New York Riesling Diary: Day 21 – Designer Steven Solomon, the Brian Eno of Wine + comment by Justin Christoph

 

Who tops the celebrity list in the Riesling Who’s Who of America? There’s no question in my mind, that it’s Paul Grieco, the self-proclaimed Riesling Overlord of the New York wine scene. When he won the James Beard Award for the best wine & spirits professional last year during the fifth Summer of Riesling at his Terroir wine bars and the second Summer of Riesling in bars, restaurants and wine stores coast to coast and beyond this clearly put him in pole position on that list. I’m just an occasional visitor with loud clothes in comparison.

The man in the picture above – as regular readers will already have spotted – is not the Overlord though, but designer Steven Solomon, the man in his shadow who has done so much to give the United States of Riesling a revolutionary look (and I think of 1776 when I use the R-Word). He also injected a huge pulse of energy, both creative and disruptive, slamming into the conventions which still weigh wine in America down making it look old-fashioned and exclusive. As Solomon says, “crisis gets juices flowing. Create a crisis…be a broken record.”

That look in his eyes is what he calls his “Stickermeister face”. Meister means master in German, and in combination with the word sticker implies a kind of anarchistic-shaman-artist who deliberately works in the small format of the sticker, tattoo, T-shirt and ring-binder folder. They are his voodoo dolls. Scrawled and smeared, layer over layer of clashing typefaces in  supercalifragilisticexpialidosious colors, bulging at the seams with Dutch angles and sinking Titanic inclines, thrown in your face and dumped on your carpet, is the distinctive I-am-who-I-am Solomon look which has defined Terroir since day one. Then when you look a bit longer you find that there’s also a Penguin book, black & white photography aesthetic coexisting with the “chaos” in what Chairman Grieco calls, “my sandbox.” That’s when it really gets interesting, because that’s how the Apollo / Dionysus tension  of Terroir becomes visible. I think you can see this in the below.

http://restauranthearth.com/terrior/terroir-archive-homes.html

For Solomon Terroir has been much more than a sandbox. He calls it, “our wine bar/think tank/batcave,” and means that it has been the place where he was able to take his own Post-Punk aesthetic and weld it to wine with almost no compromise. Looking at the covers of the first ring-binder wine lists (click on the link below to see them) he made for the East Village Terroir back in March 2008 yesterday I felt like I was stepping to a fully-formed alternative universe, though all were created before the Big Bang.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23805736@N04/sets/72157603908666302/

With them and his other work for Grieco he installed a huge white-lie-backstory in those 500 square feet which made the first Terroir wine bar feel way bigger than it looked from the outside like Dr. Who’s Tardis (in the BBC TV series) does. The day I first walked in on a steamy New York night in July 2010 it was this which hit me as much as the buzz and all those great Rieslings by the glass. OK he applied this approach to all the entire place and all the wines on the list, but it didn’t really do anything for Grand Cru burgundies with four figure dollar prices and it worked like magic for the Rieslings which were (and remain) a steal in comparison.

 This was possible because as Solomon wrote a while, “it is a design job and not painting, but the overlap of concepts is pretty strong. Maybe so strong that it’s a whole new context for everything I do.” However, that was then and this is now; now the design job has been pushed almost as far as it can go in this direction. The Terroir anti-corporate design stands head and shoulders above most corporate identity design in the US – so much of it is dead in the water and some of it was on day one – and the Terroir chain has reached an impressive size in a remarkably short time. It did so by focusing almost obsessively upon its core business and sticking laser-beam-straight to its communications strategy. The question now is where it goes from here and what the maximum chain size is that is compatible with this alternative posture. Solomon also seems to be asking himself where next. I can’t wait to see which way he jumps and am doing my best to create the next crisis for him.

To see more of Solomon’s work go to:

www.stevensolo.com

www.wineisterroir.com

PS there was just a great comment from Justin Christoph which I give here in full:

CAN’T STOP THE RIESLING / Red Slate Vulkan Peppers

Can’t stop addicted to the Riesling / Top rock he says I’m gonna drink big /

choose not a wine of imitation / distant cousin to the Elbling

defunkt the point scores that you pay for / this punk the terroir that you stay for /

in wine I want to be your best friend / East Vill wine is living on TriBeCa /

knock out finish you better come through / Riesling don’t die know the truth some do /

T-shirt your message on the pavement / button so bright I wonder what the wave meant/

white tannin is screaming in the jungle / Balance in the wine if you stumble /

go ask vineyard dust for any answers / come back strong Weißer Heunisch dancers

 

Chorus:

The wine I love / the tears I drop / to be part of / the wave can’t stop /

Terroir wonder if it’s all for you / the vines I love / the planes I hop /

to be part of / wave can’t stop / come and tell me when it’s time to

 

Sweetheart is bleeding in the icemen / so smart she’s leading me no oak zone /

music the great Riesling communicator / use two rocks to make it in the nature /

I’ll get mineral penetration /the Riesling of a generation /the birth of every other nation/

worth your weight the Goldtröpfchen / this tasting note’s going to be a close one /

smoke rings I know you’re going to blow one /Kraftwerk on a spaceship persevering /

use my tongue for everything but spitting / can’t stop the spirits when they need you /

Oak heads are happy when they feed you / Zilliken Butterfly is in the treetop /

Serringer Vogelsang TBA the meaning of bebop

 

Chorus:

Wait a minute I’m passing out / win or lose just like you /

far more shocking acidity / than anything I ever knew /

how ’bout you / 10 more Summer of Riesling reasons /

why I need a new wine just like you / far more trocken than any wine I ever knew /

Riesling on cue

 

Can’t stop addicted to the Riesling / Top rock he says I’m gonna drink big /

choose not a wine of imitation / distant cousin to the Rieslaner /

defunkt the point scores that you pay for / this punk the terroir that you stay for /

in wine I want to be your best friend / EVILL wine is living on TriBeCa /

knock out finish you better come through / Riesling don’t die know the truth some do /

T-shirt your message on the pavement / button so bright I wonder what the wave meant/

kick start the Acid generator / sweet talk Wine Queen don’t intimidate her /

Spatlese Trocken Palmberg St Aldegunder / can’t stop wine gods from engineering /

Yeast no need for any interfering / your image in oxford dictionary /

this wine is more than ordinary / can I get 2 maybe 3 of these /

Bremmer Calmont from space / Porta Nigra teach you of terrace /

can’t stop vines’ spirits when they need you / this Wine List is more than just a Read thru