Lee Campbell, pouring wine at Borgo.
Picture: Borgo
For greater than 20 years, Lee Campbell — all the time with a shiny lip and the air of a symphony conductor in a eating room — has been a considerable pressure in New York’s natural-wine world. She’s labored for town’s greatest outlets and importers, and he or she ran among the earliest natural-advocating wine applications at Andrew Tarlow’s eating places. She additionally launched town’s first natural-wine truthful and helped discovered Widespread Wealth Crush, a vineyard and wine-making collective in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Now she is again inside a New York eating room because the wine director at Borgo. She says that constructing the checklist now, when pure wine is in all places, has been a special sort of studying expertise: Campbell sees it as a extra grown-up model of what she’s been doing all alongside, and in doing so might as soon as once more be pioneering a brand new method to pure wine, one which values craftsmanship and custom over something that’s too new or stylish.
What’s the state of pure wine now? Do you assume there’s a greater understanding now than whenever you began?
I do know that wines are going deeper and deeper into the pure realm, and I don’t thoughts it. Having a large enjoying discipline is enjoyable. It additionally normalizes extra naturally styled wines for the patron. Wines that I’d have been beforehand involved about promoting to extra typical drinkers now not current such a hurdle.
What did pure wine appear to be whenever you first bought into the wine enterprise?
Within the late ’90s, there was no title for pure wine. I used to be simply working with lesser-known areas and lesser-known grapes. Once I got here into the trade, we had been enthusiastic about grower Champagne, and we had been enthusiastic about Grüner Veltliner and we had been enthusiastic about Piedmont. We had been younger youngsters enamored by these varieties or areas that had been for no matter purpose much less heralded than Burgundy and Bordeaux.
I had a second on the crossroads across the 12 months 2000. I noticed one path that was unfolding towards a extra typical wine trade and a extra predictable elitism. After which I met David Lillie, the proprietor of Tribeca’s Chambers Avenue Wines; the importer Joe Dressner; and their ilk, and stated, Wow. There’s this different approach that I may do that. I could possibly be in wine, however I could possibly be grassroots, and I could possibly be in regards to the farmers. It doesn’t must be about first growths and second growths and grand crus and premier crus. Perhaps I may have been that different sort of sommelier, however it was after I understood that there was this entire actual down-to-earth, accessible facet the place I felt at residence.
The children are going to all the time have their factor. For the final ten years or so, that’s additionally been Pét-nat and orange wine. Once I was developing, older wine professionals checked out us espousing small estates — and even the Loire Valley — and thought that we didn’t know what was good. My hope is that it’s a development that isn’t only a development. I hope that it is a actual shift of every little thing that we do when it comes to taking a look at wine as this pure product.
How did you come to work for Andrew Tarlow? Was there already a pure vibe at Diner whenever you began there?
Once I labored for Louis Dressner, Andrew was my greatest consumer. And so we’d had many conversations and had been aligned when it comes to what we beloved. And we had been each mentored and tended to by Joe Dressner. We form of felt like wine siblings in a approach. When Andrew gave me the wine applications to run in any respect his eating places, he knew what I’d do with them.
How is the viewers at Borgo completely different from the viewers ten years in the past in Brooklyn?
I believe Borgo, in lots of methods, is bringing me again to my roots earlier than pure wine as a result of I’m all the time eager about how and to whom I’m going to promote every wine. Once I was constructing the lists at Reynard, Roman’s, Diner, and Marlow & Sons, everyone who walked in was completely our demographic: The folks we had been promoting wine to had been tremendous open-minded. They had been hipsters and artists and bohemians. However Manhattan is all the time a bit bit completely different. Our individuals are all the time going to seek out us, however we additionally all the time wish to welcome new folks to the tent.
I don’t privilege wines as a result of they’re wild or soiled or savage or brutal. For higher or for worse, I believe wines which might be a bit bit extra basic or restrained of their model greatest categorical terroir. That continues to be my model right here at Borgo.
So is the marketplace for pure wine completely different now?
Nicely, like me, we’ve grown up. I believe the natural-wine purchaser generally has extra assets they usually would possibly wish to discover the masters of pure wine. So, as an illustration, listed below are two examples: I’m actually having lots of enjoyable with Paolo Bea, a producer in Umbria, and Fabio Gea, a producer in Piedmont. They’re vastly completely different, each with a really iconoclastic and foundational voice within the natural-wine world.
What do you see as the following evolution on this realm of wine?
I believe what’s happening now’s intrinsically tied to local weather change. For us, it was pure, natural, biodynamic. Now I believe it’s local weather change and demanding that we take hybrid grapes and co-ferments critically.
What Jahde Marley’s doing with ABV Ferments and what we’re doing at Widespread Wealth Crush in Virginia, working with hybrid grapes and actually giving them each little bit of care as we do the vinifera grapes that we work with, I believe that’s the following step.
There are undoubtedly some wines on the checklist at Borgo — like Clos du Tue-Boeuf and Foradori — the place I believe, These are very Lee Campbell wines. After being out of eating places for a pair years, did it’s important to style lots to determine this checklist?
I did style lots. One factor that I’m adamant about is absolutely understanding my checklist. Deeply. There’s no unhealthy wine on this checklist. There aren’t any fillers. New York has turn into such a panorama of the allocation recreation, and other people simply purchase wines as a result of they’re laborious to get — even when they don’t really need them or want them. I’m prepared to go on some allocations now. I simply need wines that I like.
Had been there any no-brainers you felt such as you needed to embody?
I don’t need my one checklist to be about dogma, essentially; I need it to be about group, and I need it to be about pleasure. That stated, I did actually assume laborious about the best way to carry as many ladies’s voices to the desk as I may, and likewise went out of my method to supply a few wines made in California by Black ladies, like Ashanta, Ward 4, and Mad Marvlus, as a result of everyone ought to know that this desk is numerous. And the extra voices and the extra tales, the extra enjoyable we’re going to have. It’s so thrilling to have the ability to have fun the issues which might be occurring.
Joe Dressner advised me one thing a very long time in the past after I was on the rise as a wine purchaser. He stated, “You’re getting your head turned by all the brand new stuff that’s swirling round. Don’t neglect the individuals who have supported you and have welcomed you into their houses and have been the inspiration of your wine data.” He was proper on some degree. You possibly can’t simply maintain going to every little thing that’s new. It’s important to honor points of your previous. At Borgo, it was actually vital for me to pour Arianna Occhipinti as a result of that’s my woman. And Fonterenza as a result of that’s my woman — and Foradori. Honoring these long-standing relationships can also be essential.
With this wine checklist, I didn’t really feel like I needed to kiss anyone’s ring. I didn’t must kowtow to the currents, as a result of let’s be sincere, I’ve been the present more often than not I’ve been on this trade. And I believe it’s actually vital for me to proceed to play that function.
Was the thought for the checklist to be principally Italian, because the kitchen has an Italian bent?
I knew it was going to be greater than Italy. I knew that, due to my very own Virginia origins, there could be some Virginia wine on there. I knew there have been a number of folks in California that I needed to placed on. And New York as effectively. This can be a fashionable New York wine checklist. We’re not an Italian restaurant, per se — we’re Italian-ish or Italian-inspired. We’re drawing our cues from Italy, however we’re working throughout the northeast farm panorama. So I believed the wine checklist ought to converse to that as effectively. I like French wine, so there’s lots of French wine. Additionally, there’s lastly a possibility to honor my love for Burgundy, as effectively, and simply discover actually lots of stunning, pure Burgundies.
What had been the discoveries in Burgundy?
There’s a producer referred to as Rouges-Queues; they had been one of many first Burgundies that I ever had within the late ’90s, early 2000s. They’re in Maranges extra in the direction of the South within the Côte de Beaune and make actually beautiful, sincere, mineral wines that I don’t assume get sufficient consideration. After which discovering new voices like Marthe Henry in Pommard making actually beautiful wines. These come via Zev Rovine. He has a pleasant little e book of pure Burgundies.
I observed you might be bucking the development of together with a piece devoted to orange wine.
I simply needed to reintegrate orange wine into the white-wine household. Once I first began at Louis Dressner, we had been promoting lots of macerated white wines, however we didn’t have the phrase “orange.” It didn’t exist. It was simply pores and skin contact, or macerated, as you’d name it. The concept that we’ve now bought this, like, segregated class drives me a bit loopy, particularly as a result of we all know that maceration is a standard method and it imbues sure wines with extra shade and different wines with no shade in any respect. Folks get so obsessive about the skin-contact facet. I believe that they’re sort of lacking the entire thing. So for now, anyway, the orange wines are going to dwell on the white-wine checklist.
You’ve got performed a exceptional job of providing many wines which might be underneath $100. For a very long time, pure wine was perceived to be cheaper than extra typical wines, and it’s undoubtedly not the case anymore.
I’ve been watching them for 20 years. I imply, it’s New York. And it’s wine. It’s not as low cost as you’ll like it to be. Being at a restaurant like that is coming into a universe the place we’re going to take excellent care of you, however we’ve to make a residing. And we’ve to pay our lease and we wish to deal with our employees. The entire, “I went to Europe and I noticed it for ten euros and now it’s this a lot cash in your wine checklist?” That’s a recreation you’ll be able to’t actually play in New York, ?
You don’t need folks to come back in and really feel like they’ll’t have a bottle of wine. You undoubtedly need them to be like, “Oh, there’s tons of issues I may select from.” We wish our folks to come back on a regular basis. We wish the neighborhood folks to be right here on a regular basis.
Internet hosting our friends every night time as a sommelier on the ground actually will get to the center of the matter. That’s the place the soul of restaurant work resides and irrespective of how a lot work could be performed from your private home, your display screen, or an workplace, the restaurant “flooring” is the whole level. We’re just about having a ball.
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