It’s a wine, wine, wine, wine world out there these days. New wineries are popping up left and right (the current Monticello Wine Trail count is 24), area restaurants are getting all savvy and Wine Spectator-approved about their wine lists [see our August 14 column on the impressively long list of spots that made the wine mag’s cut this year], and that über sophisticated new wine drinking trend—the wine bar—has made its way to our little town—first in the form of Virginia wine-focused Vavino and then in its reincarnation as Italian-focused Enoteca. We at Restaurantarama are doing our best to keep up with the latest juice on the juice, so here’s an update on all things grape this week.
First up—Just a few doors down from Enoteca, at the former site of April’s Corner, the idea for a new combination wine bar and retail shop is fermenting. The folks behind this one, George Benford and Fran Imbriglia, plan to call their spot Siips, as in wine is meant for savoring and quiet quaffing—although, Benford says his friends advised him to call the place Gulps. We tend to agree, as that’s our preferred method of imbibing the stuff—unless we’re in public, of course, and then we’re all pinkies held high and memorized tasting buzz words at the ready—“Yes, this one is supple, tannic and reminiscent of an ’82 Latour, no?”
O.K., we have no idea what that means, but Benford probably does. He’s a self-proclaimed “professional wino,” and has amassed a bunch of grape knowledge directly from vintners around the world while running a West Virginia-based travel business called Corporate Incentive Travel for the last 36 years. Imbriglia ran Champion Billiards in Washington, D.C., and Maryland and has experience with the Keystone Resort.
Benford says the bar will serve lunch and a light but exotic tasting menu—duck breast, pâtés and cheeses—to accent the wine, but that “there are too many good restaurants nearby” to do more than that with the food. As for locating so close to another wine bar, Benford first says, “I’ve spent a lot of money at Enoteca!” Then he says, “The more great shops and restaurants you have in one area, the more people you attract.”
Provided ABC licensors and contractors cooperate, Benford says Siips will open its doors around December 1.
Drinking the Kool-Aid
The French government’s annual November release of Beaujolais nouveau (which is bottled just a few weeks after harvest) is the wine industry’s equivalent of the Hallmark holiday—a marketing strategy invented to benefit commercial interests and to dupe the rest of us into buying subpar wine and getting loopy. We don’t really have a problem with that. In our humble opinion, there are too few holidays, and any officially sanctioned excuse for raising a few glasses, overly simple and grapey or not, is just fine with us. But we wondered, what if anything are local French bistros and wine peddlers doing to celebrate this year’s November 15 release of the young Beaujolais crop?
Turns out, new gastro pub Zinc is planning a celebration, but Bohème and Petit Pois are not. The latter’s owner, Brian Helleberg, told us he’ll probably get in some nouveau, but isn’t planning a big event, and Bohème’s Tom Fussell said he’s choosing instead to celebrate a real holiday—Bohème’s one-year anniversary at the end of the month.
Robert Harllee of Market Street Wine Shop told us he orders less and less of the nouveau every year in response to slowing demand. “It’s a nice harvest ritual,” he says, “but we’d rather sell more of the real stuff [fully finished Beaujolais that is] the rest of the year.”
O.K., so our solution to the Beaujolais conundrum is this: Celebrate the new stuff, the old stuff and everything in between, early and often.
Quick sips
Finally, Restaurantarama has learned that a new wine membership club is coming to the Downtown area—more on that to come! Also, congratulations to Oakencroft Winery for winning a Gold Medal for its 2005 Encore, a delightfully complex dessert wine, at the 2007 Town Point Wine Competition in Norfolk.
Got some restaurant scoop? Send tips to restaurantarama@c-ville.com or call 817-2749, Ext. 48.