Moscow Wine Bars : Rosso Bianco

Serguey Tarasov of Rosso BiancoMoscow, Russia
The outside of the place doesn’t seem to go with what you’d expect from a wine bar, but the inside which is in the basement, is immaculate and designed with an elegant sobriety. For sure, it hasn’t the wine peps to seduce a wine amateur at the first glance (it looks like a normal restaurant room with few bottles dispayed). But Rosso Bianco, at least it seems to me, is a place where good wine will have the front seat.The management of the venue changed very recently and its new manager/sommelier whom we met that day made a very good impression on me and my Russian friends.
Serguey Tarasov comes from the wine distribution/importation sector, and as such, he has a good experience in meeting the vignerons in France and elsewhere, and at selecting the wines too. He has ambitious plans in terms of quality of the wines offered to the patrons as well as on the price bracket, which he wants to lower sensibly compared to other moscow wine bars.

Rosso & Bianco's door on the boulevardSerguey Tarasov tells us how he is changing the format of this place : there will be some 150 wines available, 30 of which will cost between 25 € and 50 €, and another 40 wines will have a bracket price betwen 50 € and 100 €. Serguei was until now a wine buyer used to meet and discuss with the vignerons. He says that commonly when a wine is imported, it goes out of a Russian distribution company with a rate 3,5 times bigger than the wholesale rate at the estate because of the transport, the import fees and the distribution commission. Then, when it reaches the counter of a wine bar, it will get an additional hike of 3 times, and that’s what the end consumer will pay. He adds that if you find a 25 € wine in a Moscow restaurant or bar, it is probably a very cheap wine at the origin.
The owner of Rosso Bianca is a 26-year-old football player named Dmitri Sychev. He played in the Olympique de Marseille (OM) and he is now in the Russian national team.
Serguei Tarasov has free reins to organize the place and he is in the process to rethink the format of the bar/restaurant. There will be 7 wines by the glass but it will be possible to open bottles from a list of 30 wines. The front room of Rosso BiancoSerguey keeps working for the distributor/importer Grandi Vini, a Switzerland-based (Lugano) Russian company created by a Russian woman named Anna Erhbar. A sister company has been set up for france, under the name of Le Grand Vin. In his selection of foreign wines, Serguey Tarasov tries to favor personnal contacts with small, good wineries, in France, Spain and Italy for instance. He meets regularly French vignerons and appears to be very knowledgeable about artisan winemakers who produce exceptional wines, which is not common among Russian wine importers. For example, asked about whom he met and liked the wines of, he answers Vincent Dancer in Burgundy and Alice & Olivier de Moor in Chablis (he says the Rosette 2004 is like a Grand Cru). These are indeed good winemakers and authentic wines... He speaks also with warmth of Cédric Bouchard who is 35 and makes 6 outstanding wines only a few years after starting his winery (2003). He notes his Blanc de Blanc that he made not with Chardonnay, but with Pinot Blanc, a very rare move.
Serguei also speaks warmly about a unique hybrid from Italy : a Caberlot made by Podere Il Carnasciale in Tuscany. The estate makes only one wine, this Caberlot, and only in magnums (1000 each year). Caberlot is likes its name may suggest a variety between Cabernet & Merlot, it has the organoleptic qualities of Merlot but clusters and grapes look like Cab. He says no one else makes this in Italy, the wine costs 150 € usually in the estate. In 1999, he adds, there was no wine because wild boars ate all the grapes. The owner is a woman named Bettina Rogosky. She is soon releasing a second wine made from young vines which will cost 25 € for 75 cl. Well, I need to taste this some day... The dinner roomThe Chef here is a young woman named Lesya Katonova. She worked before at Nostalgie,the 1st gourmet restaurant in Moscow which is co-owned by Roman Rozhnikovsky and where the wine list is first class. The cuisine at Rosso Bianco is to be designed specially for the wine and 80 % of the menu will be fixed year around, the remaining 20 % changing along the seasons. The Chef takes her inspiration from the cuisine of Italy, France, Asia, Norway...There also a very populmar dish here named Chilean Civas, a fresh white fish. They sell it for 900 Rbs or 21 €; this dish cost usually elsewhere in Moscow some 40 €. He targets a price bracket for main dishes at 1000 Rbs (25 €) or under.
The wines by the glass will be cheap here too compared to other places, beginning in general at 250 Rbs. Right now they have a Rosé Cabernet d’Anjou by Baumard at 217 Rbs.
He has some Champagne Fleury (organic), some Chablis by Jean Collet. Among Italian wines, he speaks very warmly about an estate in the Friuli : Enzo Pontoni of the Miani winery [Jack of Fork & Bottle tasted some of their wines], he says, makes 6 or 7 cuvées, with 2000 bottles each, a great job. His Merlot (900 bottles only) was particularly good. He says that the man is a two-meter tall giant with big hands, he does all the work in the vineyard by himself. Robert Parker said his Sauvignon Blanc was maybe the best he had. [Gimme one bottle for Alice...]. I discovered that his wine was one of the wines found the the Drops of God, the best-seller Japanese wine manga (see here, click on the Volume 1 wine references)

Serguei pours us a Pomerol Clos Plince 2003, organic farming (Ecocert). Elegant wine, a pleasure to drink. He says that while the wine pro rate is 15 € at the estate, it hikes to 50 € for wholesale price in Moscow, and lots more on retail. Rosso Bianco Оружейный пер., 27 Orujeiny 27 Off Bolchaïa Sadovaïa (Bank BSGV at the corner) Metro : Mayakovskaya or Novoslobodskaya Wine list (Word file) phone + 8 495 973-34-52 www.rossobianco.ru Google map of Rosso Bianco Moscow nights (same evening)