David Rosoff's 45-wine list at Moruno is short, sunny and radical

David Rosoff owns Moruno with chef Chris Feldmeier.

By Patrick Comiskey

April 8, 2016 10 AM PT

David Rosoff has downsized. At Moruno, the new restaurant he owns with chef Chris Feldmeier in the Original Farmers Market (with a satellite imminent in Grand Central Market), he has created a wine program that’s remarkable for its brevity, accuracy and quirkiness.

Rosoff is like wine royalty in Los Angeles. He’s managed wine programs at i Cugini, Michael’s, Opaline, Campanile and most significantly perhaps at the Mozzaplex, where, with his all-Italian wine lists, he gently taught diners not to fear what they could not pronounce, or recoil from varieties produced in regions they’d never heard of, but rather to fall in love, as he did, with a 2,000-year-old wine culture that is as vibrant as any in the world.

At each stage of his career, he’s guided and pushed at the limits of Angeleno wine tastes. His love of wine is not just encyclopedic and impassioned; its scope is so much more than, say, its flavors and its uses in a meal. “I love the people and the stories and the history of wine,” he says. “I love walking through vineyards and the intoxicating stench of an old cellar; I love sharing the stories and the flavors with people. I love selling wines made honestly and lovingly by the people I’ve met.” In every restaurant for which he’s served as steward, Rosoff has warmly conveyed this sensibility. If this city has a wine consciousness, Rosoff is one of its principal catalysts. He is like a vinous municipal treasure.

So it is with Moruno’s list, which at 45 selections is the shortest he has curated in many years but is in many ways his most radical. First, its offerings dovetail remarkably well with Feldmeier’s menu, which is uncompromising in its own right. The a la plancha flavors are simple, but also complex, intense and very particular, driven by pungent spices and provocative acidity. When you taste something like his acid-driven esqueixada (salt-cod salad) or his pork shoulder laid upon a heap of vinegary bitter greens, you start to appreciate the skill of someone like Rosoff to select wines that complement and don’t clash.

The program leans heavily on sherry and vermouth, two agents of pleasure that seem to orbit the same aperitif planet as congenial stimulants of appetite. Rosoff’s vermouths are on tap and house-made (with Lompoc winemaker Steve Clifton), a red and a white, and his sherry list is small but extremely well chosen.

Red and white Vermina vermouth available for $10 from Moruno. They're made by David Rosoff and Palmera Winery's Steve Clifton.

As for the list itself, it is perhaps the sunniest disposition of any in Los Angeles. No Barolo here, no Burgundy, no Mosel Riesling. Instead you’ll find the Spanish, Greek, Italian and French selections that hug the Mediterranean like a string of pearls. The first thing you’ll notice about the list itself is that there is no ‘red’ or ‘white’ section. It is subdivided, but the sections fall under oddly narrative headings such as “From Our Own Backyard” and “Meanwhile, Just Over the Border in France.” Reds, whites and rosés aren’t segregated; each wine gets a red, yellow or pink bullet to hint at its color in the glass.

But what’s bound to catch your eye is the section titled “Islands and Volcanoes,” whose dozen selections hail from Sicily, Sardinia, the Peloponnese and the Canary Islands. This feels like the core of the bottle list, and may be the wines most simpatico with Feldmeier’s cuisine. The wines from these sunbaked places are forward, warm and fiercely mineral, and this last quality, a grippy presence whether white or red, works like a laser upon Feldmeier’s already focused flavors.

The other weapon in his arsenal is sherry. Rosoff speaks of Jerez and its wines with the zeal of a convert, extolling them as aperitifs and to accompany some of the menu’s more challenging dishes, like the grilled tripe, which Rosoff loves to pair with a 12-year-old Amontillado from El Maestro Sierra. “We grill and fry the tripe,” explains Rosoff, “which caramelizes its natural sugars, and use fenugreek and star anise, which are warming, savory flavors. There’s also a fair amount of vinegar in the dish, which aged sherry handles well. The Amontillado has a subtle, burnished sweetness and layers of exotic, savory nuance.”

Moruno

Wine director: David Rosoff

Floor sommelier: Erin Eichner

Number of wines on the list: 45 bottles

Number of white/red: 18/27

Least Expensive: $32

Most Expensive: $85

Median bottle price: $45

Number of wines by the glass: 16, including sherry

Particular strengths: Spain, Languedoc-Roussillon, Southern Italy

Wine the chef has with his meal: 2013 Chateau de Jolys Jurancon Sec, a blend of Petit Manseng and Gros Manseng. $13/glass.

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