Bottles
for the Nuovo Mondo
Sunday, October
17, 1999
Only yesterday, Italian wine, for New Yorkers of mid-century vintage,
consisted of Chianti in water glasses on a red-and-white restaurant
tablecloth. The straw-wrapped bottle, when drained, was plugged by
a candle. Uncle Giuseppe twirled spaghetti near the brick wall on
one side.
On Columbus Day, a shop called Italian
Wine Merchants opened at 108 East 16th Street, off Union Square.
The brick wall looks the same, but the shop embodies the Nuovo Mondo,
the New World: customers, handed long-stem glasses, can sample reds
and whites with delicate grana padano cheese and spicy soppressata.
The partners are Joseph
Bastianich and Mario
Batali, who own Babbo, a three-star Greenwich Village restaurant,
where Mr. Batali is also chef, and Sergio
Esposito, an ex-sommelier whose inamorata is Italian wines, 80,000
bottles of which are arriving to fill the cellar.
A demonstration kitchen with food seminars, classes and tastings will
fuse Italian cuisine with illustrative bottles from Piemonte through
Sicilia. "We hope 80 percent of the wines will be under $20,"
Mr. Esposito said. "Our intention is to carry the greatest producers
and find the up-and-coming ones." A testing yielded these choice
whites: 1997 Dubini Bianco, Palazzone (Umbria), $6; 1998 Orvieto Classico
Superiore, Palazzone (Umbria), $11; 1998 Gini Soave Classico Superiore
(Veneto), $12. And these reds: 1998 A-Mano Primitivo (Puglia), $8.50;
1997 Sangiovese della Calonica (Tuscany), $10; and 1997 Moris Farm
Morellino di Scansano (Tuscany), $14.
Howard G. Goldberg
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