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Sun July 12, 2006

At the Press of a Button, A Sip of the Bottle

Urban Vintage

BY PETER HELLMAN - Special to the Sun

July 12, 2006

New York wine shops have only recently been permitted to lurch out of the dark ages by allowing customers to sample wines on the premises. The renaissance continued when paper and plastic cups gave way to real stemware at shops like Zachys and Crush. And earlier this month, in-store wine tasting made the next great leap forward at Union Square Wines in its new quarters at 140 Fourth Avenue. That's where you'll find the Italian-developed Enomatic wine serving system, with 48 wines "on tap."

Using Enomatic for the first time in a wine shop in provincial Queenstown, New Zealand, in January, I wondered why the system hadn't already come to the greatest wine town on earth. "We'd been watching Enomatic for a couple of years until we thought the software was ready," USQ's co-owner, Bob Green, said. When the shop was priced out of its previous quarters on Union Square, the decision was made to install Enomatic in the new shop around the corner.

To use Enomatic at USQ, first pick up a free "Savvy Sipper" smart card at the front desk. It's pre-loaded with 1,000 points. At each of three multibottle tasting stations around the shop, wines are kept fresh under a layer of inert gas. Plug your card into a reader and center a tasting glass under a spigot connected to each bottle. Push a button and a single mouthful of wine is delivered. The more expensive the wine, the more points are deducted from your card. For each dollar you spend on wine, five points are reloaded in your card at the register. Elsewhere, you'll pay by the pour when using Enomatic, but it's free at USQ because, as Mr. Green explained, "under state law, we're a retail wine shop, not a wine bar."

I spent a pleasant hour one afternoon last week tasting 15 wines, all of them new to me. The shop's wine director, Jesse Salazar, has loaded up the Enomatic with lots of rosés for summer, my favorite of which was Calera's Vin Gris de Pinot Noir 2005 ($18.95), a Central Coast wine with sinuous flavors that lasted long in the mouth. Chateau Le Pavillon de Bayrein 2003 ($19.95), a Graves, was fragrant and gravely textured like its namesake region.The wine I took home was Marques de Murietta Ygay 2001 Rioja Reserva ($19.95), which managed the trick of being simultaneously mellow and piercing in its tobacco and currant flavors. Enomatic's only downside for now is that wine fact sheets, ideally with space for notes,are not supplied. "We're working on that," Mr. Green said.

Shoppers can try it on, smell it, or kick the tires when buying a sweater, melon, or used car. In a wine shop, all they could do, previously, was to stare at a confusing array of bottles with no clue about which was right for their table. At best, they'd have to rely on a salesman's recommendation — someone who probably didn't know their palate preferences. With the dozens of wines to taste and ponder at USQ, shoppers finally get a fighting chance to nail the right wine.