Vine & Tap, Lenox Road's wine bar celebrated its one-year anniversary in February. The neighborhood gem is now considered one of the top 21 wine bars in the country. Owner Ian Mendelsohn classifies himself as an extreme wine geek, but his merits are well deserved. He is one of a select number of Georgia residents who passed the Diploma exam of the Wine and Spirits Trust, and he worked under Kevin Zraly, esteemed author and wine educator at Windows on the World. With wine in high power at this week's High Museum Wine Auction, we caught up with Mendelsohn to see how year one at Vine & Tap went, and what he has planned for spring.
Credit: Alexa Lampasona
Credit: Alexa Lampasona
How has the neighborhood taken to Vine & Tap?
My wife Susan and I wanted a place where we would be able to go once or twice a week, not a restaurant you could only go once every six months. So we’ve evolved the menu from wine bar-specific foods to include burgers and wings, all at a price point under $20. I hate the word “gastropub,” so I’d call us a beer and wine pub.
What are your picks on the menu?
I grew up in Baltimore, so it was important to have a good crab cake. We had someone from Baltimore try it and say, 'We finally found a Chesapeake Bay crab cake.' It's still a fun twist though, because it's served deconstructed. Of course we have a good cheese and charcuterie plate that focuses on local purveyors. I'm looking forward to getting Many Fold Farm cheese back on the plate. Our Orobianco mozzarella is made here in Snellville, so its on your plate two days after its made.
What do you think about being one of the few wine bars that have opened in town over the past few years?
It’s my hope that more wine bars open up in Atlanta, because the more wine bars in town, the better each one gets. There are incredible wine selections in the city, but you have to look for them.
What kind of crowd do you get?
We’re a date place extraordinaire and we get a ton of first dates. What I really enjoy is that we see a lot of parents come in, and they’ll be sharing a bottle of wine on the patio, and their kid is in the stroller right beside them.
Your wine list is extremely affordable.
I want people to try a lot of different wines and appreciate that I don't mark them up. When I choose a wine for the list, I think, is it a great wine for the price and category? For instance, is it the best $20 pinot Grigio I could put on the list? We have some of the same selections that other restaurants have, but I also have geeky wines, like a Musar Jeune from Lebanon.
What do you mean by “geeky wines?”
A perfect example is the Chianti Colli Senesi from Tuscany. It's grown in the hills of Sienna southeast of Tuscany just outside the area that Brunello is produced. Brunello by law can only be grown in a certain zone, and this wine overlaps that zone. So it technically is declassified into a Chianti because the vineyard sits in a Chianti subregion… but it's a Brunello.
What are examples of a few other geeky wines?
- Cava, Brut Nature Reserva. It's a Spanish cava, but its bone dry, and that's rare for bubbles from Spain.
- Muscadet, VV. This Loire Valley wine is sustainable and biodynamic. If there's a better wine for oysters besides Champagne, I don't know it.
- Ribolla Gialla. It's a white wine from Friuli, Italy, a town on the border of Slovenia. It's an orange wine, which means it's entirely natural winemaking with no additions of sulfur or other additives. It's more of an intellectual wine than anything else.
That sounds like a lot to swallow for non-wine lovers.
Wine can be intimidating. Because of my background, many people thought that Vine & Tap would be more formalized and arrogant. But I wanted to have formalized service in a casual atmosphere. If someone doesn’t know wine and leaves our restaurant feeling intimidated, we’ve done something wrong. I can talk with my bartender Ryan Bee about trellises and sulfur additions, because he’s a former winemaker-but not my guests. Unless they want to go there. As geeky as my wine list is, it’s just grape juice with alcohol.
What can we expect this summer at Vine & Tap?
Our wine flights became a great way to sample different producers in the same wine region. We’ll keep regions the same- such as Spain, Italy-but switch out the wines monthly. Come summer, we’ll do a Riesling flight so people can try some dry styles. A sherry flight will also join the menu, and people love our sangria, because it’s mixed with sherry. I’m really looking forward to Rosé season. We’ll roll out our Rosé program and pour from 3-liter magnums. For the food program, we have a Big Green Egg and have been playing around with recipes: there may be an insanely good BLT with pork belly coming soon.
Credit: Alexa Lampasona
Credit: Alexa Lampasona
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