Côtes du Rhône Wine & Music
As a wine journalist walking into a wine event to taste wine from France’s Côtes du Rhône region, you’d probably expect a seated lecture, correct?
Yet I walked into Tokyo Record Bar in New York’s West Village and found an explosion of color, music, energy, and sensory stimulation.
The intimate gathering, organized by Colangelo & Partners’ Eliza Reilly, brought together a few dozen media and industry guests to explore the wines of France’s Côtes du Rhône region through an unusual lens: sound.
The venue itself seemed perfectly suited to the concept.
Tokyo Record Bar is one of those distinctly downtown New York ideas that could only flourish in a neighborhood like the West Village.
Part cocktail bar, part listening room, part cultural experience and Japanese restaurant, the space revolves around vinyl records and carefully curated music.
A DJ spun albums throughout the afternoon while elegantly dressed servers circulated through the crowd carrying decorative bites on silver trays to pair with the Côtes du Rhône wine.
Moving easily among the guests was Master Sommelier Jonathan Eichholz, pouring French wines and answering questions about Côtes du Rhône wine with the relaxed confidence that comes from deep expertise.
The wines all hailed from the Côtes du Rhône region.
They were presented as part of a broader experience in which music, conversation, hospitality, and Côtes du Rhône wine come together to create memorable emotional connections.
There was no real effort made to match a specific wine to a specific song.
Rather, the theme centered on how classic vinyl music and Côtes du Rhône wines can share a common spirit.
The vinyl records evoked nostalgia, craftsmanship, authenticity, and timeless appeal—qualities that can also be found in many of France’s most enduring wine regions.
As I listened to the music and watched guests engage with the wines, I found myself thinking about another event I attended several months ago in Champagne.
There, I witnessed an entirely different but surprisingly related experiment.
Champagne Jacquart had partnered with Paris-based audio research company Ircam Amplify to investigate how sound influences our perception of wine. The project paired individual Champagnes with custom-created soundscapes designed to reflect each wine’s personality and emotional character.
Guests wore professional headphones while tasting the wines. Rather than listening to traditional music, they experienced carefully engineered combinations of rhythm, texture, resonance, and sound frequencies intended to mirror what was happening in the glass.
A fresh, lively Champagne was accompanied by sounds suggesting springtime and renewal. An older vintage received warmer, richer sonic textures. Another cuvée was paired with sounds inspired by snow-covered mountains and physical movement.
At first glance, the Champagne experiment in France and the vinyl-focused Rhône event in Manhattan might seem unrelated.
One was scientific and highly structured.
The other was social, relaxed, and effortlessly cool.
Yet both events arrived at the conclusion that wine is emotional.
For generations, wine professionals have relied on a specialized vocabulary filled with references to stone fruit, brioche, graphite, violets, and wet river rocks. While useful, this language can sometimes intimidate newcomers.
The shared emotional power of music may explain why producers and educators are increasingly experimenting with multisensory experiences.
As younger consumers continue seeking experiences rather than products, the wine industry faces an ongoing challenge: how to make wine approachable without oversimplifying it.
Events like this offer one possible answer.
Music can open emotional doors that traditional wine education sometimes cannot.
Regardless of whether through sophisticated sound design in Champagne, or vinyl records spinning in a West Village listening bar,
Wine is about more than what’s in the glass.
It is about connection to a place, a memory, or the people around us.
It was a fabulous event that reflects the ingenuity of the folks at Colangelo PR who have their pulse on what’s happening in the wine world.
Salute!
