Seated in the expansive backyard at Popina drinking a nicely chilled bottle of Marco De Bartoli’s Grappolo del Grillo is one great way to spend an afternoon in Brooklyn. Visitors to one of New York City’s best-kept-secret Italian restaurants might pair the wine with an inventive seafood dish from the kitchen of chef and co-owner Chris McDade. His partner and the man who selects the wines, James O’Brien, will happily open another bottle once the first one runs out.

O’Brien, who learned to love Italian wine while working at Danny Meyer’s Maialino in Manhattan, wher he met his eventual partner McDade, calls the De Bartoli grillo a “super versatile” white that he sells by the bottle at the restaurant and in the wine shop that supplanted the dining room during the pandemic.