A Skeptics Tour Of New York Citys Natural Wine Bars

I am skeptical about natural wine . I have some natural wines that I like and many that I don't like. I don't understand what this is about. That's why I decided to do a wine tasting in its natural habitat: a natural cellar. You may have missed out on an important part of the experience.

The natural wine movement is pretty strong right now. You can find natural wine bars all over the world, and New York City, especially Manhattan's Lower East Side and Brooklyn's Williamsburg, is a real stronghold. If I want to get a better idea of natural wines and maybe try better ones, this area of New York seems like a good place to start.

Over the years I have heard different definitions of what makes a wine natural. Noah, bartender at Skin Contact in Manhattan, defines it this way: “It means that there is no intervention in the cellar, nothing added, nothing taken away. It's a natural concept because you taste the wine and everything. Diego, a bartender at Have & Meyer in Brooklyn, says, “Nature means no chemicals are added to the wine. This is a tribute to nature." This is one of my frustrations with natural wine: the more people define it, the more confused I get. The best I can think of is that it's only natural that producers would write it that way.

I began my exploration of natural wineries at Ten Bells, a true natural winery. When it opened in 2008 on the Lower East Side, it was one of New York's few natural wine bars; The bars do not offer natural wine, much less the pillar. (A second location will open in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood in 2021.)

Ten Bells is a dark room with wood paneling and a distinctly atmospheric atmosphere, but Rusudan Bar is as bright as a dark bar. He greeted my friend and I with a smile and gave us a list of wines by the glass. When I told him I didn't know much about natural wines, he offered to let us taste some samples. How about orange wine? I propose "Orange wines are a little drier than whites," says Rusudan, offering me the taste of a tannic, oxidizing and slightly fizzy wine at the same time, reminding me why I don't like orange wines.

So Rusudan suggests trying Pet-Nat Rosé 2021, a slightly German sparkling wine that I prefer. It comes in a very tall bottle with a nice label. The back label identifies it as a wine made from hand-picked organic grapes using real yeast fermentation and no fining or filtration. A few sips, the taste becomes a bit flat. To start with, my friend had a nice glass of Le Raisin and the Ange Brân Gamay from the Loire. Then it also falls flat, even wild. "The more I drink, the less I like it," I said over the glass.

After half a glass of wine, we said goodnight to our friend Rusudan and headed towards our next destination: Skin Contact, a super natural wine shop. We asked bartender Noah to define "skin contact." "At its most basic level, it's white wine fermented on the skin," she says. This bar is a little more modern and robust than Ten Bells. Noah proved to be as cheerful and outgoing as Rusudan, and when I admitted I had limited experience with natural wine, he agreed.

Noah served my friend and I a sample of the 2020 Ocho Mtsvane Do U Believe, a skin-to-skin wine with an unusual blue ram with yellow horns on the front label. The back label explains that Ocho is a legendary protector of forests and wildlife and states that the wine is a dry, amber-colored, unfiltered wine from Georgia. (Quevres are large clay vessels in which wine is fermented and aged. They are sometimes stored underground.)

“ Perhaps the wine is too complex for a natural wine like me. »

The wine is brown and again almost grainy, interesting but also a bit boring. Perhaps too complicated for a natural winemaker like me. Noah suggested several other wines: Fongoli Palmetta Grechetto, a white-skinned Umbrian wine; Familie Bauer Osterreich Barig, a blend of citrus and Austrian Grüner Veltliner and Roter Veltliner grapes; and the fruity Rosita Bomba, a blend of Cabernet Franc and Merlot, whose label features a caricature of a redheaded woman holding a glass under a hairdryer. At least it looked like a hair dryer to me. Finding natural wine labels can be as difficult as the wine itself. We liked the wine but we didn't like everything Noe suggested: the dry and slightly spiced Can Sumoi Xarel-lo 2021, a Spanish white wine as simple as the label says. It was also a good wine that I will definitely drink again.

The following week, I took the subway to Brooklyn to try two more wine bars with a friend from Brooklyn. Have & Meyer, an all natural Italian restaurant and wine bar, is wood paneled and dark, though brightened by rose petals and colorful photographs hanging around the room. Photos captured the winemaker and his friends at the bar, bartender Diego said, wearing a black-and-red "Piemonte" T-shirt. Like Rusudan and Noah, Diego was kind, not to mention generous, offering me some wines to try. My favorite is Rivetto Nascetta Langhe 2020, a white wax obtained from Nascetta, a dark Piedmontese variety.

Also in Brooklyn, Four Horsemen, founded by LCD Soundsystem musician James Murphy, has a Michelin star and a more formal setting. Instead of grabbing a stool at the bar, I first had to register at the counter and give my phone number.

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While my friend and I sat, the waitress Nicole provided a generous tasting of several wines, including two sparkling options paired with a (delicious) cod cake appetizer: Massimo Coletti Via Larghe Frizzante, a Chardonnay-Glera Veneta blend . ; and the juicy Keltis Mario Rozé, a Slovenian blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that I love. My friend had a very nice, lush and full-bodied Merlot de Bordeaux, L'Île Rouge Grande Terre 2020, which Nicole described as "more tannic" than the Loire Cabernet Franc my friend was also reviewing.

"Are all the wines on the list natural?" I ask “We have more than 1,200 grapes in the cellar. Maybe 1150 is reasonable,” Nicole replied. While the other waiters were chatting a lot, Nicole got to work. “He offers a lot of drinks, but he doesn't like to chat,” my friend said.

While some of the wineries we visited were better than others, the encounter, with the exception of Nicole, was quite warm. The servers are generous with their knowledge and time, not to mention the wine. It made me want to try my luck again.

Email Letty at wine@wsj.com