Here’s another in Power Tasting’s irregular series on great wine bars of the world.
Of course, you knew that W.I.N.O. (http://www.winoschool.com) stands for the Wine Institute of New Orleans. Situated just outside the famed French Quarter on Tchoupitoulas Street (that’s Chew-pa-TOO-las, in case you have to ask your way), W.I.N.O. is one of those places with a lot of bottles in nitrogen-filled dispensing machines. They refer to themselves as a self-service wine bar.
You get a plastic card, insert it into a slot and then put your glass under the spigot in front of the bottle of wine you want to taste. You can get one-, two- and four-ounce tastings at graduated prices. There are a few communal tables up front where you can sit and sip your wine, or you are free wander around with glass in hand.
Many, perhaps most of the wines on offer are little-known. There are others that are quite renowned and are priced accordingly – rather steep for little servings. We’ve found that trying wines we’ve never heard of is the most fun. They don’t cost much to sample and they’re from all over the winemaking world. If you don’t like it, you’ve only spent a few dollars on an ounce of something obscure. And if you do like it, you’ve made a wonderful discovery.
But, you may well ask, what’s so special about W.I.N.O? There are lots of similar tasting machines in cities across the US, and overseas as well.
For one thing, at W.I.N.O. you are wine tasting in New Orleans. Maybe you’re there for a convention or to listen to jazz or try the local cuisine. And drink (a local custom). Now, New Orleans has famous cocktails, like the Hurricane (ugh) or the Sazerac (not bad). It has some great local beers, specifically Abita, available at every bar. There are good wine lists at some of the better restaurants, but if you’d like to go to a wine bar and don’t want to travel far from the French Quarter, W.I.N.O. offers you a wine-friendly oasis.
Another part of the appeal of W.I.N.O. is the sheer scale of the selection available to you. Their wine dispensers house 120 beverages (a few spirits are included as well). They have reds, whites, rosés and dessert wines from the US, Europe and many other corners of Wine Country. The cost of the pours is based on the bottle price and runs from a dollar for an ounce of an obscure wine from a little-known source, to as much as $20 per ounce of Opus One. Careful: putting “just a little more” on the card adds up quickly.
If you’re looking for a quick education in the wines of a region you’re unfamiliar with, W.I.N.O. gives you the chance. In our most recent visit to W.I.N.O., we looked specifically for Languedoc wines, just to see what they would have. In fact there were five or six, but we were familiar with all of them and had some bottles of them at home. We were amazed to find out also that there were two bottles from a really off-the-beaten-path cooperative in the Enserune region that we also had tried in France.
You can get some fancy nibbles to absorb the alcohol, like cheeses, dips and olives. In New Orleans, though, if you come out a little woozy from what you’ve been drinking, no one will notice. This is the town with the motto Laissez le Bon Temps Rouler.