As the summer begins its wind down, Orlando begins its wine down.
The hottest season sees lots of us in and out of town, eating light, perhaps drinking a little less, but pumpkin spice ushers in more than burnt-orange end caps everywhere from Target and Michael’s to Aldi, Whole Foods and Publix: it’s the beginning of celebration season
Halloween gives way to Thanksgiving gives way to alllllll the winter holidays, myriad opportunities to get together with friends and family.
Myriad opportunities to drink wine in new places, whether literally new or just new for you.
Here are three with decidedly different vibes for your to-drink list.
Quicksand Bar à Vin
The idea that became Quicksand Bar à Vin was hatched long before Heather LaVine was the proprietor of a wine bar or shop.
It was another career ago, and LaVine’s job had her traveling. A lot. And when it was time to set aside work for the day, she’d find herself in wine bars.
“And it wasn’t because I knew anything about wine,” says LaVine, whose Quicksand opened about nine months ago in Orlando’s Mills 50 district. “I just knew I wanted a space where I could go out in the evenings as a woman traveling alone, where I could sit at a bar with my book and feel good.”
Her first wine shop opened in 2012 in Troy, a town in upstate New York, but years later, she’d find her way to Orlando and open Golden Hour, a wonderful little Baldwin Park wine shop where locals pop in for a taste and a chat and a bottle and yes, sometimes a glass, but this place is shop-first.
Quicksand sells bottles, too. In fact, everything on the wine list is $20 off if you’re taking it to go, but this place is, as the name suggests, a place where sinking in is the intent.
Effortlessly chill and urban, Quicksand can be high-energy if you pop in pre-dinner. It makes the night feel full of promise. It can be your weekend day drinking spot (with an absolutely slamming special: $15 gets you half a sandwich, chips and a glass of wine).
Speaking of eats, they’ve got a nice menu here, one that at the moment, is leaning heavily into French sandwiches, like comté/cornichon and jambon beurre, each tucked into bread from Altamonte Springs’ exemplary J’adore, the French Bakery.
Interestingly, LaVine tells me, there’s a trend in the natural wine world right now, one that sounds a little crazy, but in its week-and-a-half in play at Quicksand has regulars “losing their minds:” wine and ice cream.
LaVine is a fan of local partnering and does so here, too, with Sweet Thyme, an ice-cream side hustle from chef Leah Cordova, who helms the kitchen at East End Market’s The Neighbors.
“We’re doing ice cream scoops and ice cream/cookie sandwiches, and we make the cookies in-house,” she says.
It’s eclectic to be sure, and if I had to throw another in to speak of Quicksand, it’d be multigenerational. Ages mix here, styles mix here. Very comfortably. Much like the three main playlists, master rosters likely born more than a decade ago as LaVine began curating for the spaces she’d be creating, fit moods: an “anytime” melange, that runs from chill jazz to upbeat and like the guests, spans the decades, an upbeat collection that’s all high energy and a moodier mashup you’ll mostly hear post 9 p.m.
It doesn’t matter if you think you like natural wine or even know (or care) what it is. At Quicksand, as at any wine bar, says LaVine, it comes down to the team. It’s one of the things of which she’s most proud.
“It is a group of people who care deeply about … bringing people together and paying attention to the details,” she says, “and they didn’t all come to me with these extensive wine backgrounds, but everyone came with empathy and an eagerness to learn and a deep commitment to hospitality.”
People like the ones who made her feel comfortable when she was traveling alone.
“I can’t tell you the number of people who come here and sit down at the bar or outside at a table and read,” she says. “And that makes me so happy.”
Quicksand Bar à Vin: 1903 E. Colonial Drive in Orlando; quicksand.wine
Lorelei Wine Bar
Five minutes’ drive away, channeling the spirit of a boutique hotel’s lobby bar in Antibes, sits Lorelei, where wines from Sicily to Sonoma to Styria, Austria are poured by the glass in a space that is bright, beautiful, luxe, languid.
Orlando bartender and business owner Arthur Boothe says the price tag on the chic bungalow’s reno was more than the last several of his endeavors combined (places including the Suffering Bastard tiki bar up in Sanford and Death in the Afternoon, Lorelei’s absinthe-soaked sister that sits just steps away on Mills Avenue). For fans of his work, and that of his partner in crimes against the liver, Julian Burgos, this space is quite the departure.
With lighting, inside and out, that emanates influencer Valhalla, the rosés and reds and buttery vin blancs shimmer in the glasses. The bartenders are engaging and lovely (and will pour you a sip of anything before you spend on the glass). You won’t see Boothe tending bar here — his aesthetic is all wrong for the place, he opines — but you will feel the hospitality of his other spaces long before the wine buzz hits.
Gorgeous plates fromchef Eric Norvelus, whose expertise also emanates from the kitchen at Death, offer nice pairing bites (scallop crudo, fig and duck prosciutto flatbread) but if the price tag is too high, you can easily (ay the check and opt for Korean fried chicken on Mills, which, Boothe not only admits, but offers, is an ideal accompaniment for posh sparkling pours like Michel Forget Blanc De Blancs.
Lorelei Wine Bar: 737 N. Thornton Ave. in Orlando; loreleiorlando.com
Modest Wine
Though they may have equals out there somewhere (fans of the long-gone Winter Park Wine Barn might fondly remember Jolie, an enormous and equally gentle American bulldog, as I did), no shop in the world could have better greeters than Norman and Enzo of Modest Wine, a sleek shop that feels as Park Slope as it does Winter Park.
Norman, a teddy bear-like Pomeranian, and his utter physical opposite, Enzo, an Italian greyhound who, like all of them, appears freed from a gleaming hunk of marble via sculptor, may well come ahead of shop owner Kyle Ridington, who could be assisting a customer with a bottle or pour, but you’ll be gloriously occupied.
If not by the dogs, by the shelves.
Gallery-like and gleaming, here lies a cache of small-maker bottles and a veritable wall of champagne, which happens to be the favorite child of Ridington’s sommelier cultivated brood. Years spent in Michelin restaurants — Chicago, New York — have honed both his wine knowledge and hospitality skills. Though even he would likely admit that canine charms have their own special magic.
“I wanted the wine to be the art here,” he says of the white walls and clean-lined furniture.
When the space opened three years ago, a pink neon sign lured folks in with the promise of Champagne, but that’s shifted into cushy seating, a laptop-friendly ledge along bright windows, and a growing, literally, live plant collection under which the dogs’ bed allows them to be part of the vibe, as well.
The bar, petite yet expansive, and tables are welcoming, and host happy hours and even local food truck pop-ups, roughly two Fridays a month (Orlando’s lovable Pizza Slut is headed here on Sept. 12!). Moving from the front of house to the slab out back is also a decidedly Brooklyn-esque experience, as well.
“We are Winter Park, through and through. That’s our crowd,” says Ridington, whose cultivated a solid following in several years open. There’s a smidge of Maitland and Audubon Park, as well. “Lots of parents, 35 to 55. Sometimes, though not often, even a few kids will sip sparkling tea alongside mom and/or dad. That said, the space feels grown-up.
Orlando’s natural wine scene is growing — organically
And it’s that sort of experience, a relaxing one, that those who linger beyond buying a bottle seek. And many do linger, particularly during the happy-hourish hours.
“They spent their whole week or day making decisions, and they come into Modest Wine and they don’t want to make any,” says Ridington, who enjoys lifting that burden. “They just want to sit down, relax and have something that pairs with their mood.”
Plus, he knows a lot of them. “It’s fun to be able to pair wines with personalities.”
And Champagne has a lot of its own, some of which is unexpected.
When Ridington, earlier in his career, sought to differentiate himself from a large pool of New York City talent, a trip to France set him on a surprise course.
“I thought (Champagne) would be more of a buttoned-up region, but what I found were salt-of-the-earth, dirt-under-their-fingernails people. It doesn’t seem like that from the outside. All the fancy packaging and the sabering and New Year’s Eve, you don’t see that.”
Stories about makers, though, even those who craft the sips of sultans while riding tractors their grandfathers bought in the ’70s, don’t matter if the wine isn’t interesting, he says.
“People are coming here for pleasure. They want something that’s going to make them feel good. And that’s what we’re about.”
Modest Wine: 544 W. Fairbanks Ave. in Winter Park, 407-960-3857; modestwine.com
Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.
