Wine Universe By Little Somms’ new vino wisdom
JASPER Sun, runner-up in China’s 2018 Best Sommelier Competition, has kicked off a new venture — an intimate wine bar with two partners offering a concept whereby the focus is all on a “sommeliers’ work in the front house.
Wine Universe By Little Somms is a two-floor space on Yuyuan Road with a non-pretentious decor, which shines the spotlight on its extensive wine display.
Since its opening, wine industry professionals and avid vino lovers have been gathering at the new establishment day after day to share a good few bottles.
A firm believer in wine education and knowledge-sharing, Sun and his sommelier partner continuously identify the most interesting wines from different regions, and the chef and co-founder Cai Wenbin creates a French-fusion menu based on the choice of wines.
“We call us ‘Wine Universe,’ not because we have a huge wine list (400 labels for now), but because we want to be generous to wine from any grape and from anywhere around the world,” Sun said. “We also would like to respect every customer’s taste and needs. We do not say: ‘Someone drinking Burgundy everyday is actually better than someone drinking Bordeaux, or Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough.’ As sommeliers, we are not wine judges or winemakers, we just try our best to choose the Crème de la Crème of each region and each grape variety for our customers.”
Over 400 labels displayed changes almost on a daily basis. They are mainly focused on daily drinking Burgundy, natural wine and smaller Champagne growers. For the wine by a glass program, there are three sections: Sommelier Selection of the Day, Wine the Coravin and Wine Lab. Under Sommelier Selection of the Day, you can find some classic Bordeaux or Alsace wines here but mainly wines from somewhere you are not familiar with such as Slovenian, south of Italy, Romania or some small Spanish islands. Each glass is priced at 50 to 100 yuan/glass.
Wine the Coravin means premium wine by the glass (75ml) program. Here you can try wine from all over the world, including Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Richebourg, Chateaux Latour back vintages, Egon Muller in magnum, G. Roumier Chambolle-Musigny 2005. The list has over 20 premium labels that changes randomly each week. Prices start from 135 yuan/glass to 3,580 yuan. Wine Lab is a sessional concept. They recently offered a vertical tasting of fortified sweet Madeira from 1984-2004 by the glass.
You can order a flight of five years vertical tasting of Madeira and it comes with six test-tubes and you can pull in your glass yourself like a lab experiment.
“And each Madeira we only have one bottle and this sessional Madeira concept will never come back. Instead there will be another new concept coming for wine lab for example we will have 19602000 Armagnac by glass,” Sun said.