Hi everybody, I'm Hank Zoner, the grape's unwrapped.
Once I get started, I could talk about wine and food forever.
But life doesn't always give us that much free time,
so I've created Hank's Wine Shorts.
Little videos where I can introduce you to good wine,
good food, good people, good places, and good things.
Music
Hi again everybody, this is Hank Zoner from the grape's unwrapped.
This is a really special day for me.
If you're at all a foodie or a wine lover,
we're sitting right now in the Boulet Test Kitchen
in Lower Manhattan in Tribeca.
David Boulet was really one of the pioneers here in Tribeca,
but we're going to spend some time today talking with Adrian Falcon,
who is the beverage director of all of the Boulet restaurants.
Adrian, thank you so much for having us in.
My pleasure, great to have you here.
So yes, we're ended in Boulet's Test Kitchen soon to be,
soon to be former Test Kitchen as we are going through
a major change in the company that doesn't obviously include
only the restaurant, but also the Test Kitchen
that also includes most of our private events
that will be switched to a new place on 21st Street.
So we're actually excited to have you here for the last,
probably a couple months of this place.
Which is amazing that this is a remarkable space
and it's going by the wayside.
But before we get to some of these changes,
you've been with the organization a number of years
and you play a really integral part here obviously
because the beverages go hand in hand with the food.
David has always been not just at the forefront,
it's reality when you come down to it.
So the Wine Hope Everett program really has to meet
that and complement that as well.
Tell us though before we get into some of that,
how did you get involved in the organization?
It's been a great run.
I'd say.
That was my first wish being a kid first of all,
New York.
My mom might have still one of those drawings of the skyline
I was doing when I was six, seven, probably.
And you grew up in Saint-Groix, friends.
And I grew up in the Alps in Saint-Groix, friends.
We have different types of buildings.
They're pretty significant.
They're a little different.
But anyway, I just arrived here in 2007 at 20, 21 years old.
And David was the first to open his door to me.
And I was a young summoner.
I was out of Paris and I said,
I really want to have that American experience,
which I was considering at first as simply an experience
and not a project of life.
This is a happy wine.
It's fresh, it's soft, it's somewhat easy drinking,
but has enough richness and consistency
to actually make it a very serious wine.
So let's cheers to happiness.
Cheers to happiness, exactly.
I love that aromatic.
This has been fantastic, Adrian.
I really appreciate you taking time out
and to share your thoughts,
to share what you've done,
what you're going to be doing,
what David's been doing.
And thank you, thank you so much for having us in this great space.
And sorry, most people can't do it.
One more time, I'm going to take this out.
I'm Hank Zona of The Grape's Unwrapped.
We'll see you again next time.
And hopefully we can bring you another great story like this.
Hi, everybody.
This is Hank Zona of The Grape's Unwrapped.
We're coming to you today from Hamburg, New Jersey,
specifically Crystal Springs Resort.
I'm in the Restaurant Latour.
And I'm with Suzanne Wagner.
Suzanne is a sommelier here.
Suzanne, thanks for having us in today.
My pleasure.
No, thank you.
This is going to be really great because one of the things we wanted to do
was come up here and see this spectacular wine collection here,
which is one of the largest in the United States.
And you're the person who oversees this on a daily basis.
And I think that's pretty cool.
And I think by the end of this,
most people are going to think it is, too.
So how long have you been here at Restaurant Latour?
I've opened Restaurant Latour 12 years ago.
So I've been with Crystal Springs for 14 years now.
Latour opened 12 years ago.
And while I was waiting for Restaurant Latour to open,
Jean Moverhill decided to build a wine cellar.
Four flights below us, literally in the cellar.
And I was asked to help the wine director at the time.
So I said yes, because at that time I had time.
And I haven't left the cellar since.
Well, it's a great place to not have to leave.
It really is spectacular as we'll see soon.
The restaurant grew out of the resort
and out of Jean's wine collection.
I'm not mistaken, right?
That's right, yes.
He built a clubhouse 15 years ago.
14 years ago he decided to build a wine cellar.
And then about 13 years ago he said,
the wine cellar is really taking on a nice shape.
So we really should have a fine dining restaurant
to offer the wines we have in the cellar.
And that's when the thought of Latour came about.
Today is a restaurant that is perennially
in the top 25 in New Jersey.
It's recognized as one of the finest wine collections
in wine restaurants in the United States.
12 years, actually, since the restaurant's open,
you've seen some significant changes
both in the way people dine and the way people drink wine.
Yes.
Give us an example.
Executive Chef Anthony Bucco
and Chef Martina Kowiecka
really focus on local ingredients,
seasonal ingredients, everything fresh, quite light.
There's a French touch to it,
the food is really light, very nicely presented.
You can easily have five courses or a seven course menu
and not feel...
Happy wheel there.
Yes, exactly.
Before we go downstairs to check on
the roughly 75,000 bottles that are here,
which is a fascinating number.
And hopefully we'll be able to really show
just how special it is down there
and the breadth of the collection.
We have something on the table that you said you like
and it sort of fits in with the philosophy
of what's coming out of the kitchen these days, correct?
That's correct.
I'm really excited about it and it's from California.
It's from Dry Creek Valley, from the Old World Winery.
David Trowbridge is the owner.
He is mainly growing organic grapes.
When you taste a natural wine
compared to commercially produced wine,
you really can taste a difference.
And it's the perfect way to wet our whistle
as we hit the elevator to go down
into the four floors below, four floors just like we are,
into what's going to be a remarkable
playland of sorts, a Disney land for me of wine.
So we will see you at the elevator
and then head on down, we'll be back in a moment.
So Suzanne, we are in...
This is really the heart of the collection.
This is the Bordeaux room.
And just to let you all know,
there's a tour that's done here every day
at three o'clock for any guests on the property.
But they get to come along the outside.
I'm the lucky guy, I guess, to actually come inside here.
I'm afraid to touch anything.
It's a bed of magnums of a who's who of Bordeaux.
And you said that this is...
You referred to this as?
My nursery.
Your nursery.
Yes.
They just lay here like babies.
Don't say a word.
They're beautiful babies, they're very well bred babies.
Yes, they are.
This is really as good as it gets.
It's a who's who of Bordeaux finest.
It's part of the collection, isn't it?
It started, Jean was a big Bordeaux collector.
Jean loved his Bordeaux.
That's really what he appreciated the most.
We have 50 of them.
50?
So the 50 Imperials alone are worth over a million dollars currently.
That's why I'm not touching any of these bottles, by the way.
Let's move on to the next room.
So thank you, thank you so much for having us.
My pleasure.
Cheers.
Cheers to you.
You're welcome back anytime.
Thank you.
I like hearing that.
I don't hear that from a lot of my friends.
This is Hank Zilla with the Grape Zone Wrap.
Join me next time as we get to know wine and share some great stories.
It's vague, it's huge, but it's, you know, it's the biggest market in the world.
That's what people all know.
So the biggest market in the world is...
The biggest market in the world.
Give me some numbers.
Well...
How much business gets done out of here every year?
2.5 billion.
Only 2.5 billion?
Okay.
And it's fine.
And, you know, don't forget we have 22 million people in the immediate area.
Yeah, so this isn't just New York City.
It's really the metro area.
It's about 10,000 people.
Wow.
10,000 people.
Yeah, about 10,000 people in voice.
So, I mean, listen to me, and it's family for me now, you know?
Hi again, everybody.
This is Hank Zilla with the Grape Zone Wrap.
Today, we set up Brighton Early producer Mike and I from New Jersey to the Hunts Point Market in Bronx in New York City.
And we have a really special guest today.
And it's Pete Napolitano, better known to many of you as produce Pete.
Pete, thank you so much for having us here.
Good morning.
Good morning.
It's my pleasure to be here.
So, today I'm at Katzman Produce in the Hunts Point Market, a friend of my family's for over 50 years.
And this company has, I used to buy from them and now I work a couple of days a week.
You know, I keep myself busy, you know what I mean?
Working a couple of days a week.
That's great.
So, this is unusual.
A lot of times when I have a guest on, it's somebody who's not really been in front of a camera before
and I have to walk them through that.
This morning, I'm learning a bit from you how to be in front of a camera.
You've been doing this for a while, haven't you?
Yeah, well, I started about 30 years ago.
A woman walked in my store.
I had a retail store in Bourbonville, New Jersey.
And a woman walked in my store and said, I'd like to put you on television.
You sound very interested.
I was talking to her customer.
And I said, you know what?
Thank you very much.
But no, that's how smart I was, you know?
She called back about 25, 30 times.
And I kept telling her, no, no, no, no, no.
One day, I came back from the market.
My wife said, go home and change.
They're coming to pick you up in a car.
I said, why?
She goes, they're going to be on television.
I said, I told them, no, 30 times.
She goes, it'll be good for business.
Well, you know what?
All the success that I've had in television,
my wife takes full advantage of it.
Because she's the one who said, I put you there.
And she's absolutely right.
She made you.
If it wasn't for her, I never would have been on it.
I never would have done it.
So, you know, and I went on a local show, did it by 1992.
NBC saw me, signed me, and I've been at NBC for 25 years,
which is a miracle.
And it's been interesting because in 25, 30 years,
people out there are much more interested in learning.
They don't just want to eat their food.
They want to know about it, don't they?
You know what they do is they put you in a certain, you know,
zone of people that watch you.
At one time, produce peak was 59 to 72.
That was the age group.
Now produce peak is 19 to 30.
Now why?
Because people are at the gym.
People are there.
People are more health conscious and stuff like that.
So, as I always do, I bring things back around to wine.
When we were putting this segment together,
I was thinking to myself, you know,
I can talk about what wines pair with vegetables.
I love Gruner-Veltwiener.
I love dry rosés with vegetables.
I also kind of picked a wine that I think goes great with fruits.
Moscato D'Asti is, to me, a great, great fruit wine.
But I'm doing something a little bit different today.
Pizza special guest.
So I want to pick out a special wine.
I'm carrying my wine today to my guest, not to the food.
To the region.
To the region.
To the region.
To Paul Otano.
He's Napoli Don.
His family comes from the Naples region.
My paternal grandfather came from there as well.
So what I picked out today was a fiano di Avalino.
A white wine that is native to the Naples area.
And Avalino is right outside of Naples.
I guess you can think of it as what Birkin County is to New York City.
Avalino is to Naples, correct?
Right outside.
So Pete, I really appreciate you making some time to see me.
Oh, this was a lot of fun.
I really enjoyed it.
And Salud.
Salud.
And Chin-Chang.
Salud.
See you.
I was telling Pete that as a kid, I can remember my first wine-based dessert used to be my
father in the summer would cut up fresh peaches and put them into a glass of red wine.
You told me about a little bit different from that.
We call it, my father used to call it peccol.
At the end of the season, especially in September, into October, peaches start to dry out.
They'll dry and everything.
So what happens is they take the peach and it's almost like a sponge.
They cut it up.
We put it in red wine.
We soak it in there and then we eat the peaches.
Oh, it was great.
It was absolutely terrific.
I'm going to be trying that actually this week.
So it sounds fantastic.
It's a nice wine.
It's a nice wine.
It's kind of almost ending the day.
We're almost ending the day here at the market, correct?
Well, you're in a produce business.
You're ending the day.
It's eight o'clock in the morning.
That's right.
So this is a good way to kind of end the day with our shift here at the Hunts Point Market.
Pete, I want to thank you so much for making time to have us here and to share some of
your stories again.
Because, you know, again, I think we're both on the same page with that.
It's about storytelling and giving people a little bit of information along the way.
Well, thank you very much.
It was a pleasure being here with you.
Salute.
Salute.
This is Time Zone's The Great Sung Raps.
See you again next time.
Produce is meant to be eaten not stored.
Supplied demand equals price.
And the less anything travels, the better it is.
Food and memory, memory and food.
Churty is the key to anything in produce.
And every night when I go to bed, when I wake up in the morning, all night long, I'm dreaming.
I'm putting tomatoes up.
I'm putting tomatoes up.
Just for somebody who worked like a dog your whole life, that would have been a nightmare.
I said to a no with my life.
Hi again, everybody.
This is Hank's owner, The Grape's Unwrapped.
It's a beautiful summer day.
Actually probably one of the hottest summer days of the year.
So I thought that'd be a great day to come to a water buffalo farm here in New Jersey and western New Jersey in Asbury.
So I'm going to say right now greetings from Asbury, New Jersey and Riverine Ranch.
Here I am with the owners of Riverine Ranch, Courtney and Brian Foley.
Guys, thanks for having us out here today.
Oh, it's our pleasure.
Thanks for coming out.
It really is.
It's a beautiful setting.
You are raising water buffalo.
We are.
In New Jersey.
As crazy as it sounds, we are.
They're not native to New Jersey, are they?
No, originally they're native to Asia.
And you're not native to New Jersey?
No, originally I'm native to Long Island.
Native to Long Island.
So we're going to talk a little bit more as we go on this morning to hear Courtney and Brian's story and how they came to be here in western New Jersey and raising water buffalo for cheese and meat.
Be back in a moment.
Brian, you guys grew up in suburbia, plain view of Long Island, right?
And whose idea, whose bright idea was this to have before him?
Right here, Courtney's idea.
Courtney always wanted a farm and as we were living, actually at that time we moved to Queens.
We were living in Queens.
Not a lot of farm land there.
Not a lot of farm land out there.
And she always talked about owning a farm and living a farm life and I thought she was crazy.
And little by little, little by little you end up listening to her and at the end of the day she was 100%, right?
It's a beautiful life out here and I owe it all to her.
So, but you're a Long Islander in New Jersey?
Yeah, New Jersey.
That was a tough one.
I looked all over the place and when he kept on saying to go look in New Jersey, I said no way.
And then finally I came here and went on.
He came out to Warren County.
It's just a beautiful area.
And it's just a beautiful place to raise animals and start a farm.
So again, she was right.
That works great for your relationship, doesn't it?
So you wanted to have a farm?
I always did.
But you didn't start with water buffalo?
No.
Like when I was a child, just like every child wants to have a pony and a couple chickens and lo and behold turned me to this.
So you started with sheep and goats?
So when we moved out to Jersey, we had no experience with livestock and so we bought a few goats.
We knew we wanted a milk and animal.
So we started with them.
We also started growing heirloom tomatoes because we had to feel out the market.
Were we marketeers?
Like was this going to be our life?
And so we started selling the tomatoes, high quality heirloom tomatoes and we loved it.
So then we did some research and as you know, we love cheese.
And so we were looking to diversify ourselves because we knew we wanted to milk a larger animal than a sheep or a goat.
So then we started doing some research on animals that would be efficient on eating only grasses.
You're really focusing on real grass, pasture and hay.
Which has a big impact on the flavor of the milk and the meat.
Exactly.
We chose the water buffalo because as we were looking for different breeds of cows, we came across Italy and the water buffalo.
We saw that there weren't many farms in the U.S. doing it.
We said, hey, this might be a great idea.
This is my first ever glass of water buffalo milk.
But this reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to drink milk out of those Flintstone jelly jars, the Wolches jelly jars.
And even though there's no Flintstone characters on here.
There's a little Fred and Barney who also were members of the Royal Order of Water Buffalo.
Cheers!
Cheers!
I'm in an alleyway in Elizabeth, New Jersey and I'm going to be honest with you.
If you're in an alley somewhere, it's usually not a good sign.
But this is the type of alley that when people walk down this alley, they get pretty excited.
Because this is the alley leading to the door, right back there as you see where it says enter, to Allison Tillo's Brick Governing Pizzeria.
Which is arguably the best pizza in New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area.
They've been doing it this way, the right way and when you hear from Al, toward decades and decades.
A business that started with his grandfather as a baker, passed down to his father and now to Al himself.
So we're going to go inside, spend some time with Al and really, I suspect it's going to be pretty amusing.
So, come on in with me, there's not a lot of room but there's an awful lot of flavor in there.
And that's not just the pizza, you get a lot of original flavor from Al, the owner himself too.
See you in a moment.
Hi again everybody, this is Hank Zonner, The Grape's Unwrapped.
If you live in New Jersey, you eat pizza.
And if you want to eat really good pizza, probably the best pizza in New Jersey, arguably.
You've come to Santillo's Brick Governing Pizza in Elizabeth.
I'm here with the owner, the master, Al Santillo. Al, thanks for having us in.
Well, thank you for coming.
We appreciate it. You've been doing this for a while, a few years, right?
I was born here.
You were born here, you grew up in this building.
There's very building up in here since I was a kid.
Now, what's really interesting, as we were talking beforehand about your story,
is you're not a pizza-making family, you're a bread-making family.
So, you came to this originally from bread-making.
Correct.
So, you like to think that it's a little bit different approach than maybe a lot of places out there, huh?
I consider myself a bread baker that makes pizza.
And by most people's standards, really, really good pizza. He won a few awards over the years.
That's right. I think we know what we're doing.
You got it down pat by now.
Your grandfather started this business as a bread-making business, I should say, when?
I'm going to say he came to the country in 1912, and I think by 1918 he had a business.
Then your father came into the business?
Well, my father always worked for his dad and his brothers. My father had two brothers, and they all worked there.
And then came down to you?
Well, my father started at this location in 1957.
The thing is, they were crazy about this bread-goven because everybody wanted their bread and pizza cooked in the bread-goven because they thought it was healthy.
They didn't want metal oven because they considered metal mouths.
This oven was built between 1909 and 1912 for three years to build the oven.
What you got going for you is that I'm over here buying all the ingredients.
With this pizza that I'm making, yeah, I made the dough.
You grated that cheese?
I grated the cheese, and these tomatoes, the reason I'm making this, this is a nice pizza to have right now.
These are some of the best tomatoes that I've had over here in years and years.
So you use these same San Marzano's for all your sauces?
Yeah, if you look in here, these are the pieces that I have.
This is the best pizza sauce that you're going to get.
It's beautiful.
It really is a nice, rich, dark color.
I'm not going to ask you what you're putting there, because you're not going to tell me.
There's a lot of trouble to get this oregano, too.
I make a special trip to an undisclosed warehouse location in the port of New York and North,
and I get the real oregano from Greece or Turkey.
So when you started, how many different kinds of pizzas were you making?
Well, first I'm going to tell you my grandfather's day.
Okay.
He made one size pizza.
This was it.
Okay.
So we wanted a pizza.
You got a pizza this size.
That size.
It might have been a tiny bit thicker.
This is like, right here, this is as thin as you can make it.
It's probably only half a pound of dough right there.
Okay.
When that comes out, I prefer to make everything on the well-done side, because if not, it's
not going to have enough body.
Gotcha.
It's going to come out, and it's going to be, we'll be throwing a tiny moushad.
Moushad, huh?
Yeah.
Nothing is worse than a moushad.
That's right.
There's nothing worse than a moushad.
Moushad!
No moushad!
I'll say better.
Moushad is no good.
No moushad.
No moushad.
As I can tell you everything I know, but you're still 40 years behind me.
How's that helping you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you make the pizza.
While we're waiting for the meatballs to come out, I decided to snag a piece of eggplant.
I love eggplant.
I can eat this whole tray probably.
The beautiful stuff.
I love what I did.
And basil, do you ever use basil?
Not anymore.
Not anymore.
I love what I do is because I love being around people who love what they do.
Like the folks who are around me right now.
I love what I do.
And steamy almost.
Steamy almost.
Steamy almost.
Steamy almost.
Steamy almost.
Steamy almost.
