Good Company, Good Welcome

By Filed Under: Eat Local, Natural Selection (wine) Tagged With: , , , ,

 

A FEW OF THE BEST WINE SHOPS IN PARK SLOPE

Wine is new to me. However, coming from a specialty coffee background, I’ve naturally found myself drawn to the art of craft beverages, the art of curating and taste development. That being said, the world of craft beverages can be just as daunting as the culinary world. With so many flavor palettes, styles, and regions to choose from, any novice or expert can understand the importance of personalization when it comes to picking just the right vino to sip on – whether you’re looking to pair a bottle with food or want to try something new. Park Slope’s independently driven small business scene proves to be perfect for either party. With a small but mighty set of personally curated wines, the neighborhood’s friendly and knowledgeable business owners will easily help you pick out your next favorite bottle – and the one after that. 

 

Big Nose, Full Body

Situated right nearby the park on 7th Avenue, Big Nose, Full Body is an intimate wine shop that’s constantly bringing in new vines AND discounting you as an incentive to try them out. The gang regularly holds tastings every Saturday afternoon, plus additional ones as announced. The sun-filled space has a massive variety of both regions and price ranges to choose from, and the “staff picks” list is definitely worth taking a peek at for recommendations. If you’re on the go, chilled wines are at the ready.

Good Wine

Tastefully put (pun intended), 5th Avenue’s Good Wine is known as a “food lover’s wine shop.” A friendly staff of strong female entrepreneurs run this shop, a space that they took over nearly three years ago from its previous ownership. Not only do the ladies offer regular tastings of their selections (every weekday at 5:30pm and weekends at 4:00pm) they also have food pairing and education classes for the public. Finishing touches include homey seasonal décor and cookbooks resting above the shelves of wine selections, a mix of the owners’ own selections and neighborhood contributions. Deliveries within Park Slope require a two-bottle minimum – not too hard, right?

 

ACME Wine

ACME’s former origins as a 1930s deli are subtly hinted throughout the store; checkerboard floors, window signage for butter and cheese posted at the entrance. This cozy shop offers a large array of affordable wines from small producers around the world, and incorporates an entire wall of bottles under $14. The team also offers an extensive array of spirits that are Brooklyn and New York local, from gin to rum and whiskey, plus sake and cider for when you’re looking for sweeter buzzes. Join the email list to take advantage of tastings, plus the no-minimum wine deliveries till closing.

 

il Vino Torchio

Il Vino Torchio translates to “the wine press” in Italian, and ironically enough doubles as the namesake for this small but mighty wine nook on 4th Avenue. Argentinian-born owner Marcelo Torchio spent years strolling through grape vines back home before opening this spot in Park Slope in 2011. Hand-picked with his clientele in mind, Marcelo brings a mix of both old world and new world wines and offers tastings every Friday evening to showcase select vinos. He also curates a small but mighty selection of New York-made spirits.

 

 

 

 

In the Pink 2016

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Rosé has been a passion and a warm weather standard for us at Rose Water since the day we opened in August of 2000, (and a bit of a namesake, too, really). Its delicious, refreshing, and for a seasonal restaurant like ours, what other wine speaks to it’s season better than rosé? Nothing makes us happier than cold, delicious pink wine on a warm summer night. Now that Summer 2016 is in full swing, it’s time to sample a few of this year’s favorites from the 2015 vintage.

 

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Rosé is made from red grapes (although sometimes by blending white and red to get pink, but purists generally frown upon this practice). Red wine gets its color when the clear juice of red grapes spends weeks or months in contact with the grape skins. Rosé, on the other hand, usually spends only hours on those red grape skins before the juice is pumped off to a fermentation tank. Thus the much lighter hue and lighter body, while retaining some of the savory character and spice we love in red wine, along with the some of the best aspects of white – freshness and a pronounced minerality.

In a recent column we wrote about heirloom grapes and the interesting and diverse wines they produce. One of our favorite heirloom varietals is Pineau d’Aunis, a red grape grown primarily around Anjou and Touraine in the Loire Valley in Western France. It’s a delightful, but thin-skinned and fickle grape that almost became extinct in the last century, primarily due to low crop yields and its susceptibility to mildew and pests. For natural winemakers who, as a rule, try to use little or no herbacides and pestacides, these grapes can be even harder to grow than they are for conventional growers. When a farmer faces hard economic choices, it can be tempting to rip out those unreliable heirloom vines and plant hardy, high-yielding Sauvignon Blanc, for example.

A couple years ago we we fell in love with a Pineau d’Aunis rosé from Domain Courtault-Tardieux in the Touraine, but there was very little produced that vintage and even less exported to the States, and it was gone in a flash (low yields, indeed). Courtualt-Tardieux actually does grow a lot of Sauvignon Blanc, which affords them a relatively consistent income so that they’re able to stick with a risky heirloom varietal that they see as vital part of the history of winemaking in their region. Thankfully, they’re completely committed to Pineau d’Aunis.

In January of 2015 we started working on getting the 2014 bottling, only to find out that a difficult vintage (vinegar flies!) meant there was no wine at all coming stateside last year. Zero. (Unreliable, indeed).  But now the delightful 2015 vintage has finally arrived and it was worth the wait; light and rainwater fresh (great minerality from clay and limestone soils) with bright strawberry fruit and a little savory spice. Gorgeous now, but developing and coming into it’s own as each week passes – we’re going to lay aside a case for next summer to see how it matures. As usual, there isn’t much of this wine, but we managed to purchase a fair amount of what came to NYC, and we’re thrilled to be able to have it on our list (and usually by the glass) all summer long.

Courtault-Tardieux Pineau d’Aunis Rosé 2015. Available at Rose Water and Vine Wine, 616 Lorimer St. BK, www.vine-wine.com  $15

Every year we offer at least one rosé from out east. In the past we’ve served delicious pinks from Shinn, Wolffer, Paumanok and others, but this year we were struck by the unique character of the Refosco from Channing Daughters Winery in Bridgehampton. Channing Daughters is tirelessly experimental and they are proud champions of lesser known varietals. They’re easily one of the most interesting wineries on Long Island.

In 2007 Channing Daughters acquired a three acre plot on the South Fork called the Home Farm Vineyard and planted two Italian varietals, Lagrein and Refosco. Refosco is native to the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region in Northeastern Italy, and it produces primarily dark reds, most of which are not exported from Italy. Jancis Robinson describes the grape as producing reds that are “dense, lively wines with bite.” The Refosco grown by Channing Daughters has that density and bite, but in their rosé it’s delightfully restrained and the wine is unique and fascinating. With it’s balanced but bigger mouthfeel, brambly, smoky fruit and a little tannic grip, this wine is wonderful with heartier fare. We’re pairing this with grilled fish and fowl this summer and it’s divine.

Channing Daughters Winery Home Vineyard Refosco Rosato. At Rose Water and Michael Towne Wines, 73 Clark St. BK,
www.michaeltownewines.com  $20

In southeastern Piemonte, Walter Massa produces an array of wonderful wines in the appellation of Colli Tortonesi. He likes to say he has five sons in his family: Barbera, Freisa, Nebbiolo, Croatina and Timorasso, an indigenous white heirloom grape that Walter is famous for having single-handedly revived and elevated. It’s those first two “sons,” Barbera and Freisa, that go into Walter’s rosato, Terra: Sic Est (translated loosely as Earth: what you see is what you get).

Massa’s 2015 rosato looks and drinks more like a light red than a simple pink quaffer, but it’s no less wonderful a drink for the season – we can’t imagine a better foil for a fatty steak or lamb chop hot off the backyard grill. It smells and tastes first and foremost of ripe, juicy cherries, but has a savory quality of subtle herbs and spice (mahleb) and just enough grip. And it’s remarkably fresh. A pink wine this red is not for everyone, but for us it completes the broad spectrum of the wonderful world of rosés we offer.

Vigneti Massa Rosato Terra: Sic Est 2015. At Rose Water and Flatiron Wines, 929 Broadway, NY, www.flatiron-wines.com  $18

These are just three of our favorites so far this summer. We generally offer a dozen or so at any given time in the height of the season. We hope you can come by and enjoy one with us while the weather is warm, or stop by one of the fine retailers listed above. There’s no better way to celebrate the season with friends and family than sipping a chilly glass of delicious wine with the foods of summer.

The Case for Restraint

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“John, Table 10 doesn’t like the half bottle of Burgundy.” Argh. For the second time this month and the third time this year, a customer isn’t thrilled with this bottle that we love so well. Wines like these from the Burgundian appellation of Mercurey are often not as easy to drink as Pinot Noir from California or Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Compared to a West Coast pinot, this bottle from Domaine Meix-Foulot is lean and dry and lacks the richness and intensely sweet fruit of many of its New World cousins.

 

What it does have in spades is restraint—an Old World earthiness and austerity, and an uncanny ability to pair with most of our food. It’s usually our only half bottle of pinot noir, so folks order it expecting (hoping?) that it’ll be more generous. Some, like the nice couple at Table 10, are disappointed.

The wine list at Rose Water has always been a reflection of our personal taste, with only minor accommodations made to popular trends, and even then it’s on our terms. Instead of a fruit bomb malbec from South America, for example, we offer a more balanced and food friendly Cahors from southwestern France: Clos Siguier, which is a blend of malbec and tannat, has rich, dark fruit that’s not overly sweet and has balancing acidity with smooth, firm tannins that enhance the flavor and cut the fat of meats like roasted duck and grilled beef. As a general rule, our US/New World selections are chosen for their relative balance and food friendliness. We seek out wines that are both natural (sustainably-raised fruit and non-interventionist cellar practices) and restrained. We define restraint as an approach to winemaking that favors nuance and a sense of place above overripe fruit, high alcohol, and a manipulated polish.

Our friends Jennifer Munro Clark and Andrew Scott at Eminence Road Farm Winery live and work on a small farm in Long Eddy, NY in the lower Catskills near the Delaware River and the PA border. They purchase sustainable grapes from excellent growers in the Finger Lakes and truck them back to their farm to make wine that is very much in the “natural” style that we favor—a low intervention, hands-off approach that produces wines of character and honesty. It’s a less equals more philosophy. Hands-off winemaking starts with fruit grown with as little chemical intervention as possible, hand harvesting before the fruit is overripe, gentle crushing (usually by foot), fermentation by wild indigenous yeast, aging in old flavor-neutral barrels, little or no additives, little or no fining or filtering, and as little sulphur as possible, usually applied in very small amounts at bottling. Their homemade labels list the ingredients in each bottle (e.g. grapes, sulfites), and feature the words, “Bottled Alive.”

Eminence Road has just released a 2014 Seneca Lake Riesling in a clear bottle with a crown cap (similar to a beer bottle cap) that epitomizes everything we love about their work—it has just a hint of sweetness, great acidity, and varietal character. It’s fresh, lively and fabulous with food. Many Finger Lakes Rieslings these days are dry, but theirs is really lean. Andrew explains, “In the field we try to pick on the early side to preserve natural acidity and to avoid overt fruitiness in flavor and aroma. For the 2014 riesling, I would like to take credit for its delicacy and drinkability, but we did the same thing we always do, save for picking extra early—some would say those grapes were under ripe—and bottling when the fermentation stopped as opposed to when it was finished.”

Andrew takes his unusual approach a step further with this wine in that he hopes that it will develop a little fizz over time, something a more conventional winemaker would go out of his way to avoid. “We decided on a crown cap for the ’14 because there is a very slight amount of unfermented sugar left in the wine which may one day lead to a continuation of the fermentation. The crown cap is there so we don’t end up with pushed, leaking corks. Bottled alive, indeed.”

So, what about that half bottle of Mercurey at Table 10?  Agnès Dewé de Launay is not your typical Burgundian winemaker. Very tall, soft-spoken and unassuming, she’s delightfully frank about her approach; her goal is to produce wine that lets the earth speak of place and time, expressing the character of the soil, climate, and especially the vintage—the growing season from spring flowering to autumn harvest. As such, her wines vary a great deal from year to year. Some vintages are light and tight, others can be more powerful, but they always have high acidity (great for food) and express a beautiful earthiness and nuance. There’s an austerity to these wines that has very little in common with their American cousins. Agnès likes to compare her holistic, non-interventionist approach to winemaking, and specifically to her vines, to that of parenting: “If your child is not sporty, you do not push them to play the sports, you know?”

We convinced the couple at Table 10 to sit with the wine a bit, let it open up in the glass and taste it with food, and if they still didn’t like it we’d happily find them something more to their taste. After ten minutes—and some gnocchi with mushrooms—they were smitten. Given a little time and reflection, restraint usually wins the day.

 

Eminence Road Farm Winery Riesling “Seneca Lake” 2014. Available at Rose Water, direct from the winery, and at Uva Wines and Spirits, 199 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn. $22

Domaine du Meix-Foulot Mercurey 1er Cru 2011. Available at RW and at Mr. Wright Fine Wine, 1593 Third Ave, NYC. Half bottle $18

 

Heirloom Wine / into the esoteric

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Most of us know the more common grape varietals such as sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio, merlot and cabernet sauvignon. Those with an interest in expanding their horizons might venture into more esoteric territory, parsing the pleasures of grüner veltliner, chenin blanc, petite sirah and tempranillo. But, like the foodie that’s moved on from supermarket tomatoes and now scours greenmarket stalls for varieties they’ve never tasted, the adventurous wine drinker seeks out lesser known regions and grape varietals in pursuit of diversity and new experiences.

According to wine writer and editor Jancis Robinson, there are over ten thousand grape varietals in the world, and in her book Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including Their Origins and Flavours, she catalogues most that are used to make wine across the globe. Living in NYC, we’re lucky enough to have access to a wide array of wines made from heirloom grapes. Astor Wines, for example, allows you to search for bottles made from nearly 400 different grapes. For the wine adventurer, there’s a treasure trove of new experiences out there. (You should know that the reason we are so blessed in New York is because we have state laws that encourage the proliferation of wine and spirit importers and distributors, many of whom specialize in representing small producers from off the beaten path. Have you noticed that in other parts of country the selections are much more limited? Our laws in NY, which are constantly under attack by big corporate interests, are the reason why we have such a delightfully wide array of choices.)

The most popular grape varietals are popular for good reason: they make very good wine. But there are other reasons that these wines are ubiquitous, having to do with everything from fashion/trends to the heartiness of the grape and its ability to yield a consistent crop, year in and out. Heirloom varietals might be fickle, susceptible to mildew or pests, or may only prosper in specific soils in a specific micro-climate. Sauvignon blanc generally provides a very consistent crop in a variety of conditions and soils. So, if you’re a farmer who grows grapes for a living, you’re probably tempted to rip out those ancient local grape vines that no one’s ever heard of, and plant some sauvignon blanc. If you’re a farmer that honors tradition, however, maybe you keep a few rows and make a smallish amount of wine that a smallish importer wants to bring to NYC.

[pullquote]for us, wine isn’t just a joyously diverse agricultural product, it’s a fascinating and complex expression of earth, sun and craft[/pullquote]

Some of these wines are nearly extinct, and some are still robust within their region, but rarely seen outside it. Erbaluce is a great example of a such a grape, with numerous vintners in and around the commune of Caluso in the alpine foothills of Northwest Piedmont making delicious white wine from this ancient varietal that is rarely grown outside the area. Erbaluce can be made into sparkling, dessert, and dry table wines. We love the 2013 “La Torrazza” erbaluce from Ferrando, a crisp, dry wine, with flavors of apples and citrus and a delightfully subtle minerality. It’s really great with most anything, especially seafood and chicken. (Available at Rose Water, and Slope Cellars on Seventh Ave in Park Slope, slopecellars.com, $17.99.)

In Eastern France the altesse grape is grown in the two neighboring wine regions of Savoy and Bugey. Altesse (sometimes known as Roussette) makes lovely white wine with mountain flower and herb aromas, and light to medium weight and body. Altesse is a late ripening grape and has a low crop yield compared to most grapes, but for many winemakers in these two regions it’s a beautiful expression of their land and history. Our friend Franck Peillot makes one of our favorite Altesse wines in the lovely Bugey mountain hamlet of Montagnieu. His Altesse is complex, and in addition to the characteristic minerality and acidity, in most vintages the bones of Franck’s Altesse are filled out with just enough flesh to make it a perfect accompaniment to sauteed or roasted fish, especially of the freshwater variety. Franck’s Altesse starts out fresh and linear, and after a couple years bottle-aging, it starts to turn more golden and rich. It’s a good wine to buy a few bottles to drink now, a year from now, and save one for 5 or more years to experience its development. (At RW, and Astor Wines, astorwines.com, $23.96)

A half hour drive southwest out of the mountains from the Cave Peillot, over the Rhone River and into the department of Isere, is the Domaine Nicolas Gonin. Nicolas has been described as the patron saint of orphaned grapes. He’s done extensive research into the wine history of his region, and works to revive varietals, some of which are nearly extinct. One such varietal is Persan, which was nearly wiped out after the phylloxera epidemic of the late 1800’s, and, unlike other grapes of the region, was barely replanted. Nicolas’ Persan is a joy – a midweight red with a delicious black currant fruitiness, minerality and an enjoyably tannic rusticity that pairs well with poultry and red meats. Like most heirloom grapes it’s reminiscent of other wines, in this case Syrah, but it very much has it’s own unique character. (At RW, and Flatiron Wines, flatiron-wines.com, $23.99.)

It’s that unique character that drives our passion to keep exploring the diverse world of wine, and these are just three of the heirloom varietals we love. There are so many more – far too numerous to cover in one column, but a sampling of other, lesser known varietals that we recommend that you seek out are whites including Assyrtiko from the Greek Island of Santorini, Prié Blanc from the Valle d’Aosta in Northwest Italy, the Hodarribi Zurri that goes Txokolina from Northern Spain, and reds include Frappato from Sicily, Mencia from Bierzo in Northwestern Spain, Freisa and Ruché from Piedmont in Italy, and Pineau d’Aunis from the Loire in France.

Just as we support small regional farms in the Northeast that provide us with everything from heirloom pig to heirloom corn that we grind for our polenta, it follows that at Rose Water we seek out and support small farmers of heirloom grapes (but we can and do look further afield for wine). We love to offer our customers unique wine experiences – for us, wine isn’t just a joyously diverse agricultural product, it’s a fascinating and complex expression of earth, sun and craft that we have the pleasure of sampling from across the globe, and sharing with you.