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Maslow 6 Wine Shop Plans New Bar in TriBeCa

By Julie Shapiro | February 15, 2012 12:45pm
This wine at TriBeCa's Maslow 6 comes from a seventh-generation winemaker in Italy.
This wine at TriBeCa's Maslow 6 comes from a seventh-generation winemaker in Italy.
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DNAinfo/Julie Shapiro

TRIBECA — Oenophiles won't be the only customers welcome at the new Maslow 6 Wine Bar in TriBeCa.

Keri Jackson Kunzle, who is opening the bar this spring next to her Maslow 6 wine shop on West Broadway, hopes to strike an unpretentious tone at the new venue that is just as welcoming to those who can't tell a Chianti from a chardonnay.

"It'll be for people who love wine, people who want to learn about wine, and people who don't want to think about it and just want to come in for a glass," Jackson Kunzle said from her shop recently.

"The knowledge of the staff will be really high, but they will also be really friendly, really welcoming."

The TriBeCa resident opened her Maslow 6 wine shop in 2009 in a narrow nook within the VinoVino wine bar at 211 West Broadway.

The shop developed a following for both its rare and local wines, and Jackson Kunzle soon began thinking of expanding to a space where customers could sip the wines together, rather than just taking the bottles home.

The perfect opportunity came when VinoVino closed a couple of weeks ago, giving Jackson Kunzle the ability to expand into the shuttered wine bar's 1,000-square-foot space, which is separated from her shop by a wall of clear glass.

Workers will update the old VinoVino kitchen and remove the banquettes that lined one wall of the lounge. The new Maslow 6 Wine Bar will open by late spring, Jackson Kunzle said.

Maslow 6 Wine Bar will have a broader food menu than VinoVino, including salads, crostini, cheeses and artisanal truffles, and will serve craft beers as well, according to a preliminary menu submitted to Community Board 1.

"We want to do a lot more food than was there before," Jackson Kunzle said. "Lots of small plates and things — enough so people can put together a meal."

Jackson Kunzle, who left a career in banking technology to pursue her longtime passion for wine, does not have a particular theme for the wines she chooses to sell, aside from her requirement that the winemakers share her devotion to the craft.

She has met many of the winemakers whose labels she carries in the store, and as she walks up the row of bottles, she can point out which wines are organic or biodynamic, which come from a seventh-generation winemaker in Italy, and which were made from three rows of grapes growing in Santa Barbara.

"The wine makers and people behind the wines really care about what they're doing," Jackson Kunzle said. "If they really care about their product, that comes through in the end result, in the wine."