Wine Director Cat Silirie | Recommendations - Find. Eat. Drink.
Wine Director, Cat Silirie, Barbara Lynch Group, Wine Director/Wine Buyer, Barbara Lynch Gruppo, Boston, MA, Massachusetts, No. 9 Park, Butcher Shop, B & G Oysters, Sportello, Menton, where to eat in Boston, San Francisco, New York, Spain, Where to drink, What to drink, Wine Favorites, Wine Pairing Recommendations
An amazing, amazing restaurant. Chef Ana Sortun grew up in Seattle, WA, but somehow fell in love with Turkish / Moroccan / Greek cuisine and spicing. Spices from the ancient Mediterranean are her passion. Her husband is a small farmer in Sudbury, MA, so it is an unbelievable place to eat vegetables, especially in the summer. He grows them all for the restaurant and then they are always unusually seasoned and spiced. It is so inventive, but so natural and good. Her wine program is also great. Her wine director, who is Hawaiian, Teresa Paopao, has been with her for years.
Cambridge
Mediterranean
TERROIR
I do get a huge kick out of Terroir in San Francisco. It is really all natural wine, part of the movement, run by two French characters, who definitely have a very French aspect to their service.
SoMa
Wine Store / Bar
TABERNA DE HARO
It's very traditional, authentic Spanish cuisine. Deborah Hansen, who was in Madrid for ten years, is the chef / owner and also the wine buyer. There is so much to discover on her wine list, they have almost 250 Spanish wines, divided into Traditional, Modern, and Post Modern.\n\nIt is a real family style taberna (tavern) with perfect traditional food. She does all the cooking and the hosting and she makes a paella with squid ink, so it is all black - it is amazing with Priorat or Rioja. She also has great Spanish cheeses and amazing oil.
Brookline
Spanish
WINE BOTTEGA
I really love this wine store owned by Karie Platt. It’s one of those small, but super personal stores. It is mostly Italian, but they don’t limit themselves, there’s French, American, and Austrian. Everyone who works here shares a passion and an editorial point of view. You can talk to anybody and they have tasted the wine. And they do the hand-written card thing.
North End
Wine Store
I would never go to New York without visiting Terroir. One of my favorite wine lists ever. The graphics he does with Steven Soloman, talk about an opinionated wine list. He would be a good textbook example of a wine list with a point of view.
East Village
Wine Bar
THE SLANTED DOOR
I love the way the food and the wine combine here. You are right at the heart of wine country and there is no California wine on the list, only Austria, Germany, Loire Valley, Champagne and it is unbelievable with those Vietnamese flavors.
Financial District
Vietnamese (Modern)
WIENINGER HEURIGER
A family run, very traditional heuriger (tavern), owned by the Wieninger family for more than three generations. They have vineyards right in Vienna. There’s this amazing vineyard on a hill called the Neusberg that is still all planted to vines and the winery is underneath the restaurant. It’s buffet style, but it is the best Wiener Schnitzel and traditional Austrian food with casks of Gruner Veltliner right on the bar. They also have a beautiful outdoor terrace. We don’t have anything like it in the US.
Vienna
Austrian
LES TROIS GARCONS
The decor is perfect, fun English camp. There is a lot of taxidermy wearing tiaras. It is very fun and the food is delicious and quite elegant. They have antique handbags all strung from the ceiling, it is really campy.
Shoreditch
French
THE LOUNGE LIZARD
It’s filled with sixties vintage furniture and it’s fun to drink champagne in.
Shoreditch
Lounge / Bar
SANTA MONICA FARMERS MARKET
Any farmers market in California - Santa Barbara and Santa Monica. It’s a dream. The Santa Monica market is just so much fun. It is right in a neighborhood where you can imagine how healthy life must seem with the ocean right there and everybody’s out buying all these amazing vegetables in January. It is one of my favorite parts of my California trips.
Santa Monica
Farmers Market
Everyone loves La Boqueria in Barcelona, Spain which I dream about going to. I love sitting in the stalls themselves in the bars in the back, which are wonderful.
Raval
Food Market
Barbara Lynch Gruppo - Boston, MA
Who
Wine Director and wine buyer for Barbara Lynch Gruppo in Boston which includes restaurants: No. 9 Park, Butcher Shop, B&G Oysters, Sportello, Menton.
Why
She creates wine lists with a point of view, believes strongly in educating her team, and can never say no to bubbles.
Wine Director Cat Silirie | Recommendation Details
August 4, 2010
Details
Photograph courtesy of No. 9 Park | Photo Credit: Justin Ide | Photograph courtesy of B & G Oyster Bar
Recommended By
Barcelona, Spain
London, UK
Vienna , Austria
Wine
Spirits
Eat | Restaurants - Boston Area, MA
Find | Wine Stores - Boston Area, MA
Drink | Wine bars - New York, NY
Eat | Restaurants - San Francisco, CA
Find | Wine Shops - San Francisco, CA
Eat | Restaurants - Vienna, Austria
Eat | Restaurants - London, UK
Drink | Bars - London, UK
Find | Markets - Los Angeles, CA
Find | Markets - Barcelona, Spain
DOMAINE DE L’ECU MUSCADETS
Available from the following retailers
I also love Guy Bossard’s Muscadets. His single terroir wines are so interesting: the Expression de Gneiss, the Expression de Orthogneiss, the Expression de Granite.
France | Loire
Dry White
Drink | Wine - White
DOMAINE DE LA PEPIERE CLOS DE BRIORDS MUSCADET
A great archetype of Muscadet. I love being with wine trade people or even wine snobs and pulling out a Muscadet, one of the great terroir wines of France, and they try Pepiere’s Clos de Briords and they understand what you are talking about.
France | Loire
Dry White
TENUTE DETTORI ROMANGIA IGT BIANCO
They have a Vermentino done with open fermentation and with indigenous yeast.
Italy | Sardinia
Dry White
HIDALGO (EMILIO) MANZANILLA SHERRY
I always have a half bottle of in the fridge at home. It’s unbelievably energizing and fresh. It’s as vibrant and appetizing as champagne really. I like the armchair travel to the ocean with the salty tang. It’s such a quick little party with some olives, Marcona almonds, and anchovies. It’s such a value.
Spain | Jerez
Dry Sherry
Drink | Wine - Sherry
Drink | Wine - Orange
COS PITHOS BIANCO
I’m in love with Cos Pithos, it’s a Sicilian Grecanico fermented in anfora, from a producer that I love in Southern Sicily.
Italy | Sicily
Orange
MONASTERO SUORE CISTERCENSI COENOBIUM
We are having a lot of fun with those crazy nuns. Cistercensi wines from Coenobium that Rosenthal Imports.
Italy | Umbria
Orange
MONASTERO SUORE CISTERCENSI RUSTICUM
We are having a lot of fun with those crazy nuns. Cistercensi wines from Coenobium that Rosenthal Imports. They have the second bottling now, the Rusticum, which is really fun. That is doing very well at the Butcher’s Shop with cheese plates and charcuterie. That wine is really interesting.
Italy | Umbria
Orange
TENUTE DETTORI MUSCADEDDU
The Moscadeddu is amazing with different desserts. It is as scented as an orange blossom and a white lily, but it also has caramel and burnt orange tones and then just goes with all these different things.
Italy | Sardinia
Sweet Orange
Drink | Wine - Sparkling
PIERRE PETERS CHAMPAGNE
Everyone who knows me would say which I basically live on Pierre Peters Champagne.
France | Champagne
White Sparkling
ANDRE & MIREILLE TISSOT (STEPHANE) CREMANT DE JURA
An exciting go-to that’s so reasonable from the Jura - it’s gorgeous. Both the rose, which is a blend of Poulsard and Pinot Noir, and the white. Both are under $20 wholesale, which is incredibly reasonable and they are stunning. They have jurassic minerals from the Jura.
France | Jura
Sparkling
Drink | Wine - Rose
BISSON CILIEGIOLO
In the Springs, we start to work with Italian roses with a little bit more phenolics, color, tannin like Ciliegiolo from Bisson, which is super interesting.
Italy | Liguria
Rose
CHATEAU PEYRASSOL - COMMANDERIE DE PEYRASSOL ROSE
Really pretty and delicate.
France | Provence
Rose
We are very passionate about it. I love them. It’s been really fun watching it get so accepted and be turned around in terms of perception and enjoyment. I like to paint the seasons and really ritualize rose through the good weather months. So for instance, in the dead of winter, we might not have very many at all on the wine list, but I love in spring all of a sudden doing a little celebration, especially with the more delicate Provence roses, like Tempier and Commanderie de Peyrassol, really pretty, delicate ones. With June, as things start warming up and the roses start to get a little more robust, we start to work with Italian roses with a little bit more phenolics, color, tannin like Ciliegiolo from Bisson, which is super interesting.
COTAT SANCERRE ROSE
Available from the following retailers
There is a rose from Cotat that is on our wine lists the year round. It is a rose of pinot noir from Chavignol in the Loire that I consider meditation rose for the entire year.
France | Loire
Rose
DOMAINE TEMPIER ROSE
Really pretty and delicate.
France | Provence
Rose
TENUTA DELLE TERRE NERE ETNA ROSATO
I am so amazed by Terre Nere, Marco and Iano de Grazia’s fraternal property on the side of Mount Etna in Sicily. They make unbelievably exciting wines. There is a tiny release of rose that is worth looking for. It is made from Norello Mascalese from the side of Mount Etna. It is really wonderful, really different.
Italy | Sicily
Rose
Drink | Wine - Red
ARAUJO EISELE VINEYARD
Araujo’s Eisele Vineyard has always fascinated me. I always thought there was very much a terroir and a real individual sense of wine making there and we just went to visit them. They are fascinating; they really have quite a vision. And yet the first part of their vision is letting that old vineyard speak its piece - and it does.
In the case of the Eisele Vineyard, they have known since the turn of the century that it was a great Cabernet vineyard. And I really love the Araujo’s approach in honoring that and bottling separately. They are farming bio-dynamically now which is kind of a surprise, because they don’t really talk about it or use it in any way as a marketing approach.
USA | California | Napa
Red
AU BON CLIMAT
Jim Clendenen - I think their wines have intensity and elegance. I am getting very interested in the Sonoma Coast.
USA | California | Central Coast
Red
HIRSCH VINEYARDS
I am very interested in David Hirsch. He’s a really interesting character, really fun. I’ve just learned so much about farming and viticulture because that is what he’s been doing there for 30 years on the Sonoma Coast. He’s one of the first people in California I’ve met who farmed first. That of course gives you a connection to and feeling for the wine. I didn’t really understand Hirsch’s wines until I went there. There was something about them, some extra something that I could feel, but didn’t understand, but now I know why it makes me feel that way.
USA | California | Sonoma
Red
QUPE
I deeply believe in Bob Linquist of Qupe. I think their wines have intensity and elegance. I am getting very interested in the Sonoma Coast.
USA | California | Central Coast
Red
TENUTA DELLE TERRE NERE ETNA ROSSO PREPHYLLOXERA
They found these pre-felloxera sites of Nerello Mascalese right on the side of the mountain and are vinified into these gorgeous, Burgundy-like tone and weight with Sicilian volcano-like terroir, they are really, really thrilling. There are different crus, so that is really fun to explore the personalities of the different single vineyards.
Italy | Sicily
Red
VALTELLINA NEBBIOLOS
Nino Negri
Rainoldi
Triacca
Valtellina in Northern Italy and that expression of Nebbiolo. Nino Negre and Rainoldi, Triacca - they are an Alpine version of Nebbiolo where the wines are not as full bodied, but amazingly aromatic and really interesting. Those represent great values which I think still taste of the Piedmont region with a taste of Nebbiolo.
Italy | Valtellina
Red
Drink | Wine - Sweet
KRACHER (ALOIS) NV TBA CUVEE MINI
After dinner I do love cheese with sweet wine and I love the sweet wines of Alois Kracher of Austria. He and his son came up with the idea of little minis; they are little nips. They designed the glass and the screw cap so you can always have unoxidized nips of TBA.
Austria | Burgenland
Sweet White Wine
Drink | Spirits - Mezcal
DEL MAGUEY SINGLE VILLAGE MEZCALS
I have fallen hard for mezcal this year. The Del Maguey single village mezcal. They definitely have the taste of place theme that we all love so much in wine in that there are single villages from different distilleries - the same agave with a different thumb print of flavors because of the village.
Mexico | Mezcal
Spirits
