Nah. I am sweetly derisive, and happy to have inadvertently helped to give the posted link its 15 minutes of fame. If Yaacov is flinging bitter invective at me and you are huzzahing it, I must have done something right. Just chalk it up to you, Yaacov and I all having very different standards for “doing great things for wine”. There have surely been greater things done for wine in NYC than the slapdash list put together in the article. Thankfully, the topic will not merit a third post by me! 
At least half of the list and most of the older wines were from Steve Verlin’s collection.
It’s kind of an interesting read for me, knowing of some of the people and most of the establishments. But I think the influence of sommeliers on the larger wine market is close to nil – certainly nothing like the impact of top importers like Kermit Lynch or Neal Rosenthal or retailers such as Chambers Street.
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Awesome, best news I have heard all day…
Thanks Ray.
I didn’t realize this.
Steve Verlin had some kind of collection!
well, this is kind of a chicken and egg situation maybe. while i do agree with you, i must push back on the nil part as the average person is just as likely to come in contact with these wines on lists as they are store (or more likely maybe). it’s a value chain and an ecosystem - everyone has their part. it’s difficult to argue that wine lists haven’t gotten much more interesting, varied, and overall better over the past decade. it’s also difficult to argue that those mentioned in the article didn’t have a lot to do with it.
this is as typical as a Bill Klapp response as you can get - it deserves some sort of trademark or some other symbol to illustrate its benchmark-ness; lots of words, zero facts or actual content
There was content. He is done posting in this thread. What could be better?
I agree with you that there are way more interesting wine lists here in NYC than there were a decade ago, and I’m sure these folks had a big part in that. But I think the improvement has a lot to do with the broadening horizons of wine consumers generally and the role of retailers like Chambers and Crush and, more recently, Flatiron; plus Joe Dressner, Neal Rosenthal, Kermit Lynch and other passionate importers. Afterall, how many bottles or glasses do people buy in restaurants versus in stores?
As I said, I give the somms credit, but their impact was on a pretty small corner of the wine world.
I had always heard that revenue is 50/50 between retail/restaurant. Is that not the case?
You know I have always seemed to drink well in NYC restaurants. Maybe except that one experience at one of the Boulud offshoots. And I have never spoken with or met anyone of the esteemed individuals on the list.
Are you referring to revenue of the wine trade? That ratio would surprise me a bit, but I guess with 2.5x-4x mark-ups in restaurants, perhaps its true on a dollar basis.
Still, I was trying to get at where people get introduced to new wines. For the wine geek crowd – i.e., WB folks and people who care about the wine lists at places like those in that article – I would think their exposure to new wines comes more from their own sampling, reading or retailers’ recommendations. Personally, I can think of very few wines I’ve had in a restaurant or wine bar that opened up new horizons for me in wine. (A fabulous Gavi I had at Acquarello in San Francisco circa 1996 is the only one comes to mind immediately.) But I’m in a bunch of tasting groups and always seek out offbeat and new wines, and I probably eat out less than the average wine geek, so I may be atypical. (Truth be told, I’ve been to Terroirs many, many times and have had a lot of really unimpressive “new discoveries” there. I don’t think I’ve ever sought out anything I’ve tasted there, and it’s supposedly the after-hours hangout for a lot of the top somms.)
I’d be curious to know of people here feel very indebted to sommeliers for introducing them to wines they didn’t know.
John,
They’re all a part of it, and I’d say those importers, retailers and restaurants have played a massive role in something that should be dear to Bill’s heart - the declining influence of Robert Parker on the wine public, and the increased public awareness of styles that were backwaters of “vinofreakism,” to use an RMP Twitter gem.
I worked in a small retail shop in Princeton that carried a lot of off-the-beaten path stuff before moving to Kansas City in 2001, where I found it nearly impossible to find the kind of wines I was used to getting in and out of NYC. I would ship stuff back with me when I would come home to visit, but my prime work at retail and when I was in a restaurant was to bring more interesting wines here.
As an example of how the reach of some of these people goes far and wide, Yaacov introduced to Richard Luftig over dinner at Cookshop many years ago, and the subject of Jura wines came up. I was no experience with them, and Richard popped a bottle of Ganevat for us, and when I was enthusiastic sent a bottle home with me. I worked to get some different Jura wines, and though it took a while, it finally happened. Though I can’t do a program as overtly geeky as Chambers Street, we’ve carved out a nice little niche for AFWE wines in the Midwest, and there are now restaurants that are following suit, many of whom visit other venues in San Francisco and New York to see what’s happening there.
I am surprised that they didn’t mention Glenn Voigt. Glenn worked at a Windows of the World and then Montrachet. He is the driver behind Crabtree Kittlehouse’s wine program (in Chappaqua) and he now runs Kittlehouse’s sister Restaurant Rivermarket in Tarrytown, NY. Granted, he left the city a while ago, but he is a big force in the NY wine world, in my opinion.
Sommeliers have introduced me to wines I didn’t previously know, and that I enjoyed. Example – looking for a moderately priced white wine in a high-end seafood restaurant, I was introduced to Huet Le Mont Sec. Don’t think I’d ever had a Vouvray before, at least didn’t remember having one. Now I have a bunch in my cellar. Yum!
Mostly these days I bring my own wine to restaurants, so don’t get as much help from Somms. But I always enjoy talking to them. If they’re polite to me then I share my wine with them .
Like most threads, this one is full of opinions about the subject. The question of restaurant/somm influence is actually a pretty complex one. To really answer it you’d have to do some careful thinking about the number of interactions/month (or whatever) that somms have with wine drinkers, rate of attentiveness (i.e. do people even remember the name of the wine they drank), and likelihood to make future decisions based on the experience (i.e. influence). My guess is that nobody here has a lick of data to support any particular hypothesis.
Having said that, I’ve enjoyed the discussion, and I enjoyed the article. The key info for me was some facts about which restaurants seem to be more attentive to wine or have better lists. That’s useful!
I forgot about that, Jim. Great story. Richard is one of the best guys in the wine business. I’m going to get over to cookshop asap, it’s been way too long.
Please give him my best. I hope to get to NYC again soon. Dinner will be in order!
Yes, please!
Being here is a bit self-selecting for being introduced to wines via wine boards so I’m not sure how representative we are. Also, I eat at BYO places so much these days that there isn’t much opportunity.
Certainly I’ve learned a lot from Levi though more from his posts/podcasts than from eating at restaurants where he was working (just because I didn’t eat there much).
The somm at Marea (I don’t know his name) introduced me to Abbatucci for which I’ll always be grateful.
Likewise, Jay.