Last Friday night kicked off the Jenny and Francois natural wine week chez Alice Feiring. Author to be reckoned with, Alice kindly hosted a welcome party at her rambling tenement-building apartment (she has a bath tub in the kitchen too!) in Nolita. A wicked time was had by all. I believe we went through almost four cases of wine and an industrial sized pot of lentil soup. About eight winemakers from J&F’s portfolio were there, along with the dashing owners of Racine, the hottest natural wine bar in Paris (that I have yet to visit alas).

The winemakers. How I have fallen in love with them. They are all truly honest, simple people that work hard at what they love. I think of them as philosophical farmers holding firmly to their beliefs of what constitutes as good, natural wine. Half of them couldn’t speak English, none of them wore the yuppie clothing often donned by corporate winemakers, there wasn’t a PR person in sight and the vignerons knew how to rock a party.

Met some interesting industry folk too, including the owner of De Vino on the LES, the chef and owner of Farm on Adderly in Brooklyn (loved talking to this guy about his philosophy on food and really must check out his restaurant), more retailers from Slope Cellars and Westside Wines (with an inventory that sounds like its worth the trek to the upper west side) and the very sweet Brooklyn Guy, whose blog I so enjoy reading.