Opening in Rehoboth Beach: Cuvée Ray offers 170 wines by the glass

You don't have to buy a bottle at Cuvée Ray to enjoy a funky Pinot Noir from Tasmania, or Dom Perignon for that matter. Rehoboth Beach's newest wine bar and restaurant, set to open Thursday, offers fermented grape libations by the glass — all 170 of them. 

"If someone wants a glass of Dom Perignon, they’re going to get a glass of Dom Perignon," Cuvée Ray co-owner Ray Kurz said, amid the hectic last few days before his harmonious vision of wine, culinary dives and music opens on Rehoboth Avenue.

It's not the wine itself that Kurz is after with Cuvée Ray, but the exploration of it through other mediums, like his musical tastings, which he dubbed Vintunes after realizing he could pair wine with song.

"It’s not so crazy when you think about it," Kurz reasoned. "If you read wine reviews, they’ll talk about high notes and low notes and harmony. It’s a whole other way of expressing what wine is through music."

Have a glass of bright champagne and then try a viscous California cabernet, Kurz said. Now, listen to "Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles and "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele. Which wine pairs with which song? 

It's an overly simplistic example, but the point is that each wine has its own tempo, Kurz said. During a Vintunes session, guests will try wine and listen to music that Kurz pre-selects, then at the end they decide the wines and songs that pair best. 

Cuvée Ray will have three days a week of music: Thursdays are devoted to themes (like Diva night, with diva music, food by famous women chefs for happy hour and wine by women winemakers), Saturday will have musicians play from 9 p.m. to midnight and there is a Sunday Jazz Brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

It's part of Kurz's mission to make the world of wine less complicated for people. 

"I wanted to share wine with people," he said. "Every glass of wine should be fun and exciting at every price point. Whether it’s $8 a glass or $80 a glass, it's going to be great."

Cuvée Ray is host to all the world's major wine regions, from California to Argentina, as well as up-and-coming places like Austria. The wine bar uses high-tech gear to preserve its bottles and has refrigerators that will keep each wine at the perfect temperature. 

With more than 30 years as an attorney under his belt, Kurz is not what one would assume to be a sommelier. But Chris Racine, who is just that, as well as Cuvée's general manager, says Kurz "is the most knowledgeable wine person outside of the industry I have ever met."

Racine and Kurz built the wine list for Cuvée Ray ("I lost count after 1,500 wines," Racine said, laughing), and it pays homage to the classics, the eclectic and the varying wine regions.

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Kurz's wine adventure began in 1984, when he and his wife Debbie decided to take a wine course at American University in Washington, D.C. It was, Kurz said, "intellectually fascinating."

"I remember tasting one wine, it was a red Burgundy," Kurz recalled. "I tasted it and said, 'Oh my god,' It tasted like velvet. It had the feel of velvet. I’d never experienced anything like it."

So he and Debbie went out and bought six bottles of the stuff, for $25 a pop, an investment for a couple that didn't have a lot of money at the time.

"It was like buying gold bars for us," Kurz said. "Those six bottles formed the beginning of my wine collection."

He's been exploring ever since. And when he met Joe Churchman, a Cape Henlopen graduate and chef, the pairing was instantaneous. 

Churchman is the head chef of Cuvée Ray and the mind behind the restaurant's pairing menu. 

"The wine gives you a taste to start from," Churchman said.

Churchman's culinary pairings are what self-taught bartender Rob Bagley, who heads Cuvée's cocktail program, says "don't work on paper, but they do on palette." 

Oysters and duck might not sound like the best of friends, for example, but pulling the minerals from the air and shells of oysters from Oregon, where the dish's Pinot is made, and infusing it into a crema for the bird, draw out the wine's flavors, Churchman said.

The menu will change often, and most of the dishes will be wine-centric. But wine isn't the only libation sold at Cuvée Ray. Beyond beer, Bagley said he also will be serving up a cocktail program "with wine woven throughout it." 

Bagley, also a Cape Henlopen graduate, will use vermouth and other wine-based aperitifs to present classics like a Manhattan, "but with our own wine twist on it," he said.

"I'm very excited to be part of the best wine program in Rehoboth, but I also want to be the best cocktail program," he said.

"Cuvée" is a blend of wine, and for Ray, it also means the marriage of music, wine and food, what he has prepared since that first sip of a wine that wasn't mediocre or dull. 

And of course, it pairs well with his first name, as a rhyme. 

Contact Taylor Goebel at -302-332-0370 or tgoebel@delmarvanow.com. Follow her on Twitter @TaylorGoebel.

If you go

Cuvée Ray
236 Rehoboth Ave, Rehoboth Beach
Opens Thursday, July 12