Pouring In
At a Raft of New Bars, the Wine Comes First

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 26, 2007

As a gaggle of 20- and 30-somethings crowded into Bistrot Lepic's wine bar on a recent Tuesday night, jockeying for a chance to sample free glasses of wine from France's Alsace-Lorraine and Languedoc, owner Bruno Fortin recalled how four years ago he and his partner were unsure whether the bar would succeed.

"I wanted a place where we could go have fun, smoke -- when smoking was allowed," he said. "We did it for ourselves. Then it became popular."

"Popular" may be an understatement. In Washington and other cities across the nation, wine bars are opening at an astonishing rate. Although far from achieving the per-block saturation rate of, say, Starbucks, wine bars are enjoying an urban boomlet that has surprised even some of their proprietors.

"I didn't realize the need in the market was so huge until [we] opened," said Mark Maynard, manager of Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar, launched in August 2005.

On the other side of the country, Kevin Erickson -- chef and owner of Seattle's Bricco della Regina Anna -- said he was shocked recently to learn there were at least a dozen wine bars in the Seattle area. Erickson began thinking about starting one with friends in 1997, when they were students at the University of Washington-Seattle. Bricco finally opened for business on New Year's Eve in 2005.

"We started getting into wine because girls are getting into wine. We figured, what better than a wine bar?" he said. "For me, I think the market's saturated, if anything."

As with many food and drink trends born on the West Coast, Washington has been slower to catch on. Jens Strecker, who owns Seattle's Portalis wine bar and shop, said it made perfect sense that these establishments sprang up first in wine-producing regions and that other cities are following suit. Piero Selvaggio's new V-vin wine bar in Santa Monica, Calif., has been luring crowds since October, and New Yorkers are awaiting the opening of Daniel Boulud's Bar Boulud in Manhattan.

Wine bars' moment clearly has arrived in the nation's capital: The wine-focused Proof opened in Penn Quarter in July, Veritas followed in Dupont Circle in September, Vinoteca opened at 11th and U last month, and at least three others -- Cork near 14th and S streets, Enology at Wisconsin Avenue and Macomb Street and a wine bar section of Sova on H Street NE -- are set to open in the first half of next year.

"This is really becoming a wine town," said Veritas's general manager, Mick McGuire, who oversaw wine at the District's Charlie Palmer Steak, Sonoma and Mendocino restaurants before switching to his current post. "No, we're not New York, and we're never going to be New York. But are we up there with a Philadelphia? Yeah, if not more so."

A number of factors account for wine bars' growing popularity. Wine consumption has risen steadily in the United States over the past 15 years as wine production has expanded beyond Europe to Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and other countries, increasing the range of wine offerings while lowering the price. Americans drank an average of nearly 2.4 gallons of wine in 2006 compared with 1.85 gallons in 1991, according to the Wine Institute, a California-based trade association. Every state in the country now boasts at least one wine producer, providing American consumers more domestic choices as well. And while it's hard to calculate the impact of the Oscar-winning 2004 movie "Sideways," the indie film clearly encouraged American wine drinkers to think beyond chardonnay and merlot.

The small-plates trend in restaurants has created an atmosphere more conducive to wine bars. Cyril Frechier, Northwest U.S. sales representative for the D.C.-based wine importer Robert Kacher Selections, said restaurant patrons increasingly are seeking out drinks that complement tapas and other small portions.

"This kind of food works very well with wine as opposed to cocktails," Frechier said as he conducted a tasting at Portalis, one of Seattle's first wine bars.

Real estate development in urban centers, coupled with city residents' desire to eat out, has provided wine bars with a broader customer base. Erickson, who estimated that many of Bricco's customers come in three or four nights a week, described his place as "an extension of their living room."

Most of the Washington wine bars that have launched or are getting ready to open cater to their particular locale. Proof is very much a freshly minted Penn Quarter establishment, with exposed brick and images from the National Portrait Gallery posted on TV screens above the bar; Vinoteca hopes to capitalize on U Street's expansion; Veritas feels more like a Dupont-Circle-aspiring-to-be-New-York-City hangout.

"We wanted to be in this neighborhood and be a part of this neighborhood," Veritas's McGuire said.

More than any other factor, women are driving the current wine bar boom. Almost every owner and manager interviewed for this story estimated that 90 percent of their customers are female, even though they do not market specifically to women. The lack of hard liquor and of televisions blaring sports events may play a role in these bar's popularity among women, along with women's increased financial independence.

"I'm 38 and I do have the disposable income to spend," said Kathy Swift, who works for a Chicago-based wine importer and supplier and said she patronizes the Bricco wine bar three times a week. "Now it's going for a nice meal, having a good glass of wine with friends."

As the number of wine bars multiplies, many owners are seeking to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Adam Mason, who owns Veritas along with Joe Englert, called his new establishment "the only true wine bar in D.C."

"From the logo, from the moment you walk in to when you sit down and order a glass, it's all focused on the wine," says Mason, who used to manage Sonoma. "The wine is first, the food is second, and it's not dinner."

Veritas's 68 wines from nine foreign countries and four U.S. states vastly outnumber the cheeses, p¿t¿s and cured meats on its menu. The restaurant has a tiny kitchen with two sinks, and it doesn't even serve slices of lemon and lime because, under the city health code, that would require a third, produce-only sink. But it has an advanced storage system that keeps whites at 50 degrees and reds at 68 while pumping nitrogen into open bottles to keep the contents drinkable for more than two weeks.

By contrast, Bistrot Lepic's wine bar, directly above its main dining room, offers the restaurant's full menu, because diners started demanding more than appetizers with their drinks when the bar first opened. But with its Filipino furniture, whimsical pig paintings and dark lighting, the room has a distinctly different feel from the sunny yellow decor of the main restaurant. It offers between 12 and 14 whites and reds, all of them French.

Because French wines are labeled by region rather than grape varietal, Bistrot Lepic's managing partner, Cyrille Brenac, said he and Fortin decided to hold a free weekly tasting with winery representatives "to democratize the French wine, if you will. Our system is confusing to Americans. We don't go by grapes; we go by region."

Proof offers an extensive, elaborate menu -- which during a recent visit outshone its wines by the glass -- but it highlights the wine with long rows of stacked bottles. Capitol Hill's Sonoma, which has two lounges upstairs in addition to its small downstairs dining room, offers 50 wines by the glass and recently revamped its cheese list to ensure that the restaurant's food is both local and organic.

"It's a California, relaxed atmosphere," Sonoma's Maynard said. On a typical night, he said, his restaurant hosts 170 to 200 diners and 200 to 250 lounge patrons.

Many of these bar owners amount to evangelists, aiming to convince their customers that wine is not as intimidating as it might seem. Sonoma trains its servers to be "down-to-earth in the way they explain the wines to people," Maynard said, while Veritas and Bricco sell half-glasses to encourage wider sampling, and Proof has glasses in three sizes: 2, 6 and 8.5 ounces. Portalis offers a free Sunday afternoon tasting; customers who pay to attend tastings on other nights receive a $10 in-store certificate they can apply to either a bottle or food from the restaurant.

In a town as geeky as Washington, wine knowledge is an easy sell. "People want to know more," McGuire said. "It's like why I got into wine. I wanted to be the guy who got handed the wine list."

And for customers who are not experts, the staff at these places is more than happy to help. One waitress at Proof, for example, described an Italian red during a recent visit as "tar and leather" (she advised against it) while suggesting that a California white held out the promise of "rocks and bananas." Granted, we still weren't sure what the wine would taste like after those descriptions, but we appreciated the effort.

Although it remains unclear whether wine is, as Mason put it, "the next coffee," the current crop of urban wine bars is at least guaranteed to change the bar scene in Washington and other American cities.

"The role is a very social role in bringing people together in the same way, amazingly enough, bars in the '30s and '40s did," Kacher's Frechier said. "It's not a fad."