Best ways to explore wine in a new city

The first thing most of us want to do when we go to a new city, be it Dallas or Boston, is to enjoy a few good wine tastings

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Say you are visiting a new city in the US and would like to explore its wine scene and perhaps purchase some local favourites. What do you do? I experienced this recently when I visited New York. I lived in the Big Apple for years in the late nineties. It is a familiar city and yet, when I visited it recently, some 20 years later, it had changed substantially. I had two goals: I wanted to enjoy wines while in the city and I wanted to bring some bottles back home. After some amount of hit-and-miss, I came up with an approach that worked. Consider this a template when you visit any US city.

The first thing most of us want to do when we go to a new city, be it Dallas or Boston, is to enjoy a few good wine tastings. Information on wine tasting events can be found publicly and online. Mostly though, you find it through friends. I called Jayaram Bhat, a Burgundy wine fan, who lives in the Bay Area. Jayaram has attended La Paulée, an expensive and exclusive wine event that happens in New York every year, so I trusted his judgement and more importantly, his palate. Jayaram introduced me to his New York wine friends, which was how I found myself sitting with two collectors at Hawksmoor, a buzzy steakhouse in midtown.

Suzanne Camhi runs a graphics business and David Sugarman is a wine importer. They chose Hawksmoor because the corkage fee is $10 per bottle on Mondays, and it was a Monday. We have brought a bottle each, all Burgundies, two whites and a red. To our surprise, both David and I have brought premier crus from PierreYves Colin Morey of Saint-Aubin