The old wisdom said a wine list was a hierarchy: Burgundy and Bordeaux at the top, a house pour at the bottom, and a sommelier standing by to tell you what your food required. That version of wine has strong competition. New Yorkers are drinking more thoughtfully, less concerned with how much is in the glass than with what’s in it, and increasingly curious about where it came from.
The bars answering that shift look different, too: small rooms built for lingering, vast lists priced to be approached, and a plate of snacks to back the wine up rather than dictating it. No dish-to-glass pairing, no snuff; just a great glass and somewhere good to drink it.
With that, we open the new series with Stars, a small and perfect New York wine bar in the East Village.
Aim For the Stars and a Great Glass of Wine
It takes 12 seats to make one of the most quietly radical wine lists in New York. Stars, a 450-square-foot jewel box in the East Village from the team behind Claud and Penny, centers around a horseshoe-shaped zinc bar highlighted with brushed cedar. And, unlike other venues in NYC, it keeps the door and curb open to walk-ins only.
Chase Sinzer, Michelin’s 2024 New York Sommelier of the Year, opens his 1,000-bottle cellar not with a trophy, but with a section called “88 under $88.” He also keeps more than 20 wines by the glass priced between $11 and $19. Turns out that accessibility is Sinzer’s whole strategy.
“If you only have expensive wine, you’re discouraging people’s curiosity,” Sinzer said. “If you have affordable and accessible wine at all price points, nobody thinks you’re being elitist for also having high-end wine.” It’s not that they can’t pour a $35 glass, “it’s that we want 10 that are under 20 bucks, so anyone could have a glass of wine.”
The list gets built from what those people ask for, from Alsace (a Domaine Schoffit Pinot Blanc, around $65) to a touch of Jura oxidation (Domaine des Marnes Blanches “Space Monkey,” $88). Three sommeliers work the floor, and Sinzer added that the menu changes often, showcasing what his customers are asking for.
“Back in the day, people did not come to the restaurants I worked at and say, ‘I’m just really interested in a skin-contact wine from Friuli,’ you had to sell them on it,” he explained. “Now people are interested in it from the get.”
The glass he’d pour a Riesling skeptic is a bone-dry varietal from the Mosel, specifically chosen to dismantle the assumption that all Riesling is sweet. “It’s a complete shock for them when it doesn’t taste like maple syrup,” he explained. “It’s like alcoholic lemonade.”
And the food, good as it is, stays deliberately in the background. The small plates are meant more as snacks, and come small but exact. Pickled apples land like a fizzy little bite; there’s a crispy, savory potato frico; and lightly grilled shrimp served on a sweet, fluffy milk toast.
“It’s not, ‘I want to go here and have this dish,'” Sinzer said of the wine bar. “It’s, ‘I want to be with my friend, I want to catch up with my husband.’ And in order to do that, you might get some snacks.”
Stars strictly runs on no reservations, and Sinzer likes it that way. “It should just be, hey, meet me there at four, let’s see how long the wait is, we could stand and have a glass,” he said. “That’s what creates a different vibe.”
The room keeps finding new ways in, too — half-bottle carafes, rare cellar bottles opened by the glass, even a low-ABV shochu espresso martini and a weekend coffee program. For all the attention on the list, he’s clear about what actually carries the room.
“The most important part of all three of these places, in my opinion, is the hospitality,” he said. Whether you’re at the rail with a single glass or deep into a blowout meal at Penny, “the feeling should be the same.”
Visit Stars Monday through Friday from 5 p.m. until midnight; and Saturdays and Sundays 10 a.m. until midnight. 139 E. 12th St., East Village, stars-ny.com
