Picada y Vino

The first thing you will notice when you walk into this little shop that tells you it is not a typical wine store is the green couch in the front window. I routinely visit the shop after a long day of work, plop onto this couch, give Leigh, the store owner, a vague description of what I am in the mood for and she picks me a wine I have never heard of that inevitably turns out to be delicious and exactly what I wanted. My ego wants to believe that I’m the difference maker in this transaction, that I have such a sophisticated palette I would never judge a wine by its label. Humbly, I know this is false. I’m not saying that I like my wine shop to have Robert Parker Scores on the bottle necks. But with an industry that does such a great job of hiding mediocrity in the naivety of its consumers, I tend to approach the obscure with trepidation and Leigh’s collection is self-consciously obscure. Don’t get me wrong, I have found, through daily hands on research that all of the wines Leigh carries are perfectly deserving of the spot light. But they aren’t the easiest labels to sell. Magnums of Yellow Tail would be as out of place here as frozen Mickey D chicken fingers at Whole Foods. Instead, she stocks small vintners you’ve likely never heard of. Some are making classic regional wines, others are challenging conventions by making wines uncommon to their region like a chardonnay from Germany and a sparkling bonarda from Piedmont. And yet this store moves a lot of wine.

I have asked Leigh directly what she thinks makes her list work and she points to two reasons. One, the affordable price range of her wines makes constant experimentation palatable to the social drinker, and two, the bedrock of her collecting philosophy is that all of her wines must be quaffable. Both points are apparent in her list. Most bottles in the shop range from $15 to $25 and I rarely buy a wine from here that I can’t drink on it’s own in as much quantity as my liver will allow. But if you sit on the couch for ten minutes during an evening rush, you will see that the real art of this shop is the match-making rapport she has with her clients. Leigh takes the time to get to know her customers. She listens to their needs then has a genuine discussion with them about wine in practical terms about food pairing, weather, and mood. She only uses technical jargon when customers asks for it. She also has a sophisticated delivery system. The shop will deliver as little as two bottles at a time which is free if you live in Park Slope. You can keep all of your information on file with the shop, including a list of the bottles and styles you have bought in the past to assure whatever you pick meets your tastes, then, just call before you leave work for the day, discuss what you are looking for and two bottles will be at your door by the time you arrive home with your take-out.

What all this effort comes together as is wine buying made easy, in defiance of what usually makes wine buying easy. Leigh establishes a client-proprietor trust that takes the crap shoot out of wine exploration so the new and obscure no longer have to be a pleasure reserved for the esoterics.