Good Wine List Curation and List Performance Are Not the Same Thing.
Wine List Critique: Café Zaffri, New York City
This week, we reviewed Caffe Zaffri’s wine list: a thoughtful program with strong curation, disciplined pricing, and a few instructive missed opportunities. Our aim is to study what the list does well, where it leaves revenue on the table, and what other operators can learn from it.
Café Zaffri caught our attention for its proximity in experience and likeness to the now-closed NoMad, offering four service rotations and occupying the ground floor of The Twenty Two hotel in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. It’s an all-day experience with a kitchen that draws from Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Greece, with Aleppo pepper, sumac, tahini, and dukkah charming the floor. It is one of the more distinctive Mediterranean concepts to open in this part of the city in years, and the wine list shows real intention.
Our first look told us something immediately: strong curation, honest pricing, and a team that understood the assignment. Some bottles were cheap and cheerful; others high-end and well understood, with plenty of options in between. But the program still requires a highly trained floor team on every shift to move product. Sometimes a wine list can be so well curated that it begins to lean counter-productive.
The BTG Program Is Missing Two Anchors
There is no domestic Chardonnay or Cabernet on the by-the-glass menu. These are not minor omissions. They’re the two most ordered wine categories in American dining rooms. A guest uninterested in Vermentino or Corsican rosé has no entry point. The program also lacks a sub-$20 red and white at the low end. Entry-level glasses under $20 give servers windows to a tiny conversations that lead to a bottles on tables before appetizers.
A Discovery Win at the Low End
The $20 Château Musar btg is a genuine find and rare opportunity to taste one of Lebanon's benchmark producers without a real financial commitment. The catch is that it still requires a floor team member to tell the story, which supplements the missing domestic Cabernet anchor rather than replacing it.
Pricing Anchoring Opportunity
Krug Half Bottle $275
Krug Full Bottle $350
Dom Perignon 2013 $500
The $75 delta between a $275 Krug HB and $350 Krug FB closes itself with no pitch required. Dom Perignon can come down to $415 or $425. Dom can be readily available and can wholesale from ~$140. The profit consideration born from interest in a Krug Half Bottle, walked up to a Dom Perignon, because of menu engineering and product knowledge, is now double. Great wine directors orchestrate impulse purchases through menu architecture with such considerations. As documented in our Commander's Palace critique, listing half bottles directly above full bottles, and magnums beneath, rather than scattered, reduces friction and increases likelihood of right-sized spend, usually for more.
A Structural Decision Worth Debating
Café Zaffri opens its white wine section with Island Wines and the Rhône Valley prior to Loire Valley and Burgundy, presumably an homage to the Mediterranean identity of the restaurant. We understand the logic but would push back on this distinction. Marsanne and Roussanne from the Rhône lack the acidic backbone most guests are shopping for in French whites, a testament to their popularity in all restaurants that carry serious wines. And every bottle in the current opening white wine section requires a trained team member to hand-sell it. As covered in the Callie San Diego critique, wine lists that sell the most wine are organized for the diner, not the sommelier. Leading with Loire and Burgundy before concept-forward sections simply reduces friction for the guest.
The Burgundy section itself carries impressive inventory. Arnaud Ente, Domaine Leflaive Clavoillon, Theo Dancer Aligoté for $115, and Domaine Villain from the DRC family at $105 reflect serious buying intelligence at honest prices. The Leflaive Clavoillon 2022 is the one callout. It wholesales from Wilson Daniels under $300. Pricing it at $695 or $750 keeps the bottle moving, keeps guests returning, and lands within the same margin range with better velocity.
Red Wine and the Hand-Sell Problem
Château Musar anchors the red section with multiple back vintages at prices New York rarely sees. Châteauneuf-du-Pape delivers. Vieux Certan 2005 at $800 earns genuine praise. The gaps live at the top. Guests who want to spend on Burgundy are shopping for Roumier, Dujac, or DRC. Guests who want to spend on Bordeaux are shopping for Latour or Lafite. Wine Spectator has conducted studies on guest habits surrounding Burgundy and Bordeaux and their findings are similar. Redirecting some of the Loire Reds and Jura Reds into one or two anchoring bottles in each of those categories would close the gap without touching the list's identity.
The Bigger Lesson
Our Uchi Austin critique surfaced the same dynamic: a bottle list built for the wine professional that created friction for the average guest. Staff confidence is one of the most cited drivers of beverage sales performance. A program this dependent on the floor is one strong sommelier departure away from a revenue problem.
Café Zaffri has a wine director with a genuine point of view and the buying relationships to back it up. The list reflects real knowledge and real passion for the concept. What it lacks is architecture that sells without explanation. That’s a solvable problem, and the first step is knowing the difference between a list that impresses and a list that performs.
The iBEVs collective beverage directorship experience reveals to us that wine lists make more money when curated for more than concept and strategic pricing alone.
