You know the rest of that line, right? Well, it's with some small amount of sadness that I am saying that about this blog: It must come to an end. I've had a terrific time writing it, but we've decided that in the end it's a bit strange, for a magazine that's all about bringing together food and wine, to have separate blogs on those topics.

So, from here on out, any wine blogging that I (and Megan Krigbaum, Kristin Donnelly, and various other stalwart folks) do will instead appear in F&W's primary blog, Mouthing Off. No less wine coverage, just a different venue. See you there.

Ray Isle

Midtown Manhattan this time of year is one of the more frenetic places one can find oneself, but I've found an excellent escape hatch. Go to the I. M. Pei-designed Four Seasons Hotel on 57th Street, go through the revolving doors, up the stairs, to the right, and you'll find yourself at the hotel's new Garden Wine Bar. It's an oddly serene space—you know you're in a hotel, but because the wine bar is elevated above the main entrance, the main thing you perceive are the enormously high ceilings of the marble-pillared lobby and the leafy branches of the trees that decorate the bar; what you don't perceive is the bustle of people entering and leaving the hotel.

That would be nice but not worth a mention except that the Garden also has a terrific wine list, with almost all of the 200 selections available by the glass or by the bottle. A few examples: at the low end, a crisp 2007 Pra Soave Classico ($12 glass/$48 bottle); in the high-middle range, Slovenian cult producer Movia's fantastic 2003 Veliko Bianco ($25 glass/$97 bottle); and at the truly high end, a gorgeous 2006 J. M. Boillot Puligny Montrachet 1er Cru Champ Canet ($40 glass/$150 bottle). Also, unfinished by-the-glass bottles are passed along to other venues in the hotel, which means that once something is opened, it's effectively guaranteed to be poured through within a day or so, an important consideration when you're talking about $40-a-glass wines. 

Admittedly, those prices aren't bargain basement, but this is the Four Seasons, hardly known for a bargain basement sensibility. Throw in impressive cheese and charcuterie offerings—including some terrific, spicy Nduja from Boccalone in San Francisco—as well as a good small plates menu, and you've got an ideal place to take a vinous break before heading out into the maelstrom of last-minute shopping again.

The Garden Wine Bar
Four Seasons Hotel
57 West 57th Street
New York, NY
212-758-5700

The coolest new place to take in great design, food and wine is MADCrush . This new pop-up bar appears for the first time tonight at NYC's great new Museum of Arts and Design. Restaurant design genius Stephanie Goto created the space largely from recycled wine boxes and crates and it will appear on the museum’s seventh floor every Thursday from 5 to 10:30 p.m., until the end of August. The menu: wines by the taste, glass and bottle from Crush Wine & Spirits. Del Posto’s Mark Ladner is cooking for opening night. Future guest chefs will include George Mendes of Aldea and Scott Conant of Scarpetta.

Friday evening found me hanging out at the Lower East Side wine bar Ten Bells with a couple of friends who were in from Paris and with the wines of Chablis producers, Alice and Olivier de Moor. This pair has been making wine together in Chablis since 1994, striving to makes wine in the most hands-off way possible by using organic grapes, pneumatic presses to squeeze the grapes, gravity to move juice from one phase of winemaking to the next and without the addition of sulfur. Strangely enough, we didn't try any of their Chablis, but ordered three of their other wines, which led to an impromptu investigation into what else they can do. Each was dramatically different from the next, but all had clean, driven acidity and graceful balance, as might be expected from people who are experts at Chablis. Here was the line up:

2006 Alice & Olivier de Moor Bourgogne Aligoté ($23; find this wine)
In Burgundy, the grape variety Aligoté is often overshadowed by Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but this wine, with its ripe green-apple zip and stony minerality, shows that it has some potential of its own.

2006 Alice & Olivier de Moor Bourgogne Chitry ($25; find this wine)
The de Moor's Bourgogne Chitry comes from a region just beyond the Chablis appellation. This chardonnay is long and streamlined with delicate sweet citrus fruit and peppery baking-spice notes.

2007 Alice & Olivier de Moor Sauvignon de Saint-Bris ($22; find this wine)
This region to the southwest of Chablis produces old-vine sauvignon blanc that tends to be much fuller and more lush than in other regions like the Loire. This vintage from the de Moors keeps giving and giving bright candied lemon flavors with intriguing salinity.

These all were nice accompaniments to the garlicky baby eel salad, thick brandade, salty boquerones, and grilled octopus and potato salad that we had with them, making for not only a study in de Moor wines, but in all things seafood, as well.

When I was in Los Angeles recently, I had the good fortune to stumble upon what should be my favorite new winebar (it was sort of directed stumbling, in truth; Minneapolis Star-Tribune food critic Rick Nelson's uncle is the chef, and he sent me toward it). In fact, the only thing keeping it from being my favorite place for a quick glass of vino is that it's about 2,400 miles from my apartment. But that aside, Lou is a nifty little place located in an unlikely corner of a strip shopping center on Vine just north of Melrose, adjacent to a laundromat and about seventy feet from a Thai massage joint. It's relatively unmarked—even though there's a sign saying Lou, I kept thinking I wasn't in the right place—but once you step inside you're in an appealingly low-lit nook full of appealingly low-key-yet-hip Angelenos, most of them holding glasses of wine and noshing on cheese, charcuterie and larger dishes (Chorizo with black lentils, garlic confit and fried egg, for instance) off the menu, under a chalk drawing on the wall of a pig holding a glass of wine.

Lou focuses on small-production, organic/biodynamic/post-organic (whatever post-organic means) wines, thirty of which are available by the glass at any given time, and is "unabashedly Eurocentric," as the website says. If you're into that sort of thing, you'll recognize or at least be intrigued by offerings like the 2006 Guy Breton Morgon for $14 a glass, 2007 Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon Blanc for $8 a glass, or Huber & Bleger Crémant d'Alsace Rosé NV for $10 a glass...though it may well be that those choices have changed since I was there. Regardless, I still think they're providing plates of "pig candy," which is essentially candied artisanal bacon, for five bucks. Candied pork? Uh-huh. I'm in.

Not long ago I was eating dinner at a tiny winebar called Cantina Do Spade, in Venice, when a German woman at the table next to me made a request for parmesan on her risotto nero. "I can give it to you. But you will ruin your meal," the woman who was serving her said. Her tone suggested that ruining the chef's risotto would be a very unwise thing to do. (Risotto nero, of course, is black thanks to cuttlefish ink, and as any good Venetian will tell you—evidently quite directly—fish and cheese don't go together. At least when in Italy.)

I feel like a Venetian restaurant proprietor when it comes to Sauvignon Blanc and oak. Why would you want to ruin such a spritely grape by slathering it with a bunch of oak? But, oddly enough, again while I was in Venice, at the Ristorante Lineadombra (which I heartily recommend), the proprietor effectively insisted we drink a magnum—there were six of us, so it wasn't that extreme—of the 2003 Inama Vulcaia Fumé Sauvignon ($30). And I thought it was just terrific.

This is what fixed ideas are for, I suppose: to be zapped out of existence. Anyway, the Vulcaia Fumé still had the citrus notes characteristic of Sauvignon Blanc, but it also had a savory, leesy depth that was surprisingly appealing, and a silky textural richness that was very un-Sauvignon. Of course, it was also several years old, but even so I had to rethink my absolutes. The wine is fermented in 25% heavily toasted barriques, then given battonage every six weeks for about eight months. It ought to be appalling. Instead it's delightful. And it was very good with the large and, thanks to my rudimentary Italian, somewhat mysterious-of-species roasted fish we had with it.

Anyway, I got back to the states, and decided I ought to taste the 2007 Inama Vulcaia Sauvignon ($23) just for comparison. (Inama, by the way, is in Soave, close to Venice.) Fermented and aged in stainless steel, it's still a fairly rich style of Sauvignon, probably thanks to the malolactic fermentation it undergoes. But it's more familiar in its bright grapefruity citrus character and tart finish. And it's also mighty fine; a pleasure to drink. Unfortunately, neither of these wines are the easiest to find, but if you contact the importer, DallaTerra, they may be able to help.

Had the opportunity recently to check out a couple of new New York wine bars, Accademia di Vino and Casellula. Accademia qualifies as one of those places I'd like to have enjoyed more than I did, given that ‘Cesca chef Kevin Garcia is behind the food, and it sports a hefty, 500-bottle, all-Italian wine list. But, the night I was there at least, they'd run out of both my first choices (white and red) off the somewhat less impressive by-the-glass list, and the charcuterie sampler, while pleasant enough, was pretty skimpy for the price ($14 for three types, all served in very modest amounts). Hm. I'd be inclined to give the place a second chance, except that I'd rather just hedge my bets and go to Casellula.

Casellula, which opened a month or two ago, is the brainchild of Brian Keyser, formerly head cheese-guru (fromager to the Francophiles out there) at The Modern, along with co-proprietor Joe Farrell and chef Jenise Addison. The focus in this tiny but somehow spacious-feeling room on 52nd at 9th is cheese. And wine. And that's a fine focus for a wine bar, I'd say. The wine list leans towards esoterica-I had a surprisingly polished, robust Hugarian red, the Vylyan Mini-Evolution, which blends Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Zweigelt, Kekoporto, and Cabernet Franc to nice effect. (It also gives one the chance to ingest some Kekoporto, something that few of us get to do on a regular basis.) The cheeses were equally intriguing and perfectly ripe. If I'd had my brain with me, I would've written down the three I had, but apparently I was waylaid by brain-thieves on my way over or something. In any case, the cheese menu changes regularly. And what do you need my recollections for, anyway? The best thing to do is simply head there soon and order, as I did, with reckless cheese-frenzied abandon.

Because my life is such a jet-setting frenzy of travel to international hotspots and hobnobbing with the famous & fabulous, I was recently able, in the course of only a week, to check out not one but two good new wine bars. One is in Manhattan; I took the subway. The other is in Houston; I took JetBlue. Man, am I living the high life or what?

First up, the Blue Ribbon Downing Street Wine Bar, which despite its lengthy name is about the size of your average NY studio apartment. This latest venture from the ever-successful Bromberg brothers continues a mini-trend of tiny restaurants with wood walls (Avec in Chicago, Momofuku Ssäm Bar in NYC), giving it a kind of retro-hip-rec-room feel. The wine list is adventurous and smart, and while it's not exactly inexpensive, if you choose well you won't be too horrified when the check comes your way. Highlights were a brisk 2006 Commanderie de Peyrassol Rosé from Provence ($10) and a lush, biscuity, utterly delicious Charles Ellner Cuvée de Réserve Brut Champagne ($42 for a half-bottle, and worth it). For noshing, get the aptly-named rillettes toast—which is house-made pork rillettes on toast. What's to argue with there? No website yet (grr), but here's the vital info:

Blue Ribbon Downing Street Wine Bar
34 Downing St., New York (btwn Bedford & Varick)
212-691-0404
5pm – 2am

OK. After hopping the jet to Houston and renting my fabulous slasher-movie-red Pontiac Sebring from the fine folks at Thrifty Car Rental—James Bond has nothing on me—I headed over to 13 Celsius, a new wine bar in the near reaches of downtown. (In fact, it's located on Caroline St., once home to the only punk club that would let me and my brother's mindbendingly godawful band onto a stage; ah youth, when we sang with the golden throats of angels...). Located in an old dry cleaners, with decor that feels more Williamsburg warehouse than Houston wine bar, this is a great place to have a plate of artisanal salame finochiona and a glass of—well, of an impressive variety of different wines. Say, the '05 Colterenzio Praedium Sauvignon Blanc ($11) from the Alto Adige, or the '05 Lageder Lagrein Rosato ($8), or the '05 Tir Na N'Og Old Vines Grenache ($16) from Australia's McLaren Vale...you get the idea. Cool place, good wines, tasty charcuterie. Well worth checking out.

13 Celsius
3000 Caroline, Houston, TX
713-529-8466
4pm – 12am