Since 2003, Lindsay and Michael Tusk have built a small yet formidable dining empire in the upward-trending Jackson Square neighborhood of San Francisco. Quince, their flagship restaurant, is its Rome: a three-Michelin-starred restaurant (one of only three in the city) and one of The New York Times’ 50 best in the U.S., serving a seasonal tasting menu featuring ingredients sourced from Northern California purveyors. It recently underwent a year-long renovation and redesign before reopening in November 2023. 

Just next door is Quince’s sister property, the more casual Italian eatery Cotogna (Italian for “quince”), and the Tusks’ wildly popular French wine and vinyl bar Verjus—which was closed for a long four years that started during the pandemic—reopened this month in its original space across the street from the Transamerica Pyramid.

Quince head somm Adam Chhibbane grew up working in a Santa Barbara restaurant alongside his father. After moving to the Bay Area, he worked in restaurants and eventually landed at Quince. He and his colleagues, Matthias Cattelin at Verjus and Matteo Villano at Cotogna, have developed one of the most impressive wine programs in the country across the three locations. Quince’s list, in particular, is a deep dive featuring not only the classic producers you’d expect, but also many from unheralded regions and who have championed a minimal intervention approach—whether they’re at the cutting edge of the natural wine movement, or simply old-school traditionalists who have steadfastly hewed to this approach. Many of these wines are surprising to find in a three-Michelin-starred restaurant—and in U.S. fine dining in general. But you’ll hear no complaints from us.

Below, Chhibbane shares some of the producers and bottles that he’s most excited about as Quince, Verjus, and Cotogna launch their next chapter together.

Edited and condensed for clarity.

Adam’s Highlights from Quince (and Cotogna and Verjus)

Alto Piemonte Nebbiolo with Age

Collectors of Italian wine from a prior generation, especially those based in New York, might know, but the wines of Antonio Vallana from the ‘50s—and up to the ‘70s and beyond, too—well, lovers of Italian wine might not be too familiar with or know how exceptional they are. They rival the likes of Mascarello and Giuseppe Rinaldi and Accomasso and Conterno from that era. They're entirely different wines. They're a little bit wilder, they're so high toned, and their fruit is so young for their age. Their colors are darker and more intact. They might be some of the greatest wines from Italy from that era—and anywhere, for that matter.

Heritage California Reds

There's so many producers that people are aware of. But if you compare, let's say, the consistency of Bordeaux and Burgundy from, say, the 1960s to 1990 with the mass of producers from California that were making great wines without necessarily so much of a struggle—you know, other than their UC Davis training and California sunshine [laughs]. The wines from Calera, in particular, from the 1980s into the 1990s, are brilliant. We've opened them and they've shown well for like a week, because their acidities are so bright and the fruit is almost relentless. They're not even close to peaking.

New-Wave Burgundy

There's a lot to be said of the sheer quality of the wines that are coming from more contemporary [Burgundy] producers going about things with a minimal-intervention approach. Some of those producers are making wines that are very different from what is considered to be classic Burgundy. Like Domaine Dandelion, wines that are just so brilliantly juicy but serious.

A producer that sticks out for something like a classical volume and depth; but with a living quality that speaks to its minimal interventional approach, is Domaine Rougeot. Some of the wines are not necessarily conventional, but still very classic and typical. The sans soufre bottlings, and in particular the négoce bottles under his name, are some of the most special Burgundy we've had in a long time. Texturally, they remind me a lot of Bernard-Bonin. The kind of intensity of fruit, but with volume and richness that can supplant what polish often does for a wine, and bring it into balance and give it a sense of refinement. I’m hoping that—maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot here—those wines stay reasonable, and that people can have a top producer’s wines and not feel as though they're mortgaging their life to get them.

With vines that are in the Hautes-Côtes, as opposed to those in some lieu-dit or in vaunted villages, you're seeing a shift in what terroir people are approaching out of necessity. They’re making wines of utter intrigue and purity, and can rival great wines from the region.

Vintage Beaujolais

We're always looking for vintage Beaujolais. Maybe we don't have a lot of it on the list, but we do reserve a few bottles to offer to those who might appreciate it. We've had Fleuries from Métras from the 1990s that are absolutely stunning. I think Gamay as a grape can consistently yield extraordinarily ageworthy wines. The perception in the past was not Beaujolais Nouveau or anything like that, but even so the understanding of the great wines were that they are juicy and serious, but not necessarily something that ages well. This might be a Californian bias, but if you think of the way the old style of California wines have aged, they’re not on a knife's edge balance of tension. It's more a combination of fruit and acidity, which is often the recipe for ageworthiness in red wines. These Beaujolais wines—they age very slowly. Something that often gets pigeonholed as light and juicy, at 30 years old is far more compelling and certainly more flavorful than a lot of wines we're seeing from Burgundy from the post-1990 vintages.

Serious Rosé

We find fuller-flavored styles of rosé to be utterly gastronomic. They can be so flexible for a restaurant like Quince, where you might be in a situation where somebody wants red wines exclusively on a wine pairing. But how do you give someone red wine with lobster? It might involve, let's say, Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo. Giuliano Pettinella is making this wine called Tauma, which might rival Valentini’s Cerasuolo. It's more red-wine like, and has this dazzling complex of mineral, saline, smoky, sour cherry fruit with an herbaceousness to it. It’s a wine that wants to see a decanter. Sergio Drago, who is in Alcamo in Sicily, makes a wine called Rosa, which is almost like candied raspberry with mountain herbs. It’s one of the most brilliant wines that we've encountered at Cotogna and Quince. We're seeing lots of other more minimal-intervention producers going for rosés that are much more intensely flavored and are better with food, rather than more diffuse styles that can be nice with food, but aren't necessarily interacting with it. 

Up-and-Coming California

There's a lot of really lovely wines that are very fun and juicy, but I think the next level is the wines that will age well, but also offer tension and counterpoints of fruit and grip. Dani Rozman of La Onda is making some incredibly special wines from the Sierra Foothills. The wine that I'm thinking of is called La Mala—equal parts Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, inspired by that blend from Domaine de Trévallon. It has the same counterplay, in that the Syrah is giving lift and the Cabernet gives the finesse and the regal quality to it. But it's also a wine of the Sierra Foothills, bringing high-elevation granitic soil origins, and an edgier sort of rusticity. But in the most brilliant way, because it's aligned with so much depth and length.

Another California producer is Michael McCullough—his winery is named Outis. I think that when his wines are introduced more widely, he’s going to be seen as one of the great winemakers here. There's none left of it, but he made a Chardonnay from Monterey County in the 2019 vintage with a tension that I can't say I've encountered in any other producer in California, at least from the current generation. It reminds me of the structure of a Ganevat with the intensity and the amplitude of—I hate saying this, but it's almost kind of like a Coche-Dury but with a more alive, natural profile.

The wines of Florèz have been really impressive and in that vein of California wines that give so much fresh fruit, but with structures that give them so much levity. All of the wines of Claire Hill, too, have been really impressive. A producer who's within the Bay Area—maybe past emerging and now one of the best producers on the Sonoma Coast—is Matt Taylor. The wines he's making from the Komorebi Vineyard, in particular his Chardonnays, are inspired by his time spent with [Loire Valley Chenin winemaker] Richard Leroy. Absolutely stunning wines. Not only just—clichéd phrase—world-class Chardonnay, but brilliant Californian wine, in the sense of the fruit that it offers, but with the structure and intrigue of some of the wines that get imported here and have cult followings.

Italian White Wines

Selvadolce is a producer in Liguria, led by Aris Blancardi, who converted his family's flower farm, which was farmed conventionally, to biodynamic vineyards. He's making wines from Vermentino and Pigato, which is basically a pockmarked variety of Vermentino. Salinity is probably the word that gets thrown around about white wines right now; it's kind of the new minerality. But if you think of a salty white wine, this is it. It has the classic appealing characteristics of Vermentino—white nectarine, a sea spray-tinged sort of style. But it's so much more elevated, because of the winemaking and the concentration, with also a levity. The macerated wines from Selvadolce are also really brilliant. Some of them are a bit more orange, more on the apricot and oolong tea side of things. And there are some that are a bit more delicate, like the VB1. It retains so much more of the saline quality, while having a roasted citrus and chamomile quality to it. A really unique combination of flavors and textures. 

A producer called FORA in the Veneto is making one of the most unique wines that I've had in a while, at an approachable price point—a wine called Pontaron, which is Garganega. Sixty percent of it is direct press, and 40 percent is macerated. It has just a hint of the texture of the maceration, but the flavor really predominates, in a light, almost airy kind of way.

Irreplaceable Alpine Wines

Something that my colleague Matthias will have over at Verjus is some of the wines from Domaine Belluard, from before Dominique Belluard’s passing and the sale of the estate, and the wines from Domaine du Gringet [the estate’s new label under winemaker Vincent Ruiz]. Prior vintages we've had, from as far back as 2005, have aged so brilliantly. You're almost a little bit upset they've been opened and sold. There's only one or two of those bottles that you could find, and it's just gone, forever.

Monsieur Gringet is the bottle that really stood out for me. One hundred percent Gringet, half of the blend is macerated and the other half is direct press. It has the purity and the suggestion of the Alpine that all of the wines Dominique Belluard was able to finish have, with this savory lilt to it. Those are really, really special.

Coteaux Champenois

So much of what makes Champagne one of the most interesting wine regions right now is how many great producers are coming from its new wave and fashioning these wines of such intense flavor. So much has been said about Champagne, about the necessity of the process in light of its marginal climate, and that’s being completely upended. A lot of the Coteaux Champenois wines are going beyond just curiosities, and are really brilliant wines with tension and uncompromising weight and intensity of flavor. Like Olivier Horiot—how special a producer, and how immensely, profoundly fruity his wines are. Maybe the best wines he makes are the Rosé des Riceys—which may bring us back to full-flavored rosés! There's a lot of red Burgundy that would be shadowed in comparison in terms of the detail and intensity. With something like the David Léclapart Fun N Roses—the color is quite light, but then the fraise de bois fruit that's there, and an almost stony minerality, but only very slightly. The wine is certainly chiseled, but it's not so serious, and is more about a lushness of fruit.

Another producer who's making really exceptional Coteaux Champenois with a different approach is Charles Dufour. His wines are some of the most exciting. The Vin de Comptoir is based off of a solera, so it’s more savory and not necessarily lushly fruity. He’s another producer who is making some exceptional wines that are a bit brighter, a bit racier than what you would ever encounter in Chablis. But that's where the corollary might be—this Chablis Premier or Grand Cru intensity of freshness, but with a more subtle, more mineral tenor.