Grace starts monthly wine program at “pour man’s prices”
As corkage fees drop like flies across the city, Grace Upstairs is hosting a monthly wine event starting on September 23 at which owner-sommelier Lesle Gibson will be serving glasses served at break-even points. “Now that I’ve settled here for a year and a half I want to start focusing more on what I love because I’m a sommelier first and foremost,” she says. “I became a sommelier in the late ’90s, back when there weren’t a lot of women doing it. It was a real boys’ club back then so it was a lot of fun cracking into that.”
This month, Grace is featuring rare California wines (Gibson previously opened three celebrity hot spots in L.A.) such as Santa Rita’s Brewer-Clifton Pinot Noir ($24 a glass). On October 21, it’ll be Napa Valley’s Ramey Wine Cellars Chardonnay ($18) and Rouge ($18). On November 4, winemaker Tom Eddy will be at the restaurant with his Cabernet Sauvignon ($34) and, on December 9, it’s Biale Zinfandel ($22) and Petite Sirah ($23). The wines also come with canapés made by chef Dustin Gallagher.
“I privately ordered all these wines. You can’t just go into a store and buy them,” says Gibson. “We’ll just see how this goes through until December. After that I’d love to get some Ontario winemakers on board.”
As for those who’d like to purchase these limited edition wines at the restaurant, Gibson says she’ll refer them to Barrel Select, the importing company she worked with to bring the wines into Grace.
Eight Wine Bar & Restaurant at the Cosmopolitan Hotel has $1/oz. every Friday, at least 20 wines available, great wines, we had lots of fun last week, good to find great promos like the one at Grace.
Grace is an amazing, much-needed neighbourhood restaurant. I frequent alot and have never been disappointed.
BUT, I must take issue with jim above; Eight Wine Bar is one of the WORST places in the city, and yes, I would even put it below Veritas for food. I don’t even want to recall what nasty, nasty, food we had a little while ago and if I didn’t have a client staying at the hotel, we would never have gone back. Gross, cold food that my kid could have made taste better. There is no $1/oz wine in the WORLD that would get me back to that place. Oh, and don’t be fooled, obviously, the wines they have are shit for $1/oz. When we went they pushed this ridiculous, cheap promo on us and every single decent wine we asked for, they were “out of”. Mind you, they had just begun this promo and they were out already? Something smells fishy…a little false advertising maybe?