New York: A funny thing started happening in New York City bars a couple of months ago. Drinkers began ordering glasses of sauvignon blanc – with jalapeno slices in them.
“I know it’s a trend,” says bartender John Murphy, who remains a little perplexed by the whole thing. “It started with rosé. And now it’s moved to sauvignon blanc. It’s one of those things that’s just taking off.”
Bartender John Murphy mixes sauvignon blanc with jalapenos at his bar, Automatic Slim’s, in New York City.Credit: Ying Xiang Tan
On a recent Thursday afternoon, Murphy mixed three types of the drink – one with frozen jalapeno slices, one freshly cut and one with the slices muddled into the drink with a pestle – for this masthead to taste at his West Village bar, Automatic Slim’s.
Like so many of today’s trends, this one took off on TikTok. You can find videos of people pouring white wine over jalapeno slices years ago, but it was only this year that it developed into a full-blown thing, helped along by a slew of influencers jumping on board.
“So apparently the girls are putting jalapeno in wine,” Bea Caroline Seitz told her 380,000 followers in a video last month. Quickly, the spicy sauvignon blanc has been proclaimed as the new “drink of the summer”.
Bartenders have a tendency to scoff at the creation, although it’s not like people are ordering it with vintage chardonnay. This is the kind of drink best made with a $15 bottle of savvy B from the Marlborough Valley.
So says Emrecan Uslu, manager at Entwine Cocktail Bar, a block away from Automatic Slim’s. He recommends a sweet or floral wine, such as an Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc, rather than something dry. His sauvignon blanc comes from Sancerre in France and doesn’t take too well to slices of jalapeño, though he’ll make it if he has to.
“I don’t like it, but the customer is always right,” Uslu says. “I’m not a big fan of spice, but if you had a little, and you take it out after that, I think it can work.”
There is no clear agreement on how many slices should be added for a standard glass of white wine, although Murphy reckons “the voices of the internet” have settled on three or four. Despite his barman’s preference for purity, he admits the drink works.
