The dream job? Putting together the wine list at Bottega ... a task which is really not all that simple. Try tasting over 550 wines to put together a 150 wine list! And of course, the list was already filled with wines I love and that complement my food perfectly, and wines which have a great personal story to them. The big aha was the tremendous quality of the wines in the $30 price range, a great trend for restaurant-goers! See what a tasting looks like (remember, these wines were tasted for just ONE section of the list....)
The excitement building around the restaurant opening has brought some excitement in the vintner community, and all week I've been honored and grateful for the gestures by old friends to develop a phenomenal wine list at Bottega. From a Staglin Sangiovese, with less than 30 cases made, that have not been enjoyed off their property, to a Turley Wine Cellars '99 Old Vine Zinfandel Hayne Vineyard, to the highly allocated Schafer Hillside Select.
I’ve worked in restaurants since I was fourteen years old so until I left Tra Vigne in 2000 and put my love affair with running a restaurant on hold, I’d never really paid full pop for a restaurant meal. One great benny of working in the biz is getting the bill with the you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours markdown. Going out there as a civilian diner, you feel very different when the bill comes.
I’m fine with paying top-dollar for the damned good food that chefs are making from our amazing Northern California produce. I’m not fine with the water portion of the bill. I’ve found that a table of four to six people can spend upwards of fifty bucks on water during a meal. One hundred dollars on wines from Italy? No problem; if it’s great wine, I don’t even blink. Fifty dollars on water from Fiji? Stop right there. What bothers me most is how far that water has to travel to take second place on the table. I have this image in my mind of a tanker steaming across the ocean filled only with bottles of water, and that image does not sit well.
Before my fellow restaurateurs come at me, let me say, I get it. We need to make money. The costs of running a restaurant these days are prohibitively high, especially for newcomers and especially given the cost of real estate in this area. You have to make your margins where you can. And I also believe there is a place for expensive imported water. During one incredible tasting menu at Bazaar in Los Angeles, Vichy Catalan water was poured instead of wine with one of the courses, and it was spot on: saline, mineral-rich. Mind-blowing.
At Bottega, instead of importing our water, we’ve put in a very good water system. I sleep better at night knowing that we are not supporting a big burn of fuel to ship in water. There are some things I have trouble giving up: Italian wines, some Italian ingredients, Italian shoes but water is one area where I don’t want to squander resources shipping in water from around the globe. Do you agree or do you think there’s a place for an imported water menu in a restaurant?
I try to buy local as much as possible – luckily, in New York, we have seasonal farmer’s markets that guarantee fantastic regional fruits, vegetables, herbs, fish and meats and even some dairy products for most of the year. When winter comes, I am usually forced to step back into more standard supermarket shopping, but throughout spring, summer and fall I love to be able to buy potatoes, basil (pick your vegetable – you name it, I’ll buy it local) from the same three or four farm stands, and get cooking suggestions from the growers themselves. You really can taste the difference.
BTW, I ate at Bottega last fall and loved it. My husband and I are looking forward to our return visit in November!
