New York wine shop with mission

Wine has gone through many changes over the years. In the beginning, it was nothing more complicated than basic fermented grape juice. When the French finally finessed it, aged it and pasted on fancy labels, it matured into a rather complicated drink. It was an intimidating situation for many, a nerve-wracking exercise in trying to choose the perfect bottle.

Most recently a new wave of wine writers attempted to demystify it. Now a new shop in New York has gone a step further, opened by a group of experts aiming to take the risk factor out of buying wine.

Their store, Best Cellars, is a clean, uncluttered environment. Instead of organising their stock according to region, grape type or price, they have come up with eight easy-to-understand categories into which all the bottles fall.

Fizzy is sparkling, Fresh is light-bodied whites, and Soft stands for mellow, easy-drinking, medium-bodied whites. Luscious means richly flavoured full-bodied whites and light-bodied reds, while upfront and fruity wines are pronounced Juicy. Smooth are velvety, refined, medium-bodied reds, Big stands for powerful, highly concentrated reds with full-body, and Sweet are dessert wines - honeyed, indulgent and elegant.

The salespeople are young, bright, knowledgeable and eager to be of service. Since Best Cellars offers just one hundred or so selections, they have all been tasted by staff. And for every wine on hand, 10 or more were rejected as not suitable. If a wine is not well balanced or not ready to drink the day you want to buy, it is not right for Best Cellars.

While they are certainly not plonk, none of the wines are expensive. This makes Best Cellars a perfect place to perform your own taste test. You can easily afford to move through the eight categories until you find the winning combination for your palate and nose. Then you can move on and upgrade - probably elsewhere.

That is fine with Best Cellars. At the moment they are more like basic training - a foolproof resource for the average person in search of a decent, respectable selection for dinner - and a small first step on the way to more complex, pricier offerings.