Uptown restaurant Cicchetti, which has retail wines available, hosts a wine club centered on sustainability. Kristen Wile/UP

Briana Cohen, beverage director and operations manager at new Uptown Italian spot Cicchetti, knows wine from the ground up. Back in 2012, she spent four weeks working on vineyards in Italy during harvest, and found one mentor that introduced her to the importance of sustainable agriculture: Elio Altare, whom Cohen calls the founding father of new world Barolo.

Altare showed her the importance of growing grapes without pesticides on both the environment and the resulting wines. As she worked harvest in one of the world’s most renowned wine regions, she saw what it meant to put sustainability into practice.

“Everyone is natural, organic, sustainable just as the norm,” she says of the winemakers there. “It was such a contrast to what I was used to with the U.S.A., where we use those labels as marketing tools, the FDA is involved, there are certifications that are required, licensing, etc. — where in old world wine production areas, for the most part, that’s just how they farm.”

When she came back, she adjusted the wine list at Aria to feature more of those producers. When Aria’s sister restaurant, Cicchetti, opened this fall, Cohen had another chance to highlight wineries focused on sustainability. She created a wine club called CSA, short for Cicchetti Sustainable Agriculture.  Each month, members can purchase that month’s offering of two to six bottles of wine from a single producer for $75. The wineries Cohen select all produce sustainable, organic, or natural wines.

This month, for example, the club is focused on Daou Vineyards, a Paso Robles winery that is Sustainability in Practice (SIP) Certified. The restaurant hosts a pick-up party for club members the first Wednesday of each month that include a tasting. There will also be a wine dinner and specials in the restaurant to spotlight Cohen’s selections even more, with a member of the winery usually taking part in the dinners.

“This is just something I am passionate about, and I felt like this was a real opportunity to help people realize this movement of where your food comes from, it’s no different when speaking about wine,” Cohen says.

Sign up for the club here to see what Cicchetti is offering each month. —Kristen Wile