Our most sophisticated sweats. New York’s most casual wine enthusiasts. The name “Vintage French Terry.” It all makes a strange and beautiful kind of sense—tart and floral, perhaps, with a dry, chalky finish…
The campaign for this so-named new collection came together in a fog of Pinot with Ryan and Christopher Goydos, the twins behind SuperVinoBros. The NYC-based oenophiles have amassed a following with their unpretentious (if informative) blind tastings, travel guides, and bottle recs.
“Wine media can sometimes feel unapproachable and kind of stuffy,” Ryan says. “The whole goal of our content is just making wine feel as easy to get into as we thought it was when we got into it.”
Like a lot of people, the Goydos drank their fair share of wine during the pandemic. The only difference is, they turned professional. In addition to making videos, the brothers now run their own wine club and frequently host events in the New York area.
To celebrate the launch of our Vintage French Terry collection, the SuperVinoBros organized a wine bar crawl in Lower Manhattan, stopping at BabySips (for the octopus salad), Cellar 36 (for some “seriously deep cellar stuff”), and the James Beard Award-winning Lei (which has incredible Chinese food). You can watch the resulting video here.
During the shoot, we caught up with the twins to talk wine, New York, and drinking wine in New York…
For someone with an untrained palette, how much is it really worth to spend on a bottle?
I would say the sweet spot is 25 to 30 bucks for a good wine to share with friends (Christopher).
What’s your most controversial wine take?
People are drinking their red wines too warm and their white wines too cold. I think you have to drink more chilled reds and more room temp whites (Christopher).
What’s the best part of drinking wine in New York?
The access. On any given night in New York, you can drink a bottle from one of the most sought after producers in the world, discover something made by a tiny producer you’ve never heard of, or have a $12 glass of wine that completely surprises you. There are so many importers, sommeliers, wine bars, restaurants, and shops here constantly putting interesting bottles in front of people. You could drink wine every night for years and still feel like you’re discovering something new.
What makes New York’s wine drinking community unique or distinct, compared to other scenes cities?
New York has an incredibly curious wine community. People here really want to try things, and because the city attracts people from everywhere, there isn’t one single definition of what the New York wine scene is supposed to look like. You have big-time collectors drinking alongside people who are just getting into wine, and you have bars pouring classic Burgundy next to something completely unexpected from Georgia, the Canary Islands, or upstate New York. There’s a level of knowledge here, but at its best, there’s also an openness to drinking outside of what you already know.
If you only had one night left in New York, where would you go for a glass of wine and what would you order?
It’s almost impossible to choose with so many incredible spots in New York, so we’d probably pick based on whatever we were closest to that night. But if we had to name one, we’d head to Ops in Bushwick or the East Village, order a Juno pie and a chilled glass of Gamay. That’s a pretty great way to spend a night in New York.
What sets a great wine bar apart from a good wine bar?
Personality. There are enough places in New York with great wine lists that having good bottles alone isn’t really enough anymore. The places we love have a point of view, whether that comes through the list, the food, the music, the room, or the people working there. You should be able to walk into a wine bar and understand what they’re excited about without having to read every bottle on the list. And most importantly, it should still feel like a bar. Wine can be serious without the experience of drinking it having to be serious.
Any tips for pulling off a successful NYC wine bar crawl of our own?
Pick a neighborhood and walk. New York is probably one of the best cities in the world for a wine crawl because you can have completely different drinking experiences within a few blocks of each other. We’d also say don’t try to do too much at each stop. Get a glass, split a bottle if you’re with enough people, order a snack, and move on. And ask the people working there what they’re excited about. A wine crawl is much more fun when you’re discovering something at every stop rather than showing up with every order already planned.
What’s the strangest wine you’ve ever tried?
Anything from a perpetual cask. What that means basically is, you have wine from different vintages that get mixed into the barrel year after year. So you [can] get wine from the ‘50s or ‘60s mixed with brand new wine and it creates this really weird old- plus-new tasting experience (Christopher).
What’s the weirdest drinking vessel you’ve ever consumed wine out of?
There was no other option at the party and I had to resort to a giant flower vase (Ryan).