A white table runs like a narrow domino down the center of Clo, sommelier Andrew Bradbury's new robo wine bar in the Time Warner Center. If you drag your fingers across its surface, you'll scroll digitally through more than 100 wines, searching by grape, color, region, price or prettiness of bottle—all on the tabletop, like a giant iPhone.
It's housed in what's not quite a kiosk, not yet a room (its walls are only 7 feet-ish tall) set up in the glossy hallway neighboring Bar Masa and Per Se. So why would you find yourself there? Either you're a wine connoisseur, you're very lost, or you like small, neat things in small, neat spaces at very large (per-ounce) prices. Clo's both genuinely useful and genuinely weird, simultaneously removing the need for a sommelier and requiring a sommelier to usher you through the process of not needing a sommelier. Is it the future of wine bars? No. Is it a novelty wine-amusement-park ride? Not that, either. It's more like a glorified wine store for people with lots of time and money.
The procedure: Tap the pictures on the table to pull up information about your chosen wine, note its location code (B5, say), and bring your glass (imagine a preteen-size wine goblet, but stemless) to the B section of the bar’s walls, which serve as grown-up soda fountains. Put your Clo card into the machine (it’s a special credit card you use until you leave), and press the button above B5 to get 2 ounces of wine delivered via tiny hose from the temperature-controlled bottle to your glass. To get an idea of how much wine 2 ounces is, think of the most possible liquid you could hold in one cupped hand.
Since the serving size is designed more for quick tasting than lingering and lounging (although bottle service is also available), the prices at Clo start on the low end ($3) but reach up to $98 for a squirt of 1863 Barbeito 'Bual' Madeira (location A7, described breathlessly on the tabletop as "incredibly rare and amazingly complex...with notes of candied citrus, pancakes and light syrup, roasted walnuts and a mineral-driven finish"). Light syrup!
Digs: It’s a rectangular space bounded by half-walls holding electronic wine fountains on the inside and display cases of elegant and ridiculous wine accessories (puffy wine-bottle cloaks made of feathers?) on the outside. (The wines you taste are available to take home, too.)
Vibe: Tony and curious. Everyone seems to be having fun, even if many are jabbing mistrustfully at the table like rotary phone enthusiasts using a cell for the first time. Most people make at least one joke about "WALL-E."
Music: Because there’s no roof, the soundtrack is whatever’s floating up from the lobby below—indecipherable muzak, garbled tourist exclamations and marble echoes. Plus overheard snippets of braggadocio (“My tongue is sucked dry, I'm so ready to go back to whites at this point.” “A-men!”).
Service: Top-notch. Owner Andrew Bradbury (formerly of Aureole in Las Vegas, where he designed a similar yet simpler electronic wine list) and his team of sommeliers bend over backward to make sure no one's overwhelmed or embarrassed by their table-jabbing or wobbly finger-hovering. The baby wine glasses are whisked away and replaced with fresh ones for each tasting, and once you get your head around the process it's as easy as using a soft-serve machine.
Food: Cheese and charcuterie ($5 for one, $13 for three), like the Red Hawk cow's milk cheese from Cowgirl Creamery and the Culatello cured pork haunch from Parma—plus a couple pates and a selection of Jacques Torres chocolates.
Bottom Line: Clo's cool and surprisingly friendly, considering how easy it would have been to make it uncomfortably sterile and confusingly weird.
Net results: what people are saying online
[Shecky's]: "Owner/sommelier Andrew Bradbury (of Las Vegas' Aureole) better have a geek squad ready for all those customers who still don't know how to send a text."
[TONY]: "’Tis the year of the digital sommelier..."
[Zagat]: "Great views of Columbus Circle..."
[UrbanDaddy]: "Show up after a hard day of work to blow off some steam and do some serious 'tasting.'"
Clo Wines
Time Warner Center, 4th floor
Columbus Circle
212-823-9898
Photo by Ryan Muir
