What Are the Best Wine Restaurants in NYC?

Allow us to take a moment to pull back the curtain: Last week, our restaurant critic Matthew Schneier wrote about Saint Urban, a new place with a wine-first approach to service. He pitched the idea to me on Slack, and even though he couldn’t see me, he could sense my shoulders shrugging, so he gave me the hard sell: “Ninety percent of people’s eyes roll into their heads when you start talking about wine,” he wrote. “This is for the other 10 percent.” That statistic struck me as a little high: Every restaurateur and chef in town these days complains that liquor sales are down across the board, and Gen Z is — statistically speaking — drinking far less than older generations. Why are so many people turning away from wine? Since Matthew did such a great job making his case on Slack — and I love the resulting piece, for the record — I asked him to talk to me here to further advance his agenda.

I am, as you know, wine agnostic. In the past, I have tried, and failed, to learn the important details that separate those who know quite a bit about wine from those who merely drink it. You are an enthusiast. Tell me what I’m missing.
I think that wine is a great pleasure. There’s a limited and diminishing amount of education about how to enjoy it, which is not to say anyone needs to be super-educated to enjoy it, a misconception that I think intimidates people and keeps them from even trying to. Ultimately, it’s just another lovingly grown and crafted culinary product that enhances the enjoyment of other lovingly grown and crafted culinary products. For people who care about status melons and which Greenmarket vendor their flowering broccoli comes from, wine can offer some of that same enjoyment. Ultimately, the pleasure is visceral. It’s delicious. You’re not being quizzed or given an exam at the end of the night.

You did seek out quizzes and exams and proper wine education.
Well, I’m a nerd. But I was interested enough to want to learn more. And I’m very much still learning. I get my ass handed to me in blind tastings more than I’d care to admit.

Nobody is saying wine is “bad.” But why should everyone set down their white negronis and filthy martinis to order a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape right now, aside from the dad-joke appeal of getting to quote that Beastie Boys line?
What’s exciting right now is the increasing number of places that are rising to fill a middle space between super-expensive, super-fussy serious restaurants and scuzzy wine bars where you’re getting poured something out of a bubbling jug. I’m thinking about places like Lei and Penny and Zimmi’s. Both the Penny team and the Zimmi’s team are about to open new wine bars, by the way.

Speaking of scuzzy wine bars, how’s the glou-glou movement going? My theory is that it really gained a foothold 10 or 15 years ago because the barrier to entry was so much lower than old-guard wine. There was very little talk of regions or grapes or history, and it made it all seem so much less … academic.
I was right there with them. I was not someone who was weaned on Mouton-Rothschild or the finest stuff in the world. The first wines that converted me were natural wines, the kind of unsulfured, carbonic Dr Pepper that kicked off the whole trend to begin with. They didn’t announce their seriousness. And there’s still absolutely a time and a place for those wines — they’re a lot of fun.

My sense is that, within the city’s restaurants, the pendulum is swinging away from the Natty Fratty era and back toward wine that’s made and sold in a style that would be familiar to boomers.
More and more, they’re co-existing. The “natural wine” brand is strong, but the real divide isn’t between “natural” and “traditional.” The difference is between mass-produced wine and thoughtfully produced wine. A lot of the wine that is “traditional” — these people are also making wine organically, they’re limiting additives and picking by hand and all the rest. The “unnatural” wine is the one being grown carelessly, doctored, and shipped off so that every bottle out of the tens of thousands sold tastes exactly the same. That might as well be soda.

It’s an expensive hobby.
It can be. But I do not accept the claim that drinking well means drinking super-expensively. Let’s be clear that I pay for the wine I drink at restaurants; my self-set limit really tops out around $100 per bottle. That’s not cheap, but it’s wildly different from $8,000 bottles. Those are for the Goldman Sachs types. At a wine store, there’s an exponential uptick in quality when you jump from $20 to $30 and $30 to $40, so at a restaurant that translates to going from $70 or $80 to slightly above $100. You’ll notice a difference.

You already mentioned a few new spots to try. Where else?
I enjoyed Entre Nous in Clinton Hill. And I love Popina on Columbia Street, which has a terrific and truly unheralded list. James O’Brien, the wine guy there, has excellent taste, and if you go for Saturday or Sunday lunch, which they just introduced, he’s basically running a fire sale.