Wayfarer travel TV show: Series 02 Episode 07, the best of Williamsburg, NYC

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hi I'm James Wilkinson driving a travel

editor for over 20 years on this show

we're gonna take you to some of the

world's most amazing destinations from

the big cities for the great regional

areas we'll go inside some the world

with hotels bars restaurants galleries

and much more right now we're in New

York City and this is wafer

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Brooklands what are the hottest boroughs

in New York right now and one of the

most popular neighborhoods is Wynans

burg

it's home to trendy bars and restaurants

amazing street art waterfront festivals

chic boutiques and some of the most

stylish hotels in America one of them is

the white hotel which is located in a

former cooperage and features some of

the hippest rooms bars and restaurants

in this thriving neighborhood in New

York City

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we're here inside the Cooper room at the

beautiful and boutique white hotel in

Williamsburg in New York I'm talking to

the owner and general manager Peter and

what a beautiful event space is down

here thank you so much

one of the great joys of standing with

the very old building is they found

spaces so we put some lights in a new

flooring but we have this fabulous

vaulted ceiling and yeah it's a great

venue for small groups private dining

small cocktail parties all the place

thing it's about the history of this

building it was a cooperage at one stage

and yeah it was a was built in 1901 as a

cooperage they made barrels for the

sugar industry which was what ran the

waterfront at the turn of the century

and when we found it it was a textile

factory kind of a an interesting one

that did everything from grass mat wall

coverings to textiles for NASA and

acoustic fabrics but they were winding

down their business and looking to sell

the building and we we kind of won the

lottery when we when we caught this one

quite amazing because when this opened

there were no other hotels around here

at the time they want certainly nothing

that that felt like it belongs in

Brooklyn and that was our mantra from

the beginning was to build something

that both belonged in Brooklyn and

reflected the the real spirit of the the

borough as much as it was changing at

that time and

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and you've got 70 rooms with some

beautiful sweets overlooking Manhattan

as well we do yeah we our westward view

across the river you know runs right

into the Empire State Building and

they're all over midtown Manhattan and

it's lovely to have that perspective if

you live in the city there's not so many

options that you get to get out of it

I'm saying you know what fabulous

madness it really is yeah from Brooklyn

we we get that view every day and you

open the bar in here which has a

backdrop of one of the best backdrops of

any bar or I think in in New York City

yeah up on the sixth floor which was the

roof of the original building here we

have a cocktail bar and a bunch of

outside space up there very much spring

and summer is a very popular spot for

our neighbors and starting to be from

tourists and visitors from all over the

world which is great you make some great

drinks in there you make some great

drinks yes I have talented young people

making great drinks of that it's baking

of drinks in your restaurant here um you

would got one of the more interesting

one is I think I've ever seen a meal

yeah the guys are focused on natural

wines as much as I possibly can and

trying to turn people on to what that

really means so they're much less

processed yeah there can be a little

funkier yeah but that becomes an

interesting conversation with people

a shot

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and with the sealed of wine director

imbecile you put an incredible wine list

here at the hotel yeah how do you choose

so many amazing natural organic and buy

them at once well we work and focus on

mostly organically farmed vineyards and

work with a small number of importer of

distributors that do the hard work which

is yeah sourcing those wines and make it

bringing them inside here in the US not

an easy task

yeah buy from trusted sources what do we

have here right now so actually this is

a non French wine this is what we're

currently pouring by the glass here in

radar it's a skin contact white wine for

Dante from Veneto and Italy and it's the

state of stalls Croce and the grape is

called all true go so talk about a hot

grape right now a true go yeah I'm going

begging forward to go these tapes right

now it's a white wine with an orange

color obviously because the skin or

macerated for ten days

yeah it's for me it's good because it's

a perfect like food wine there's acid

there's texture there's Tenon's and

there's bubbles so try it out

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welcome to the Brooklyn Brewery here in

Williamsburg it's one of my favorite

craft breweries in America and today

we're doing a tasting of some of their

top drops come and join me

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well we're here at the Brooklyn Brewery

in Williamsburg in New York and we're

talking beer with Tim from Brooklyn

Brewery Tim tell us about the great

history of this amazing brewery well

before we get into the history we should

be experiencing all right let's let's

start off with a beer and that kind of

starts the story anyway

so what we're pouring here is at

Brooklyn lager yeah this was our first

beer still our flagship it's available

all around the world this is in I want

to say 30 countries about 30 states in

the United States and this is really

where it all started Cheers thank you

you're saying was back in 88 when the

when this was the this was first crafted

so this was our co-founder Steve Hindi

and Tom Potter kind of set out on this

mission to bring brewing back to

Brooklyn you know back in the 1800s this

borough alone produced about 10% of

America's beer Wow most of it was drank

in New York City bounds because you cram

all these people together they get a

little thirsty week went into

prohibition with somewhere around like

30 breweries in this borough yeah and

they kind of dwindled down until the 70s

they finally completely died off once

that happens you know Steve and Tom kind

of came into the scene and Steve had

been introduced to home brewing over in

the Middle East he's working a lot of

dry territories so folks turn to making

their own beer so when he came back over

he had to get out on that - yeah he came

back over - you know the American beer

scene of all these super boring lagers

and said well I can't live like this

so he started home brewing in his

apartment and that was how he met Tom

Tom lived downstairs and he would smell

him brewing and come upstairs and be

like hey this smells incredible yeah

yeah what are you up to and they hatched

this idea that they would bring brewing

back to this borough so Brooklyn lager

was the first kind of attempt and

obviously it mostly worked as history

sort of tells us and if you look at that

style I mean you're very renowned for

that style of lager not many doing I

like it like this that's true yeah you

know a lager like this kind of takes a

certain appreciation for where a beer

has been you know the lager like this

was very popular in Brooklyn when it was

the the powerhouse that it was last

century last to century

tell us about the journey now you've got

about 15 or so beers on tap here in the

brewery in Brooklyn

so these beers are available some of

them all over the world you know like

lager obviously everywhere we go some of

them are just available here so it's

really cool to be able to come here and

see what we have on tap now we should

probably taste a few more they station

when you do your pedal together for us

yeah absolutely

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well my thank you so much for bringing a

bit of a tasting forests and having us

here in the brewery yeah absolutely

there's a pleasure wonderful thank you

so see you at the bar

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coming up on the next episode of

wayfarer want true authentic Texas

experience there's no place better than

Fort Worth and we tried to incorporate

that into our local flavor and local

color as we built the hotel

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the walkability of this area is pretty

amazing we've got multiple museums in

this district that you can get to on

foot

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spending money today investing time of

resources today that we won't see any

benefit from for four or five six maybe

ten years there

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right now we're in Fort Worth Texas and

this is why fair

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