From the Ground Up:
Building Gotham’s new wine cellar

By Bret Csencsitz

When Gotham closed in March 2020, one of the first orders of business was parting with our extensive wine cellar. No one believed I was really going to reopen Gotham, and everyone felt eager to face facts and steel ourselves against COVID. That Zachys auction, reduced to online of course, was a sad and symbolic day for me on many levels, saying good-bye to wines the likes of which I’d never see again, and watching 35 years of wine collecting be suddenly undone. It was like seeing Gotham, my second home of 13 years, get sold off bit-by-bit. As soon as six months later, when my new partner Kevin Conrad and I did buy Gotham, I knew that one of our biggest challenges was going to be rebuilding a Michelin-level wine cellar, one worthy of Gotham’s wine-loving clientele.

The silver lining of every blank slate is the chance to reflect and reinvent with intention. We were going to have re-create our cellar, quite literally, from the ground up. In that process we would examine winemaking best practices with the earth in mind and a global eye that goes beyond the biggest names. To do this I would have no better partner than Heidi Turzyn, Gotham’s longtime wine director and now co-owner of Beaupierre Wines & Spirits with her husband Yannick Benjamin of Harlem’s Contento and Wine on Wheels fame.

Joining us as consultant, Heidi has worked with me to build a diverse list of well-made wines from around the world, wines that respect both process and place. My late friend Mark Tarlov defined such wines as “memorable.” To that I will add the word “meaningful.” These are two subjective terms that are hard to define, yet unmistakable when experienced. With Mark, who founded Chapter 24/now Rose & Arrow Estate, starting in 2015 I helped blend Gotham’s own Oregon pinot noir. (See our 2018 article on that odyssey.) Then in the summer of 2021, just before Mark passed away, Kevin and I began working with Rose & Arrow’s new winemaker, Felipe Ramirez, to create the sixth vintage of 12 East 12.

12 East 12. Our wine, our address. Any discussion of meaningful and memorable wine goes back to terroir, that broadest of terms meaning the complete set of conditions that define a place. Since reopening one year ago, we at Gotham have had to look closely at our own “terroir”; what makes Gotham Gotham? Is it how you feel when you walk up 12th Street as much as how we look inside? What does it mean to respect a “sense of place” when attempting to re-create a plant, if you will, with such deep roots? One thing has been clear; successfully reopening Gotham has called for teasing out the ideal between nostalgic and new in our room, in the spirit of Gotham’s culinary history via Chef Paprocki’s new menus, and in our fine yet friendly service style. Our reopening journey has been largely about respecting the terroir of our 6,000 square feet at 12 East 12th Street.

This worldview extends to Gotham’s wine list today, a selection of wines that respect terroir through a balance of nature and nurture that seems analogous to every human endeavor. We hope you will join us soon to experience the continuously expanding cellar that Heidi and our wonderful new wine team have poured their hearts into.

One final note. A few weeks ago I had the honor of joining my friend Judy Tarlov, Mark’s widow, at Le Bernardin to sell his cellar. It was another heavy-hearted Zachys good-bye that was also a celebration of Mark’s passions and extraordinary palate, his extensive joie de vivre. It had a painful finality; never again would I share a wine with Mark, who used to bring extraordinary bottles to enjoy over burgers or steaks at Tribeca Grill, and his own wines would now be dispersed like the old Gotham’s, untraceable.

And then it struck me that everything Mark taught me will live on, not only in Gotham’s original wine but in our new cellar (so far 1/5 the size of our old—not bad for six months!). He’ll be a muse in our ongoing quest for meaningful and memorable wines. Through this, through his family, the movies he left, the meaning and memories he made, Mark will live on. So here’s to friendship, quite possibly the terroir of life.