Congratulations to Chase Sinzer and Ellis Srubas-Giammanco of Penny, The MICHELIN Guide New York 2024 Sommelier of the Year winner, presented in partnership with Franciacorta!
Over the last decade, Chase Sinzer has led wine programs at some of the best restaurants in the city. After serving as Wine Director of Two MICHELIN Star Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, he opened Claud and seafood counter Penny, overseeing both wine programs.
Ellis Srubas-Giammanco is the Wine Director of Penny, which he joined after working alongside Master Sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier at Chambers. At Penny, his refined and wonderfully expansive selection expertly matches the seafood on offer.
We spoke with them recently to learn how they pick new wines and what they’re drinking right now.
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What’s your philosophy behind your wine list?
Ellis Srubas-GiammancoMy journey with wine, luckily, has been pretty varied. I've always enjoyed working with wine lists that really run the gamut in terms of style and where the wines are coming from. I hope our wine list can illustrate generationally what's changed over the last 30 or 40 years within a given wine region. Offering those iconic, age-worthy, very special producers' wines right alongside the people that they mentored who maybe are a little bit more risk taking, forward-thinking.
What’s your criteria for adding a new wine to your list?
Ellis Srubas-GiammancoA wine has to be delicious. It has to be something that speaks to me specifically in terms of the precision. Something that's been made in a conscientious way with a lot of care. Beyond that, once I've experienced something that perks me up, then I get interested in, what is this? Who made it? What's their story?
A wine just has to have a certain emotion or soul component to it that really makes you want to learn more about it, rather than the reverse, which is you read about something that you think you should find very impressive, and then you taste it, and then you kind of have to convince yourself that it lives up to what you've read about it.
What are some of your favorite wines on your list?
Ellis Srubas-GiammancoWe were lucky to build up a pretty comprehensive list of wines from the Jura, including the names that we all seek out like Ganevat and Labet. These are some favorites of mine, for sure. There's plenty of new producers kind of sprinkled throughout there that are making really exciting wine. We have that in Burgundy too, although it's a little bit more encyclopedic.
I've been really loving Spanish white wines. There’s a renaissance of producers changing up what's been happening. There’s amazing stuff happening in Jerez with palomino-based wines that are unfortified, terroir-driven. Angela Piedra in Rueda, making Verdejo in this incredible, powerful, age-worthy style. Cota 45 from Ramiro Ibáñez, making terroir-specific palominos that are eye-opening. Even the more classic burgundy drinker can find excitement in these wines.
If someone wanted to splurge on a truly unforgettable wine experience, what would you recommend?
Chase SinzerWe would need a specific idea of what splurge means to that guest. If somebody wants a nice bottle of wine today in the classical regions that is a couple hundred bucks, Dominique Lafon is making very consistently delicious wines. Jean-Louis Chave, Saint-Joseph is a very underrated and underpriced bottle of wine that can still go for a couple hundred bucks and be a special occasion bottle with some vintage age.
How do we see sustainability on your wine menu?
Ellis Srubas-GiammancoIt's very important for me that wines we feature here are produced with sustainability in mind in terms of viticulture. Being able to showcase producers that embody sustainability in terms of how they produce and what they do, is much more important than a conversation about sulfur and natural winemaking. Sulfur is a reasonable thing that winemakers have to have in their arsenal.
Chase Sinzer
We get there through networking and sourcing. If you're able to do that and you have consistency in product, you can create the circle that we're all dreaming about in terms of sustainability, where we have high quality of product that is able to come to us in a sustainable manner and take people out of the middle.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to be in a position like yours?
Chase SinzerSeek out as much wine as humanly possible to develop your own style. So when someone asks a question, you've accumulated an encyclopedic notion of the aesthetics and business of wine that you have a quick, formulated idea of what your wine list represents to you and what you want people to get from it.
Hero image: Teddy Wolff / Chase Sinzer and Ellis Srubas-Giammanco
