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In early August, Leo Bayless-Hall woke up to a nightmare. He\u2019d gotten up early to open the weekend brunch shift at Rolo\u2019s<\/a>, the popular Ridgewood, Queens restaurant where he\u2019s beverage director, only to receive the news that a refrigerator in the basement had caught fire in the middle of the night. Luckily, the street-level dining room and the apartments above were left unscathed. But tragically, the fire claimed the Rolo\u2019s wine room, eviscerating almost every bottle in their extensive, carefully curated beverage program. \u201cI went in before cleanup had started,\u201d Bayless-Hall recalls. \u201cIt looked like the whole place\u2014the walls, the doors, the fridges, the shelves, the bottles, everything\u2014was coated in a jet black layer of smoke.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Many of the bottles had exploded; others were covered in the melted wax from their caps. Some laid entirely empty, their corks making a break for it in the heat of the flames. The fire remediation team wiped down every remaining bottle and placed them back on their shelves, allowing Bayless-Hall and the rest of the Rolo\u2019s team to investigate the extent of the damage. Quickly, it became clear that none of the wine from their basement storage was salvageable. \u201cWe knew right away that we weren\u2019t going to be able to sell these bottles of wine,\u201d Bayless-Hall explains. Upon examination, some of the collection was fine, \u201cbut a few of the bottles were really gross, and had clearly been <\/span>maderized<\/span><\/a>, or cooked.\u201d Rolo\u2019s made the devastating decision to ditch their entire list, rather than risk a bad pour: \u201cIf every single bottle is going to be a dice roll, we have to just take it all as an L.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
It was a tough call for Bayless-Hall in particular. Since he took over as beverage director two years ago, he has doubled the wine list at Rolo\u2019s, focusing on adding American wines, especially from the East Coast, to the menu, as well as diversifying the offerings within broad categories like Riesling and Burgundy. \u201cI had a real attachment to some of this stuff,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n
But in a lucky twist of fate, Bayless-Hall\u2019s rapacious hunt for new bottles provided a life raft for Rolo\u2019s after the fire. The collection had become so vast that they acquired an offsite storage location at the beginning of the year. It wasn\u2019t meant to be a contingency for emergencies: \u201cI’d been buying some cooler, older stuff,\u201d he explains. \u201cThey were well above the standard price point for what we had been offering. We were slowly figuring out ways to put some of that stuff onto the menu, but a lot of it was waiting in the wings.\u201d After the fire, the Rolo\u2019s team decided to open up their offsite collection as a way to keep serving great wine while they rebuild what they lost.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n By the following weekend, Rolo\u2019s was ready to start offering these pours, with the aim of keeping the price relatively stable from their old list, despite the higher costs of the bottles. \u201cEvery wine director will always brag about how good their prices are,\u201d Bayless-Hall says. \u201cBut now that we got forced into this position, it\u2019s important to us that people keep thinking about Rolo\u2019s as a place to drink wine that is well-priced and accessible. That means that, for the time being, our markups are the lowest they\u2019ve ever been.\u201d He estimates that the current markup is, on average, a third or even half the restaurant\u2019s typical pricing. For more premium bottles, he adds, they\u2019re selling them almost at cost: \u201cI just want us to break even.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n So far, he says, the backup plan seems to be a success. Whether it\u2019s because the staff is thinking more about wine than they would otherwise, or because the prices are better than they might have been before the fire, Bayless-Hall has noticed an uptick. \u201cIt\u2019s only been a few days, but we\u2019re selling more wine.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Since the fire, the team has been opening one special bottle a night, offering pours of rare wines like a 2002 Robert Ampeau & Fils Les Charmes Mersault<\/a> (\u201csuper lactic and intense,\u201d according to Bayless-Hall), a jeroboam of a 2025 Peter Lauer \u201cKupp No. 8\u201d Riesling Kabinett<\/a> (with \u201creally tightly wound acidity\u201d and \u201czesty citrus\u201d) and a 2013 Thomas Perseval Le Village Blanc de Blanc<\/a> (\u201clow-intervention, zero sulphur added, and zero dosage with 7 years on the lees is a very ambitious undertaking\u201d). Because of the relatively small collection, there\u2019s not enough bottles of each to necessarily add them to their wine list, but these nightly pours allow patrons to sample their cellar while Rolo\u2019s rebuilds.\u201cMaybe it\u2019ll be something we do indefinitely, or at least until we go through all these bottles,\u201d says Bayless-Hall.<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s a Pierre Paillard Grand Cru Champagne or a Paolo Bea Italian red, Rolo\u2019s loss is, at least temporarily, a wine lover\u2019s gain. \u201cI want people to be drinking wine that they\u2019re excited about, and that I\u2019m excited about, and that seems like something we\u2019re going to be able to do in a way that\u2019s kind of cool,\u201d Bayless-Halls explains. \u201cIt\u2019s for a shitty reason, but it\u2019s ultimately exciting.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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