You walk in, you open that book, and you just go, 'Oh my God, oh my God.'

-- Sommelier Steve Goldberg

The unobtrusive canopied entrance leads to a staircase that descends into the bowels of an elderly office building, one block west of Ann Arbor's Main Street. Barricading the bottom is a solidly-built, unlabeled fire door. Pondering a possibile wrong turn, you open the door into a sparingly-lit basement grotto of naked brick and understated decor. Signs point left toward the restaurant, right into the wine bar. You turn right.

Sommelier Steve Goldberg (no relation to MichWine's editor) is there to meet you. As you head toward a booth with a ringside glass window overlooking the "day cellar", he hands over an unlabeled black looseleaf binder. You flip it open to find 34 pages of small print, each line on every page listing a different wine. No chit-chat or flowery descriptions here; this list is all business.

Goldberg with 'that book': Welcome to his candy store

At any time, the list offers 1300 or 1400 wines, with several hundred others waiting their turn to appear. It's backed by a cellar  inventory of 12,000 to 14,000 bottles -- "maybe more" -- he's really not sure. Goldberg explains, "I purposely don't keep track of the exact number of bottles, or the value of the cellar."

The surprisingly wide range of selections and prices is immediately evident, from an under-$20 Leelanau Cellars Sleeping Bear Red to a less-than-expected number of high-end Bordeaux and Burgundy and Californiia cult wines.

"This is an Ann Arbor wine list," says Goldberg. "It's a college town on one end, yet there are a lot of wealthier people, too. So I list a lot of wine at $20 or $25 that a group of students can come in and order, and I like talking about them just as much as a $100 bottle. After all, I started drinking wine back in the '70s, when I lived across the street from Village Corner. I used to go in, talk with the wine guys for an hour, and leave with a $5 bottle."

The list reflects the Earle's food directions -- French and Italian country cuisine -- as well as Goldberg's eclectic tastes. While he again pleads fuzziness about specific numbers, he estimates the list to be about 20% French, 20% Italian, 40% American, with the rest a mix of Spanish, Australian, German and the like.

"But it's not the standard big wine list, with verticals of all the glamour wines," he notes. "We've got adequate selections of Bordeaux and Burgundy. But the list plays around a lot. For example, I'm a great southern Rhone fan. I've never met a Chateauneuf-du-Pape I didn't like; we probably have 35 of them on the list."

Part of The Earle's 12,000+ bottle cellar: So who's counting?

He complains that wineries and distributors don't bring him very many Michigan wines to taste. "I'd like to put more of them on the list, because they're from our state. A fellow came in with those wines from Pentamere, and I bought them."

He acknowledges that the Michigan wines on the list can be hard to sell.  "People who buy them tend to be from wine country," he notes. "Most people aren't familiar with them."

One Michigan highlight is a 1998 Wyncroft Chardonnay for $45. That's close to winery retail for the current release.

Asked if such pricing is typical, Goldberg returns to an earlier analogy. "A candy store isn't any good if penny candies cost a dollar. I'm always on the lookout for closeouts and direct imports that I can use to keep the overall prices down."

Goldberg says that people appreciate being able to buy restaurant wines that aren't all that much more expensive than they are in a store. "We have a lot of regular wine customers," he says. "Part of my idea is to create a return clientele that not only appreciates the wine list, but feels like they're not being ripped off."

MichWine's take:
Selection: Excellent in all price ranges from $ 20 to $ 200
Strengths: California Cabernet, southern Rhone, overall breadth
Weaknesses: By-the-glass program
Pricing: Reasonable

The Earle
121 West Washington Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734.994.0211

Open daily for dinner
Closed Sundays from Memorial Day through Labor Day

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