If Fine Dining Is Dead, Why Isn't The Bear A Wine Bar?
If Fine Dining Is Dead, Why Isn't The Bear A Wine Bar?
Plus: American dry cider recs for this holiday weekend. And why Barolo bros get Barbaresco all wrong.
This week, in The New Wine Review. I tackle the issue of wine and fine dining as depicted in Hulu’s hit show, The Bear.
I trust many readers have binge-watched season 3 of The Bear at this point? If so, you know the reviews have been overwhelmingly negative. The New Yorker called it “overstuffed and undercooked,” Eater called it “a mess,” and Slate declared “The Bear Is Not a Good Show,” adding “it’s a bad show in especially annoying ways.” I’ve been a big fan of The Bear. But I agree that the story of Carmy, Sydney, Richie, Marcus, Tina, Fak, and the rest of the gang—who convert a local family sandwich shop into a fine-dining destination—has gone off the rails.
For me the fundamental flaw of The Bear this season is how far it’s leaned into fine-dining culture—what Eater calls “fine dining propaganda overkill.” In the first episode, Carmy announces that he’s monomaniacally focused on earning a Michelin star, and that the restaurant will now offer a nine-course $175 tasting menu that will never repeat a dish. We see flashbacks of Carmy snipping edible flowers, learning to truss a chicken, and so many shots of tweezering and drizzling dishes—often it feels like we’re inside an episode of Chef’s Table, along with cameos from famous chefs such as Daniel Boulud of Daniel and Thomas Keller of The French Laundry.
The fine-dining milieu that The Bear depicts doesn’t feel at all fresh or of the moment. Just last year, in the wake of Noma closing, everyone was literally talking about the “death of fine dining.” Noma’s chef, René Redzepi, was even quoted at the time saying, “It’s unsustainable. Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work.” Yet look at who turns up in a cameo in the first episode of The Bear’s third season: René Redzepi himself!
In my NWR piece, I suggest that if The Bear was a real restaurant opening in 2024, it would likely be a wine bar (because every restaurant is basically a wine bar now). But the near absence of wine in The Bear was not missed by many in the wine world.
There’s been some hand-wringing in the wine world this week about The Bear, the Chicago restaurant drama that was Hulu’s most-streamed show of last year. Season three dropped last week, and both Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast have already published pieces bemoaning the absence of wine in the fictional fine-dining restaurant. About The Bear’s “near-complete neglect of wine service,” Wine Spectator says: “For a show that glamorizes (nearly) everything cool and gritty about the fine dining world, the message seems to be that wine . . . isn’t that cool or gritty.”
There’s so much to unpack in that statement, especially during a moment when the wine world is already freaking out about the doom and gloom reports that younger people don’t think wine is cool.
Click to read more of my commentary here.
Why Barolo Bros Get Barbaresco All Wrong
Also, recently in The New Wine Review, I wrote about my beloved Nebbiolo, calling for more love to be bestowed upon Barbaresco, which may offer some of the best wine value in the world right now. Check out my deep dive into Piedmont’s premier wines.
Are there any regions in the world more gatekept than Barolo and Barbaresco?…
The gatekeepers tell us that we must wait, patiently, for Barolo. Of course, Barolo must always be aged a minimum of three years, by law, before it can be released. But even after release, the common wisdom espoused by critics, sommeliers, and influencers is that we must wait another 5 or 10 or 20 years—or longer—before a Barolo is truly ready to drink.
The idea that young Barolo is always too big and aggressive—with growling tannins that might rip your face off—is just one of those deeply ingrained beliefs in our wine culture. This reputation has also fostered a certain machismo around Barolo, as well as a strange gendering that happens when Barolo is compared to its neighboring Nebbiolo-based wine, Barbaresco. We’re often told that Barolo is “masculine,” while Barbaresco is “feminine.”
This gendering of Barolo and Barbaresco, mind you, is not a thing of the past. You’ll still regularly find it in wine media, and the most-referenced book on the region is called Barolo and Barbaresco: The King and Queen of Italian Wine. On my recent trip to Piedmont, last month, I was told by several producers: “We call Barolo the king, and Barbaresco the queen.” At least two others told me: “Barolo is the man. Barbaresco is the wife.”
To be clear, in this cringey metaphor, Barbaresco is stereotyped as “feminine” simply because of its reputation of being “approachable” and ready to drink earlier, with softer tannins. Meanwhile Barolo is defined as “masculine” mainly due to the bolder, harder tannins of its youth, before more years of cellar aging.
How this masculine/feminine thing plays out in America is unsurprising. Dudes love Barolo, and mostly give Barbaresco a pass. A friend who works as wine director for a popular Italian restaurant in Manhattan said she often tries to dissuade men—almost always men—from ordering Barolos that are still too young. But her proposals of Barbaresco at similar or lower price points generally fall on deaf ears. “It’s nearly impossible to sell Barbaresco to guys that demand Barolo,” she says.
Narratives in wine, especially Italian wine, are difficult to change. The reason for this is obvious: There are no term limits in wine criticism. Barolo and Barbaresco have been defined by entrenched gatekeepers—such as my former boss—for at least two decades.
Also, check out my tasting report, with more than a dozen Barbaresco bottles to buy now.
American Dry Cider For Our American Holiday Weekend
Finally, I wrote an extensive tasting report on dry American cider, focusing on northeastern ciders from New York and New England. I revisited many of the same producers I wrote about in my book The Cider Revival. Let me tell you, the top quality ciders just keep getting better and better—and drier and drier.
Check out my cider report in The New Wine Review.
A cider evangelist like myself faces a couple of problems when we talk about cider, especially in the summer. First of all, American cider has an autumn problem. Too often, the perception of cider remains that of fall, of leaf peeping season, of the time when pumpkin spice lattes arrive on the scene. The perception leads many to think of cider as something best consumed in a flannel shirt or a cozy sweater, over a crackling fire after a day of pumpkin picking and apple-cider doughnuts. It’s a magical, romantic association, but it’s also limiting—relegating cider to a seasonal niche. Offer your friends a cider on a sunny day at the beach and they might look at you a little funny.
But perception is not reality. Cider is not just for apple-picking season. Let’s remember that grapes are also harvested in the fall, yet no one limits themselves to drinking wine only from September to December. To its credit, the American Cider Association has been working to counterbalance the autumn dilemma. Since before the pandemic, the trade group has promoted American-made cider as a Fourth of July drink of choice.
It seems to be working. Summer has become cider’s biggest season. Last summer, for instance, the Washington Post reported that cider’s highest period of sales in 2022 and 2023 was the four-week stretch from June 20 to July 17.
So for this year’s Fourth, it feels like a no-brainer: Drink American cider. Especially for those who are not yet cider fans, our national holiday feels like a great opportunity to discover just how good cider has become.
Who, with any credibility, says or believes that? It might change but it’s NOT dead.