Tannins and Tunes

Raise a goblet to a New York City rock 'n’ roll experience at Harlem's Vinyl Wine

By Tina Benitez
Published: October 7th, 2010 | 2:10pm

Step inside, and you’ll likely hear Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest, Fela-Kuti-style Afro beat group, Daktaris, or the Blue Oyster Cult playing in the background at given time. Two bottom shelves house rows of vinyl records, tees hang tacked up to a cork board near the designated merch table, and black and white photographs of rock stars drinking wine through the ages decorate the walls. This isn't your average NYC record shop.

Vinyl Wine is everything the name describes, and it’s uptown—way uptown. Opened in 2009 by wine connoisseur Mike Cesari and friend Michael Faircloth, a musician who earned his wine education at an Austin, Texas wine bar and in Napa Valley wineries, the Harlem shop sells organic and small production bottles from around the world, all under $30.

The idea was simple: bond the ambience of an old-school record shop with some wines that won’t break the bank. Cesari first had the epiphany to open Vinyl Wine after attending a record store party in Atlanta where folks were drinking beers, buying LPs, and listening to a live band playing in store. “It was a cool hybrid retail art experience,” says Cesari. “I started to wonder why wine stores couldn’t be the same way. More often than not they are these antiseptic, very static stores selling an incredibly variable and expressive product. That’s when I realized there were so many natural parallels between wine and music.”

“I find the obsessions of wine geeks and music geeks both incredibly interesting and off-putting,” says Faircloth. “The guys who have Wiki-like memories for obscure albums that came out and [know the] track orders from Japanese B-sides are fascinating, and the same type of Jeopardy-factoid mind is found in wine. It really is over so many people’s heads, and it’s only a small percentage of people who care about what they’re drinking beyond if it tastes good and gets them drunk, a much smaller niche of people than people with good taste in music.”

Rod Stewart with a bottle of vino in hand next to David Bowie, Axl Rose circa Self Destruction Blues lounging on a couch sipping some Perrier-Jouet, and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones tinkling some keys in the band’s tour jet with a carpet of wine glasses and bottles atop the organ—these are just some of the photographs sprinkled throughout the shop. Mostly Spanish, Italian, and French wines give both Mikes a selection of quality wines within their specific price point.

Vinyl Wine is meant to be accessible to newbie wine drinkers, yet provide something different to those in-the-know. Moving forward, Cesari and Faircloth will offer some conversational, laid-back tasting classes and add some new wines from Jura, France (Faircloth’s favorite region of the moment), as well as New York’s Finger Lakes, where Cesari grew up. Eventually, Cesari wants Vinyl Wine shops to open across the country. There they’ll sell actual vinyl alongside wine and feature a performance space for live music. (At the moment, New York State law does not allow them to sell anything but wine in store, but patrons are welcome to pull a vinyl from the sleeves for some wine-perusing tunes.)

“In retrospect, I don’t think either of us have much interest in opening a regular wine store,” says Cesari. “It would be too boring.”