The Wine Hit List, Winter 2023 Edition: Foxface Natural, Leo, Gem Wine, and More

The sum total of buzz around Foxface has been significant — in no small part thanks to chef David Santos’ cooking. There’s roasted whole fish that rewards the fearless, pasta in novel forms, pork tongue with a tonnato sauce, and, following on Foxface’s earlier incarnation, where it tended to dabble in unusual game, you also get dishes like kangaroo tartare. It is defiant in the best way, if not everyone’s cup of kombucha — as owners Ori Kushnir and Sivan Lahat seem to want it.  And yes, it’s the latest, and one of the greatest, examples of exceptional cooking talent in what at least bills itself as a wine-bar format.

Santos certainly understands how fine-dining works, having put in time at Per Se and Bouley, and the effect here is to plant a flag on embracing the unfamiliar.  Wine director Raq Vo’s selections too are in a mode of pushing boundaries, although in a way that feels confident and informed, embracing postmodern stars (Paul Henri Thillardon in Beaujolais, Hiyu’s Nate Ready in Oregon) while still looking a bit over the horizon. 

Taro Vinícola (Pablo Matallana) Pet Nat, Canary Islands, 2021 ($82)

It’s always a pleasure to find new talent from Spain’s Canary Islands, and Matallana is a recent emergence on Lanzarote, with its black volcanic ash soils and old wiezened vines. This pét-nat is from malvasia and diego, and shows that distinct, intense mineral aspect that white grapes from the Canaries do.

Absentee Winery Balou California Red, 2019 ($95/magnum)

Avi Deixler is at the cutting edge of the new California — making flamboyant, no-compromises wines from a cellar in Point Reyes before moving north to Mendocino, even using his own coopered barrels. The Balou is syrah from Hopland (in Mendocino), fermented in whole clusters, and feral in the great way syrah can be.

The team at Ops has just about perfected what feels like a quintessential Brooklyn formula: sourdough pizzas that hint at Naples but are very much their own thing, all tied to an expansive natural-minded wine selection. They doubled down when they added Leo three years ago. Over time, each has found its own way to shine — in Leo’s case with items like a New York-style pie, the occasional soft-serve, and notably, a list that could easily show up in a restaurant with a lot more fussy food than pizza. 

Where the wine program at Ops can feel freewheeling, bottles plucked from the wall and such, Leo can come across as more low-key — in a good way — perhaps because of the tidy, printed two-page list. Don’t let that fool you: The largely French selections here are a compendium of many of the important names in the naturalist realm: L’Octavin in the Jura and Vincent and Marie Tricot in the Auvergne, plus others like La Stoppa in Italy’s Emilia, Sam Vinciullo in Australia. There’s also a clear long view of talent in these regions, so that Champagne from the iconoclastic Charles Dufour sits next to those of more traditional David Léclapart. French pioneers like Mark Angeli and Leon Barral get their due. It’s a nearly encyclopedic view of this approach to wine.

Domaine Didon, Bourgogne Aligoté, 2020 ($78)

If aligoté is a key part of Burgundy’s current success, there are few better places to find it than the northern tip of the Châlonnaise, and few better practitioners than David and Naïma Didon. David was the longtime viticulturist at Volnay’s Domaine de Montille, and his own wines have a crystalline depth — always with flavors below the surface. 

La Combe aux Reves Tu T’es Vu Quand Geybu Rouge, 2021 ($76)

Gergoire Perron grows a wonderful grab bag of grapes in Journans, in the Bugey area in the foothills between the Jura and Savoie. This is gamay grown at altitude, fresh, more structured than Beaujolais, a great pizza wine.

This wine bar on a sedate corner of Cobble Hill is bookish in a literal way — named for Anaïs Nin and filled with books she presumably would have loved. This seems to have been put through a slightly saucy filter but there’s also plenty of e.e. cummings and Joyce, and design tomes and books on abstract art — most of them for sale.

More poignantly, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a place so packed with so many people just plain drinking wine. In part, that’s because noshing here is minimal: potato chips, olives, smoked whitefish, pâté. But nothing wrong with that. Anaïs, which is run by the same group that runs Rucola, June, and the newly opened Clara, is very much a spot to enjoy a glass or a bottle and continue your evening. It is, as the Parisians might say, a proper bar à vin, versus a restaurant in wine-bar clothing, in this case with a deep fondness for France, Germany, and Austria. Nothing about Anaïs feels like it’s overly complicating things, and we like to think Nin would have been here for that sentiment.

No reservations.

Les Foulards Rouges, Glaneurs Rouge, 2021 ($68)

One great element of the selections at Anaïs is how they dive into less-loved regions and find great producers with a long history of great wines. In this case it’s the Roussillon, and Jean-François Nicq, who pioneered natural wine in the southern Rhône before moving even further south in 2001. Glaneurs embodies the radiant, bright side of grenache from the far French south.

Claus Preisinger Kalkundkiesel White, 2020 ($68)

We’re in Germany’s Burgenland here, with Presinger, who’s one of the region’s mavens with white wines. The mix of grapes is unusual — grüner veltliner, pinot blanc, and more — as is the mix of soils (chalk and gravel, hence the name) but the net effect is the heady, sleek style that has earned Preisinger such a following.

This particular space at 54 Great Jones St. has always felt like it’s just been there — part of the block’s patchwork, including when it was, for many years, Great Jones Café. The café was appreciated and enjoyed long after the buzz faded to room tone, and that feels very much the same in its current incarnation from Gabe Stulman, as though it’s been here forever. 

While Stulman’s current project, Sailor, is getting all the attention right now,  there’s something quietly magical afoot at Jolene.  The menu has a way of underselling wonderfully precise cooking — like a chicken “parm” with Sungold tomatoes, or cabbage with banana pepper and anchovies, the sort of dishes full of hidden layers. Cocktails, too, make little ado of themselves but are sublime and grown-up (and an antidote to that maximalist thing). 

And, crucially, the wine list, as often is the case at Stulman’s places, feels just right: not too big, not too small. Grown-up. It pushes boundaries in a user-friendly way: with “Easy Drinkers” like Raventos’ cheery De Nit  brut rosé from Spain, “Classics” like the always overperforming Domaine Eden cabernet from the Santa Cruz Mountains, and “Off the Beaten Path,” which can get a tad esoteric (Pinard et Fils ‘Wine Love Me’ from Quebec) but certainly not weird by, say, Greenpoint standards. The net effect may remind Stulman fans of the much missed Bar Sardine, in the ease and grace. 

Jolie Laide North Coast Pinot Gris ($75)

Few people in California have as much innate talent with skin-macerated winemaking as Scott Schultz: His trousseau gris was one of the state’s early defining orange wines. That tradition remains in effect with this pinot gris, which in fact is one of those grapes that’s not white at all but a bit coppery, and traditionally made that way in places like Friuli. Here Schultz continues the tradition with remarkable finesse.

Domaine de L’Ecu Rednoz Rouge 2018 ($68)

A perfect example of how well the Jolene team has plumbed the depths for great bottles. (The guy on the label in a tux with a clown nose perhaps notwithstanding.) This is, improbably, cabernet sauvignon grown at the iconic L’Ecu in the Loire’s Muscadet region, known for its breezy white wines. It is for sure one of the most subtle, fascinating cabernets you’ll have all year.

Leland is one of those restaurants that feels like it’s been in its Prospect Heights neighborhood forever, even if it opened in late 2020 and has been pivoting and re-pivoting since. In part, that’s because owner Randi Lee, chef and partner Delfin Jaranilla and their team are hospitality veterans, having put in time at many of the city’s popular restaurants. Some is that Jaranilla’s cooking feels eminently comfortable — with references to his Filipino and other Asian twists, but also items like trout rillettes with za’atar potato chips, a half chicken with salsa verde, and the fresh-baked focaccia that Leland made a signature coming out of pandemic times.

None of these elements are set in neon, though, which is to say that the Leland team thinks a lot about community and is ambiently anti-hype. (For the most part.) And their exceptional wine program follows suit: a taut two pages full of contemporary choices, including a section for “lightly chilled reds” (get the Tavijn grignolino), rarely topping $100. This is the sort of list we could use more of in New York: quirky, fun, eminently affordable, floating a few big names (Tempier, Lopez de Heredia) but also some great surprises.

Bisson Colline del Genovesato Pigato, 2021 ($63)

The Bisson wines are exemplars of how Liguria really should be considered one of the great white-wine producing regions of the world. They also remain, somehow, remarkably affordable — just the thing to drink at your local on a weeknight.  Pigato is an alternate form of vermentino, one considered its own variety by Ligurians, and this has brine and citrus and everything you’d want with a plate of seafood or pasta.

Clos des Mourres NoVice Red, 2020 ($58)

Among those trying to re-shine light on the table wines of the southern Rhône are Ingrid and Jean-Philippe Bouchet. NoVice is their grenache blend mostly from the higher altitude village of Vaison-la-Romaine, and it’s a perfect specimen of how good grenache from the Rhône towns can offer juicy fruit and freshness and depth all at once.

If Anaïs is the Brooklyn edition of beautiful people vibing on wine, Gem is very much the downtown Manhattan version: full of drinkers who could easily be deep in the scene a few blocks away in Dimes Square. (Chef Flynn McGarry moved the original Gem Wine, on Broome Street, around the corner to what had been the larger Gem location on Forsyth Street, marking a strong vote for the wine-bar ethos.) 

But the wine situation here has deep substance, very much on par with any of its nearby peers, including Parcelle and Ernesto’s. Which is to say that the bottles on tables either indicate that a quantum leap in wine knowledge has taken place among the Dimes Square set (tell me more about Juliénas, you dashing thing) or that Gem has some very talented staff on hand to suggest gems.

Piri Naturel, Nava Nahe Siegerrebe, 2021 ($80)

Although Christine Pieroth’s family has been farming in the Nahe town of Burg Layen since 1781, her own wines are very much a new effort — and unique by any measure of German wine. This is the little-known siegerrebe grape (either a cross of two aromatic white grapes, or a naturally occurring offshoot), not entirely unlike gewurztraminer but with less sugar, here macerated for three weeks to get that sort of fragrant, chewy aspect that Alsace is similarly doing so well.

Nicolas Carmarans, Minimus Aveyron Rosé ($76)

In the name of fashion, let’s do the flip side of orange wine, which is pink — here from Carmarans, one of the great talents of France’s Southwest. (Namely the mountainous region of the Aveyron, in the southern Massif Central.) Carmarans harnesses the tangy fer grape, and makes a rosé that’s fragrant and languid and just right for a cold Lower East Side night. Doubly so for the stark black-and-white label, which is the perfect prop on a table looking to impress.