“Natural” has become the attention-grabbing word in the wine world, referring to wines that are made with minimal intervention, like chemical additives or commercial yeast. Natural wines will populate the lists of several restaurants coming this fall, and they’re the specialties at four new wine bars.
Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske Valtierra, who began serving them six years ago at their restaurant Contra, and later at Wildair, will sell only natural wines at Peoples, a wine and spirits shop in the new Market Line food hall on the Lower East Side. They’ll pour them at an adjacent wine bar.
“This is coming full-circle for us,” Mr. Stone said. “Customers at Contra and Wildair would ask about where to buy the wines, and we’d have to send them elsewhere. Now we can sell them.” Spirits from small producers will also be sold in the shop; the bar will serve a rotating menu of snacky bites like charcuterie and croquettes.
Expect some natural sparkling wines, or pét-nats, at the Riddler, a Manhattan branch of Jen Pelka’s Champagne bar of the same name in San Francisco. In addition to more than 100 Champagnes and other sparklers, it will several natural ones. The food menu includes oysters, French bistro fare like charcuterie and gougères, and high-low concoctions like Tater Tot waffles with smoked salmon and caviar. White-wine stemware, not flutes, will be used in the intimate room, which is done in black and white with vintage brass accents.
[Click here to read more from our restaurant preview.]
A natural wine bar in Brooklyn Heights, Pips, from the owners of Colonie next door, will have mostly bar seating for a list of what they’re calling “low-intervention wines” and Italian-style aperitifs. The food, by Jared Braithwaite, the chef in both places, will be inspired by coastal Italy.
Kindred, from the team behind the East Village bar Ruffian, will maintain the parent restaurant’s devotion to natural wines, with a focus on the Adriatic region.
Kindred 342 East Sixth Street, October.
Peoples Wine Shop and the Bar at Peoples Market Line, 88 Essex Street (Delancey Street), October.
Pips 129 Atlantic Avenue (Henry Street), Brooklyn Heights, October.
The Riddler 51 Bank Street (West Fourth Street), September.
