To + From NYC in a New York Minute!

I say this almost every season that I’m in New York, but I just love New York this time of year!  What a wonderful, colorful, glamorous city.  There is truly nothing like it in world, well… unless you’ve been to Hong Kong (that’s another blog entry). 
Just this week, I spent a couple of days in the city hanging with a fun group of new Croatian pals and drinking Eastern European wine.  Not a bad job, right?  There is, as I’ve learned with Eastern European culture, so much to understand about the history, beginnings and taste of this culture and its wines.  Introducing the new wine kid on the block, Korta Katarina Winery, to a group of first generation Croatian Americans is both, as I found, exciting and also jam packed with interesting comments.  Especially in a very vocal location like New York.  After trying several of these bottles and thinking back to my first YOUTUBE video on Amusée’s CRUSH PAD where I tried some of the best producers of the country, I realize that there is so much more that I now know about this place called:  Croatia. 
Like New Yorkers, Croatians are proud.  They are rare folks who talk so romantically about their culture, the land, the original grapes and its people.  Everyone holds their hands in forms like the Italians, you know pinched fingers, expressing their points.  And, I love it.  The same is true of so many in NY.  Sometimes maybe too vocal, but always very passionate when they speak.  Good Mid Western girls were taught to never interrupt, which really wouldn’t get you anywhere with this crowd, so you have to ‘express’ your own points in between their breaths. 
And while NY is a place where every single rare bottle of wine can be found, they too have some wonderful neighborhoods that support the Eastern European wine category with its inhabitants in full force.  For one, the neighborhood of Astoria.  A very cool spot.  Folks with open markets, nationalities of every spectrum, and languages that are heard from one end of the store to the other.  It is a neighborhood in the northwestern corner of Queens, which now you can imagine a bit more the streets and corners if you’ve ever been to the area.  And funny as it is, when in Seattle a couple of weeks back, I had a conversation about an Italian restaurant located there.  A few Master Sommeliers spoke of this great Italian restaurant, delicious food and great wine located in Queens.  Wouldn’t you know it, I ended up there while on this trip!
Ponticello Ristorante.  While we did not have time to eat, you have to know that it will be the first place on my list the next time I’m in the city.  The owner, Pepe, is one cool cat.  A native Croatian passionate about his wines, food and his restaurant spoke to us about his culture, New York and well, many other subjects.  His passion for selling Croatian wine was evident and it was so fun throughout the day(s) listening to everyone’s take on the country’s main red grape:  Plavac Mali.  The grape as I’ve come to learn it is rich with fruit, high in feisty tannin and ridiculously complex with layers of dirt, minerality and crunchy dried herbs.  I can now say, I’ve tasted some very inexpensive ones (and not really my favorite) to some very good ones.  Knowing of course, that Korta Katarina is my first pick on the shelf, there are others that display the same fruit yet different underlying layers of earth and spice.  I feel like my palate and my mind have been taking inventory on this grape now for weeks.  It’s very cool how each of them really is so different.  From its native area of southern Croatia and the Dingac and Postup Vineyard Sites to the Island of Hvar – each has its own story to tell.  There is so much to learn. 
Though my trip to the great city of New York was short and sweet and filled with many more interesting ‘blurbs’, ones blog shouldn’t probably go on and on and on.  So I end with my favorite part of New York, because it’s always a place I manage to make it to while there. 
Central Park.  Where the horse carriage aromas seem to fill every corner of the park, to the colorful street vendors that make your walk visually entertaining, it is the most rare piece of land in any one city.  The trees are now in bloom, the color of green is almost neon in some spots and the open fields in the park’s center, I’m sure, have already been used for Sunday afternoon frisbee throwing and late afternoon picnics.  It’s such a beautiful spot, and truly…as I said like no other place in the U.S.  I can’t wait to go back. 
Cheers to my new Croatian and Russian friends and thanks for your warm and very generous New York hospitality!