Wine Director Cat Silirie | Wine Recs - 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
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 | Wine Recommendations
August 4, 2010
NO. 9 PARK
Italian / French
Beacon Hill
9 Park Street
Boston, MA 02108
T: 617.742.9991 (make a reservation)
Website:
B&G OYSTERS
Seafood
South End
550 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02118
T: 617.423.0550 (make a reservation)
Website:
Wine Bar / Butcher Shop
South End
552 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02118
T: 617.423.4800
Website:
SPORTELLO
Italian
Fort Point Channel
348 Congress Street
Boston, MA 02110
T: 617.737.1234 (make a reservation)
Website:
MENTON
French
Fort Point Channel
354 Congress Street
Boston, MA 02110
T: 617.737.0099 (make a reservation)
Website:
Wine Recs
Photograph courtesy of No. 9 Park | Photo Credit: Justin Ide | Photograph courtesy of B & G Oyster Bar
Recommended By
Wine Director’s Recs
White | Muscadet, France
It’s still a value. I tell people it’s one of the great terroir wines of the world. Nothing else really tastes or looks like Muscadet. That’s a passion of mine - terroir wine that isn’t necessarily Corton Charlemagne. There are discoveries of wines that are inimitable in their taste and their sense of place, but they don’t necessarily have to be the world’s rarest.
Domaine Pepiere
Especially people like Mark Olivier of Pepiere. If his wine doesn’t say it, I don’t know where else to look. It’s so wonderful. That’s a great archetype of Muscadet to compare other producers to. I love being with wine trade people or even wine snobs and pulling out a Muscadet, one of the great terroir wines of France. They try Pepiere’s Clos de Briords and they understand what you are talking about.
Domaine de l’Ecu
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. They haven’t been on the market for a while though, because of the hail in 2007.
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Red | Valtellina, Italy
In Northern Italy -- the Alpine expression of Nebbiolo. We have a new fine dining restaurant called Menton, and there is a section of the wine list called ‘Passion Pages.’ We set up the wine list to have little studies of a producer or a zone. So there is a whole passion page of Valtellina with wines from Nino Negre, Rainoldi, and Triacca.
Everyone loves Barolo and Barbaresco, and many diners that are coming for a fine dining situation might consider those wines first. But it is fun to take them to an Alpine version, 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.
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Red | Sicily, Italy
I am so amazed by Terre Nerre, Marco and Iano de Grazia’s fraternal property on the side of Mount Etna in Sicily. They make unbelievably exciting wines. They are not even in their 10th vintage. They found these pre-phylloxera sites of Nerello Mascalese right on the side of the mountain and are vinified into these gorgeous wines with Burgundy-like tone and weight with Sicilian volcano-like terroir.
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Red | California, USA
Qupe & Au Bon Climat
I deeply believe in Bob Linquist of Qupe and Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat. I think their wines have intensity and elegance.
Hirsch
I am getting very interested in the Sonoma Coast and am very interested in David Hirsch. He’s a really interesting character. 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.
Araujo
We also just made a deep friendship with a winery that I have respected for a long time and am now just getting to know, Araujo’s Eisele Vineyard in Napa, in Calistoga. They are fascinating and really have quite a vision. The first part of their vision is the inherited knowledge of what that land is like after generations. They have known since the turn of the century that it is was a great Cabernet vineyard. 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.
Orange | Italy
Cos Pithos
I’m in love with this wine. It’s a Sicilian Grecanico fermented in anfora, from a producer that I love in Southern Sicily.
Coenobium Cistercensi & Rusticum
We are having a lot of fun with those crazy nuns’ wines. The Cistercensi wines from Coenobium that Rosenthal Imports. They have the second bottling now, the Rusticum, which is really fun. It’s doing very well at the Butcher Shop with cheese plates and charcuterie. That wine is really interesting.
Dettori Moscadeddu
A beautiful sweet version of orange wine from Muscat in Sardinia from Dettori. It was imported by Vias, but they aren’t working with them anymore, so we are in a panic, because we need these wines, they are wonderful. They have a Vermentino done with open fermentation with indigenous yeast and the Moscadeddu. 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 goes with all different things.
Orange Wine & Food Pairings
We are certainly having a lot fun pairing food with orange wines. That’s our newest exploration. One of the great things we have learned is that they can act like white wine in the beginning at a cool temperature, just out of the cellar, with appetizers or fish. Then with a tasting menu or a progression of dishes, as they warm up more to room temperature, the phenolics and the richness of the wine work well and can stand up to animal protein. So we’ve been joking that they are really two wines in one that can act as your aperitif and then act as your red wine.
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Rosé | France & Italy
I love them. It’s been really fun watching it get so accepted and turned around in terms of perception and enjoyment. I like to paint the seasons and really ritualize rose through the good weather months. In the dead of winter, we might not have very many at all on the wine list. But in spring, all of a sudden doing a little celebration.
Tempier & Commanderie de Peyrassol
In the Spring, I love the more delicate Provence roses, like Tempier and Commanderie de Peyrassol.
Cotat Rose
There is a rose from Cotat that is on our wine lists year round. It is a rose of Pinot Noir from Chavignol in the Loire that I consider meditation rose for the entire year.
Bisson Ciliegiolo
When the weather cools, we start to work with Italian roses with a little bit more phenolics, color and tannins like Ciliegiolo from Bisson, which is super interesting.
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Sherry | Spain
Sherry is another passion of mine. There is always sherry in the fridge, but especially Manzanilla. I’m working at The Butcher Shop to have more and more of them and keep them at the right temperature and have the right food. They are so fascinating and a great value, but just not chic right now.
It takes so much proper storage in a restaurant to do it right. The idea is that you want to banish the old days of every hotel back bar having bottles that have been open for six years with half fills and kept warm. It’s a disaster.
We have an eight bottle temperature control unit for the bar for just sherry and we date them so that a Manzanilla is not open for more than three or four days. You have to be really vigilant.
Hildago Gitana Manzanilla
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.
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Pre-dinner Drink / Aperitif
Always bubbles, but especially champagne. It is almost always champagne rather than prosecco or cava.
Stephane Tissot | 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.
Pierre Peters Champagne
Everyone who knows me would say that I couldn’t answer this question without mentioning Pierre Peters, which I basically live on.
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After dinner Drink / Digestif
I’ve never really fallen for spirits, but I have fallen hard for Mezcal this year.
Del Marguey Mezcals
Their single village mezcals definitely have the taste of place that we all love so much in wine. There are single villages from different distilleries - the same agave with a different thumb print of flavors because of the village. I’ve never really seen it in a distiller, except for maybe a single malt scotch.
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Alois Kracher
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 a couple of unoxidized nips of TBA. They had noticed in their restaurant travels around the world that all of us, including me, serve their TBA by the glass, and it is very expensive to have a bottle open. They came up with a non-vintage blended house style that they put in these nips and it is reasonable, but still TBA from a great producer.
With Kracher TBA, I do love the fully ripened Delice de Bourgogne or Pierre-Robert. I love the gooey, creamy cows milk cheeses. But they are also good with blue cheeses, like Humbold Fog.
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