INDIGENOUS INDUSTRY
MORRELL AUTHORITY
One of the first in the crush of NY wine bars.
BY ROBERT SIMONSON s PHOTOGR APHS BY MICHAEL GROSS
Last October, a wine bar called V-Note opened on the Upper East
Side. It was trumpeted as a “vegan wine bar,” and offers biodynam-
ic, organic and sustainable wines to pair with its animal-free food.
No New Yorker blinked.
Why would they? Gotham is awash in wine bars of every stripe,
and has been for some years. They have become so idiosyncratic
and specialized that it’s possible to find one precisely catered to
your taste no matter how specific your oenophilic tendencies. Like
South African wines with your South African cuisine? Head to
Xai Xai in Midtown for your dose of pinotage. Think the wines
of southern Italy are undersung and underdrunk? Point your feet
toward In Vino in Alphabet City, where Basilicata and Calabria
are never forgotten. Worship riesling? Terroir Tribeca, where
Germany’s noble grape is on tap even, is your fatherland.
In short, Manhattan’s bibulous are spoiled. But it wasn’t
always so. This embarrassment of wine bar riches is a relatively
new phenomenon, born of the current infant century. There had
been a spurt in the early ’80s, the result of the 1970s wine boom.
The hot spots typically focused on old-school French wine and
mainly clustered around SoHo, which was on the verge of its
heyday as the center of the art world. But it was short-lived, and
by the decade’s end, in New York a wine lover’s mouth could easily
dry out between glassfuls.
Then a few glimmers of light appeared. There was Etats-Unis
(now closed); and Le Bateau Ivre, which opened in January 1999
and is still going strong on East 51st Street, billing itself, rather
long-windedly, as “New York City’s first true French wine bar.”
And there was Morrell Wine Bar & Cafe.
In New York’s relatively young wine-bar world, Morrell rates as
a founding father. The very name has become a sort of synonym for
“wine bar,” shorthand in its mercantile realm in the way institutions
like FAO Schwartz and Brooks Brothers are in theirs. It is perhaps
the one wine bar in the city that even nondrinkers know by name.
Morrell’s position is partly owed to the fact that it’s held firm
to its ritzy, high-profile inner berth of Rockefeller Center Plaza,
opposite the skating rink, and that it continues to pack in tourists
and locals alike, most every night.
22 edible MANHATTAN JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011
But one also must take into consideration that the business’s
city roots go deep. This is not just a 12-year-old wine bar, but a
12-year-old wine bar run by a 63-year-old wine store. The Morrell
story began in 1947, when the parents of wine bar cofounders Peter
and Roberta Morrell swung open the doors of a liquor store on
49th Street near the Waldorf-Astoria. By 1998, the business—run
by Peter, Roberta and Roberta’s husband, Nikos Antonakeas—was
facing a dwindling lease, when Rockefeller Center came calling.
Tishman Speyer Properties had just bought the landmark complex
of office towers from Mitsubishi and was determined to bring actual
New Yorkers back to the ur-New York address.
“We were called,” recalls Antonakeas, a distinguished-looking
Athens native with a European’s love of food and wine and a New
Yorker’s penchant for wearing black. “We were not looking to
move to Rockefeller Center. We thought they would be out of our
reach. They said, ‘No, we’re looking for an established name to
bring New York back to Rockefeller Center, because it has been
nothing but airline ticket stores and banks.’”
Antonakeas and the Morrells agreed to take a look around.
But the Tishman rep was only opening doors on 49th and 50th
streets, nothing along the inner plaza. “She said, ‘Management
really wants to save those spaces for restaurants, food and wine,’”
recalls Antonakeas. “And I said, ‘We can do that.’”
Antonakeas had wanted to do a wine bar on Madison Avenue,
but the landlord was skittish about the idea. So at Rockefeller Center,
Morrell became a side-by-side two-store operation: wine store on the
left, wine bar and café on the right. True to Tishman’s plan, the wine
bar took over a space formerly occupied by an American Airlines
ticket counter. In fact, under the current wooden floor is buried a
huge brass eagle, the emblem of the airline. “It would have cost more
to remove it than to actually leave it there for posterity,” chuckles
Antonakeas. “It’s for people to find in years to come.”
Roberta Morrell, who married Antonakeas 27 years ago,
executed the design of the snug cantina. “I wanted two things,”
she says. “I wanted it to look like a fun place, to be very convivial.
And I never wanted it to look empty—even when it was empty.”
Toward that end, she created an undulating front bar that pushed
Idea on the rise: Nikos Antonakeas wanted to serve food, not
just bar nibbles. “I almost never drink wine by itself. If I am at
a bar and I don’t intend to eat, I might as well have a Scotch.”
In New York’s relatively young wine bar world, Morrell rates as a founding father.
The very name has become a sort of synonym for “wine bar,” shorthand in its
mercantile realm in the way FAO Schwartz and Brooks Brothers are in theirs. It
is perhaps the one wine bar in the city that even nondrinkers know by name.
hard against the front window. “I realized you can talk to everyone
on a curved bar. On a straight bar, you can only talk to the person
next to you. And wine people talk to each other.”
Antonakeas knew from the start that he wanted to serve food,
not just bar nibbles. “What bar food will do is make it a bar,” he
says. “You can cut the wine out—it will be a bar. If you want to
make a wine bar that is doing justice to the theme of wine, wine is a
complement of food. I almost never drink wine by itself. In fact, if I
am at a bar and I don’t intend to eat, I might as well have a Scotch.”
Morrell Wine Bar & Cafe made an impression right away,
offering 100 wines by the glass—an amount not unheard of today
but especially remarkable at the time. Critics cottoned to it, but it
took a while for the public to catch up. “The first year was what
I call the fishbowl effect,” says Antonakeas. “They were looking
through the glass. They were not sure if this was a restaurant, a
tapas place, a wine place. ‘Can I have a beer?’” After about a year, it
caught on with people who work in the neighborhood. “Rockefeller
Center is a microcosm by itself. Tens of thousands of employees
work in the buildings of Rockefeller Center, above and beyond the
tens of thousands of visitors, which are mostly tourists.” Soon, NBC
employees and editors from Simon & Schuster and Macmillan were
coming for lunch two or three times a week.
Morrell benefited from a sea change in the country’s attitude
toward wine. “Americans were getting interested in wine,” says
Antonakeas. “They were really saying to themselves, ‘that’s an
extension of food.’ Until that happens, wine is not part of the
culture. If you treat it only for special occasions, and it’s not an
extension of your meal, it doesn’t become part of your life.”
New York Times writer and food historian William Grimes
remembered the bar’s arrival. “The wines on hand were good,
of course, and the food was, too. It was nothing spectacular, but
the whole wine-bar ethos was pretty much bistro-level. You were
looking for an imaginative wine list—a chance to try choice wines
without reaching deep in your wallet for the price of a full bottle.
I imagine some people used them as testing grounds, sampling
wines and then buying a bottle or case.”
A year after Morrell’s launch, the business found itself in good
company, and the New York Times observed a sudden crop of wine
bars. “In the past few years,” wrote Frank Prial of the trend, “about
20 places calling themselves wine bars have opened in New York,
24 edible MANHATTAN JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011
some to considerable acclaim, and none could be more different
from (the) dinosaurs (of the past)…. Wine is still important, but
the pomposity is nowhere to be found.”
“Within a year, actually, all of a sudden it became fashionable,
the thing to do,” says Antonakeas.
Nikos’s wife says she wasn’t surprised at all by the boom in
wine awareness. “What I didn’t think was that most of the bars
would be Italian,” Roberta Morrell comments. “We are the exact
opposite. And to this day I don’t think there’s anyone who’s
replicated what we did. We started with wines by the glass, from
everywhere. South African, New Zealand, French, Italian, and at
all price ranges. And when we opened, we had a first growth by
the glass.” The luscious and prized dessert wine Château d’Yquem
by the glass was another early attraction that has since become
somewhat commonplace (Le Bernadin and the late Cru, for
instance, have offered it), as was Dom Pérignon on pour.
By 2003, Time Out New York intoned, “as wine bars proliferate
faster than Duane Reades, you’ve found comfort in a classic:
stately Morrell Wine Bar.”
A stately classic—after only four years.
Stately, it does seem, even today. And not just because of its
imposing address (1 Rockefeller Plaza!), glass-and-gold facade and
narrow-but-soaring two-tiered architecture. The clientele is very
obviously well-heeled. There’s no need for a dress code here. Crisp
dark suits, ties and fine jewelry accessorize the twisting bar. And
patrons don’t shy from ordering glasses of Italian Super Tuscan
Tignanello and the big-boy Napa Cab Insignia. Roman Roth,
the respected East End vintner, calls it “a great meeting point,
especially for guests from overseas.”
Who you won’t necessarily find perched in Morrell’s window
seat are the hirsute, wool-hatted members of the younger
oenophile set, for whom Morrell now feels a bit middle-of-the-
road, a place for the Wine Spectator–reading establishment. And
critics have, to a large extent, moved on to newer drinking dens
like Ten Bells on the Lower East Side, known for pouring the
natural offerings of small producers, and Bar Henry in Greenwich
Village, where patrons can order half pours of many bottles, the
remainder of the wine then being offered to the room by the glass.
They are no longer sent aflutter by Morrell’s celebrity patrons, like
legendary theater director Hal Prince, who works nearby, or the
Chilean-wine-loving Miami Dolphins quarterback
Dan Marino, who drops by every time he’s taping a
sports program in New York.
“It’s pretty conventional,” says Tyler Colman, the
author of the wine blog Dr. Vino, proffering faint
praise. “Could you or I find a wine that would keep
us happy during a lunch with a publisher? Yeah. But
it seems like it’s for a crowd that knows what it wants
already. If you’re looking to be challenged, you’re not
going to be necessarily pushed into buying something
that you’re not familiar with. It is serviceable for
people who find comfort in labels.”
Fair enough, perhaps. It’s true you probably
won’t find people at the Morrell bar chatting about
biodynamic methods or the oxidized orange wines of
Friuli. The Morrell list is more traditional, less esoteric.
But, of course, wine elitism goes both ways, and there’s
another side to that argument. Roberta Morrell, who
regularly checks out rival wine bars, remembers one
visit vividly.
“We were in a little tiny wine bar that had six
or seven seats at the bar and maybe 20 in the place.
Nikos ordered a wine from Sicily and I ordered one
from Sardinia, and when they came, they were so hot
that I looked at him and him at me and I said, ‘Ice
cube?’ He said, ‘Why not?’ That’s one of the things
people have said to me, that we serve wine at the right
temperature. The whites aren’t too cold and the reds
aren’t too hot. So we asked the guy behind the bar to
put an ice cube in each glass. We’re talking about $6
glasses, now. He did, and then turned around and
said to the other guy behind the bar, ‘Some people
don’t know anything about wine.’”
“That’s us,” she says in the tone of an adult who
long ago learned to tolerate the impudence of youth,
“the people who don’t know anything about wine.”

Morrell Wine Bar ; One Rockefeller Plaza,

212.262.7700;
morrellwinebar.com

Robert Simonson writes about a wide variety of intoxi-

cants for the New York Times and Wine Enthusiast, as
well as his own blog Off the Presses (offthepresses.blogspot.
com). He remembers studying wine at the Wine & Spirit
Education Trust years ago and wondering, “What’s this
Morrell place all the instructors keep mentioning?”

www.ediblemanhattan.com 25