A new bar featuring 24 wines on tap, craft cocktails and a culinary menu that complements the wine offerings opens Friday in Danville.
Called Crush’d Wine Bar + Kitchen, it’s helmed by Chef Francis Hogan — an East Bay restaurateur best known as the chef behind Pleasanton’s Sabio on Main. General manager Jame Blackmon and executive chef Charlotte De Bleeker round out the restaurant’s leadership roster.
The wine bar has ditching bottled wines for kegged ones — a step that owners say curbs its carbon emissions by more than 90%, compared to the environmental impact of flying, shipping and storing bottles, capsules and corks created as far away as Europe that traditionally come with bottled wines, he says.
It took some of the winemakers represented on the menu convincing to make the change, but Sabio on Main’s reputation as a serial winner of Wine Spectator awards helped his team make the case they’d present the wines well, Hogan says.
It’s not the first time he’s been a leader in pushing for sustainable restaurant practices in the Tri-Valley restaurant scene. Years ago, he says, when he was getting Sabio on Main started, Pleasanton didn’t offer compost services for businesses. So the restaurant started a pilot project with Pleasanton Garbage Services, and within two years, composting for businesses was made mandatory.
When it comes to a by-the-glass experience with wine, he adds, wine served on tap can more easily poured at its optimal temperature with little to no oxygen interaction than wine served from bottles. “As soon as oxygen starts hitting, it starts changing the wine — often for the worse,” Hogan says.
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Aperitivo culture — .that period of casual late-afternoon snacking and low-ABV sipping so popular in countries like Spain, France and Italy — inspires much of the menu, including that the wine bar offers a special aperitivo-hour menu from 3 to 6 p.m. daily with discounted small bites and cocktails. The 2,500-square-foot, 60-seat spot was designed by architectural firm Arcsine and features a lounge space, oak tables and a designated charcuterie station.
Alongside the half-whites, half-reds wine menu, the bar’s going all-in with its charcuterie and cheese board offerings, he adds. All of the cheeses come from small dairy farms in California and all the meats come from small heritage breed-raised domestic farms. The menu also serves up a selection of four tartines that will change with the seasons, oysters by the half shell and juicy lamb meatballs that went through roughly six recipe iterations while the recipe was under development. “We’ve got them so dialed,” Hogan says.
The goal is to be a spot that serves up quality but isn’t just a destination for birthdays and anniversaries, Hogan says. “We’re a neighborhood restaurant executing at a high level with no pretension.”
Want to hang out at home instead? Crush’d also has a small selection of retail food, drinks and comestibles to go, like tinned fish, olive oil and cheeses to build your own charcuterie board at home.
Details: Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily at 312 Railroad Ave., Danville; crushddanville.com.
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