When in New York...

I recently had the pleasure of visiting several wine bars around the country, and one that particularly stood out to me for its innovative spirit is Clo in New York’s Time Warner Center. The fun factor is high here, and it’s a great place to drop by for tastes of old favorites or new discoveries (I had never heard of Gelber Muskateller from Austria, for instance, but I liked it) before or after savoring some jazz at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola -- which is what I did on a recent trip to New York.
What makes it novel is that guests sit at a communal, interactive table with a multi-touch projection menu allowing you to explore wine regions, grapes, flavor profiles and producers for all the wines on offer. Andrew Bradbury, Clo’s creator, developed the eWinebook, an electronic touch screen wine menu at Aureole Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and in Clo he has fused his love of wine, technology and design into one impressive space. I say “space” specifically because Clo is not even a room with walls that reach the ceiling; rather it has curved walls that create an intimate space in the middle of the 4th floor at Time Warner Center. From what I was able to piece together from talking to two young French women who work in the wine industry in London and were visiting Clo the same night I was, “clos” means an enclosed space in French. A server then told me that the owners dropped the “s” so people wouldn’t be worried about how to pronounce it.
See my story on Clo and four other wine bars around the country (in San Francisco, Seattle and Atlanta) in the October issue of Cheers, the beverage magazine.