It’s a comfortable night time at Anaïs, the candle-lit wine bar tucked in amongst Boerum Hill’s brownstones, and Eliza Dumais is sitting in a nook sales space. Subsequent to her is Joseph Signa, a chatty, shaggy dude in a classic sweater, and Anaïs’s wine director. It’s not solely clear if Signa is firmly planted at our desk as a result of he needs to make sure I’ll write one thing good about his bar, however the fact is much less calculative: He and Dumais are outdated associates who first met on the now-gone Lalou, the place Signa labored as a server and Dumais — a born-and-bred Brooklynite who reveres New York on an “Empire State of Thoughts” degree — would spend hours speaking, ingesting, and writing.
As a way of life reporter, Dumais has lined journey, love, intercourse, and meals. However her major focus is wine. She’s a mainstay amongst natural-wine producers and sellers and restaurateurs. For years, she was a co-editor for Swurl, an impartial wine journal. Final 12 months, she printed customized zines with wine-giant Marko Kovac (after which hosted events for these zines at locations like Night time Strikes and Marlow & Sons) and curated panels for Zev Rovine, a name-brand importer and natural-wine demigod. Whereas the wine world is evolving and present process one thing of an id disaster — attempting to shake freed from the “natty fratty” stigma, navigating a public that’s ingesting much less, staying conscious of rising financial nervousness — Dumais embodies a spirit of unstuffy appreciation. “Most individuals are too intimidated to speak about wine in any respect, after which you could have Eliza who will effortlessly say one thing like, ‘It tastes like pennies,’” says Alex McCown, the proprietor of Frog Wine Bar in Mattress-Stuy. “Nobody else within the wine world would ever say that. Usually, we’ll say one thing tastes like tobacco, earth, limestone. After which you could have Eliza who’s like, ‘Oh yeah, this one tastes like cherries and disappointment.’”
“She didn’t come by means of the standard sommelier world,” says Rovine. “She writes concerning the emotions behind the tastes, and it’s very cool and really influential — she’s chatting with a distinct motion, a younger, stylish, downtown, natural-wine motion, and it’s thrilling.” At Anaïs, I intend to take full benefit of her experience. Our first bottle is a Chardonnay-Sauv-Blanc mix referred to as Escargot made by Marie and Vincent Tricot, a favourite producer of Dumais’s. A number of the winespeak, not all unprovoked by me, included: a recreation referred to as “What do bubbles sound like?” — per Dumais, “child tooth” — the perfect wine to deliver to a cocktail party, Bisou by Domaine Mosse, as a result of “it’s mild sufficient to sate the ‘I don’t drink crimson’ constituent, and full bodied sufficient for the Cab dads … it’s simply a kind of crunchy, vibrant, easy-to-drink reds.”
All night time, along with speak of Cab dads, “Sam” is peppered incessantly all through the dialog. Sam is Sam Lawrence, chef and co-owner of the ultrascene-y restaurant Bridges in Chinatown and Dumais’s boyfriend. Their relationship is the idea for Dumais’s first e book, Grape Juice, an 831 Tales romance novel about an ennui-addled wine rep in New York who finds herself at a profound harvest in Alsace. There are passages within the e book — a pair driving to Paris on the finish of harvest, for instance — that Dumais says she pulled straight from her personal real-life love story, a narrative during which, very similar to Dumais IRL, the dominant taste is unselfconsciously flowery. “Whereas we drive, cities and small appellations rising and falling on both aspect of us, we inform tales,” she writes. “First kisses, sports activities video games, driving classes, house moldings.”
“I really like writing whereas Sam is cooking — all of the human noises of slicing and simmering helps me work,” Dumais says. “Throughout lengthy afternoons spent cooking and writing, the complete breadth of our interactions will encompass ‘will you style this?’ and ‘what’s one other phrase for … ?’” She recalled a current lengthy lunch — certainly one of her favourite sorts of meal — that Lawrence coordinated for her birthday. “The restaurant was closed,” she recollects. “Sam lined tables down the center of the eating room and threw me and my 20 closest associates essentially the most glamorous five-hour lunch of my life.”
Earlier than I do know it, three hours have handed throughout our night time, and we had been tipsy. Once I ask Dumais what she’d order for us subsequent — ought to we determine to get correctly shitfaced? — she says, “I’m a sucker for bubbles and pure grower Champagnes, so I’d in all probability say … some glasses of Champagne Chavost or Lahèrte “Ultradition.” Anaïs, which was fairly tranquil once I arrived, is all of a sudden noisy and bustling. Signa had talked about {that a} mentalist was doing a present later within the night time, however … is it already later? Dumais is telling me about one other novel she has within the works, this time about feminine friendship in your 30s, when as if on cue, two feminine associates of their 30s interrupt us with, “Are you Eliza?” They’re followers, it seems, who acknowledge Dumais from certainly one of Rovine’s portfolio tastings for which Dumais had moderated a panel.
A random group of individuals squishes in subsequent to us, and the room is now packed for the magic present, so Signa escorts us out by means of a secret wine cellar and unlocks an escape hatch across the again, whereas Eliza texts Sam about assembly up at a brand new restaurant opening, the place he’s ready with a pair of heels for Dumais in his tote.