to remember every wine purchase, including the price. “One of my first purchases was the ’66 Calon-Ségur,” he tells me as he leads me into the labyrinth of the cellar. “It was $36 a case.” The cellar, though very clean, looks utterly chaotic, with stacks of wooden cases and cardboard boxes creating narrow alleys and a wide variety of shelves and racks, but it’s all accounted for on an Excel program that tells him and his staff the location of each bottle.
In the early days the list, currently 114 pages, focused mainly on Bordeaux, and it still has an amazing selection of treasures from that region, from the 1961 Gruaud Larose ($795) to the 2006 Lafite Rothschild ($1,400)—including many wines that are priced well below what they’d fetch at auction—although he believes that the great growths of Bordeaux are becoming too expensive. As much as he loves these wines, he seems offended by the idea of anyone spending four figures for a bottle. “The first-growth Bordeaux are becoming commodities. Once they become commodities, they don’t have a place at the table.” But he can’t quite seem to break the Bordeaux habit—I notice many cases of expensive 2005s and 2006s—including Petrus and Lafite—among the stacked cases.
The cellar would be extraordinary if only for its collection of older vintages, including an extensive list of Burgundies, but it also reflects the new reality of the global wine village. Conklin keeps up, and he is currently very enthusiastic about New Zealand whites, Sonoma Pinot Noirs, and Argentinean Malbecs. He’s also been a longtime booster of the top Long Island wines. Sitting on the front porch of the hotel, in between greeting the passersby on the sidewalk, he tells me, “There’s never been more good wine in the world than there is today.” And Ted Conklin is still discovering it and buying it, somehow finding more space in the cellar.
A Tuscan in the House:
Julian Niccolini and the Four Seasons
“This is New York,” Julian Niccolini says, looking out over the famous Philip Johnson–designed Grill Room where Barbara Walters, Charlie Rose, and Governor George Pataki are eating lunch. “They know what they want. They know wine. They like to show off.” He is explaining why a restaurant that has probably done more than any other to shape how Americans drink and perceive wine has no sommelier. “Since the beginning we had the idea that the customer knows what he wants.”
The lack of a gatekeeper to the cellar is just one of the ways in which the Four Seasons remains the quintessential American restaurant. The restaurant’s approach to wine, like its approach to food and the seating policy, reflects a smooth amalgam of the democratic and the plutocratic, of American informality and New York attitude: the customer is always right—not least because he’s likely to be rich, powerful, and opinionated, or all three. Still, no customer is ever above and beyond Niccolini’s coruscating European wit. Sitting in the serene oasis of the Pool Room with me one night—Grill Room for lunch, Pool Room at night is a formula to go alongside white wine with fish, red wine with meat—he stands briefly to bid farewell to a silver-haired banker with a gorgeous young thing on his arm, then sits again to refill my glass. “He has to get her home right away,” Niccolini tells me. “His little blue pill is kicking in.”
Ever since 1959, when it opened on the ground floor of Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building on Park Avenue, the Four Seasonshas had an enormous influence on American cooking, as well as restaurant service and design. If at this point it’s no longer at the cutting edge of the food and wine revolutions it helped to foment, to this day it is exemplary in its approach to wine service and pricing, thanks in no small part to Niccolini, co-owner—with Swiss-born Alex von Bidder—and the guy in charge of the cellar.
From the very start, the Four Seasons was dedicated
In the early days the list, currently 114 pages, focused mainly on Bordeaux, and it still has an amazing selection of treasures from that region, from the 1961 Gruaud Larose ($795) to the 2006 Lafite Rothschild ($1,400)—including many wines that are priced well below what they’d fetch at auction—although he believes that the great growths of Bordeaux are becoming too expensive. As much as he loves these wines, he seems offended by the idea of anyone spending four figures for a bottle. “The first-growth Bordeaux are becoming commodities. Once they become commodities, they don’t have a place at the table.” But he can’t quite seem to break the Bordeaux habit—I notice many cases of expensive 2005s and 2006s—including Petrus and Lafite—among the stacked cases.
The cellar would be extraordinary if only for its collection of older vintages, including an extensive list of Burgundies, but it also reflects the new reality of the global wine village. Conklin keeps up, and he is currently very enthusiastic about New Zealand whites, Sonoma Pinot Noirs, and Argentinean Malbecs. He’s also been a longtime booster of the top Long Island wines. Sitting on the front porch of the hotel, in between greeting the passersby on the sidewalk, he tells me, “There’s never been more good wine in the world than there is today.” And Ted Conklin is still discovering it and buying it, somehow finding more space in the cellar.
A Tuscan in the House:
Julian Niccolini and the Four Seasons
“This is New York,” Julian Niccolini says, looking out over the famous Philip Johnson–designed Grill Room where Barbara Walters, Charlie Rose, and Governor George Pataki are eating lunch. “They know what they want. They know wine. They like to show off.” He is explaining why a restaurant that has probably done more than any other to shape how Americans drink and perceive wine has no sommelier. “Since the beginning we had the idea that the customer knows what he wants.”
The lack of a gatekeeper to the cellar is just one of the ways in which the Four Seasons remains the quintessential American restaurant. The restaurant’s approach to wine, like its approach to food and the seating policy, reflects a smooth amalgam of the democratic and the plutocratic, of American informality and New York attitude: the customer is always right—not least because he’s likely to be rich, powerful, and opinionated, or all three. Still, no customer is ever above and beyond Niccolini’s coruscating European wit. Sitting in the serene oasis of the Pool Room with me one night—Grill Room for lunch, Pool Room at night is a formula to go alongside white wine with fish, red wine with meat—he stands briefly to bid farewell to a silver-haired banker with a gorgeous young thing on his arm, then sits again to refill my glass. “He has to get her home right away,” Niccolini tells me. “His little blue pill is kicking in.”
Ever since 1959, when it opened on the ground floor of Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building on Park Avenue, the Four Seasonshas had an enormous influence on American cooking, as well as restaurant service and design. If at this point it’s no longer at the cutting edge of the food and wine revolutions it helped to foment, to this day it is exemplary in its approach to wine service and pricing, thanks in no small part to Niccolini, co-owner—with Swiss-born Alex von Bidder—and the guy in charge of the cellar.
From the very start, the Four Seasons was dedicated
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