At press time, the city was restlessly awaiting the late-autumn onslaught of big-name, big-wine-list openings. The Bastianich-Batali crew (Babbo, Lupa, Esca, and so on) is busily compiling Italian bottles for the list at Del Posto in the Meatpacking District, while a few blocks away Zak Pelaccio is assembling Austrian and German whites for the Malaysian food at his new Fatty Crab. Bill Telepan (Judson Grill) is working out cellar space at the new Telepan on the Upper West Side, while the guys at Five Points are working on opening a west side branch called Cookshop. And Olivier Flosse from Caé Boulud has been assembling a deep, French-skewed list for Andrew Carmellini’s yet-to-be-named place on 26th Street. But thanks to a slew of new wine stores, New Yorkers aren’t lacking for wine and people to help them find it: There’s Le Dû Wines in the West Village, opened by Jean-Luc Le Dû, the former sommelier at Daniel; Wine Therapy, a hip store focusing on small-production and organic wines, run by Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Humbert.
This review appears in the print edition of the June 2011 issue. Like what you just read? Subscribe now.
is W&S’s editor at large and covers the wines of the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe for the magazine.