Just a hilarious well written piece by Alice Feiring on what we wine geeks have to put up with when we go out to eat and drink. Really made me chuckle. My linking is not working . . .so here it is.
Ever since it opened, three years ago, I've loved ‘inoteca, the little wine oriented resto/wine bar on the lower east side at Rivington and Ludow.
I was there with Melissa on Wednesday night. Our objective was to get something light to eat and something delicious to drink. It should have been easy because in their own words..."Our passionate and educated staff is eager to introduce you to your new favorite bottle and to expertly pair it with our chef’s cuisine."
We were combing the wine list to find something under $100, not barriqued etc. etc. and interesting. It was my birthday, and not that I believe in these things, but it would have been nice to have had something good to drink. Something with layers and violets would have been really nice. The pickings were really slim. The first sign of trouble was when I asked about the 1997 Vallana Spanna. This is a wine I drank lots of back in the 80's and 90's and at some point I stopped because they had gone over to the dark side. I asked if this was one of those dark side wines.
He didn't know. I can respect that. The list is large after all. Then he asked, you want something with age?
Yes.
You want something soft?
I hate that word 'soft' when it comes to wine. When did "soft" become a virtue?
No, I said with some complexity, some evolution.
He didn't know what I meant. He stared at me sort of blankly as he tried to search the limited computer of his wine brain to understand the situation before him.
The young sommelier (as he was called) who looked, 32? cute, short, smirky kind of smile... wore one of those plastic bracelets --the yellow one popularized by Lance Armstrong? He suggested an "Arte," imported by Marco deGrazia.
He was shocked, shocked I tell you, when I told him I was not on board for deGrazia wines (someone had obviously told him deGrazia was the God of Piemonte) and by the way, I didn't want anything in new oak or rotary fermented.
He didn't know what rotary fermented was and didn't ask..(A machine that beats the grapes up in fermentation. Helps the wine gets fruitier.)
But, he insisted there is no new oak on the wine. And the look on is face said...who the hell were we to tell him otherwise?
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Man, he hates me. He hates Melissa. His brown eyes turn blue he hates us so much. But, he is such a dolt he doesn't get that we maybe know something. And maybe if he fesses up to not knowing, that's ok. It's the pretending that is so bad. And so he keeps on pressing with inane suggestions.
I won't bore you with the details. I tell him we're considering the Sardinain Dettori.......not exactly a bargain at $90. The young pup says, it's a little over extracted.
Extracted? But, the wine is foot stomped, isn't it? There are no extraction techniques done to the wine. Oh, the poor guy.
He doesn't flinch. It doesn't even register. The young boy who has the title of sommelier --and even though he's in jeans and a checkered shirt that is not tucked in, he is acting so pompous he should be wearing a tastevin around his neck---continues I think, "This is what is wrong with wine. This boy is what is wrong. Attitude without substance." If he had said, "I"ve been there." Or..."I've talked with the winemaker." Or..."Really? Tell me more." But he doesn't. All he knows is that he's threatened. And maybe I've threatened him but really, all I wanted was something to drink.
Then he continues being an imbecile about the Sardinian wine we're eyeing and says "You don’t feel the wood very much on the Dettori'."
And so I decided not to let him know that the wine that 'didn't feel the new wood too much?" -- has no wood. It has no new OR old woodl He wouldn't want to know that it is raised in cement, and goes directly into bottle without ever seeing any wood. He wouldn't want to know. I imagine it would twist his brain in knots. Like how can you make wine without wood?
Melissa and I ordered the Paolo Bea Rosso.
He says there's new wood on that.
I say, there is no new wood in that winery. And certainly no small barrels.
He tells me Francesco (?) just came back and there was new wood, but not much.
How did I get into a pissing contest with this guy? I find it amazing that his little pea brain couldn't perceive that perhaps I really did know something that he didn't. And even still he might have known something I didn't but he was striking out with too much misinformation. All credibility was blown.
"The dry reds all undergo an extensive cuvaison that frequently lasts as long as 4 weeks. Malolactic fermentation occurs in stainless steel and then the wines are racked into large oak barrels""
The Bea was good. The food was passable but it was missing any care. Presented unlovingly like slop in a canteen.
The music was loud enough to keep anyone older than 26 away.
My July lament: there are no places to go out in New York unless you want to spring for major dough. None. None. The best you can do is taking your Riedel or whatever AND bottles of wine to Indian on 6th or NoHo Star...and call it a day. Or night.
To me, this story (while funny!) illustrates what's wrong with wine today: People want to lock it away and only let the elite enjoy it or know anything about it. While the men in this story perfectly illustrate this, the woman telling the story is just as guilty, in my opinion, by getting into some pissing contest to see who knows more. Who won that contest? No one - lest of all the wine world.
ReplyDeleteDale,
ReplyDeleteI see your point . . .but she wanted a certain type of wine and the sommelier was obivously vastly underqualified to help her out despite the fact that is his job. If I want to order a steak at a restaurant and the waiter comes back and says I should get pork . . .I would not be happy. Same thing with wine except there are many more variations.
I was really disheartened to read this story because Francesco Grosso, who buys the wine for 'inoteca and works the floor 6 nights a week (the guy pulls down like 90 hours a week at work, every week) is one of the nicest, most gentle people on the planet, and is also extremely knowlegeable and helpful regarding wine. His new assistant, who has been there like less than a month, well, I have never really spoken with him. But Francesco has had a terrible time finding someone to work as the assistant, mostly because who wants to walk out of work at 6:30am after giving last call at 4am? I know that leaving time to be accurate, because I dated a girl who worked there for awhile. More than a couple assistants have come and gone in the last year.
ReplyDeleteTo address some of the other points: the music too loud? You're on the corner of Rivington and Ludlow for God's sake! Plus, the soundtrack has and forever will be a huge part of identity and success of restaurants such as Otto (also partly owned by the Denton's) and Babbo. That was the whole inspiration for the place to begin with! They were in Italy, they were at an enoteca where the guy behind the counter was playing American rock music, and they were like, we've got to bring this back home!
The prices? Well I guess you can direct all the hate on that to my personal inbox, because 2 years ago I started going there a couple times a week and ordering up older bottles with some of the other sommeliers and captains from work uptown. We considered ourselves quite lucky to have Valdicava '90 for $100, and Soldera '87 for less than $300. And so in response the vertical pages of the list were developed and I can see where there are a lot more bottles over $100 than there used to be. But I have never in the past, and still do not have any trouble finding something great to drink for under $50 on that list. I mean there are plenty of options.
This person talked to the new guy, who is probably still trying to make his bones there and is concerned about looking bad, and he probably doesn't know the list that well. Okay. You have one off conversation and you trash a place that has totally defined a neighborhood for years? The place is totally the reference point for anybody in NYC who is even thinking of opening a wine bar. I know because I have been there with operators who explicitly wanted to know what it was about.
And I still don't get it - if she knew all the answers before she asked them in the first place, why did this lady need to grill the server?
And I had Oddero Barolo '67 there for $180...
ReplyDeleteI would point out that if a wine is over $100 that doesn't mean it represents bad value. Like the '82 FX Pichler I picked up at Chambers St. for $100. Superb value. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Levi,
ReplyDeleteYou and Thomas Matthews might be vying for longest post on my blog. Woo hoo!
But seriously it was humorous from an outside perspective and Alice wrote it very deftly. I can understand how if you know the people behind the scenes it can get personal and dicey.
Just to play devil's advocate I was at Otto with my girlfriend around a month and a 1/2 ago and I thought the music was waaay too loud. Like over the top loud. But then again the '95 Radikon Merlot made it a touch easier on my ears.
But as I have been taught from many mentors in my wine career if you don't know the answer say you don't know. We are all in this to learn.
True dat. Choices: (a) drink at home; (b) drink at basement level. Also, there's no virtue in working long hours per se. As the old saw goes, "work smart, not long." I am sure your homeboy brings home the serious Benjamins and in today's EV/LES that's all that counts. He (and you) should be content with that, god bless late stage capitalist societies. Lyle is a nutjob but that doesn't forgive the fact that 'inoteca, in the same vein as its brethren (Il Posto Accanto, Bar Veloce, etc.), exist to serve OK wine to people who think they are being adventurous while truly they are playing it safe (at 300% markup). Let a thousand gardens bloom, if you can sleep with it, so be it. Please just make your customers take the gum out of their mouths before drinking a nice Aglianico. As far as I can tell there's no wine bars in NYC. But the moral of the story is that's what Lyle gets for going out with women who aren't total misanthropes and want to, shudder, "go out"...
ReplyDelete- Lord of the Underworld
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteGreat post . . .I was rolling.
I always have said that there are no wine bars in NYC.
I have been told that I look like Thomas Matthews by more than one person.
ReplyDeleteThe point I was making about the hours was this: there is a wonderfully nice person at 'inoteca that would be happy to talk to you about wine 6 days a week. If you happen to be there during the five minutes he isn't there, and you get somebody else, well, sorry about that. Also, every wine buyer knows that if you really want to come up with the goods and still work the floor, you have to put in the hours. So from a customer view point, you really do want someone who is putting in hours, because they are trying to put together a better list and still help you tableside.
There is absolutely no possibility that the markup at 'inoteca is 30%. None. Quite a bit less, unless you are talking about BTG.
It's not my business to defend a the clientele of a restaurant. You don't like the people that hang there? Your business.
Again about the music: it's on the corner of Rivington and Ludlow Streets and it is not a library.
So Levi says in a nutshell that the formula for a New York wine bar is loud music, high mark-ups, and an overworked staff.
ReplyDeleteLyle rightly states there are no wine bars in New York. There are only bars that serve wine.
Anonymous rightly states that there are only two options - go small or go home.
Asimov states that you have to take the classroom home.
Why o why if you can't enjoy wine for wines sake in all of New York City where (in this country) can you go? This is truly an American phenomenon.
"Anonymous rightly states that there are only two options - go small or go home."
ReplyDeleteDidn't mean go small per. Meant it quite literally: "drink at basement level." Lyle knows.
As for the statement that bar, restaurant, wine bar markups are not ~300% over wholesale, well, I don't quite know how to answer this one. Except to say speak to anyone who works in the wine business. When you have a good chunk of the wholesale prices in BevMedia memorized and then go to a wine bar it's hard not to cringe at the prices being asked. The things we do to be around fake blondes with cell phones. Sigh...
- Lord of the Underworld
My shoes get wet when I drink in the basement.
ReplyDelete