This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to New York
Manhattan may be full of smart wine bars and restaurants with impressive cellars, but one of the best ways to imbibe in New York is to visit one of the borough’s excellent wine merchants.
Whether you are seeking a rare white burgundy, a funky orange wine from Spain or an obscure Californian Pinot Noir, visiting a wine shop can help you understand the taste of New York City. But with nearly 4,000 retailers in the city to choose from, you must know where to go.
Over the past few years as my interest in wine grew, I became frustrated by my neighbourhood wine store’s limited selection. I wanted to find more interesting bottles, like the Macedonian Malagousia I savoured at the hip Persian restaurant Eyval, and to share my enthusiasm over Chardonnay from Jura with friends at a dinner party. As I started searching for quite specific wine styles, I explored more and more stores — and met the merchants who helped me learn something new.
With owners as passionate about wine as they are knowledgeable, the following shops can broaden your horizons, take you to new destinations or introduce you to lesser-known grape varieties or winemaking styles. Most importantly, they each offer something special to share with friends and family.
Wine Therapy
171 Elizabeth Street, New York, NY 10012
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Good for: Natural wine
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Not so good for: Traditionalists
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FYI: The store usually offers free tastings on Thursdays, 6pm — 8pm
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Wines: From $11 to $460
Wine Therapy, located in the heart of trendy Nolita, has been dedicated to natural wine since it opened in 2005. Owner Jean-Baptiste Humbert, who founded the store with his ex-wife Patricia Kirkland, grew up in France and was first introduced to wines made with little or no intervention by his parents. (His mother worked as a journalist for a French consumer report, covering food and drink, and his father once worked as an agent for a wine importer.)
“Our aim [with our store] always gravitated around natural wines from day one, but [when we opened] there were only two importers,” Humbert said. “So we couldn’t only have natural wines. We also had organic and biodynamic and sustainable wines.”
Most New Yorkers weren’t enthusiastic about natural or organic wines when Humbert opened shop. “We overheard passers-by say, ‘They [sell] organic wines’ and ‘These are bad wines,’” he recalled. “So we erased the organic part on our sign and logo outside because we thought we were losing customers.”
Since then, the store has doubled in size and now has about 1,130 labels for sale. My favourite purchases have included a cloudy rosé from the California producer Ruth Lewandowski Wines (whose owner, Evan Lewandowski, previously worked in Alsace), a kombucha-like orange wine from Chilean natural-wine producer Cacique Maravilla and a fruit-forward, medium-bodied Syrah from Mylène Bru in Languedoc, France. On a Saturday afternoon, the shop is usually bustling with hip Gen Zs and millennials scouring the shelves and asking for recommendations for the most exciting orange wine.
Despite natural wine’s newfound popularity, Humbert still carefully selects those stocked at his store. “I only want to carry natural wine that I like,” Humbert said. “I am doubtful sometimes about some new wines that call themselves ‘natural’ . . . there will always be opportunists who want to make money out of a trend.”
Natural wine can sometimes come with surprises: without the additions of sulphites, sugar or other additives, it can lack consistency from bottle to bottle. But at Wine Therapy there is usually an expected flavour profile to guide shoppers, and Humbert and his knowledgable store associates are also always eager to help customers find a bottle or two.
Astor Wines & Spirits
399 Lafayette Street, new York, NY 10003
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Good for: New World wines and bottles from lesser-known regions
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Not so good for: Anyone who struggles with choice paralysis. The store has one of the largest selections of wine in New York City
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FYI: The store offers free tastings most Tuesday to Fridays, 5pm — 8pm, and Saturdays, 3pm — 6pm
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Wines: From $5 to $32,000
Nestled in NoHo, Astor Wines is an open secret in New York City. The store was founded in 1946 and with about 5,000 wines and spirits, has the one of the largest selections in town. It offers an extensive range of French and Italian wines, as well as plenty of New World wines too, particularly from the US, Canada and Mexico, the latter being a new discovery for me. I recently tried a bottle of Monte Xanic Sauvignon Blanc (crisp and clean, with citrus and tropical flavours much like its peers from New Zealand), and I was also delighted to discover that the Baja California region also produces tart natural wine — and indulged in a bottle of Listán Negro from the Mexican producer Bichi.
Head wine-buyer Lorena Asencios says the store’s approach is to “lean on the small, artisanal, limited and rare”. She travels to visit wineries a couple times a year to meet the families behind the wine.
“Our unique selection of products is why people shop at Astor,” said Asencios. “Not only do we represent small wineries from around the world, we also purchase old cellars of wines for collectors looking for something special.”
Astor also offers free tastings nearly every day, usually focusing on specific regions or producers — and sometimes the winemakers themselves make an appearance. I have sampled wines by Ntsiki Biyela, the first South African Black female winemaker, learnt about how a family-run Greek winery, Domaine Zafeirakis, resurrected the nearly extinct Limniona grape and tasted wine from Santa Barbara’s famed Au Bon Climat vineyard. It holds a weekly one-day sale and tends to discount featured wines, and staff are always helpful in answering questions or guiding you to a fantastic bottle.
Flatiron Wines & Spirits
873 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
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Good for: Smaller French producers and grower champagne
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Not so good for: Drinking cloudy natural wines (they have some in stock but it is not their speciality)
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FYI: Flatiron also has a sibling store in San Francisco
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Wines: From $8 to $4,950
I discovered this shop through Pascaline Lepeltier, one of the world’s top sommeliers (and the first woman to be awarded the Meilleur Ouvrier de France — a revered distinction for people working in the country’s food and wine sector), whom I briefly met at a wine-tasting event. I summoned the courage to ask her where she buys her wines and she told me to check out Flatiron.
Flatiron is one of the leading wine merchants in Manhattan, with a broad selection of bottles from around the world and an exciting offering from France. The shop stocks nearly 200 champagnes, with an emphasis on the smaller, artisanal variety and its shelves boast every major French winemaking region, including the smaller Jura and Savoie.
The store was founded by husband-and-wife duos Jeff and Natasha Patten, and Josh and Stephanie Cohen. Jeff and Josh previously operated a now-closed wine store together in Brooklyn and, following the encouragement of their wives, opened Flatiron Wines in 2012.
“We really want wines that represent some interesting facet of the world: a local terroir, a culture, a history, a wine style,” Jeff said. “[We’re] really focusing on smaller production and more artisanal offerings.”
Flatiron has an interesting collection of wine from more obscure French wine regions such as Corsica and Jura, which has become increasingly popular in the US among organic- wine lovers. The small wine region east of Burgundy is best known for floral Chardonnays and vin jaune, a sherry-like wine (though not fortified) made from the local Savagnin grape, which a 2019 study showed has been cultivated in France for at least 900 years.
The store also stocks plenty of interesting New World wines too. It has a nice selection from Oregon’s Willamette Valley, Washington’s Columbia Valley and the Finger Lakes region of New York, which produces excellent Riesling (a personal favourite is Hermann J Wiemer’s 2020 Magdalena Vineyard Riesling, which has a long finish with notes of stone fruit and citrus).
Le Dû Wines
600 Washington Street, New York, NY 10014
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Good for: Wine novices who want to discover a new region or producer
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Not so good for: Those that want to peruse a large selection of wines
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FYI: It offers free tastings on Saturdays from 2pm to 6pm
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Wines: From $13 to $6,000
Le Dû Wines was founded by the legendary sommelier Jean-Luc Le Dû, who opened the store in 2005. Le Dû had originally moved to New York to be a punk rocker in the 1980s, but he soon fell into the wine world of New York City and trained to be a sommelier. He died suddenly in 2017, but his legacy lives on: Le Dû’s eponymous wine shop, now run by JT Robertson, has preserved his approach to wine.
“If [you] want a $10 Pinot Grigio, we’re going to treat you like a client in the way Jean-Luc established,” says Robertson. “Without pretension and without condescension”. Though they may suggest something more exciting. “We’re not trying to be bougie,” he added. “We just want to give you something that is going to be a little bit better than you came in asking for.”
The boutique wine store is much smaller than some of the other venues on this list, but it is finely curated, with a focus on small producers from lesser-known regions, and the staff are impressively knowledgeable. Ask about a specific wine, and they will immediately recall the producer, grape varietal and region, and offer off-piste but similar suggestions to encourage customers to broaden their horizons.
The last time I visited, I was looking for a wine from the Côtes Du Rhône region, and a store associate selected a bottle for me that he thought I would like, while also recommending a Cannonau from Sardinia, which is also made from Grenache grapes. I opted for the Sardinian wine, produced by Elisabetta Pala of Mora & Memo winery: light-bodied with soft tannins and red fruit — it was the perfect choice for a casual pizza dinner, and my friends and I were impressed that it cost only $25. “We don’t think you have to spend a crazy amount of money to drink fine wine,” says Robertson.
Crush Wine & Spirits
153 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022
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Good for: Old World wine drinkers and collectors
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Not so good for: Natural wines
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FYI: It has one of the best selections of German and Austrian wines in New York
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Wines: From $10 to $15,000
Crush, a beloved wine store in Midtown East, was founded by Josh Guberman, Robert Schagrin and Nobu restaurateur Drew Nieporent. Schagrin, who grew up with Nieporent on the Lower East Side, fell in love with wine after dining at the latter’s restaurant Montrachet in the 1980s, and decided to start collecting after tasting a 1960s Dom Pérignon and a 1962 La Tâche Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.
In 2005, in his mid-40s, Schagrin, who worked in real estate, decided to open Crush, with Nieporent and Gruberman as investors, and put a small portion of his rare-wine collection for sale.
“You walked into wine stores back then and it was all elevator music or they were playing opera. It wasn’t a hip environment,” said Schagrin. “I wanted a young staff, music . . . what would happen if Dior, Saint Laurent or Gucci opened a wine store? What would it look like?”
Despite the emphasis on style, Crush is certainly not lacking substance. The staff really know their stuff. Some have even gone on to pursue careers in winemaking, such as Chris Cottrell of Bedrock in Sonoma, California, and the store’s former wine director, Stephen Bitterolf, who set up a German-wine importer called Vom Boden — which may be one of the reasons that Crush has such a fantastic collection of German and Austrian wines. (I fell in love with a German Pinot Noir by Ziereisen and a Grüner Veltliner from Austria’s Bernhard Ott when I visited Munich last year, and having thought that I would never find either wine stateside, I was delighted to discover that Crush stocks both.)
Crush also has one of the best selections of wine from Burgundy, Champagne, Northern Rhône, Piedmont and the Loire Valley. The store also caters to wine collectors and specialises in rare burgundies from the 1990s and early 2000s (at the time of writing this includes a 1997 Coche-Dury Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru and a 2009 Rousseau Chambertin Clos de Bèze Grand Cru).
Tell us about your favourite wine store in New York in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter
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