Wine Truth: by Michael Dominic

After ingesting a good, albeit, oleaginous meal at Great Jones Diner, my friend Todd and I wandered over and down to East 1st Street. A new wine bar opened a few months back named Simon Sips. My wife and I sat and had a glass there a week earlier, while waiting for a table at a restaurant around the corner. It was relaxed, small and welcoming in comparison to other similar places, and made me want to return. My friend and I were greeted by a frazzled but kind-eyed woman. In the evening the space is dim, but in the day it’s large plate window pours the sunlight in.

One of the six or so small tables was available, so we sat down and looked over the menu. Next to us were a table of lanky women that could have only worked in fashion. At the outside tables there were men fiddling with laptops. Not only is Simon Sips a wine bar but it is also a cafe, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as brunch and an array of desserts.

I’m pleased that there is a shop of such quality near my office. Morrell makes for a pleasant diversion from my otherwise tedious work day. The weather has been perfect, in the sixties and seventies for the last several days. A slow walk north with a slightly cool breeze makes my fleeing all the more serene.

The thrice I’ve been to Morrell they always seem to have a tasting. I would have given notes on what I tried, but I don’t feel comfortable taking down information and photographing bottles in a shop where I know no one.

Walking around the East Village on Saturday with my fiancée Ting, I came across a wine shop on 1st Avenue that I had never seen before. Tinto Fino, a small narrow space that that only sells wine from Spain. The woman running the shop, I believed to be the owner, was as far from a Spaniard as possible. Blond with porcelain skin and I detected a slight mid-western accent. They do have a large selection of Spanish wine, but being that it’s only Spanish one might consider it small. I browsed the low waist high shelves.

To illustrate my general ignorance, only today, for the first time I heard of Morrell & Company Wines. Being that they opened their doors in 1947, and are literally three blocks away from my office, that’s pretty pathetic on my part. But you can’t cry over spilled wine, so I decided to make an afternoon dash a few blocks north.

When I entered the shop, right at the front they were having a tasting. They were pouring one Californian white and one Spanish red.

Friday the weather finally cooled down a little making the City a little more bearable, so by the time I arrived at Alphabet City Wine Co. I wasn’t as exhausted and dehydrated as usual.

Zach was was working today, but the tasting was being run by Beth, a rep from the distributor of the wine that they were pouring. Sometimes a rep will tell you that the motor oil that they’re passing off as wine is the great, when it’s barely, or not at all, drinkable. With Beth this was not the case. She seemed to genuinely like and be interested in the wine she was hocking, two reds and one white from Spain.

I’m having some problems with my camera so there are some technical problems. The sound drops out at times. I am working to fix this.

I was supposed to post my weekly video today, but my DV deck is not working. I borrowed one from work and I will have episode #4 up tomorrow morning.

Today I want to give you a list of my favorite wine shops on and off-line.