Photo by Caitlin Abrams
Sparkling wines
For as long as I've been writing about wine, natural wine has always been about to break wide—natural wine being wine made with as little technological interference as possible, and breaking wide being leaving San Francisco and New York City. Well, 2019 is the year it breaks wide in Minneapolis, because we're getting our first natural wine bar this fall, Bar Brava.
Apple Valley native and investment banker Dan Rice spent several years in New York City drinking at places like The Ten Bells and the Four Horsemen, where he fell in love with natural wine. After tiring of investment banking, as do we all, he decided that he would like to just open a natural wine bar in the Twin Cities. He quit his job and started on a plan of concerted research: traveling Europe, exploring San Francisco, and meeting the local players in natural wine, namely Jill Mott of Jill Mott Selections and Gretchen Skedsvold of Henry & Son.
When Rice was in Oakland, at the natural wine bar The Punchdown, he got to talking to the bartender about his plans to open a natural wine bar in Minneapolis, mentioning he needed a chef. "Why, my best friend is a chef and just moved to Minneapolis," replied the bartender.
Minneapolis, meet Nick Anderson! Anderson was the sous chef for two years at San Francisco's ABV, the California finger-food joint (they have no utensils.) When he and his partner Shannon (whose family is from here) found themselves pregnant, the famed Minnesota homing device kicked in, and they moved here to have baby Si where he could learn pond hockey, as God intended. Now Anderson and Rice are 50/50 partners in Bar Brava, Mott is consulting and importing some Spanish wines that are earmarked just for them, and they're working with Henry & Son so that many of the wines you taste at Bar Brava may be purchased at Henry & Son. Relationships, people! It's all about relationships.
I asked Mott what she imagined would be on the wine list, "Crazy awesome stuff which Minneapolis has never seen, things that you can literally not get anywhere in the country except Bar Brava." I asked her if she thought we had the market to support that, and she said yes. "What I see when I'm at Henry & Son is, the average guest comes in and says: I have thirty dollars, can you get me something orange and funky? There are a lot of people moving here from New York and San Francisco these days because those cities got too expensive, and they're bringing their taste with them."
Rice told me he expects a wine list of some 100 offerings, with 20 or so by the glass, to change constantly. "The point of our by-the-glass program is to allow folks to try new wines every time they come in." He also imagines they'll have flights of something like five different wines, to allow you to learn while you drink.
Chef Anderson tells me the current plan is to serve dinner six nights a week, from 4 p.m. till midnight, every day but Monday. Most of the food will be what Anderson calls "California bar food," with a vegetable focus stemming from his three years working on a vegetable farm in Washington. "First and foremost we're a natural wine bar, but people like to eat when they're drinking, so we wanted to have food. We want to be seen as a bar and not a full restaurant, even though you could come in and eat and be full."
I got a peek at the menu, and it looks pretty fab: Lots of Spanish tapas, like traditional eggy tortilla and papas bravas, as well as more chef-driven plates like roasted carrots glazed with fermented blueberry served with lebneh with zahtar spices. "I like preserving, pickling, I'm very influenced by the idea of making food that's local from what's all around us, even when it's 30 below. I also like using lots of herbs and green stuff, I'd say most of what's on the menu so far is very California, and a lot of Mediterranean flavors, Spanish and Mexican foods, though we're not tying ourselves to those cuisines." There's also a cheeseburger with cheese on the top and bottom, which Anderson tells me makes it easier to eat. A few other menu items which caught my eye? Green chili noodles with crab, fried oyster mushroom chips, delicata squash with fermented jalapeños, a wild rice cake, Swiss chard pesto, and chicken wings.
Target opening date is October. The location of Minneapolis' first natural wine bar is to be just off the corner of Washington and Broadway, at 1914 Washington, a few doors north of North Loop, and just south from infamous strip bar BJ's. Which, rumor has it, will be gone by 2020. If you want to watch the blow by blow of kitchen equipment installation and wineglass acquisition and polishing, follow Bar Brava on Instagram. Till then, get ready for your first natural wine bar Minneapolis, and tell your neighbors who relocated here from San Francisco and New York. It should please them very much.
