4 GREAT WINE BARS

June

COBBLE HILL

This wine bar nails drinking in all seasons – its leafy back garden is a cool oasis in summer and cosy booths inside the Midnight in Paris-inspired dining room are a great place to warm up in winter. June has always had a natural wine focus, but there’s been a shift to more eco-friendly offerings lately, particularly with more wines on tap. The experience doesn’t come cheap, but its generous “happy hour” (from 5pm to 7pm, Monday to Friday) should soften the blow.

junebk.com

Ruffian

EAST VILLAGE

Ruffian nails the brief for “snug” – only 20 guests sit single file along the cream-coloured concrete bar (which also houses the tiny kitchen), and you can barely shuffle behind to get from the front door to the bathroom. Walls lined with 1950s and '60s exhibition posters from The Met, a low ceiling of white-washed wooden beams and an eclectic glass list – think Slovenia, Georgia and Croatia – make this one of the most original wine bars in Manhattan.

ruffiannyc.com

Pips

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS

After a few Covid-related delays, Brooklyn wine bar Pips is open for service. The project, from the team behind long-standing New York restaurants Colonie and Gran Electrica, was supposed to be a drop-in spot for snacks and vino. However, a pandemic pivot has turned their offering into a full-fledged restaurant. The food is largely Italian (think sugar snap peas with ricotta salata and poppyseeds, and pork polpette with gremolata and horseradish), backed up by a list of European low-intervention wines and a solid range of amari. How very New York.

pipsbrooklyn.com

Gem Wine

LOWER EAST SIDE

The team behind chic fine-diner Gem (by a now-adult Flynn McGarry, who starred in the documentary Chef Flynn as a teen) has opened a walk-in only wine bar, and it’s much more than an overflow area. The wine list is verbal, mostly European and all natural – by the glass your options are “one of each colour”. Small plates, which lean on Gem’s foraging themed menu, are served on vintage plates with vintage forks. Look around the small dining room, everyone else is tearing into house-made bread, hunks of gouda and spicy capocollo with their hands too.

gem-nyc.com