The Riesling Asylum might be a more apt name for this sliver of a wine bar in New York’s East Village—only the inmates are the ones running the place. The staff wears red Che Guevara t-shirts, only Che’s image has been swapped out for Bartolo Mascarello, a producer of Barolo wines. The wine lists look to have been compiled by degenerate sommeliers stuck in high school detention: The three-ring binders are plastered with wine-centric graffiti, crudely drawn cartoon figures, and Hello Kitty stickers. Inside, each page has a different theme, and a different font to reflect it, like scary Gothic lettering for German wines.
To a wine geek, it’s hilarious. Mascarello was the staunchest supporter of natural, traditional wines in Piedmont until his death in 2005. He flat-out refused to dress up his wines with flashy new oak, Cabernet, or anything else that would make them more approachable and modern, even as his neighbors became rich and famous by doing just that. His wines take a decade to even begin to soften enough to be pleasurable, and they taste like nothing more than the particular flavor of Nebbiolo grown in Piedmont’s hills (which is everything a traditionalist can hope for). Mascarello is an excellent mascot for a wine bar named Terroir, a French word for what’s often referred to as a “sense of place” in wine.
The graffiti on the wine lists says stuff like “JURATASTIC” and “Amo, Amas, Amaro,” but the inside jokes aren’t integral to enjoying the place. While I was thrilling to the very idea of having a Portuguese sparkling wine (who knew?), my decidedly non-wine-geeky friend was thrilling to the actual flavor of it (yeasty, fruity, floral, with tiny bubbles; really tasty)—and the fact it cost just $9 a glass.
The list is the work of Paul Grieco, who began developing his reputation for zany wine lists at Gramercy Tavern, touting Ontario Gamay and pushing Austrian Grüner Veltliner long before it became cool. He runs the tiny, bare-bones bar with Marco Canora, his partner at Hearth, just down the street, and at Insieme in Midtown. The list is small compared to those at the other restaurants, but possibly more interesting, as there’s only room for the bottles that really get Grieco going. He devotes an entire page to the wines of a single vineyard in Austria made by Johannes Hirsch; another page features wines grown on tuffeau (a kind of soil) in the Loire Valley. The glass selection is uncharacteristically quiet on the commentary side (there is none), but wine geeks will notice that each wine has a counterpart to compare and contrast: A New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc follows a Sancerre (also made from sauvignon blanc grapes); a Loire-style North Fork Cabernet Franc goes up against the real deal from Bourgeuil.
You could learn a lot about wine while drinking at Terroir, but you can also just have a drink. Which is always better when eating—especially here. The kitchen isn’t much more than a dorm-sized fridge and mini deep-fryer, but it turns out some insanely inspired basic eats. Take the tonnato bruschetta, which is essentially toast topped with the tuna sauce that normally goes on vitello tonnato, bound with aioli. Or the arancini, made with beet juice and blue cheese. Canora’s deep-fried, sausage-stuffed sage leaves are just as impossibly delicious as they were at Craftbar, where he made them famous. Dishes top out at $15; most are more like $7, though Grieco’s acid-focused wines tend to incite hunger, which incites more ordering of food, which sends the bill higher, but makes for happy, full people.
Terroir 413 E. 12th St., New York, NY (no telephone; wineisterroir.com)
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