There is a particular Monday-morning quiet that settles over the city once the Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival packs up the Seaport. Four days of tasting tents, skyline pours and 50-plus events, and then — nothing. The ticket spreadsheets get archived, the group chats go silent, and every wine lover in New York looks around and wonders what happens next.
Plenty, as it turns out. The last ten days of October are when the industry itself comes out to play, and November is when the smart money starts planning Thanksgiving. Here is your next four weeks in NYC wine: the tasting that closes out the fall festival season, the new rooms worth a seat, and the bottles to buy before the holiday crush hits every wine shop in Manhattan.
One Last Grand Pour: Wine Spectator’s New York Wine Experience
If you only do one big-ticket event this month, make it this one. Wine Spectator’s New York Wine Experience runs October 22–24 at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, with the Grand Tasting pouring on the 22nd and 23rd. This is not a stroll-and-sip festival. It is a room full of winemakers standing behind their own bottles — first growths, cult Napa, top-tier Champagne, benchmark Barolo — and the pace is closer to a tasting seminar than a party.
The practical advice: eat first, wear shoes you can stand in for three hours, and pick a strategy. Either chase the producers you have never tasted and will never afford by the bottle, or work one region end to end and actually learn something. Do not try to do both. The spit buckets are there for a reason, and the people having the best time are the ones who use them.
The Calendar Goes Quiet — And That Is the Point
After the 24th, the festival calendar thins out and the city’s wine life moves indoors and gets smaller. This is the good part. Late October and early November are when the best wine bars in NYC are at their most civilized: no queue at the door, a seat at the bar, and a sommelier with enough time to actually talk to you.
It is also the moment the new fall openings have found their rhythm. If you have been waiting to try the season’s most-hyped rooms without a two-hour wait, this is your window.
New Rooms Worth a Seat
Stars (East Village)
The team behind Claud and Penny opened a bar that answers the question their restaurants kept provoking: is this a wine bar or a restaurant? Stars is a wine bar, full stop. Twelve seats around a horseshoe bar, deviled eggs, and a list of more than a thousand bottles — with exactly 88 of them under $88. It opens at 4pm. Be there at 4pm.
Friars (Lower East Side)
Patricia Howard and Ed Szymanski turned Dame into one of the city’s great small restaurants, and now they have added an 18-seat wine bar with its own entrance at the same address as their new counter-service spot, Chippy’s. Fish, chips, and a serious glass list is a very strong argument for an early Thursday.
Bar à Part (West Village)
The Zimmi’s crew opened this 15-seat wine bar and cafe next door in early October, and it may be the most pleasant room to open this fall: small plates, a deep list, and pastries — savory and sweet — that make it as viable at 10am as at 10pm. The kind of place that quietly becomes a habit.
La Compagnie Wine Bar (Flatiron)
The people behind Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels brought their act uptown to 6 West 24th Street, a few blocks from the Flatiron Building. Same philosophy as the SoHo original: a list built for curiosity rather than trophy hunting, and staff who will steer you somewhere you have not been.
Further out, two neighborhood spots keep coming up in conversation: Gigi’s in Greenpoint, where the wine selection is full of things you have never heard of and the roast chicken is the reason to stay, and Bodega Nights in Bushwick, which has more personality per square foot than most of Manhattan. And keep an eye on the Justine’s on Hudson space — a new wine bar is slated there for November.
The Thanksgiving Problem, Solved by Cabernet Franc
Every year the same question lands in every wine shop in the city: what do I pour with turkey, stuffing, cranberry, sweet potato, and three opinions from your relatives? The answer, increasingly, is New York Cabernet Franc.
It makes sense. The grape is aromatic and herbal rather than heavy, with enough acidity to cut through dark meat and enough red fruit to handle cranberry sauce. Finger Lakes bottlings lean lithe and peppery, Long Island versions pick up a little more weight and savor, and Hudson Valley producers split the difference. It is local, it is affordable, and it does not fight anything on the table.
If you want to taste before you commit, CourseHorse has a New York Cabernet Franc class on Tuesday, November 10, 6:30–8:30pm that walks through Finger Lakes, Long Island and Hudson Valley side by side and pairs them with Thanksgiving favorites. Six pours, one very practical education.
Tastings and Classes to Book Now
- Thursday, October 29 — Sicilian Wine Class at Winkler & Samuels. Currently sold out, which tells you something; get on the waitlist.
- Saturday, November 7 — NYC Autumn Wine & Food Festival, the 12th annual edition from Crush Wine Experiences, back at the Grand Hall at St. Mary’s on the Lower East Side. Afternoon and evening sessions; tickets and session times here. Also on the 7th: RGNY’s Día de los Muertos harvest finale on the North Fork, if you would rather spend the day in the vines.
- Thursday, November 5 — The New Iberia, a Spanish-and-Portuguese tasting at NYC Wine Company, 6:30–8:15pm.
- Wednesday, November 18 — Volcanic Wine Class at Winkler & Samuels, $65. Etna, Santorini, the Canaries — soils that taste like themselves.
- Saturday, November 21 — Thanksgiving Wine Class, same shop, same price. Two hours that will save you an hour of staring at a shelf the following week.
Mark the Calendar: Beaujolais Nouveau, November 19
By French law, Beaujolais Nouveau cannot be sold before the third Thursday of November, which this year is Thursday, November 19. The ritual is older than most of us and sillier than some of us would like, but it is also genuinely fun, and New York does it well.
The French American Chamber of Commerce holds its annual tasting at Brownstone Social, 109 West 25th Street, 6–8pm — registration closes November 18 at 10am, so decide now. If you would rather skip the ticket, almost every French bistro in the city will have bottles open that night and through the weekend. Order a glass of the nouveau, then do the thing that actually matters: order a glass of cru Beaujolais from Morgon or Fleurie next to it, and taste the difference for yourself.
What to Drink This Week
Three bottles that fit the moment, whether you are celebrating the end of festival season or getting ahead of the holidays:
- A Finger Lakes Cabernet Franc — chill it slightly, twenty minutes in the fridge. Herbal, bright, absurdly food-friendly, and usually under $30.
- A cru Beaujolais — Morgon if you want structure, Fleurie if you want perfume. Buy two: one for now, one for the 19th.
- A Finger Lakes Riesling, dry — the single most useful bottle in America for a table with this many competing flavors, and the one your uncle who “does not like white wine” will ask about.
The festival tents are down, the lists are printed, and the city’s best bars finally have room at the counter. Go sit at one. October in New York only gets quieter from here, and that is the whole appeal.