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Classy in Adams Morgan – A BYT interview/review: AM Wine Shoppe

February 9, 2010 by Phelps

photos by Jane Briggs
words by Eric Rohleder
intro/interview by Phelps

Adams Morgan can now count itself among the growing list of neighborhoods with either a wine bar or retail wine shop serving up fine meats, cheeses, antipasti and damn near perfect sandwiches.  A couple weeks back I ducked beneath Skynear and Company into the AM Wine Shoppe, on the corner of 18^th and Wyoming NW, and purchased an “Admorghese,” their version of what I think is a muffuletta.  Impressed by the food, the customer service of GM Andrew Akre, and the old school Animal Collective on the iPod, I shuffled up the block with the sandwich under wraps – sharing it’s praises but not a damn crumb.  MINE.  Slightly more clear-headed, I returned a few days later and had the pleasure of chatting with proprietor Justin Abad, also owner and GM of nearby Cashion’s, and was invited to a tasting of some of his fine product last Thursday night.  I was also lucky enough to be joined by someone who knows what the hell they’re talking about, local wine consultant Eric Rohleder of Cecile’s Wine and The Thirsty Cook.  As Eric and Justin waxed aromas and bodies, I stuffed sopressata and cheese into my own.  Below are Eric’s words, Ms. Briggs’ pics, and a quick follow-up interview with Justin sans our grappa influence.  I’d head into this place before DC gets blizzed again tonight or the 1500 people who purchased AM Wine Shoppe’s Living Social deal yesterday beat you down the steps.

It’s the PM of a Thursday night, and I’m walking through the newly established A.M. Wine Shoppe with proprietor Justin Abad. We talk about the wines he has on the shelf. Special selections personally picked from Justin for you, the lucky, little winos of Adams Morgan.

Justin got his start at Cashion’s Eat Place, which he is now the proprietor of, as well. He tells us about how he got his passion for wine…

“I had the opportunity to go Italy. And the owner at the time told me, ‘Go to Italy. Or you’re fired.” That’s some harsh convincing.

Once on the Italian soil, he, like many of us in this fine wine business, had one of those transformative experiences. An oeniphilic-awakening that is usually grounded in an experience of food and wine too good to describe. All you can really do is try to share shards of that experience with others. For Justin, it was a single bottle of Barbera given to him by a friend.

“It completely opened my eyes. Had no idea wine could be that good.”

While he tells his story he gave us the opportunity to taste some wines he had personally picked out for the feature. We started off with the Cottonera Barbazzale, a soft red wine that played with spiced red fruit, and a slight reduced strawberry component.

Then we start on a little tour of Pinot Noir. The first Pinot was the 2008 Jezebel Pinot Noir, a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir that was very smooth on the palate with notes of cracked nutmeg and clove with some raspberry notes on the front palate. The second wine was a California Pinot Noir, the 2008 Laguna Ridge, a Sonoma coast Pinot Noir that offered up some notes of spiced strawberry and some toasty vanilla with a very nice texture all around. The final wine was the Monthelie 2005, a Burgundian Pinot that gave off a typical savage taste, with notes of spiced vanilla bean and barnyard. All of the wines had that clever little bit of restraint that Justin admits he tries to offer in all of the wines he chooses.

While we’re tasting people peer through the glass windows, Justin offers a wave that everyone seems to respond to.

“I notice that when I wave them in, they almost always walk away with a bottle” Justin slyly mentions.

Tonight was no exception, as a bit of a line began to form at the register. Others perused the wine selections. And those same others also peered through another glass window, the artisanal deli case. Aside from fine wines, A.M. Wine Shoppe also offers up selections of fine cheeses, cured meats, and other antipasti assortments. But you’ll have to go in and ask Justin for the whole selection, because it…is…a lot.

Justin and I start talking about specific bottles on the shelf…a killer Sicilian wine here, the best Sparkling wine for the money their. He’s very eager to share his knowledge with any customer wanting to hear about the wines.

“What?! Grappa!” I shout.

“Oh Yeah.”

Grappa is not for everyone, but it is for me. And I love the stuff.

It was only a small selection, but it’s part of what else A.M. offers. Maybe they’ll get in some more distilled spirits. For now it’s a small operation.

BYT Interview with Justin on Monday, February 8th

BYT:   Hey, Justin.

Justin:  Josh, how are you?

BYT:  Good man, how’d you make out this weekend?

Justin: This weekend was kind of fun, ‘cause when it’s a blizzard like that, I mean, all of the locals come and hang out, you know what I mean?  It’s always a really good crowd.  It wasn’t as busy as a Friday and Saturday normally are but, all things considered, I can’t complain really.  They pretty much emptied my shelves at the wine shop, don’t have much left!

BYT:  Oh, yea, I walked by at some point on Saturday and saw you hosting 4 or 5 people in there looking around, and the streets were packed!

Justin:  Everyone was out and about, people were having a blast, and, literally, emptied the shelves.  Good thing I have a lot of wine coming in tomorrow!

BYT:  Well, congratulations, and congrats on the Living Social deal, looks like it’s taking off, with over 600 now.

Justin:  I guess that’s a good thing!

BYT:  Good thing you got the trucks coming I guess.

Justin:  (Checks site) Wow, you’re right, 693!  (Ed. Note, 1514 total purchased.)

BYT:  Niiice.  I won’t keep you too long as you have two businesses to run, but, I wanted to talk a little bit about what you touched on the other night as far as your trajectory from being a student in DC at 19, working at Cashion’s, and now sitting here as an owner of both Cashion’s and AM Wine Shoppe.

Justin:  Sure.  I had just started working at Cashion’s in September of 2002 and I was just starting my sophomore year at GW at the time, studying psychology and political science.  I started working at Cashion’s because I felt really comfortable in restaurants, working in them since I was 13, off and on… you know, friends of the family and things like that, just as busboy, waiting and hosting.  It was a great way for me to have the flexibility and extra money to pay for school and such, and learn about food and wine which I’d always had a little bit of interest in.  I chose Cashion’s because I found the menu very different from my previous waiting and serving background and the fact that it changed every day, the challenge, made it attractive to me.  The people around there, former owners Anne Cashion and John Fulchino, their passion for food is something that I probably hadn’t been exposed to prior to that, just how much they really were in love with the idea of food and wine.  That developed and I think the biggest thing was my trip to Italy and living there for six or seven months, however long that ended up being…

BYT:  You were still in college?

Justin:  That was the second semester of my junior year and originally was just a study abroad thing, some time to cool my heels a bit and try something different.  I had no idea or any intention of falling in love with food and wine as such an intricate part of culture, the culture of dining and sharing a meal, sharing a glass and a story with a friend and a loved one.  In Italy it’s a no-brainer, you just end up doing that whether you want to or not and it, for me, really put things in perspective.  That experience is the reason that I even considered doing something like Cashion’s or AM Wine Shoppe.  When I came back and was asked by my now business partner, John Manolatos, I remember his quote was ,”Are you gonna keep doing this school thing or you wanna try and open a restaurant with me?”  I thought, you know, why the hell not?  There’s never another time in my life that I’ll be able to take this kind of risk and not be too scared about it, and I’m gonna regret it if I don’t take this opportunity is how I felt about it.  To make a living hosting a dinner party and or pouring wine all day, it’s really not a bad deal for me.

BYT:  I assume that’s when you assumed ownership of Cashion’s.  So John is in the kitchen and you’re on the floor?

Justin:  Yea, and then his brother is the third business partner, George Manolatos, and he’s the bar manager.  I came back from Italy in May or June of 2005 and that’s when we started talking about trying to buy a restaurant.  We didn’t think it was gonna be Cashion’s, that was just something where the circumstances lined up and we started raising money and were able to get everything squared away, including the financing, purchase of Cashion’s by July of 2007, July 11^th.

BYT:  Once that happened, how did the AM Wine Shoppe go from a gleam in your eye to what it is now?

Justin:  I think it had a lot to do with me wanting to extend the philosophy of how I chose the wines at Cashion’s and what I liked in terms of simple, straight forward foods, that idea.  It was a matter of me also wanting an additional creative outlet to Cashion’s.  I think of AM Wine Shoppe as a retail extension of our philosophies and I’ve been able to play around with different wines that wouldn’t necessarily work at Cashion’s because of the cuisine there.  When you’re dealing with just cured meats and cheeses and some simple antipasti, you have a really free range of wine that you can play with.  That’s kind of what it was, all I kept thinking about even before we bought Cashion’s, when I got back from Rome, is why isn’t there just some place, whether a wine bar or retail location, where you can just walk down the street, pick up a bottle of wine and a baguette, some good cheese, couple pieces of slice meat, you know what I mean?  That’s everywhere in Italy, France, Spain…  Over the last two years as I’ve gotten more comfortable with certain systems being in place at Cashion’s, it gave me the opportunity to look a little bit outside of the box and when the space became available and the lease structure was something that seemed agreeable, I just said well, here’s the opportunity and I gotta jump on it.  Some people call me crazy for trying to do a second place in an economy like this, and they might be right!  But it was something I really wanted to give a fair shot, you know?

BYT:  Absolutely.  So, you mentioned the wine, meats, cheeses and antipasti but you also had a little bit of liquor and said soon you may go into some finer liquors and digestifs?

Justin:  The idea is to use the full extent of our license which does allow us to sell spirits but I don’t want to turn it into a liquor store.  I want to be able to offer a small selection of grappas, single-malt scotches, some nice Armagnacs and Cognacs.  Some sherries and ports, things of that nature, single-barreled bourbons.  Digestifs like chartreuse, St. Germain.  These are liquors, or after dinner drinks, but we have the same idea as with the wine – keep the selection small and quality high.  We’d like to be able to offer some things you don’t find in your everyday liquor store.  Quite truthfully, I don’t expect people to be running through the doors to pick up a bottle of sixty-dollar Scotch but there’s always going to be an occasion for one, you know?  It’s that special occasion kind of spirit place.  With some of the ports and grappas, they’re actually pretty affordable considering what they are.  It’s not like a bottle of wine where you open it and finish the whole bottle in one sitting, or hopefully you’re not going to do that (laughs.)

BYT:  I gotta say, that grappa had me reeling the other night.

Justin:  (laughs)  Yeeaaa, the grappa, you know it kind of sneaks up on you!  I sip on it, especially in this cold weather, had a glass of it after the game last night.

BYT:  For sure, my belly was warm and my head was somewhere else.

Justin:  Exactly, you know, I’m a big fan.

BYT:  Cool, well I’ll let you go but before I wanted to ask you about what you’d put together if you were sitting down, in this weather, as far as a nice bottle of wine and some food on the table…

Justin:  It’d probably be an Italian themed dinner with a risotto and a braised osso bucco which is a braised veal shank.  I’d do that and pair it with a nice, hearty Italian red.  Maybe something like the Barbera d’Alba.  It’s just got this beautiful length and with stewed and braised meats you can sip on that thing and be transported back to Italy.

BYT:  Well it’s supposed to snow about 20 more inches tomorrow so maybe people will have a chance to do that.  Thanks again, Justin, and I’ll be in there to see you again soon.

Justin:  Excellent, take care.

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