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“Learning about Cool Juice, Wine Bingo and Iron Maiden: A Q&A with Terroir's Paul Grieco”

Paul Grieco may be a partner in two of the most beloved restaurants in the city (Hearth and Insiemme), and he may also be one of the most respected wine directors of his time. But sit down with him and what you won’t get is the pretense you might expect of someone at his level. Take a gander at this quote from his Hearth wine list with respect to Reisling:

“What needs to be made abundantly clear is that when the Riesling grape is grown in any of the 13 wine regions of Germany, it can produce some of the most sublime, well-balanced wines on the planet Earth. And yes, there probably will be some residual sugar. But who cares. In America, we talk dry but we drink sweet. Don’t deny it; other than New York City school kids, someone is drinking all that Coke and Dr. Pepper and Snapple. What you need to understand, accept, and embrace is that in the finer German wine circles, this residual sugar is counterbalanced by a high level of tartaric acid. When a wine rides this razor’s edge of balance, it is the most thrilling beverage possible. Compare it to the Rock vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin on Monday Night RAW, you are sitting on the edge of the couch, your final pig-in-a-blanket is on the floor, and your case of Bud is finally depleted.”

Yeah. Not your typical sommelier.

Paul at Hearth 

When I got Paul talking about his wine list at Terroir, his latest project which he owns with buddy Marco Canora, the terms “joyful juice,” Iron Maiden, and Wine Bingo were all used in succession. It’s clear that this project is his baby, and when he talks about it, you get a real sense of that sugared-up-school-kid/mad scientist energy he has for wine.

Seriously though, in this 500-square foot converted bike shop he’s created a rare haven for wines that speak to a sense of place—that are uniquely imbued with the soil, the climate, the culture, and the history of the land. I sat down with Paul to learn more about his approach, his vision, and, yes, Wine Bingo.

Strong Buzz: Hi Paul. So I wondered how you approached the list at Terroir. What was your vision?
Paul Grieco: I think I’m going to back into my answer and start to ramble. So, when we opened Hearth the goal was to mimic the seasons like chefs do. I felt, why doesn’t a wine program follow suit and follow seasonality. The food in winter time is heavy, and lighter in summer, so I created a seasonally-driven list that’s like a roller coaster through the year. It’s my list so it’s my way of doing things. We serve bigger more masculine wines in winter, so we have Barolos and Barbarescos and Napa Valley Cabs in winter. And in summer we have more feminine wines.

Then we opened Insiemme, which is a menu that’s traditional versus contemporary that was also reflected in the wine list. And now Terroir is an idea that wine has a sense of place, which is more than terra, which is just ground. Terroir is everything about that land: the slope, the microclimate, the history and the culture of that land that comes through in the wine. These wines have an über-focus on the sense of place. I want to describe to you the terroir of the wine as opposed to saying it’s light, bone dry, with notes of raspberry. I want to tell you about the soil and how it affects the wine. This is a very French concept. There’s no English word for terroir, for that sense of place.

SB: So what does that mean in terms of what wines will be represented?
PG: In essence in the summer you’ll have white wines like we’ll have Reislings from around the world so you can see how they express different senses of terroir. I’m trying to juxtapose wines from different areas. So I’ll pour a Reisilng from Germany against the Finger Lakes, two Chardonnays, one from Burgundy and one from South Africa, a Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire and one from New Zealand. That gives you an idea of the terroir. It’s an aggressive single-minded program. It’s a Paul Grieco list.

SB: You’ve mentioned the term “Paul Grieco List” before. What defines a Paul Grieco list?
PG: A Paul Grieco List is the oddest stuff you can find in the market place—regions you’ve never heard before and varieties that you’ve never heard before. I don’t want to say esoteric because to people living there in that region don’t think so, it’s their juice. I want to make Reisling the next Chardonnay. Why is it that the Loire Valley’s Chenin Blanc is not on everyone’s table every night of the week? There’s great value there in the Loire.

Another aspect of a Paul Grieco list is rather than focus on verticality in vintages, I’d rather go horizontal, which is to investigate entire broad sweet of the wine world. Let’s look at a Pinot Noir from Slovenia.

SB: Sounds like you’ve made some wild discoveries. Are you still learning or have you seen it all?
PG: I am always discovering and learning. I discovered four grapes I had never heard of in Italy. I was like what, where is this? In Italy and Spain there’s so much discovery.

SB: Tell me about the specifics of the list at Terroir. How many wines are on it?
PG: The list is not as large as it should but at the moment we have 10 whites, 10 reds and a few sparkling wines so we have 22 wines by glass. I’d like to grow to 150 bottles and 25 by the glass. Wines are offered by the 3-ounce taste, by the glass, and by the bottle.

SB: What about price point?
PG: Well, food-wise Marco is in the $5-$15 range. We’re doing happy hour from 5-6pm where we have 6 glasses of wine at $5 a glass, ends at 6pm, then we go from $8 to $20 a glass.

SB: Paul, I have to say, you have so much passion about wine, it’s pretty impressive. Where did this come from? Who were your mentors?

PG: There are three actually. First is my father. Now, my father is not a wine guy but what he did for myself and my brothers was to allow us to pursue whatever we wanted in any topic and provide us with means and most importantly with the encouragement. He’s got to lead the list of mentors.

The second is Steve Olson who put together the first list at Gramercy Tavern. I think this may come out as really big-headed of me, but Steve was like the Paul Grieco of the ‘90s. If you wanted an esoteric wine list that was Steve. When I took over the program at GT I worked off of what Steve Olson established.

Thirdly, and this is sort of corny, but it’s all the producers of cool juice out there. I hang out my flag and they come to me and show me how great wine can be and they inspire me to tell their story.

SB: These days everyone’s talking about being a locavore. What are some local wines that you’re into these days?
PG: Chris Tracy at Channing Daughters is incredible. His Sauvignon Blanc is the best Sauvignon Blanc in America. They also do a wine called Meditazione, which is like a Friulano. It’s joyful juice. Schneider vineyards is crafting great Cab Franc. Shinn estate also doing great things and their pursuit of biodynamics is terrific but their wines also taste great. So I applaud them. Roman Roth at Wolffer and Bedell and Corey Creek. The Finger Lakes is also incomparable for Reisling in America from Hermann Wiener and Konstantin Reislings.

SB: You’re so into getting to know off-beat wines. Are you planning an education program as part of Terroir?

PG: I’d say my better trait is my ability to inspire and educate. Because we focus on the unknown we do educate staff and our guests. You should want to criticize me if my staff can’t talk about the wine list. They’re goal is to make you comfortable with the list. Some people get upset because they cant find anything they can recognize and they’re embarrassed because they don’t know what to order. SB: Are you planning any wine classes?PG: I do wine dinners every Monday night at Hearth and at Terroir we will do Saturday afternoon wine classes. We’re also going to do wine bingo.

SB: Wine bingo? How’s that gonna work?
PG: I have no clue how we’ll do that, but we’ll do it. We’re also doing some grass roots stuff like we’ll send out an email blast that well open an ‘89 Bordeaux tonight at 10pm, and we’ll give the price per glass. We’ll have heavy metal nights and only play Iron Maiden and only serve wines with iron. We also do this thing that’s a riff on Girl Scouts. Were you a Girl Scout?

SB: Me? A Girl Scout? No. I’m from Queens. There were no Girl Scouts. I think we had some gangs though.
PG: Well, you know how they used to have those badges?

SB: Yeah, sure.
PG: Well, we’ll have that here. We’re going to have badges that we’ll give out to people when they accomplish certain tasks. There will be up to 12 badges that you can collect. I want people to have fun with wine and make people comfortable with it. You’ll get insanely great food and super cool juice at great prices and even if you don’t think about it you’ll learn something about wine. You’re going to have a great night.

 

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Posted: March 11, 2008

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