Aggressively Geeky!

WINE TALK
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We had dinner tonight at Leeward, a relatively new restaurant in Portland, Maine. This opened early ’20, in the teeth of COVID. It has an excellent reputation and the food and service were absolutely outstanding. The restaurant specializes in pasta, naturally has an Italian bent, but is not rigid about it. I will be back early and often, but the wine list is a quandary.

Food: Eileen had a bibb salad and rigatoni Bolognese, I had mussels and gnocco frito. I would happily order any of them again and again.

The wine list is aggressively geeky, especially for this neck of the woods. There are about 100 wines in six sections. The 12 btg include 4 whites, 4 reds, 1 frizzante, 1 bubbly, 1 rose and 1 orange. About half the wines are Italian. Glass prices are all ~$15. Bottle prices are $50 - 100+, with only a handful in 3 digits (Barolo and Champagne). I was able to find glasses to suit us, but it was not immediately evident. The wine list on the web site is almost exactly the same as what we were handed, with just a handful of changes.

There is one wine that includes Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s a btg, blended with Cinsault.
There is one Chardonnay, a Petit Chablis by the bottle.

There are no wines that include any of the following grapes:
Sauvignon Blanc
Pinot Gris / Grigio
Pinot Noir
Syrah
Grenache
Merlot
Malbec (despite there being a Cahors on the list!?!)

Besides Italy, countries, states and districts are:
France (most of the rest of the list)
Slovenia
Spain
Greece
Germany
Switzerland
Chile
Austria
South Africa
Canada

And within the US
Vermont
Maine
New York
Oregon

And within California
Mendocino
Sierra Foothills
Sonoma
Russian River

I am a wine geek. I loved the restaurant and will be back, but this list is too geeky for me. How about you?

Dan Kravitz

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for those interested, the list in question:

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looks like quite a lot of high quality producers from the ones i’m familiar with. that would incline me to trust the selections i am unfamiliar with.

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Is it over the top geeky, yes. That said, there are some recognizable things on the list. Overall I think the person who put it together is more interested in him/herself than the customers.

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That is an awesome list. I would go back to drink even if the food sucked.

Tom

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The first bottle that jumped out at me was the Fratelli Alessandria Verduno Pelaverga, but I see on CT that there are brett issues and that’s a no-go zone for me.

The frizzantes from Vermont are a curiosity but not enough to buy a bottle.

So Tempier Rosé it is.

You’re right that this is too geeky.

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I don’t consider myself a natural wine enthusiast by any means but there are quite many wines on the list from producers that I like and many others that I’ve been looking to try.

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It’s geeky, but I disagree that it’s too geeky. I applaud their desire to expose customers to excellent producers from less exposed grapes. It’s not like it’s all random natty natural wines, and it’s not like Brovia arneis, Foillard Fleurie, piñon vouvray, etc are exceptionally geeky.

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I had exactly the same thought looking over the list.

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I don’t know about too geeky. I echo others, I can find plenty in any category from producers I recognize that it establishes some trust that they know what they’re picking.

If the food is as good as you say it is, I think that’s their play. The food is good enough to have a wine list where they don’t care what the customer thinks.

Is it how I, or most would put a list together? Probably not, but I also don’t run a beverage program or a restaurant.

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I think it’s a very good and interesting wine list. While there are quite a few wineries that I don’t know of/have tasted, most of those I have tasted are very good and interesting wines. Some who really cares about wines put together this list…

Hence it’s a place where I would engage with the somm and follow recommendations when in the mood for it.

Are the wines geeky, yes perhaps but think the selection is not put together just to be different. Takes an opens mind and real student of wine to offer those wines. And at for US reasonable prices then :clap:

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Could be. Or the somm really likes those wines and is thinking that he can make others discover them and take them off the beaten path. There were a lot of restaurants in Montreal with wine lists in a similar style. Although they did introduce me to some things I wouldn’t have tried otherwise (La Garagista, Giovanni Montisci Cannonau di Sardegna Barrosu, Azienda Agricola Cirelli Trebbiano d’Abruzzo come to mind), I’d have to say I normally had more wines that didn’t enchant me than wines that did.

I think in this context you have to provide the somm with as much info as possible as to what you don’t like in wine and what you do and see if he really put this wine list together for the menu and diners or if he just built a list of his favorites.

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Hmm. I don’t think of myself as one who searches out geeky wines. But there are producers on this list I recognize and they are all pretty good. I’d be happy to choose wines from it, especially if I loved the food as much as you do.

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The latter point is the problem. I like this list but I’m way out there on the adventurous scale. The big distributor lists are the lists I don’t like.
I agree with Jonathan that there is a bunch of wines that are recognizable.

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My office is about a block from Leeward, and I agree with Dan, the food is really great. (It is also very hard to get into without booking a reservation +/- a month in advance.)

I don’t consider myself a wine geek, but I love wine. My cellar is full of somewhat more “traditional” wines (Napa, Bordeaux, Tuscany, Piedmont).

A friend we went with (not a wine person) recognized a bottle on the list from a local wine store and ordered it. It was fine/OK (honestly I don’t remember what it was).

Personally, I would have much preferred a list with more bottles I recognized. (The bottles I did recognize (Pax comes to mind) are wines that I actively avoid.)

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Yeah, that’s a very geeky list, except for the Tempier I guess. I don’t know if there is such a thing as too geeky for me under the circumstances: a chance to try something I wouldn’t normally get the chance to try - makes the restaurant experience more interesting, why not?

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I wonder if the somm’s thought here is that most guests don’t see this list the way we do (i.e. far outlier wine obsessive types who spend a good deal of time on wine boards), and therein is an opportunity to turn people on to wines they might not try otherwise. The average person who enjoys wine may have no idea that Chablis is Chardonnay, what grape is in Beaujolais, etc. So this list doesn’t look geeky to an average guest - it’s just another wine list. Maybe the lack of familiar choices (Napa cabs etc) stands out but that’s about it.

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Of those grapes mentioned as there being just one or no wines based on them, all but Pinot Grigio are fringe / non-native grapes to Italy. If the food leans strongly towards Italian, then I’d have no issue with their exclusion, even though it’s still possibly to find great examples from all of them in Italy.

Pinot Grigio’s absence feels like it might be a statement exclusion, with the somm being personally unimpressed by what’s available.

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To me the list reads like whoever put it together wanted to keep things as affordable as possible without sacrificing quality. Where they were able to get recognizable producers, they did, but they also know their customers are not necessarily the kind of people who will spend that much more than $100/bottle, which is fine. I’ve heard of leeward (and wanted to try it) and know that they want to be food focused, so the wine has to be a compliment to that (and not the other way around).

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While I do tend towards geeky I see nothing wrong with this list. As others have pointed out, there are plenty of recognizable solid choices, and the list is firmly tilted towards value. A good somm should be able to steer any reasonable person towards a wine they like. And the BTG options are great.

Re the Vermont Frizzante comment above, as long as you’re willing to spend the coin any La Garagista wine is worth the plunge.

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