At the Press of a Button, A Sip of the Bottle
New York wine shops have only recently been permitted to lurch out of the dark ages by allowing customers to sample wines on the premises. The renaissance continued when paper and plastic cups gave way to real stemware at shops like Zachys and Crush. And earlier this month, in-store wine tasting made the next great leap forward at Union Square Wines in its new quarters at 140 Fourth Avenue. That's where you'll find the Italian-developed Enomatic wine serving system, with 48 wines "on tap."
Using Enomatic for the first time in a wine shop in provincial Queenstown, New Zealand, in January, I wondered why the system hadn't already come to the greatest wine town on earth. "We'd been watching Enomatic for a couple of years until we thought the software was ready," USQ's co-owner, Bob Green, said. When the shop was priced out of its previous quarters on Union Square, the decision was made to install Enomatic in the new shop around the corner.
To use Enomatic at USQ, first pick up a free "Savvy Sipper" smart card at the front desk. It's pre-loaded with 1,000 points. At each of three multibottle tasting stations around the shop, wines are kept fresh under a layer of inert gas. Plug your card into a reader and center a tasting glass under a spigot connected to each bottle. Push a button and a single mouthful of wine is delivered. The more expensive the wine, the more points are deducted from your card. For each dollar you spend on wine, five points are reloaded in your card at the register. Elsewhere, you'll pay by the pour when using Enomatic, but it's free at USQ because, as Mr. Green explained, "under state law, we're a retail wine shop, not a wine bar."
I spent a pleasant hour one afternoon last week tasting 15 wines, all of them new to me. The shop's wine director, Jesse Salazar, has loaded up the Enomatic with lots of rosés for summer, my favorite of which was Calera's Vin Gris de Pinot Noir 2005 ($18.95), a Central Coast wine with sinuous flavors that lasted long in the mouth. Chateau Le Pavillon de Bayrein 2003 ($19.95), a Graves, was fragrant and gravely textured like its namesake region.The wine I took home was Marques de Murietta Ygay 2001 Rioja Reserva ($19.95), which managed the trick of being simultaneously mellow and piercing in its tobacco and currant flavors. Enomatic's only downside for now is that wine fact sheets, ideally with space for notes,are not supplied. "We're working on that," Mr. Green said.
Shoppers can try it on, smell it, or kick the tires when buying a sweater, melon, or used car. In a wine shop, all they could do, previously, was to stare at a confusing array of bottles with no clue about which was right for their table. At best, they'd have to rely on a salesman's recommendation — someone who probably didn't know their palate preferences. With the dozens of wines to taste and ponder at USQ, shoppers finally get a fighting chance to nail the right wine.
SAUVIGNON REPUBLIC
What's a chef's preferred white wine for allaround food matching? John Ash, the award-winning cookbook author whose namesake restaurant in Santa Rosa, Calif., was a pioneer in serving locally grown foods, anoints sauvignon blanc as his go-to wine, even if most customers still order chardonnay. "This wine has this unique ability to wrap itself around global flavors," Mr. Ash said. "Hispanic, Indian, Asian — wherever you think a little squeeze of lemon can zip up flavor." Think oysters on the half shelf, too.
Mr. Ash has teamed up with the winemaker John Buechsenstein, the viticulturist Paul Dolan, and the restaurateur Tom Meyer to create Sauvignon Republic, tightly focused on making globally sourced bottlings of jump-out-of-the-glass sauvignon blanc. Sauvignon Republic's first trio of bottlings is from Sonoma's Russian River Valley, New Zealand's Marlborough, and South Africa's Stellenbosch. The triangular labels that visually connect the wines, resembling postage stamps from exotic lands, recall early Banana Republic catalogs designed by Patricia Ziegler. All three wines have that food-friendly zing, although my favorite is the Stellenbosch, boasting the most texture and minerality ($19.99 at Crush).
"The difficult thing is finding the right grape-grower in each region and a winery nearby to make the wine," Mr. Ash said. Like other "flying winemakers," Mr. Buechsenstein stays busy year-round, attending to harvests in the autumn of one hemisphere while in the other, the vines lie dormant. Soon, he'll have to scramble even faster, as Sauvignon Republic prepares to make its first wines in Europe. "We thought that the Loire Valley would be the source of our fourth wine," Mr. Ash said. "But it may be the fifth, because Friuli in northeast Italy is heating up." Either way, Mr. Buechsenstein won't lack for frequent flyer miles.
THE HIGH LIFE, CHEAPER
Got a hankering for caviar on toast served at its ultimate purveyor, Petrossian restaurant, located in the gloriously ornate Alwyn Court (182 W. 58th St.)? You'll need champagne in the ice bucket, of course. The seemingly weightless Mumm de Cramant, a personal favorite from Petrossian's extensive champagne list, is priced at $151. The fuller-bodied Pol Roger 1998 Reserve is $175. Now, on Tuesday nights, you can bring your own bottle with no corkage fee (though the deal does not apply to the $37 prix-fixe menu). Since most of Petrossian's wines are marked up to nearly triple their retail prices, you can celebrate, at the very least, a big savings on the high life.
