Upper West Side Wine Bars

Mediterranean

434 Amsterdam Ave. 10024
Cross Streets:  81st St.
646-863-3896

Hours: Sun-Wed 5pm-1am, Thu-Sat 5pm-2am

Here is an UWS wine bar that goes all eco on us.  It serves over 160 selections from France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain. The 37 wines by the glass range in price from $9-22 and almost always contains a back vintage wine. About 80% are small-batch, organic, biodynamic and sustainable. [Essentially, biodynamic wines are those whose processes follow the principle of organic farming; the wines are natural, unmanipulated by use of pesticides, herbicides or chemical inputs.]

This wine list – composed from co-author of The Ultimate Wine Lover’s Guide and importer Evan Spingarn – also changes with the seasons.  Riesling, America’s fastest growing wine variety, is well represented, with eleven choices, and offered as one of their numerous signature Trios — flights of three, food-paired, 2oz pours, with themes including Sherry, and oysters (we heart wine flights).

A few good bottles are under $40, but the most interesting range from $40 to $75. The staff seems well versed, and is thankfully free of the desire to initiate wine education sessions without invitation. Tentative wine drinkers can happily settle for a very good pinot grigio, for example, while leaving the funky wines like orange wines and sections for red and white “exotica,” to the true wine geeks.

Chef David Seigal, formerly of Mercat pairs the wines with a Mediterranean cuisine that also changes with the season: keeping it market-driven and organic when possible. The menu starts off with imported cheese and charcuterie; moves on to Crostini topped with ingredients like chickpeas and morcilla; and ends with larger plates including southern France’s pizza-like pissaladiere (nicoise olives, caramelized onions, anchovies), an Italian-esque black truffle risotto, and hanger steak with duck fat-smashed spuds.

The space is designed like a wine cellar: warm and accented with marble and terra cotta, and highlighted by dual wine towers made of Burgundy limestone. It seats sixty and will have an outdoor patio come springtime, as well as a bar holding sixteen chairs, and high top tables.

Word on the street is they have daily specials from 5-7pm and during Sunday brunch from 11:30am – 7pm, serving 3-4 special wine selections that are not on the menu and featured at $6-$8/glass. Also, starting in the Winter 2011, on Wednesday nights they will open any bottle on their wine list if two glasses are purchased. That means you can try some of the older, rarer and more expensive vintages without having to commit to buying the whole bottle. (The price for two glasses will equal half the bottle price.)