We went to 5 natural wine bars in New York and drank 13 wines. Here are my notes

         

December 27, 21.30, New York. 

Have been drinking all day except at lunch when we were eating — Katz’s — but first we did Brooklyn and very first: Diner. Perched at counter, coats off, global warming shock warm remember this is December. Chicken soup for our souls and a white Burgundy I’m promised don’t taste classic but does. Fresh, clean, whatever. Free re-fill of $16 glass like it’s coffee for that diner feelin’ or flirting. Both good. Next is litre bottle orange “Vino Bianco” 2015 by Cantina Giardino (Coda di Volpe + Greco fermented on the skins for 10 days then aged in chestnut casks) which is sage and honeysuckle and apricot. Very easy, a little toasty and 100% juicy. Did I mention litre bottle?

Next up: next door. This is the first of two pairs of bars we visited serving only natural wines next to each other. This is civilisation. Step into Marlow & Sons or step into upstate New York rustic cabin wine bar with all natural list (does this exist???), pine boughs hanging, smelling, gloom-lit and candlelight and the difference is the same. This is how it feels here, ‘here’ being New York not upstate. This is civilisation. Taste-sips down the list and we think ‘how cool’ they have their own ‘Marlow’ wine. This is every year from someone different and this year an unfiltered, fragrant, slightly oxidised 2015 Romorantin by Hervé Vilimade all canary yellow wax topped 1.5l of it with label drawn by Andrew Tarlow, cookbook writer Dinner at the Long Table and owner. Order a dozen Bird Island oysters that taste like Rhode Island big gulp of the Atlantic and drink juicy, slightly spicy Grolleau (“Grappe Full” 2015 by Adrien Baloche from the Auvergne). Small, tart wild-picked cherries. Smashable

Lunch break.

It’s 16.30 not yet 17.00 so it’s the Ten Bells via Chambers Street Wines and we’re kids in a candy store when kids still liked candy more than their iPhones. We are three and we buy a 2012 “Saulétas" Sancerre (bright, sweet and deep, thank you always Sèbastian Riffault); “Calico” 2015 by Vignenvie Collective (earthy, citrusy but lacking anything bright), a 50 strong collective preserving vines in Charnay, Beaujolais; Mariam Iosebidze's 2015 "Tavkevri" (a girl!!) from Georgia (notes) and "Torre Nova" 2015 by Del Prete (notes). Guy helping us is called Eban. Eben tells us to go to a place called Dirty Bird. Eben prints out wine list for Dirty Bird. 

Time for Ten Bells and for sitting. Wrap around bar wrapped round Sev Perru is full at 18.00 so we sit in the corner where the empty magnums are kept. Could be worse. Place is dark with corners and candlelight. I taste the “Ploussard de l’ami ami Karl” 2015 (Domaine de la Pinte) and decide instead (sorry Karl) on “Cardamine" 2014 by Les Herbes Folles (Grenache) which is flamboyant: jammy (cherry), luscious and Grenache intense-spicy. A black eye bruiser for sure. To my right sips an aromatic, flinty 2015 Georgian qvevri orange, “Kisi” from Do Ré Mi, and on my left Domaine Binner's 2014 Gewurztraiminer Pinot Gris which tastes like roses. Then lastly a glass of something American  for the road (“Jambalaia” 2015 by La Clarine Farm: 59 % Mourvedre, 21 % Marsanne, 15% Grenache + Syrah) that was zippy, zesty, crisp and juicy and remarkable for the way it honest to god smelled like Florida red grapefruit  and tasted 'French' despite being from California. And then we go to Contra.

Contra. Contra is next to Wildair making this the second pair of couples. Wildair looks like to drink you must also eat so we sit at the hallway bar of Contra and are greeted by a fierce cocktail shaking lady that talks a soft ‘y’all’. Colour scheme is grey or shades of silver and concept clean, minimal, cool, cocktails. Mostly cocktails actually and why not when a Negroni costs the same ($16) as my (stemless) glass of resinous green twist nervy “Gamay Aunis” 2015 (Jean-Christophe Garnier, Gamay). Friend to my left is drinking “La Pierre aux Chiens" 2015, a tobacco leaf sweet leather raspberry Pinot Noir by Christian Venier, and on my right “Matassa Blanc” 2014, Domaine Matassa (Grenache Gris, Maccabeu): Sicilian lemons plus skin + pith.

As I said we skipped Wildair because we had Dirty Bird which is to say a whole free range organic rotisserie chicken with hot sauce and hotter mayonnaise, three sides, a wonderful waitress and two awesome bottles of wine ("Mauvais Temps" by Nicolas Carmarans and "La Gravotte", Clos du Tue Boeuf) each at $60 which is to say CHEAP which is the whole concept: chicken and cheap natural wine. Talk about civilisation (but read about it, and the wines, here).

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In short:

Vino Bianco 2015, Cantina Giardino, Campania — sage, honeysuckle, apricot

Romorantin 2015, Hervé Vilimade, Cour-Cheverny — unfiltered, fragrant, slightly oxidised

Grappe Full 2015, Adrien Baloche, Auvergne — tart wild-picked cherries

Saulétas Sancerre 2012, Sébastian Riffault, Loire — bright, sweet, deep

Calico 2015, Vignenvie Collective, Charnay — earthy, citrusy, lacking something bright 

Tavkeri 2015, Mariam Iosebidze, Georgia — teeth-suck tart, herbs

Torre Nova 2015, Del Prete, Salento — Haribo cherries

Ploussard de l’ami ami Karl 2015, Domaine de la Pinte, Jura — blood orange, rhubarb, pepper

Cardamine 2014, Les Herbes Folles, Languedoc — jammy (cherry), luscious, Grenache intense-spicy

Kisi 2015, Do Ré Mi, Samegrelo, Georgia — aromatic, flinty, apricots

Jambalaia 2015, La Clarine Farm, Sierra foothills, USA — zip, zest, ruby red grapefruit

Gamay Aunis 2015, Jean-Christophe Garnier, Anjou — resinous, green twist, nervy

La Pierre aux Chiens 2015, Christian Venier, Touraine — tobacco leaf, sweet leather, raspberry

Matassa Blanc 2014, Domaine Matassa, Roussillon — Sicilian lemons, skin, pith

Mauvais Temps 2015, Nicolas Carmarans, Aveyron — smoke, spice, animal musk
La Gravotte 2015, Clos du Tue Boeuf, Loire — spring rain on soil, smashed pomegranate, cooling herbs  

Georgian girl power = Georgian power wines | Mariam Iosebidze "Tavkveri" 2015

We were in New York and asked the guys at Chambers Street Wines for something volatile, read: a little weird. This being New York and this being Chambers Street Wines, the guys gave us a qveri buried Tavkveri from Georgia, Georgia ("Tavkveri" 2015 from a Mariam Iosebidze which makes her a girl, which makes her one of very few girls in Georgia making wine) and it was tart as hell. Tart like the sides of your mouth go TING tequila lemon tart or teeth-ache cranberries not yet cooked, tart. 

Tasting notes:

Barn on the nose, Ploussard punch pink on the eye, bruised laurel in your mortar and your vitamin C fix of cranberries and red currents in the mouth plus chewing gum chewy tannins besides. Read: an austere little thing and, New England winter inside sitting considering and not outside hot Georgian summer let’s say grilling, a little too strict though certainly intriguing but let's get to the point shall we: quickly emptied.

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Mariam Iosebidze
"Tavkveri" 2015

Tavkveri

Kartli, Georgia

From: Chamber Street Wines, NYC

Andrea Calek "A Toi Nous" 2015 tastes like a supernova

Andrea Calek’s 2015 "A Toi Nous" is a 750ml s u p e r nova all speed»»»»» and motion and we hooked it down out of the bottle dancing to hard tek. This I know rhymes (tek-Calek) but is also honest true.

It was 22 October and we’d finished up the last drop of Riffault eating salty skinned meats with Frederico sitting in his store and talking talking because some wines are for sitting down and talking, some for thinking and others for fighting. The Calek was for the road and for !f i g h t i n g! which is how you look with hard tek dancing but also for hydration. 

Calek I have read started his domaine in the Ardèche in 2007 close to and because of Gerald Oustric and lives in his mobile home next to his vineyards which people seem to like writing about probably for the same or similar reason I choose to write about the time we gulp-gulped his juice behind a five high stacked sound system powered by a generator pulled by a tractor driven by squatters rather than the time we drank it nice-nice on the couch, which happened too but we were talking about his 2015 A Toi Nous, namely whole clusters of low alcohol select Syrah + Grenache grapes short time @ low temp a-macerated and later foot-stamped. Two bottlings (December 2015, June 2016), unfiltered and no SO2. Colour of sun shining through a ruby-red, tastes 🌀🌀crazy juicy alive and j a m doughnut jammy of tangy, stick-to-sides-of-your-mouth cherry.

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Andrea Calek
"A Tois Nous" 2015

70% Syrah + 30% Grenache

Alba-la-Romaine, Ardèche

More vin du Calek.

Baptiste Cousin "Marie Rose" 2015

Even on a root day drinking Baptiste Cousin’s wines makes me feel like it’s my birthday. They’re d i s c o wines: fun, foot  l o o s e and fancy free, skip the Kool-Aid and Acid Test these juice b.o.m.b.s best drunk out of cups bikinied or, better: not actually in a bikini because let’s face it; push comes to shove and most people feel better not worrying about what’s wiggling but in XXL shirts and their geography teacher's hiking socks. But you get the vibe I’m going for.

Baptiste works in the Loire and makes this wine with the native Grolleau which is great news as far as someone who pretty much only drinks neon strawberry wines cold from the fridge is concerned. Other good news is he works without sulphites, works with horses like his outlaw dad from whom he bought his vines, has dreads / is handsome and makes a SUPER FUN Grolleau Gris pét nat called "Puppet Nat" that I can personally attest to being perfect to celebrate the first time you’ve skated on natural ice slash ever really skated. And so you see, bikini not always necessary.

Tasting notes: 

Pale rose petal rosé pink in your glass on your eyes but there's also something rosy in the mouth zone too. Like the herby, woody bowls of potpourri mom puts on the window sills to collect dust, or how those raw liquorice bars with pandas on them that look better for you but are still liquorice bars smell. But in a good way. Anyway, by now you’re on your third, fourth sip n' golly gone and changed your mind sir, because why no, sir, this isn’t as ABC a wine as you first thought, sir. It’s light, sure, juicy, sure, but there's nuance and layering and texture and gravity and it coats your tongue like velcro or at any rate a Bourgogne. In a good way. **

** and this was on a root day.

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Baptiste Cousin
"Marie Rose" 2015

Grolleau Gris

Martigné-Briand, Loire

Julien Meyer "Les Pierres Chaudes" 2015

We were drunk and still drinking and talking about name dropping and I said, ‘Meyer, why do people talk about Julien Meyer?’ What happened next is we knocked back his 'Les Pierres Chaudes' Pinot Noir in about 3.8 minutes and now that I’m thinking about how to describe it I keep coming back to heavy velvet wizard cloaks and Patagonia night skies. To gravity and potential and mushroom-seeking boars’ hair caught on bramble bushes fallen to the mossy forest floor. To the electricity running ‘tsk’ through those electric tennis rackets of death used to zap flies, to shadow play and the

M   i  l  k  y     W  a  y.

Tasting notes:

Small wild berries growing with midnight plums in the tangly bramble undergrowth that's taken over a magical mystical garden somewhere elsewhere and shot through with comet-bright acidity and all that in your glass because this is wine even if it doesn’t sound like it and I know it doesn’t, I get it, I let it not, but who cares ‘cus seriously HOW GREAT DOES WINE SOUND WHEN YOU'RE NOT OBVIOUSLY TALKING ABOUT WINE?? Les Pierres Chaudes is intense, pure, balanced and water on your face fresh and I think I know why people talk about Meyer.

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Domaine Julien Meyer 2015
"Les Pierres Chaudes"

Pinot Noir

Nothalten, Alsace

Brett: the taste spectrum of farm

I guess I was around 13 when I got my first taste of farm. We were in Austria walking and we had apples and cheese and dried sausage for lunch and it was the first time I drank Apfelmost and it went !*p f c h %$ when you opened it and it was golden like low winter sun ‘round 3, maybe 4, o’clock-golden and with that sparkly-sparky taste of something alive and rotting and in a rush>>> A borderline case flit-flirting between sour, sweet, yeast and your brain’s yes OK and no: definitely throw away. Smell of fresh wet hay and grass-damp horse blanket. Of apple skeletons and toast.

We drank it on a bench and it was delicious and I think my aunt was there too and the cows were soft and chestnut and 15 years later I know now that the word to describe that particular smell slash taste-state of life and death, boot room, sweaty saddle and organic mass that makes me think of Most is, when it comes to wine*, called ‘brett' and, officially, Dekkera bruxellensis or Brettanomyces by those who know what they're talking about, and 'FUNK' and 'barn' by them too plus by all the others, and the Internet is full of discussion on whether or not this naturally occurring strain of yeast is, when it comes to wine, a fault that compromises terroir or is, in fact, itself terroir — course there is — and you can care or not care but the smell still reminds me of the first time I drank Most which is why I’m telling the story and as it happens I happen to like it.

*beer too.

'Album' 2012, Jean-Baptiste Menigoz

I’ve mentioned baskets of bruised apple before but Jean-Baptiste Menigoz's "Album" 2012 gives you quince. Fuzzy quince browning in wooden fruit bowls of walnuts and almonds and baked apples in warm sugar dusted dough. Lush with ripe pears dipped in Manuka honey, some lemon pith and tastes somehow heavy.

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"Album" 2012

Domaine les Bottes Rouges, Jean-Baptiste Menigoz

Savagnin

Jura

Milan Nestarec's "Podfuck" 2014 means party

‘Party in a glass’ is how I'd described Milan Nestarec's 2014 "Podfuck" if you asked. But equally I could say ‘A five-a-day fruit forward punch in the face of anyone who takes their wine too seriously’ or, ‘Californian sunshine, captured’ or, if short of time, ‘Fun! Capital F’.

Furthermore the colour is peach fuzz slash bleached out Venetian paint pink orange and it comes from the Czech Republic and is made by Milan Nestarec and the first time I drank it I swore off food.

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"Podfuck" 2014
Milan Nestarec
Pinot Gris

Moravský Žižkov

Imported by Wilde Wijnen 

'Les P'tites Vignes' 2015, La Lunotte

Smells milky like salted caramel ice cream melting in a cone. Drinks soft with a plummy finish, like an over-blended blueberry-banana milkshake that’s spoon stand-up thick and air-soft. Bluberry blue but tastes milk chocolate brown and reminds me of flannel sheets: soft and powdery because your mom uses too much laundry softener.

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"Les P'tites Vignes" 2015
La Lunotte, Christophe Foucher
Gamay
Loire

Beijing Bao, Rotterdam

If I said what I wanted to say, namely that what I ate at Beijing Bao didn’t taste like Chinese food, then you’d probably take me for an idiot. You’d say China is big, China is far away, and as the only Chinese food you’ve probably eaten was eaten in Chinese restaurants, the restaurants not being in China, then you don’t know what Chinese food tastes like.

That would be fair enough.

So perhaps it would be better for me to say that the food at Beijing Bao is not what one would expect to eat at a Chinese restaurant. I mean, not unless you expect cumin in your food and thickets of fresh coriander strewn on top. Not unless it’s no big deal to you that the beef you just put in your mouth has melted before you had time to close it, let alone chew; and not unless you’re the kind of person that would find someone’s asking you to pass the soy sauce some sort of joke. Everyone knows you don’t get soy sauce when you’re eating Beijing Bao’s Chinese.

And you don’t; at least, it doesn’t come standard at the table. Standard there is a small pot of vinegar, Korean style, and a sauce with a chilli-kick. Standard there are green beans barely cooked and heaped in fried, minced pork that will make you think twice about the virtues of eating pop corn because heck, popcorn is greasier than this and this is much more satisfying anyway. Those sauces (you know the ones) that render every dish essentially the same but for their different hues of red? That goopy, black, they-call-it-fish-sauce, I-call-it-MSG stuff that, no matter how hard you try not to, reminds you of the effects of an oil spill? Instead of that stuff, you get vegetables that are still identifiable as, and have the original texture of, vegetables; and if you order right they’ll come with nothing more than chunks of fried garlic that you’ll be able to chopstick-out blindfolded for their size.

No, this kitchen is not afraid of garlic and nor should you be. Not even when you order the beef ribs in garlic which, when we did, turned out to be (or at least seemed to be) pork ribs in a dry-as-dust pancake-batter crust that had been infused with garlic. ‘Dry as dust’ in the case of batter is a compliment, unless you like the not-enough-napkins greasy kind, in which case this is not your sort of Chinese. 

You’ll probably want to order second plate of the Chinese cabbage with pork (kimchi with really tasty, not at all dry pork), but don’t let this put you off ordering another, different cabbage dish. The Chinese cabbage with soy and vinegar was bright and tangy and imparted a joy akin to that you might feel in taking a bite of a well-placed pickle in your sandwich for balance, i.e.: much joy. Order it. Order it and put a little on your plate with a little of everything else (the dishes are large and to be shared), but especially the melt in your mouth beef with cumin (I’m still surprised), shredded onion, coriander and… garlic. With the beef shaven, succulent but dry and spiced with cumin, I suppose this is what Greek gyros would taste like if it were excellent. And this was excellent.

When the ‘Beijing pizza’ arrives (for the restaurant operates strict serve-yourself drinks and it-comes-when-it-comes policies), essentially a larger, absolutely not greasy, dumpling rolled over well-spiced minced lamb and braised leeks, it’s likely you’ll also want to comment on how Middle Eastern the tastes are. Ditto with the steamed eggs - theirs is the same creamy, nuttiness that you’ll find in the 10-hour boiled eggs that perch atop hummus bowls in Israel. From these last two dishes and the beef, it would seem that the two kitchens share similar recipes for soul food. 

And it’s the food that carries the place. With no real decor to speak of, a TV screen in the back loudly slide-showing the dishes, no alcohol licence and staff that aren’t really interested in talking to you, Beijing Bao is the type of place you probably only dared to enter because of the number of Chinese sitting inside, or because a local friend you trust enough to take you to a Chinese restaurant in Rotterdam even though you don’t like ‘Chinese’ and you have to travel from Amsterdam, takes you. However you got there, go there. After dinner you’ll probably want to go again for breakfast.

Photographs by Sophia van den Hoek. Also published on Unfolded.

A garden in pictures

When I say my mom’s a gardener what I mean is that we eat late in the summer months. It means there's a good chance my hand luggage has a plant or two stuffed down the side wrapped in damp newspaper and that I get seed heads sent to me in the mail. It means I don't cut flowers probably because my mom doesn't cut flowers, and that I like making sticks into infrastructure most certainly because mom makes stick infrastructure.

When I planted my first garden I was a little nervous and spaced everything out like the mysterious runes and diagrams on the seed packets said to. Mom’s advice: ‘Everything just wants to live’.

When I say ‘my first garden’ what I mean is that time, three years ago, when I grew mainly greens and 3.5 sunflowers in a 1x1 box in a field that, for the longest time, was looked over by city planners and left to a group of alcoholics that would (mostly) leave you alone as well as a modern day mystic and follower of the ayahuasca church (possibly — no, probably — also an alcoholic) who once accused me of stealing his watering can (I didn’t). This field is now a construction site like it’s been for the last two years, destined for a new try at life as a carpark. 

My next garden isn't so much mine as it's ours and this isn't just because it's squatted, which it is. These pictures are of her garden, not of ours.

Sunflowers, incidentally, seem to do very well in Amsterdam.

Movia Wines + Restaurant De Jong + Lux = magic * natural wine

It started at 6 so we figured we’d probably be out early. And anyway, or so I thought, it was a wine tasting (small sips, spit spit) and it would all be natural (wine that has been farmed according to organic or biodynamic principles plus minimum intervention thereafter… including, according to some diehards, no sulphite at bottling; a practice that has the effect of stabilising the otherwise very much still alive wine by stunning microbial reproduction, fermentation and all-round interaction as well as sanitising bottling equipment: sulphite’s antioxidant properties shield the wine from oxygen.) — so we’d be fine

— or at least, more fine than how we might feel after drinking, sorry tasting, the equivalent amount of conventional wine; wine that will almost invariably have had chemicals and sulphites added, noxious nasties that would have to be processed by our livers the next day as well as the alcohol. The lack of crap* in natural wine should make it, both theoretically and in many of my own experiences though certainly not all, less likely to leave you feeling bad the next day, precisely because there’s less crap to have to filter out. Obviously alcohol percentage, sugars, dehydration, levels of histamine (high in red wine), how much and how fast you drink are also influencing factors; and there are a lot of offhand soundbites being thrown around about the evils of sulphites as the major causer of hangovers, but for now, that’s what they are: unscientific soundbites. 

And that’s where we’ll leave them. Hangover prevention is a bad reason to start drinking natural wine and if it’s yours, please don’t. Better reasons are: caring about the environment, supporting the farmers that care, additives in your food and if you think you’d be interested in trying something that’s alive, tastes it, and is therefore unlike anything else, certainly anything we label ‘wine’. 

But the night itself?