The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Porchlight Wine Bar offers warm welcome
SHARON — The eponymous porchlight at the newest bar in town remains an outside brass coach lamp with a warm amber incandescent light, hung on the sprawling porch of a white Victorian house.
The light is a signal of sorts to serious wine connoisseurs in the region, much like the fictional Jay Gatsby’s illumination to Daisy Buchanan in the novel “The Great Gatsby” (sans the star-crossed conclusion).
Since the bar’s opening in September, customers have enjoyed glasses of wine, beer, and small plates at The Porchlight Wine Bar at 19 West Main St. Thursdays through Sundays. Visitors range from elderly pillars of the community to noseringed 20-somethings with punk haircuts. A New Age healer may be speaking in French with an acclaimed avant-garde writer. Locals and New Yorkers mix together. They are all united by a love of good wine, and The Porchlight has an extensive menu of just that ingredient.
Server Theresa Sheremeta, who is always at the ready to recommend the right wine for the occasion, said there was always a wide array of customers. That Sunday afternoon, Sheremeta poured glasses of a 2014 Tomas Cusine**CMMD** Llebre tempranillo for the owners to taste.
The owners, spouses and business partners Tracey and Brian Abut took a few
minutes from supervising the bar to chat.
Brian Abut said, “We have always wanted the bar to be like home.”
Tracey Abut added, “We like all types. Life would be nothing without diversity.”
She said an expansion will be happening in the future. The right-most wall will be knocked down to expand into a room of the large house that contains a fireplace.
“We will be adding a leather sofa and armchairs, and the room will have a lounge feel,” Brian Abut said.
The bar’s current 27-seat, 26-by-18-foot space would be expanded. “It will have a club feel to it,” Tracey Abut.
Currently, The Porchlight’s decor sports a subdued, dimly-lit, tasteful air, contributed to by dark Polo-blue walls, glossy gray ceilings, painted walnut wood floors, and an intimate salon-like decor. Eight compact and orderly modern-looking walnut tables and scoop-back Wegman-style chairs adorn either side of the bar as one enters the bar. One is walking on what resembles an antique Indian Amritsar runner rug. Tables’ candles contribute to the quiet, hallowed atmosphere. A large antique map of Connecticut and Long Island Sound from 1815 hangs on the left wall while two gilded oval mirrors hang on the right wall.
Farther inside the room, a vase with an explosion of wildflowers greets one’s view at the end of a reverse-L-shaped Carrera marble bar, with the same aforementioned shade of Polo-blue base and cushions atop five gunmetalfinish metal bar stools. Hooks adorn the front of each seat, so that one can hang one’s purse, scarf, or jacket.
Past a smaller purplish Indian rug, another small table and chairs is found with a small beige lamp and beneath a rectangular, panoramic, near-Impressionistic photograph of a solitary rower by Theo Coulombe, a local artist new to the area (his gallery Standard Space resides around the corner at 147
Main Street) and who is a regular patron at the bar (Coulombe also periodically bartends there).
Tracey Abut said, “We have employees from professional backgrounds, some with their own businesses, so they are all great with customers.”
Brian Abut said, “And the customers are such an array of people. They are so much fun. We get people from Lakeville and from Millerton (New York). We still have people who don’t know yet about us but we are currently not advertising.”
The Abuts said the lack of advertising is due to the name of the bar likely being changed in the near future. This is due to a cease-and-desist letter received recently from a New York City hospitality company that alleges the Abuts’ bar’s name infringes on the company’s previously possessed same name. Brian Abut said they wish to keep the tone of the name intact, with its call to bring visitors home to a welcoming place. The Abuts have batted around various possibilities, and Tracey Abut said the bar may hold an Instagram-based contest to select a new name. Brian Abut, however, said the name will likely become The Brass Porchlight.
Brian Abut said prior to opening The Porchlight, they had done an extensive trademark search. “Apparently the searches are separated by states.”
But the Abuts are not worried about this temporary bump in the road. “It is just one of those growing pains of a business,” Tracey Abut said, shrugging.
Brian Abut explained the motif of the porchlight comes from his childhood
in Long Island. His family would hang a light at the front of their house and it wouldn’t be extinguished until every family member arrived home. “They kept it on until the last kid came home,” Brian Abut said. “That is why I want to keep some form of the name.”
Advertising or not, business at the bar remains steady, with 30 to 40 customers per night. Libations at the bar range from $9 to $16 per glass, and $32 to $60 per bottle. Coulombe and Sheremeta present discriminating wine menus that include such whitewine vintages as a 2016 Leigenfeld, Huber Gruner Veltliner from Austria and a 2015 Domaine VigneauChevreau, Vouvray Chenin Blanc from France. Reds include a 2013 MacRostie Winery and Vineyards, Pinot Noir from California; a 2016 Terres d’Avignon, Cypress Cuvee Cote de Rhone rouge blend from France; and, of course, the afore-mentioned tempranillo sampled by the Abuts.
The Abuts moved to Sharon in July 2016, keeping an apartment in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. During the week, Tracey Abut works in human resources at OnDeck, an online small-business lending company; Brian Abut works in BlackBerry mobile phone sales for the banking and private-equity industries. He had also worked in the restaurant industry in his 20s and 30s, planting the seed for his future business endeavor.
“We got tired of summers in New York,” said Tracey Abut about their move to the Northwest Corner, adding, “We took vacations in April and in
October. We originally looked at opening a restaurant in New York but the cost was prohibitive. We looked at Dutchess County at first. And then we saw that Connecticut’s taxes were so cheaper and the region so much prettier.”
She said, “Over a year ago we were at JP Gifford Cafe (across the street from their bar), and we were shown this space.”
In the sprawling house that used to be a doctor’s office, The Porchlight shares the address with a hair salon in the back and an active Airbnb onlinevacation-rental space upstairs.
Tracey Abut said she loves the personable quality of the region: “We have met more people here in one year than in all of our many years in our New York apartment building.”
When asked how the Abuts handle dividing their time between New York City and Sharon, Tracey Abut said, “We have the best of both worlds. We are working seven days a week, but we have a great and dedicated staff.”
The wine menu also includes selections of roses and sparkling wines. There is also a smaller selection of bottled and canned beers, including Shiner Bock from Texas (a nod to where Ms. Abut originally hails from); Two Roads Lil’ Heaven IPA, Stratford; Big Elm Gerry Dog Stout from Sheffield, Mass.; and others. Non-alcoholic beer includes Clausthaler from Germany.
The ever-changing menu of small plates includes “not-so-deviled eggs,” which features halved eggs with dijonnaise mustard and radish, and “devils-onhorsebacks” with dates stuffed with bacon. A generously-sized meat-andcheese board, as well as a flatbread that sports mozzarella, blue cheese, and pears glazed with balsamic vinegar, make subtle companions to the offered wines.
“We do everything,” said Tracey Abut, referring to herself and the staff. “People enjoy the food and simple plates of home cooking.”
In warmer months, the bar’s porch offers outdoor seating with tasteful cookout tables and white widerattan chairs.
The overall feel of the place is that you have been invited to an exclusive cocktail party where the conversation is deliciously hushed but always interesting.
The Abuts said they plan on holding more winerelated events this spring. A class discussing biodynamic organic wine from an Oregon winemaker will take place at the end of March. Previously in January, The Porchlight hosted a class with winemaker Maria Alfonso of Finca Volvoreta, a vineyard in Zamora, Spain.
“We will also be taking a vacation in mid-March to California that will include seminars at Brumaire, Oakland’s Natural Wine Fair, and visiting Santa Barbara wineries,” Tracey Abut said.
Brian Abut said, “It is for the love of everything educational around wine, and we are lucky to be in such a business.”
The Porchlight Wine Bar’s hours are Thursday, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.; and Sunday, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. The telephone number is 860-397-5259. www.porchlightsharon.com