Go figure-it seems to be a Savagnin moment. Not more than a few days after I blogged about my experiences with this oddball Jura grape variety, following the terrific meal I had at the new midtown Italian offshoot of Hearth, Insieme, here comes Moira Hodgson at the NY Observer, reviewing Insieme and writing about the same darn Puffeney Savagnin that Paul Grieco recommended to me. Paul! Are you starting a movement? What's going on here?

Anyway, as a 19th century Englishman might say if he were to write the next phrase, the stuff's deucedly difficult to find, but if your interest has outpaced your inertia, try going to wine-searcher.com and searching for Savagnin. And if the Puffeney doesn't turn up, consider the Rijckaert-also a mighty fine wine.

One thing about Paul Grieco, co-owner of Hearth, in the East Village, and the newly opened midtown spot Insieme, is that he can suggest the most peculiar wine-food combinations, make them seem entirely reasonable, and then—voila!—it turns out they are entirely reasonable. I don't know if this is good wine service or something more on the order of a kind of vinous prestidigitation, but either way it's impressive.

The other night I went to Insieme and said to Paul something along the lines of, "We're going to have the linguine con vongole [stupendously good linguine with clams-Marco Canora must have signed a deal with the devil on this one], the culingiones con fave [potato ravioli w/ fava beans, pecorino, fennel and mint; a true essence of springtime dish, and probably more effective than Prozac at lifting lingering wintertime depression], the cacciucco [a tomato-based fish and shellfish stew w/ spicy peperoncini, ideal cuisine after a ten hour shift on a fishing boat off the Atlantic coast, but tasty in midtown Manhattan, too] and the lamb [saddle, breast, chop & sausage, all surrounded by thumb-sized morels-and anything served with an abundance of thumb-sized morels is OK by me]." After which I took a breath, because it was a very long sentence indeed. 

Paul said, "Great."

I added, "Oh, and we want to drink something white. That would go with all of those things."

Paul said, "You're having lamb and you want to drink white?"

I explained that Cecily, my wife, who in all other respects embodies her family's general attitude that to be game for anything is to have one of the highest character traits found in humans, is laid low by red wine. It gives her migraines. She handles this bleak fate with grace, but is nevertheless stuck with a largely red wine-less life.

Paul said, "What about the 2002 Savagnin from Jacques Puffeney?"

Which gets me to the point of this ramble. I'm trying to think of a cognate outside the wine world for the basic outré-ness of this suggestion. It's sort of like a car salesman saying to you, "Well, of course I could sell you this Toyota Camry, but I really think you'd prefer a 1953 3-wheeled BMW Isetta. Like this one." The thing is, Puffeney's Savagnin really is an odd wine—oxidative in style (typical for Savagnin from the Arbois), with a lightly bleachy, nutty scent recalling fino sherry as much as it does any other white wine, incredibly focused stone-fruit flavors and fierce citrusy acidity, and a weird facility for seeming both quite old and quite young simultaneously. Pour it for your friends without warning them first, and they'll holler at you, "What's with this crazy juice, you freakin' madman?" Trust me. They will.

And yet, in this instance the Puffeney was, as Paul had suggested it would be, bizarrely successful with the equally odd range of dishes in our dinner: dense enough for the lamb, zesty enough for the cacciucco, light enough for the culingiones, and—oh man—just plain perfect with both the plump, sweet, briny clams and the subtle bite of garlic and hot red pepper in that transcendent linguine con vongole.

Someday Jacques Puffeney will be living in a palace and riding in a golden chariot while the masses sing wild praise of his remarkable wines. However, that may be a while. Until then, I'd suggest heading over to Insieme and ordering a bottle off the list, myself.

The other night I went to Anthos, the new haut-chic-Greek midtown spot from chef Michael Psilakis and restaurateur Donatella Arpaia. As about fifty other bloggers and restaurant reviewers have noted, high-end Greek food seems to be having its flavor-of-the-month moment—witness the arrival of Barbounia, Parea, etc. (I'm still waiting for the cuisine of ancient Babylon to make a comeback—bring on the dried fish and date cakes!—but that's just me.) What's interesting about this Greco-proliferation, though, is that it's one of the few restaurant trends I've found where the wine got there first.

Greek wines have been impressing sommeliers for several years now, and for good reason. If you're curious as to why, Anthos wouldn't be a bad place to start, as it has one of the most comprehensive lists of Greek wines I've run into—I can't think of many other restaurants that would offer seven different vintages of Tsantali's Cabernet-Limnio blend, for instance.

The other thing Anthos has in terms of wine is a hell of a sommelier, Mark du Mez. This is my idea of great wine service: at one point in the evening I asked Mark about a Chassagne-Montrachet premier cru he had on the list. (The list, by the way, is extensive and has a good Burgundy selection, too; our table started with Greece and moved on to France, sort of like the Romans circa 130 B.C.) Regarding my choice Mark said something along the lines of, "Well, it's definitely good. But with what you've ordered, I really think you'd enjoy this more." This was a 2002 E. Giboulot Côte de Beaune La Combe d'Eve—which, outside of the fact that it turned out to be a beautiful, minerally, silky-textured white Burgundy that went perfectly with our meal, cost thirty dollars less on the list than the wine I'd asked about.

Since then I've tried to think of the number of times I've had a sommelier suggest a wine priced that much less than the one I planned to order. The number I've come up with so far is zero. That's not really a surprise; in some sense, Mark's suggestion cost the restaurant's bottom line $30. But what he also did, far more lucrative in the long run (and just plain better service, too), was instantly create a return customer.

Wine service aside, the other thing that will bring me back to Anthos is Psilakis's cooking. Highlights of the meal included the supremely good taramasalata (very garlicky, very un-fishy, completely addictive), a pillowy sheep's milk ricotta dumpling topped with a single, succulent pan-seared Botan Ebi shrimp ("You may suck the head, if you like," stated our waiter—good advice, in fact, if somewhat unfortunately phrased), and a crisp-skinned piece of perfectly seared red mullet atop a luscious, bacony bed of lentils.   

Anthos has no website yet, but reservations can be had by calling 212-582-6900.