The Horsemen Are Drawing Nearer
Words by Aaron Lefkove | Photography by Kyle Johnson | Illustrations by Laura Mauriello
“This was not an attractive category to be in in the ‘90s,” Justin Chearno muses over a bowl of congee. “People that worked at wine stores were old guys in corduroy blazers with patches on the elbows that were really rude to you and talked about Syrah all day long,” he continues as we discuss the seismic shift natural wine has seen in the ensuing decades.
It’s February and a sliver of sun—an unfamiliar sight to New Yorkers this time of year—pours down from an overhead skylight as we chat in Daymoves, the all-day café adjacent to the wine bar and restaurant he co-owns, The Four Horsemen.
The space channels the downtown lofts where DJs like Larry Levan and David Mancuso broke underground sounds in the ‘70s—especially after dark when it becomes Nightmoves, a disco replete with an illuminated dance floor straight outta Bay Ridge circa 1977. The DJ booth is punctuated by two 1200s and a McIntosh receiver—gold standards for real heads—and massive speakers suspended from the ceiling: the kind of soundsystem that one would expect to find if they were in, say, Jamaica during the great sound clashes.
“So then what happened was Uva Wines opened in Williamsburg on North 5th in the Mini Mall,” Justin continues, recounting the embryonic early-2000s era of natural wine. “And so I got a job there and it was really just like working at a record store. It really clicked. Tons of young people were coming in. Most of them had never been in a wine store before and were really intimidated. They were shocked to see people like themselves behind the counter.”
Drawing from his experiences in music—Chearno notably did time in Turing Machine, Panthers, Pitchblende, and Unrest—he brings a bit of a crate digger’s mentality to the 600 or so bottles on the list at The Four Horsemen, somehow avoiding the condescension inherent in both wine shops and record stores.
“It's not about me telling you everything I know about wine. This is about you having a great night and getting the right bottle on your table. [This is about] letting you get on with who you're here with and getting me out of the way,” he expounds when pressed on how the restaurant demystifies some of the list’s more esoteric selections. “It's like somebody that has a bucket of everything they've ever learned about the Loire Valley. Why don't they just dump it on the guest’s head?” Justin offers with maybe a hint of sarcasm. “That person might not want to hear what this winemaker's dog's name is or the time that you were there in the spring and how beautiful it was.”
That subtle dig goes in on The Four Horsemen’s ability to remain inviting not just to insiders but to the crowds of new faces that have arrived as their profile has steadily risen.
“There are definitely ways to put great bottles in front of people and have them be like, ‘wow, this is more than I expected.’ And I think a lot of people do come here because we have a lot of stuff on the list that they don't expect to be able to order or drink,” he explains. The list at The Four Horsemen runs the gamut from rare to undiscovered nuggets hidden in plain sight for the curious to tap into. Justin elaborates: “we're deep on stuff like Rayas just as much as we're deep on stuff like [Gabrio] Bini. I like to show both sides of those things.”
We both agree the best wine lists should read like a record store that’s never been picked over—a place where digging through the cellar is as enjoyable as digging through the crates. The trophy bottles in the window are a signal of the digging to be done once you’re inside. “You definitely have people sitting right next to each other, having completely different experiences with the same wine list and the same menu. And it's a really satisfying thing,” he concludes.
Both Williamsburg and the natural wine world have grown up considerably from those nascent days back when Uva was in the Mini Mall on Bedford and the neighborhood trafficked more in “art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties” as Four Horsemen co-owner James Murphy intoned (with maybe a wisp of irony) on his 2002 single “Losing My Edge.”
But in New York City the only constant is change. Semi-occupied and—to be completely frank—hideous luxury condo towers thrown up hastily by greedy developers dot a stretch of avenue where a decade and change prior, you could’ve stumbled out of a Black Dice gig into a balmy New York City night at the intersections of Kent and Metropolitan and River Street—a place that once felt like a utopia at the edge of the world, even with the Manhattan skyline glimmering just across the East River. Now that corner just feels like anywhere else. With the neighborhood changing at a steady clip, how does a wine bar with such a distinct point of view, pardon the pun, keep from losing its edge?
“You’ll have the guest that is begrudgingly brought here and is shocked to see something like DRC on the list or Rayas or some Barolo. But they return sometimes sooner because they'll bring friends and they'll say, ‘you're not going to believe this place I found in Williamsburg—I didn't know we could eat like this and drink wines like these,’” Justin continues. And as for the old faithful, the heads who heard by word of mouth, the working somms and other industry folks from around town, the internet seekers who can tell you every great vintage from 1962 to 1978, your friends who sold their guitars to buy turntables then sold their turntables to buy Zaltos, what about them? “I also really think that if you know us and you know what we do, you know we'll have something you want to drink.”
Five years in and the Michelin Guide and the New York Times have finally caught on, awarding one and two stars respectively. As breakfast comes to a close, a text comes through that chef Nick Curtola is a finalist for a James Beard Foundation award. Seems like they still have their edge.
Further Listening:
Still workin’ on the Night Moves….