Wine & Spirits - April 2018 - 61

ESOTERICA ON MAIN STREET

Sommeliers used to have to sell the sense of adventure that came with an unknown wine; now they are rushing
to keep up with the demand for unusual bottles.

have inspired a big conversation on
what natural wine is. I'm seeing a lot of
interest in orange wines, too-people
are reading about them, and then coming in and asking for them.
-Matt Tunstall,
Stems & Skins, Charleston, SC

Odd as Hell
We sell lots of
gamay, funky
indigenous varieties form the Loire,
hands-off wine from
Languedoc. A few
times a month,
I'll have someone
come in and say,
'I want something odd as hell, super
funky, bacteria-driven,' and I keep a few
bottles around for those people, but for
the most part, my rule is, if you can't
drink the whole bottle, I don't want it.
It's interesting that the range of wines

HOW WE CONDUCT

THE POLL

Stems &
Skins, Charleston, SC

Freek's
Mill,
Brooklyn

The Georgian Thing
People come in and say, 'Georgian
wine? I didn't even
know that was a
thing.' And then
they end up really
excited to try it. So,
being a destination
for Georgian wine
is a big part of what
we do. When we
first opened, I didn't realize it was going
to be as big. Now it has become onethird of the program. The Georgian
wine thing is pretty amazing and super
exciting."
-Alex Alan, Freek's Mill, Brooklyn

For our Annual Restaurant Poll, we survey America's favorite restaurants, inviting 3,584 restaurants to participate in the digital survey. By our deadline, 231 restaurateurs had completed the poll, providing a list of their
ten top-selling wines in the last quarter of 2017; lists of their top-selling by-the-glass selections; and answers to
our questions about how their guests order and enjoy wine.
A quick scan of the participants (see Restaurant Directory, p. 56) will give a good perspective on the results.
You'll recognize a range of extraordinary restaurants among our respondents, places like Chez Panisse in Berkeley
and 71Above in Los Angeles, Acadia in Chicago and Atlanta's Empire State South, Zahav in Philadelphia and JeanGeorges in New York. All are experts when it comes to the question of what wines people are looking for today.
After analyzing our survey data, we interview a number of participants for their perspectives on the trends
we find. Since the Poll tracks the top end of the market for fine wine-both in terms of who we survey, and the
wines they list-the results do not represent actual sales figures. Instead, the significance of the Poll lies in the
fact that the overall wine market continues to take its cues from the top.
WINE & SPIRITS

APRIL 2018

29th ANNUAL RESTAURANT POLL

Nobody Knows
We have a manager who has an esoteric
hand with the wine list; the guy before
was more California driven. The diversity of the new list excited our wine
staff; they aren't selling just varietals,
but wines from different places that not
everyone knows about.
-Chris Clewell, Acorn, Denver

Something Old
One of the most interesting trends I've
seen recently is more and more people wanting older wine, twenty years
old or more. Not necessarily after the
most prestigious wines; they just want
something old and unusual. [We] just
had some '86 Coltibuono Sangioveto.
Things like that are a little bit known,
but not several hundred dollars. That's
what I like to turn people on to.
-Sarah Clarke, Mozza, Los Angeles

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - April 2018