With 3.3 billion liters drunk in 2020, Americans are the world champions when it comes to wine consumption. But also importing bottles. In other words, more than any other city in the United States, New York – a cosmopolitan, globalized, wealthy city – is at the forefront of the phenomenon.
In New York, when you love, you love hard. Whatever the cost, because Manhattanites can afford their pleasures. Coming from a variety of cultures and with access to all kinds of gastronomy, New Yorkers only had to fall in love with wine for their city to find itself at the forefront of all that the wine planet is capable of. to produce rare vintages.
New York drinks a lot and from all continents. France, in value (expensive bottles), and Italy, in volume (the number of bottles), are vying for first place among importers. But beware ! Here, it’s all about wine like everything else: everything goes fast, very fast. Trends come and go, tastes change and wine shop windows adapt.
This effervescence is due to an insatiable curiosity for discoveries, but also to the influence of social networks, according to Maxime Blaise, sommelier at Bernardin, a three-star Michelin restaurant in Midtown, a ten-minute walk from Central Park. “Social media has brought everything together, he observed. It is enough that, in France, a respected critic or a known sommelier highlights a cuvée, by posting a photo on Instagram for example, and importers flock to it. If a trend emerges in Paris, it instantly reverberates in New York. »
Orange wine is a must
No wonder, then, to discover at Astor Wines & Spirits, on Lafayette Street, a Manhattan institution located near Washington Square Park, the French favorites and the emblematic domains of many appellations, much better represented than at many wine merchants in France. . In the Languedoc section: white from Mas de Daumas Gassac, reds from Clos Fantine, “Vieilles Vignes” from Domaine Gauby, among others. The corner of the Jura is full of nuggets. For Beaujolais, the new stars rub shoulders with sure values, with a Morgon from Mee Godard stuck to the Côte-du-Py, from Foillard. The same is true with Italy, Spain, Chile and other countries, the shop hosting no less than four thousand classic and cutting-edge references.
A large refrigerated room houses the rarest and most expensive bottles (the Californian estate Opus One, the Australian Grange Penfolds, the Loire Clos Rougeard…). But also, in recent years, natural wines without added sulphites, sensitive to temperature. And, in the middle of this cellar at 12 degrees, a small mountain of orange wines. These « skin contact wines », as we designate in the United States wines made from white grapes vinified as red.
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