At the corner of Wooster and Broome in New York's SOHO District, is a unique wine store and tasting room. Vintage New York opened in July of last year, and has been attracting a growing clientele ever since. With over 200 labels to choose from, and sample (and yes, you can taste any wine in the shop) the tasting room is open seven days a week from 11am to 9pm, including Sundays when they open at noon. If you follow the ratings game, The Wine Spectator listed Vintage New York as one of five top wine shops in New York.

The store's distinction is in selling only products produced in the great Empire State --cheeses, chocolates, smoked fish and of course, a wide range of wines from the major wine producing regions: Long Island, the Finger Lakes, the Hudson Valley and Erie -- all hand selected to make a showing of the best of the region. And to help you in your wine selection pick up a colorful brochure, as inside are tasting notes categorized by wine varietal -- merlot, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, cab franc, Riesling, chardonnay, and the like, including lists of "sparklers," after-dinner wines, and even wines from native grapes. These handy little guides include vintage, producer, appellation, price and indicate whether the wine is dry or not, and what level of residual sugar.

Founders and co-owners Susan Wine and Robert Ransom know a thing or two about cuisine and wine. Susan Wine is formerly the co-owner of the four-star Manhattan restaurant, Quilted Giraffe. Robert Ransom founded Rivendell Winery with his family in 1987.

I met with Susan and Robert in their elegant store and tasting room one August morning and could have happily lingered among the wines, paintings, and wine-related items. We settled in downstairs to talk in their events room and wine cellar. With her pixy smile and intense vivacity, auburn hair Susan immediately outlined the business plan for Vintage New York. Robert entered the conservation almost casually, talking about the wines as if they were old friends, and I guess they are.

MM: Susan, from formerly owning the Quilted Giraffe, how did you get involved in this unique venture?

SW: Well, Bob actually got me involved. After closing and selling the Quilted Giraffe in 1992 (with my former husband) I spent some time looking for a good use of what I considered my business talents. In '95 I met Bob. He introduced me to Rivendale winery, his family's business. My interest in getting involved in the winery was to launch this New York project. I thought I could put some background and credibility from running a New York hospitality business to the project. So we decided to go for it. We decided to have the winery as our base, and start this New York project. Bob, on his side, was really always involved in the marketing end of the winery business. So it made sense for us to combine our skills.

MM: How did you come up with this idea?

RR: Well actually the genesis of it was years and years ago. I'd always thought of doing something outside the winery ever since we started the winery as a farm winery, and realized we had the ability to legally run auxiliary retail stores that operate the same way that the winery does.

MM: Part of the Farm Winery Act of 1976?

RR: Yes......and the late '80s and early 90's were a very interesting time. A lot of people getting into the winery business. New varietals being experimented with.. Long Island was just beginning to hit its stride. The Finger Lakes were growing. There were mergers. It was a heady time. But it was definitely too soon in the evolution of the industry to do this kind of a project. Originally my idea was to do a series of stores...based on a winery tasting room. Where people could go, taste the wine, and buy it. It wasn't my idea until Susan focused it, to take on one tasting room in New York -- to introduce people to New York wines.....

MM: When did you officially open?

SW: July 17, 2000. In the winter of '97-'98 we hatched the idea and wrote the business plan. And based on that, in April of '98 we started the trial project, and introduced ourselves to 6 or 8 wineries. We started stocking their wines at Rivendell, and opened our store, calling it Vintage New York at Rivendell Winery. We tried from the very beginning to create a product line -- different merlots, different chardonnays -- creating some different style and geographic profiles, to have some "ABC" wines -- a Seyval blanc, a Gewurztraminer, a Viognier -- and to give the wineries some geographic distribution. People were very open to this...Across the board the wines were selling well. We would take on wines that seemed so expensive to us, compared to what we were selling in our tasting room in the Hudson Valley, and no problem. The value was there, the wine sold. So we proceeded with opening the New York store. I don't think we had any surprises. We were very consistent about knowing what we were going to do. We knew that we were always going to taste all the wines. We tweaked a few things. It was pretty much the development of the tasting room conceptŠWe now have 200 wines.

MM: How do you describe Vintage New York? It is a store or a tasting room?

SW: What I like to say is it's a store built around a tasting counter. It's designed to simulate the concept of a winery, but on a broad scale.

RR: And because we have other products, we have embraced the idea of New York wineries being boutique producers, there are a lot of other boutique products made in New York -- so we have a whole range of artisanal products -- cheeses, pates, smoked fish.

SW: Putting the wines in a lifestyle context.

RR: But also, because we have so embraced the concept of New York, everything we do is New York. Every product is New York. Our contractors and architects were New York. All our suppliers are New York. We changed our license from a commercial winery license --which would have allowed us to bring in bulk wine from California if we wanted to -- to a farm winery license because our intent is so focused on New York.

MM: And how does your customer react to that?

RR: Great. People walk in here all the time and ask for Opus One, and when we say we only sell New York wines, they say "oh really? So what's good in New York? Tell me." There's an unbelievable acceptance to what we're doing, that I thought we would have a lot more resistance to. People are thrilled.

MM: So what do you say to them, then?

SW: We point to the tasting room.

RR: We say, you can go to the tasting room and try anything you like. Because the whole concept here is not to try to sell someone something, but to have someone taste. Here at Vintage New York, your palate is your guide. Taste it. Like it? Then you can buy it and take it home. We're not going to sell you what we like, we want to sell you a wine that YOU like. And in no other retail store can you on a regular basis taste any wine before you buy it. Only in a winery tasting room or here.

SW: As Robert Parker says: there's no replacement for your own taste and your own palate, my paraphrase.

RR: And we have the luxury of being open on Sundays.

MM: It this concept of showcasing a wine region unique?

SW:....Well, this speaks to why we decided to focus our looking in Soho. Because Soho speaks to fashion. And what needed to happen for New York is for New York wine to cross the "fashion barrier." New York wines, for whatever reason, haven't been fashionable. And this does bring in the Quilted Giraffe. This is my vantage point, which I don't think anyone else could really have. Coming from having the restaurant in the mid 70's and opening in mid-town Manhattan in 1979, what I began to see as we developed the concept -- before we open Vintage New York‹was that New Yorkers have always have a love for foreign labels. And it wasn't only about wine. It's defiantly fashion labels, and other areas. In 1979, the only important New York restaurants were French or Italian, or had Frenchmen or Italians in the kitchen, and their wives in the dining room, or vice versa. You had to have an accent to make yourself credible and expensive. The Four Seasons had done some major work in pioneering California wines, but they were alone. What the Quilted Giraffe did -- we looked at the nouvelle cuisine chefs, and looked at how they changed the world, how has the world gone from [Le Guide] Michelin to [Le Guide] Gault-Milleux. Can we take that model and make this happen in New York? In 1979, there were a handful of chefs, we were not alone, but we were defiantly part of the pioneering effort to create a haute cuisine that would be credible enough for people to spend big bucks and make it possible for us to serve high quality luxury products. Along with that we could see that even though our clientele was involved in the eclecticism of the cuisine, they were still drinking the expensive French wines. We were instrumental in bringing along the California wines. At that time, that did not exist. People were not buying expensive California wines when we started in the late 70's and early 80's. They simply weren't. And no one remembers that now. When I say "we're going to do for New York wines what I saw happen in New York for California wines, and what we were instrumental in creating" people act like that didn't happen, They have no memory.

RR: And yet, it was only 20 years ago.

SW: At the Quilted Giraffe that is how I met Robert Mondavi and his whole family. All the 15 major wineries from California were not popular in the New York restaurants then. They came here and spent huge amounts of time in the restaurants in order to get their products in the door. Robert Mondavi would come and spend time, get comfortable, become friends, use his own diplomatic efforts to make it happen. And now New Yorkers have adopted California wines like they've always been here

RR: For a product like wine to get its wings by attaching itself to the cutting edge is pretty interesting, especially such an old industry like New York's. People come to Soho to see what new, what's hot, what's good. And when they see there's a New York wine store here --it just sort of goes logically for them. In the beginning we presented the wines by flavor profile. Not by varietal. So our tasting notes were organized like "light bodied whites" "medium bodied whites" "full bodied whites." in an effort to focus people in on the fact that you can have a cabernet sauvignon that is rich and full bodied, and one that is light and delicate. That they are both good, in their own right. But those categories were too strained, too intellectual. People would always prefer to compare varietals - such as two cabernets sauvignons to each other. So now we let the wines completely speak for themselves, and have organized them by varietal category, and we're doing very well. Everything sells.

MM: Do you think eventually, down the road, each of New York's wine regions will become identified with one varietal?

SW: I don't know how much I love that idea. It prevents the kind of innovation and creativity. I think we are still so much in the developmental stage, that it would be a shame.

RR: ..to pick one thing to the exclusion of others...

SW To go there yet. Look at how over planted in merlot and chardonnay the west coast is. It's over planted because it's consumer driven.

RR: New York is in a really fine position. We starting to mature, money is coming into the industry, there is a fair amount of history and knowledge about growing. It has become very professionalized in the last few years. And we have the opportunity to take the lessons from everyone else -- California, Washington, Oregon, Australia and not pigeonhole ourselves to one variety. Long Island for example, is never going to make commodity wines "i.e. inexpensive table wines". The land costs, the labor costs. The focus there should be on luxury products. Higher end more expensive products. The Finger Lakes have the opportunity to fill in with the medium prices wines.

SW: My son was here last Sunday. He lives in California. He was in the store for a couple of hours and he told me he could see and hear such a huge change in the clientele, from when he'd been here before. Whereas earlier people would say, "what's this? What is this all about?" This weekend, he was here Sunday, in our busy time, and he would hear "what was that wine you brought home last week that was so delicious, can we have that again? Can you find that again. Can we find something like that?" My son said the conversation in the store had changed so drastically. He said "you're in a very different place, Mom. No matter where you think you have to go --- you know, how long will this take, how many more hours, and how much more struggle -- you have overcome so much already. in what you've done here."

RR: We feel justified in taking a fair a mount of credit for what's happened to the reputation of New York wines in New York City this past year --in one year -- because we've gotten so much publicity, exposed so many people to New York. We didn't make the winesŠthe wines speak for themselves. But we have been a conduit for so many more people to be exposed New York wines, there's already been a mini quantum leap in reputation. And because Soho is an international destination, a destination for many tourists coming to New York, we are feeding the word of New York back to all these countries on a regular basis. And to most of [these international tourists] what we are doing is special, its logical. Because everywhere you go in the world, the local wines are the wines of choice, except in New York. So they walk in and say "oh, you have local wines!" Then when they find out we are unique, we're the only ones, then it becomes a story for them to take back home. And now we have people talking all over the world bout New York wines.

Having done their research [less than one percent of all the wine sold in wine shops in Manhattan is New York produced] Susan and Bob are two months into launching Vintage New York wholesale They have just hired a director of wholesale sales, Seamus Quigley and if they bring the same energy to this venture, we will soon start to see our favorite wines on restaurant wine lists and store shelves. Check out their web site http://www.vintagenewyork.com