Originally published on December 30, 2008.
Paul Grieco is a co-owner/wine director at Hearth, Insieme, and his very cool wine bar Terrior. Terrior has one of those wine lists that wine people can spend hours reading. This “reading of the wine list” activity can often be extremely annoying to the dining companions (a.k.a the husband) of certain wine people. This is because most wine lists are exactly that – just big lists of wines. Not so at Terrior – Mr. Grieco’s list is fun, or at least not completely boring, for non-wine people to read. There are pictures and stories and cool fonts, and it’s all bound up in a three-hole punch binder with graffiti scribbles on the front. And the last time I was there, it included an entire page on Chateau Musar, which is the way straight to my heart. So wine people can pour over the actual list, while the non-wine-people-husbands are reading the other stuff.
But I digress.
- Mr. Grieco may be the most quoted person in the wine business today. At least the New York wine business. He was quoted by Eric Asimov in last week’s The New York Times “Dining” section. This is when it occurred to me I had seen his name a lot over the past year. And then there he was again, in this week’s “Dining” section, quoted in an article on Sherry by Florence Fabricant. That sealed the deal. Twice in the same publication in one week and a day. If this rate maintains, we’ll see Paul Grieco quotes 52 times in 2009. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing – his quotes are pretty good…quite “quotable”.
New Year’s Resolution #1? To be quoted just once in the New York Times. Or even mentioned…quotes are not even required. Eric Asimov, Florence Fabricant…can you hear me?
Maybe it would help if I actually sent out a press release.
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: It took a while, but it happened. I’ve been mentioned and quoted in The New York Times more than I can count. OK, that’s a lie. I know exactly how many times I’ve been in the NYT:
- The 2010 article about new, cool wine shops
- Two different pieces about Serge Hochar and Chateau Musar during his 2012 tour
- And finally, starting in 2014, six different Wines of the Times Tasting Panels
And you know what. It never gets old. It. Never. Gets. Old.