Sometimes customers come into the shop with mere hints at clues about the wine they’re looking for - the color of the label or first letter of the grape variety - and we’re always up for the guessing game. Once, while bartending, I fielded a request for “a Mahita, you know, with gin and mint...” He had the gin part wrong, but we realized he wanted a Mohito and had a good laugh. Someone in the shop once asked for Fomentino, which made me want to open a Café Fomentino (where the revolution’s brewing alongside the coffee?) But we don’t make fun; you say tomato...

Dealing with wine from all over the world, I mispronounce words at work all the time. If you’re not a logophile, or at least a linguaphile, you’re bound to be phrustrated by the endless lexicon of grape names, growing regions, and production methods this job will throw at you, words that don’t follow the rules of a national language, but require knowledge of a local dialect, like the vocalized ‘s’ in Vacqueras. Or sometimes they’re just hard to say; I stop short when discussing the Austrian wines of the Neusiedlersee, or Champagne from Reims, a word that seems to require a subtlety of the tongue not privy to non-native French speakers.

Compounding the difficulty of the linguistics of wine are the many names assigned to a single grape variety. California’s Mataro is France’s Mourvèdre is Spain’s Monstrell. In the Piedmont subregion of northern Italy alone, there are five other names for Nebbiolo: Spanna, Picutener, Prunent, Chiavanesca and Picotendro. Vermentino also goes by Favorita in Piedmont, and they call it Rolle in the south of France. Corsicans drop the ‘o’ and add a ‘u’ as they are wont to do, making it Vementinu ! If all of this is confusing to U, then UR not alone, and if U don’t mind being cornfused and want to learn more, come on down to Oakland Yard, taste wine from around the world, and mispronounce some words with us.

Tonight...THURSDAY NIGHT FLIGHTS: VERMENTINO and NEBBIOLO - Explore different expressions of a single grape variety by tasting three whites from the Vaucluse, Corsica, and California, or three reds from the Langhe in Piedmont.
2024 Anne Pichon Sauvage Vermentino
2024 Clos Fornelli Clos Blanc
2024 Terah Wine Co Vermentino
2023 Elvio Tintero Langhe Nebbiolo
2022 Monchiero Langhe Nebbiolo
2021 Luigi Scavino Azelia Langhe Nebbiolo
Tasting Flights $15 from 5-9 and wines by the glass until close

SATURDAY 9/20: PET NAT FLIGHTS - Sample four pétillant-naturels: dry, sparkling wines made using the méthode ancestrale, from France, Croatia and Sicily
2023 Tour des Gendres Conti Pétillant Naturel
2024 Pomalo Debit Pétillant Naturel
2022 Ayunta Metodo Ancestrale Rosato
2024 Lise & Bertrand Jousset Éxilé Rosé
Flights $20 from 2-6 and wines by the glass until 9pm

Cheers,
Max (AKA Jonathan)