foodanddrink
amusebouche By Adam Erace
food
’WICH BREW
classifieds
RYBREW | 2816 W. Girard Ave., 215-763-1984,
rybreadcafe.com. Hours: Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-8 p.m.
CASE TO CASE: Alicante grapes ready for the crush. MARK STEHLE
[ cellar report ]
GRAPE EXPECTATIONS Cherry Hill might not have an AVA, but there’s some serious winemaking happening at The Wine Room. By Caroline Russock
A
n industrial park in Cherry Hill does not have the same visual appeal as, say, the sun-drenched hills of Napa Valley, but just off the New Jersey Turnpike, they’re making some serious juice at The Wine Room (1 Esterbrook Lane). Owned by husband and wife Kenton (“Master Wineax”) and Kathy (“Quality Control Taster”) Nice, The Wine Room offers a chance for amateur wine enthusiasts to create custom-blended bottles from grape to cork. Head winemaker Michael D’Auria refers to himself as the customer that never left. The former chef walked into The Wine Room some 10 years ago and ended up coming on full-time, managing both More on: The Wine Room and the Nice’s Franklinville winery, Coda Rossa. At the winery, D’Auria specializes in native Jersey grapes like chamborcin petit verdot along with more widely known varietals. But at The Wine Room, the grapes come from a bit further away; California grapes are brought in in the fall and Chilean fruit arrives in the spring. Customer “winemakers” are offered a chance to create custom blends, ranging from a powerful meritage that brings together old-vine zinfandel, petite sirah and carignan to a simple vino da tavola with alicante and grenche. Aged in oak bar-
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rels from Missouri, wines at The Wine Room are available in full, half and quarter barrels, which come out to 20, 10 and five cases of wine, respectively. While loading a crusher with inky-purple alicante bunches, D’Auria explains that 750 pounds of grapes go into a full barrel. Imported from Italy, the crusher uses rubberized gears to squeeze the grapes and separate the stems. “We want to crush the grape but not the seed. If you bite into the seed, it’s bitter. We want the seeds to go through fermentation since the skins and seeds are what gives the wine tannins.” In a warehouse painted with tromp l’oeil murals of an Italian village, the wine-making process happens in five very hands-on stages — after an initial visit to taste the varietals offered for blending, the customer-vintners return for the crush; the pressing of the grapes a week later, racking (removing the sediment from the wine) and 10 months later, the bottling. “The wines that we make here are not MORE FOOD AND for aging, they’re for drinking,” D’Auria DRINK COVERAGE says. “They’re not as high in tannins and AT C I T Y P A P E R . N E T / we don’t use a whole lot of sulfites as a M E A LT I C K E T. preservative. You want to have it consumed within five years.” Of course, consumption isn’t really an issue for winemakers at The Wine Room. The breakdown per bottle comes in at around $11, a damned good deal for a custom-made wine complete with your own private label. Oh, and if you harbor fantasies about crushing your grapes the old-fashioned way (aka. the old foot stomp), The Wine Room is more than happy to accommodate. (caroline@citypaper.net)
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³ SMALL-BATCH COFFEE house. Indie art gallery. Bike boutique. If there were an amenity checklist for gentrifying neighborhoods to complete before officially “arriving,” it would read something like this. A craft-beer bottle shop and a new-school sandwich place are two other must- haves, and in Brewerytown, whose main drag still looks more Crip than hip, the new Rybrew definitely satisfies one requirement, maybe both. Rybrew is an offshoot of Rybread, a cheery crust cubicle in Fairmount that shares a block with firstworld businesses like London Grill along with a pet groomer and a holistic massage studio. Meanwhile, just a few blocks north is more of a mixed bag. Such is life in a transitional hood. But for savvy business owners like Rybrew’s Ryan Pollock, who lives two blocks away with his girlfriend, being an early adopter can pay dividends. Located in the middle of the block, 40-seat Rybrew occupies a onetime toy store with a wrought-iron mezzanine and a table fashioned from an old toydisplay carousel. It’s a big room with cool bones but little charm, and a gloomy paint job that made me feel like a character in a Zoloft commercial. Or maybe it was just the drab weather outside, keeping walk-in customers at bay and the phone ringing off the hook? But with the friendly staff buzzing around fielding takeout, my eat-in order got delayed. Waiting 25 minutes for a few sandwiches seems a bit excessive when you’re the only customer in the place. I used the time to browse a paradise of 250 craft bottles. When the named-for-cities sandwiches did arrive, I was half-pleased. The Le Bus bread was impeccable, and Pollock’s mom’s chicken-salad recipe (the Denver), bursting with juicy grapes, had that fresh-poached flavor. But the sourdough-slabbed San Antonio and the panini-pressed Buffalo starred industrial Boar’s Head lunch meats, which makes it hard to take Rybrew seriously. Pollock says he plans to start roasting his own meats; with the larger kitchen, there’s no excuse not to. They were out of soup, but I did try a salad — the Austin, a very nice Southwestern setup with chicken, avocado, corn and a peppy lime vinaigrette. Dessert was limited to a lonely chocolate cupcake. Rybrew feels less like a fully developed, independent establishment and more like a glorified commissary with beer. The menus at Rybread and Rybrew are the same. If only my enthusiasm were. (adam.erace@citypaper.net)
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