Volcanic Gift Pack
$81

Check out our full selection of Holiday Gift Packs!

Like a red rag to a bull, we have a tendency to get all fired up at the sight of Spanish wine. So expect some banging of hoofs at our Rioja tasting this Saturday, where our Viura and Tempranillo matadors will attempt to tame these two magnificent beasts:

Marqués de Murrieta “Capellanía” Rioja Blanco 2005 (Rioja, Spain) $24

Ramirez de la Piscina Rioja Reserva 2005 (Rioja, Spain) $26

RIOJA TASTING
Saturday, October 15
3:00-6:00pm

Vino is rightly celebrated for its extensive wine selection, but our range of spirits has grown impressively over the last year, affording us the opportunity to present some of our favorite liquid libations to our discerning but adventurous clientele. And if the popularity of our Thursday Cocktail Hour events is anything to go by, New Yorkers are displaying a new-found appreciation for classic tipples and the rediscovered art of mixology. So it’s only natural that we should offer three terrific spirits-based gift-packs this holiday season. The Manhattan and The Brooklyn celebrate the city’s cocktail renaissance, while the Bar in a Box gives you everything you need to concoct your own cocktail creations at home. Cheers!

The Manhattan
$45
Give the gift that contains everything one needs to craft this classic cocktail the way it was originally made — using rye whiskey, not bourbon. This gift pack includes one bottle of Old Overholt Rye, one bottle of Dolin Sweet Vermouth and one bottle of The Bitter Truth Aromatic Bitters. A recipe card is included so you can mix and taste for yourself why some drinks never go out of style.

The Brooklyn
$47
This gift pack hails from the other side of the East River, and includes the ingredients for a classic Martini. The gin is called Breuckelen, and comes from — you guessed it — Brooklyn. The vermouth is the delicious Dolin Dry. Shake ‘em up as per our special recipe to make a fine Martini-a cool way to warm up this holiday season.

Bar in a Box
$167
This fantastic assortment of spirits is all you need to create your very own bar at home. One bottle of each the basics is included: Buffalo Trace Bourbon, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Milagro Silver Tequila, Plymouth Gin, Marie Duffau Armagnac, and St. Lucia Chairman’s Reserve Rum. A set of six laminated cocktail recipe cards is enclosed so you’ll know all the proper proportions for classics like the Margarita, Cosmo and Sidecar. Grab some mixers and snacks and the party is set to go!

For more information please contact 212-725-6516 or info@vinosite.com.

DeMorgenzon is a South African producer located in the region of Stellenbosch. DeMorgenzon was originally a section of Uiterwyk, one of the oldest farms in South Africa. In 2003 Wendy and Hylton Appelbaum bought the estate and have transformed it dramatically. Part of the magic of the DeMorgenzon property is the  relatively cool climate it enjoys compared to the rest of Stellenbosch. This cool climate allows Chard to shine, as do the low yields of 8 tons per acre. The grapes are handpicked and juice fermented with indigenous yeast in French oak barrels. The wine is then matured on its lees for ten months in barrel.

The wine tastes like its label looks, an elegant amalgam of the traditional and the modern. Part rock n’ roll, part hip hop; it’s some fruit, some oak, all elegance. Chardonnay has suffered from a bit of backlash much like Merlot. Luckily, it seems to be back on track.

DeMorgenzon “DMZ” Chardonnay 2009
$15

For more information please contact 212-725-6516 or info@vinosite.com.

This unique whiskey starts out with locally grown, malted barley, and fresh mountain water from the Rockies. Distillation takes place in a custom-made combination pot/column still; a double run results in a smooth base spirit, which is then aged in charred American white oak barrels for at least 2 years.

While many other brands on the market combine whiskey from hundreds of barrels and then bottle them to create a uniform taste, Stranahan’s only produces 12 barrels of whiskey a week. Ten to twenty barrels are then selected and combined to craft a true small batch whiskey. And just to make each bottle extra special, the name of the distillerand the music they were listening to while bottling is printed on the label.

If you like Irish whiskey, you’ll enjoy Stranahan’s since it’s un-peated and made from malted barley. It evokes flavors such as tobacco, spice, smoke, caramel and maple syrup and is best enjoyed neat or on the rocks. In the Rockies, if possible.

Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey

$59

For more information please contact 212-725-6516 or info@vinosite.com.

Cocktail Hour
MOSCOW MULE
Thursday, October 21
5:30-7:30pm

For more information please contact 212-725-6516 or email info@vinosite.com.

Vino is excited to present a brand new addition to its class schedule, in which our very own Jim Hutchinson invites you to explore the hearty foods and delicious wines of Emilia-Romagna.

Comprising two historic regions, Emilia and Romagna, the unified Emilia-Romagna benefits from a unique geographical position, acting as a sort of keystone state between Central and Northern Italy, and stretching the peninsula from the Adriatic coast to Liguria. The region’s most famous towns lie centrally: Parma, Reggio-Emilia, Modena and Bologna, each of which is synonymous with some of Italy’s favorite and most heavily exported food products.

Lambrusco, Parmigiano Reggiano and prosciutto crudo... just some of the flavors we'll be sampling on Wednesday, April 29.

In an exclusive tasting, class participants will sample some of the cuisine which defines the region, such as prosciutto, parmigiano-reggiano, egg pasta and aceto balsamico. These will be paired with expertly selected wines including the sparkling Lambrusco, plus Sangiovese di Romagna and wines from the Colli Piacentini.

EMILIA-ROMAGNA: Italy’s
Gastronomic Heartland
with Jim Hutchinson, DWS
Wednesday, April 29
6:30-8:30pm
$65

For more information and reservations call 212-725-6516 or email register@vinosite.com.

Vino’s full Spring 2009 Class Schedule is available on our website, vinosite.com.

The Empire State Building as glimpsed from the roof of my new building in the East Village.

A couple of Fridays ago I celebrated my 30th birthday, an event which probably varies in significance depending how old you are! Over the last year, several of my friends had reached this undeniable milestone, and had described to me their sense of panic at having to kiss goodbye their roaring twenties. I personally felt happy to embrace a new decade: I’ve had thirty years to prepare for it, and after all, doesn’t life begin at 30? I certainly feel more content these days than in 1999, the year I first visited these shores as a wide-eyed 20 year-old. Exactly ten years later I find myself living in New York City, signing the lease to a new apartment on my 30th birthday. Blame it on a simple twist of fate…

Look at those bubbles! Giacosa's Brut is double-fermented in bottle to achieve that extra sparkle.

After getting the keys to our new place we went home to crack open a bottle of Extra Brut 2001 by Bruno Giacosa which Jim Hutchinson had gifted me on New Year’s Eve. It had been sitting in my fridge ever since, just waiting for an appropriate moment — I suppose this was it. Renowned in Italy for his Barolos and Barbarescos, Giacosa’s “spumante brut” is made from Pinot Nero grapes grown in what is known as the Oltrepò Pavese, an area south of the river Pò which covers the province of Pavia. My first year living in Italy was spent in this foggy university town, so I couldn’t think of a better wine to pop open on this special night. It certainly got the evening off to a bubbly start as I opened my cards and unwrapped my presents. Thanks everyone!

Bruno Giacosa's Extra Brut Spumante is a study in stylish Italian opulence both inside and out.

I’d made no plans for the evening but it turned out Hillary had, and I was soon being bundled onto the uptown-bound 6 train, final destination unknown. Exiting the subway at 86th and Lexington, we walked up to the corner of 92nd Street, where the warmth and coziness of Sfoglia awaited us. Owned by Ron Suhanosky and Colleen Marnell-Suhanosky, the restaurant is the Manhattan outpost of their original in Nantucket, and the ambiance is definitely more New England kitchen than Upper East Side hotspot.

A generous helping of pappardelle alla bolognese (left) at Sfoglia. We were seated beneath a poster for the Spoleto Festival, an arts event held every summer in Spoleto, Umbria, and Charleston, NC.

The portions are equally homely: I ordered the exquisitely-textured pappardelle alla bolognese (my personal idea of comfort food), a sizeable bowl of which took me roughly an hour to finish along with a decidedly rustic Chianti Riserva by Poggio della Torre. Perhaps foolishly, I had pre-ordered the bread pudding which could have easily fed four. As luck would have it, it was all delicious, and we lingered over cookies and Moscato until the wee hours.

My bread pudding had to be pre-ordered: after the pappardelle it was a lot of dessert but hey, it was my birthday! Grazie Sfoglia for the complimentary Moscato and biscotti!

The birthday weekend was put on hold as I spent the next two days carrying boxes and lugging furniture (thankfully only a few blocks) between homes. The prospect of moving house had forced me to postpone my party until the following Saturday, by which time the new pad was at least taking on the semblance of a home. Hillary had surprised me with a new stereo and turntable, and so we spent most of Saturday scouring the West Village in search of used vinyl. After stopping for an old school pizza experience at John’s of Bleecker, we picked up a bunch of classic LPs (many for as little as a dollar), which we spun that night at the party. (As a result my meticulously compiled ‘79-’09 iTunes playlist was thrown out the window at the last minute.)

Just some of the bargain-priced classic albums I picked up last Saturday, including "JT" naturally! (Special thanks to Bleecker Street Records and Academy Records.)

The tunes taken care of, party guests made some important contributions to an excellent spread: Jess (who also made a mean Joe Greene spinach dip the night of the Super Bowl) brought a homemade cheesecake which went well with Hillary’s mysterious sangria-punch (the effects of which I certainly felt the next morning!). My roommate from Pavia and another recent addition to the thirtysomething club, Federico (co-founder of Roomorama), brought a cream and chocolate cake from The Black Hound, which we washed down with Metodo Classico 2003 by Lini which Michele, my colleague from Domenico Valentino, had kindly brought with her. Grazie mille ragazzi!

My birthday party wouldn't have felt complete without a bottle of Lini. I guess we couldn't quite muster up thirty candles...

My birthday present to myself was an original 1974 New York City subway map, designed by Massimo Vignelli. Famed for its clean, simplistic beauty but infamous for its odd irregularities, the popular design ran from 1972 to 1979 before being replaced with something akin to today’s map, although Vignelli’s visual identity for the subway is still in use. It is now considered something of a modern design classic: the map is on the walls of MoMA and was updated in 2008 for Men’s Vogue.

Massimo Vignelli's '74 subway map is as beautiful as it is baffling. Why is the Second Avenue stop east of First Avenue? Why is Central Park square?

Hardly in-keeping with these recession-filled times, I also splashed out on a bottle of Barbaresco Asili 1979 Riserva Produttori del Barbaresco from Vino. Our man in Austin, Jeremy Parzen aka Do Bianchi, had recently written about enjoying a bottle of Borgogno Barolo from his birth year, which more or less convinced me to do the same. It was an extravagant purchase but hey, you only live once. And what fun to drink a great wine that’s the same age as you!

I had French toast with pear and raspberry for Valentine's Day brunch at the Little Owl (left). TV sitcom fans may recognize this West Village building (right).

Hillary and I finally got the chance to savor it on Saturday night, which also happened to be Valentine’s Day. After what had been a busy two weeks it was the first occasion we’d had to cook a serious meal in our new place. A pizza-and-Menabrea combo on Friday night at Luzzo’s (the best pizza in the city, secondo me) followed by a tasty brunch at The Little Owl the next morning held us over until Saturday evening.

This Cava by Dominio de la Vega made an ideal aperitivo. Thanks Hillary!

I prepared a simple-but-already-legendary spaghetti all’amatriciana (bucatini sometimes splatters too much) with pancetta, and let the sauce sit simmering for a couple of hours while we drank a tasty Cava by Dominio de la Vega, probably the only non-Italian wine mentioned on this blog!

"The best pasta I've ever tasted" was Hillary's impressive description of my spaghetti all'amatriciana (left), which was followed by grilled filet mignon (right). Thank you Fresh Direct!

Then, with a sense of enormous anticipation, we tried the Barbaresco. The first sip (without food) tasted as expected, and left an “apple juice effect” which lingered on the gums but all but disappeared once we began the first course. Hillary certainly enjoyed my amatriciana, describing it as the best pasta she had ever tasted. High praise perhaps, but I have to admit it was pretty darn good. For secondo we cooked up some patate alla besciamella (potatoes sliced and baked with béchamel, also known as aux dauphinoises), sides of spinach and two huge hunks of filet mignon which we grilled on a very hot stove.

The cork was a little stubborn but I did it in the end! We'd been dying for several weeks to open "the Barb" as it became known... it was worth the wait.

A great meal calls for a great wine, and the Barbaresco drank beautifully, only improving as the evening progressed. Produttori has been making wine from the south-western facing Asili vineyard since 1970, and it’s considered by some to be the quintessential Barbaresco. It was actually kind of awe-inspiring: I’d tasted some very old wines in Italy but couldn’t believe that something that had been sitting around for most of my life could taste so good and still be so drinkable after all these years.

Only 6,790 bottles of Asili single-vineyard 1979 Riserva were bottled. Number 4153 was certainly a good one.

Having both come close to passing out at the table we wisely agreed to skip dessert, but our epic feast was still the perfect end to a fun, hectic couple of weeks, and a crazy, life-altering couple of years. And when I think about how I found myself in another part of the world, in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife, I do sometimes indeed ask myself: Well, how did I get here?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K8ZRQQNxi8]

All photographs and photomontages by James Taylor, 2009.

Not afraid to get his hands dirty, Tuscan winemaker Guido Gualandi attends to his vines.

Regular readers of this blog will no doubt be familiar with Tuscan winemaker Guido Gualandi. The Montespertoli-based producer is often celebrated at Vino for his many talents in addition to winemaking: archaeologist, painter, musician, technology consultant… it’s an impressive list. But what exactly makes Guido’s wines so special? For starters, each wine Gualandi produces is the result of his own toil and hard labor, and he conducts every step of the winemaking process with his own hand. Grapes are hand-picked (using a traditional type of basket known as a “bigonce“) then hand- (and foot-) pressed. The wines are typically left to age in barriques, at which point Guido, a great believer in batonnage, regularly performs the act of stirring the lees himself. The entire production process from harvest to bottle is represented by diagrams on his wines’ labels.

A devoted non-interventionist winemaker, Gualandi insists on keeping his product free of all herbicides or pesticides. “I especially avoid correcting the taste of the wine in the cellar,” he says. This philosophy is part of Guido’s commitment to maintaining the same production techniques traditionally employed by winemakers in Tuscany. “Modern technology is practically banned from inside the winery,” he explained to us. “The materials I use are the same as those of fifty or even a hundred years ago.” For a man of such creative output, it’s perhaps no surprise Gualandi refers to his methods as “the art of making wine.”

Take home these Tuscan masterpieces at an astonishing 20% off!

Vino Rosato 2007 Guido Gualandi
was $19, now $ 15.20

Cavalleresco 2005 Guido Gualandi
was $38, now $30.40

Gualandus 2005 Guido Gualandi
was $50, now $40

Vinum 2007 Guido Gualandi
was $40, now $32

All four of these wines by Guido Gualandi will be available to try at
our FREE tasting this Friday, January 23rd, from 5:30-7:30pm.

For more information please call 212-725-6516 or email contact@vinosite.com.