Making Wine Entertaining at Windows on the World
By Virginie Boone
For decades, Windows on the World was the most desirable place to dine in New York City, set on the top floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex. Founded in 1976, it would come to an end on September 11, 2001.
A menu donated to the Smithsonian that is widely believed to be its last features such dishes as Yellow Tomato Gazpacho with jumbo lump crab meat, Maine Lobster Bisque, Sliced Magret Duck Steak and Rack of Lamb.
But beyond its sky-high setting, luxurious dining room and decadent food, Windows on the World holds a special place in wine for giving us Kevin Zraly, the restaurant’s formidable cellarmaster and creator of the Windows on the World Wine School. A wine educator extraordinaire, Zraly took the mystery out of choosing and enjoying wine for an entire generation of Americans that were new to it but intrigued.
“It all started in the spring of 1970, when I was 19 years old and in college looking for beer money,” Zraly wrote in the opening to the 2012 edition of “Kevin Zraly’s Complete Wine Course,” whose previous editions had already sold 3 million copies.
“I was hired as a waiter in a local restaurant. As luck would have it, I was in the right place at the right time. Within a year of its opening, the restaurant was reviewed by the then-New York Times restaurant critic, Craig Claiborne. He gave the restaurant the highest rating of four stars – the first restaurant outside of New York City to achieve this. From that point on, my world would change!”
That change led to a bartending job where Zraly was put in charge of ordering beer, liquor and wines and enrolled in a beverage program to help him through it. After a week of starting the course, Zraly taught his first wine class, at the age of 20, to his local customers, and a career was born.
That was in 1971. A year later, eager to learn more, he took a break from college and hitchhiked to California, visiting wineries in Napa, Sonoma County, Mendocino, Santa Cruz and Livermore, where he “could feel the energy of what was to come.”
Back at school, he got the State University system in New York to offer the first accredited wine course and become both a student and teacher at his own college. A $99 airfare to Luxembourg got him to Europe, where, with a Eurail pass and youth hostel guide, he spent the next year traversing France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany.
After Europe Zraly finally felt ready to go to the wine capital of the world, New York City, and test his knowledge.
In April 1976, he was hired by famed restaurateur Joe Baum as cellarmaster (because Baum didn’t think the word sommelier belonged in an American restaurant) of the soon-to-be-opened Windows on the World.
Baum directed him to create the “biggest and best wine list New York City has ever seen,” and indeed Zraly’s award-winning wine list would propel Windows on the World to not only becoming the number-one dollar volume restaurant in the world, but also the number-one seller of wine in all of the United States.
In addition to all that, Zraly taught the Windows on the World School at One Trade Center for the next 25 years, inspiring a generation of experts and novices alike.
The New York Times’ Eric Asimov described in a 2021 article called “The Accidental Wine Educator,” how “For 50 years now, Mr. Zraly, 70, has helped Americans make sense of wine. Not only has he educated countless consumers, but he has instructed some of the most influential American wine professionals, who went on to teach multitudes themselves… Mr. Zraly made his classes fun, injecting them with humor and energy. He turned them into entertainment.”
Esquire writer Cal Fussman, sent to take classes and write a story about it in the late 1990s, recalled the school this way: “The Windows on the World Wine School, the best in the city, was down the corridor from the famous restaurant by that name, at the top of the World Trade Center. The elevator took fifty-eight seconds to reach the 107th floor, and you could always tell who was taking the ride for the first time. Halfway up, everybody’s stomach did the same sudden somersault, and the rookies would grasp in panic for support… The classroom was a ballroom filled with tables topped with columns of empty wineglasses… You had to hand it to the architect who envisioned that millions of people would travel millions of miles to dine some 1,300 feet above sea level. For a time, no restaurant in the United States took in more money, and no restaurant on the planet sold more wine.”
Alas, it all came crashing down on 9/11, the building, the restaurant and 72 of Zraly’s colleagues. By a stroke of luck, Zraly was at home, preparing for the birthday of one of his four kids.
In 2011 Zraly became the youngest recipient of a James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award, one of only three people from the world of wine to be so recognized at the time, joining Robert Mondavi and Ernest Gallo.
After 9/11, Zraly moved Windows on the World Wine School to the Marriott Marquis Hotel, where he ran it until 2016. Today, 23 years after that tragic day, Zraly continues to teach people about wine in wine tasting events, which he custom-creates, and in virtual wine tasting classes he has trademarked as Kevin’s Virtual One Hour Wine Expert Class.
Throughout it all, Zraly has maintained this philosophy: “When it comes to tasting and enjoying wine, there are no answers. The bottom line is drink what you like and what tastes good to you! I live by Mark Twain’s commentary: There are no standards of taste in wine, cigars, poetry, prose, etc. Each man’s taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard.”
On this solemn day, we honor and commemorate the sacrifices made on 9/11. And we raise a glass to Zraly and to the late, great Windows on the World, and all they brought to American wine culture.
Image by: Atomic Ranch