Success Stories:

Restaurant Latour at Crystal Springs Resort. “I retained John Foy to assist me in creating a world-class wine cellar and fine dining restaurant. With his help we built and developed our wine collection that received the Wine Spectator Grand Award. And he assisted in the creation of our award winning Restaurant Latour and securing its chef.”
- Gene Mulvihill, owner, Crystal Springs Resort.

“John Foy created a wine events program for our restaurants. He gave us a program that generated constant revenue, added wine knowledge to our service staff and new and exciting menus for our chefs.”
- Michael and Sylvia Frodella, former restaurant owners.

“John Foy was instrumental in our menu planning, solving food cost issues and hiring a new chef and sous-chef, both of whom were highly successful. He more than covered his cost.”
- Armando Luis, restaurant owner.

“I retained John Foy to rejuvenate our wine program and return us to the list of Wine Spectator award restaurants. He accomplished both. He also analyzed our kitchen operation and assisted me in hiring new chefs.”
- Fred Slater, owner, Nero’s Grille

“Since the 1980s, John Foy has been providing wine advise to me and buying wines for my cellar. "
- Dr. Bartholomew D’Ascoli, private collector.

Grand Award 2007 - Wine Spectator
74 Grand Award winners in 2007, all of which successfully maintained their status from last year. Forty-eight of the 74 restaurants are in the United States, while the remaining 28 represent 13 different countries.

Wine Spectator's Restaurant Awards recognize restaurants whose wine lists offer interesting selections, are appropriate to their cuisine and appeal to a wide range of wine lovers. The Grand Award is given to restaurants that show an uncompromising, passionate devotion to the quality of their wine programs, typically offering 1,500 selections or more from top producers and outstanding depth in mature vintages, large-format bottles, excellent harmony with the menu and superior organization, presentation and wine service.

Grand Award 2006 - Wine Spectator
One of less than 80 restaurants world-wide to hold this coveted title and one of only 3 new additions to the prestigious list in 2006!

Owner Gene Mulvihill hired restaurant consultant John Foy to conceive a restaurant literally built around a mind-blowing inventory that’s 15 years in the making. Mission accomplished.

learn more...

Restaurant Latour and the Wine Cellar Receive Rave Reviews!

Vistas, vintages in NJ Skylands

No jackets are required to partake of white-glove service at Restaurant Latour, home to one of the world's premier wine collections, perched atop the scenic New Jersey Skylands in Sussex County. The 50,000 bottles in Latour's cellar would swamp the 40-seat restaurant, which overlooks the Kittatinny Mountains from its aerie at the Crystal Springs Resort. The liquid treasure now fills five wine rooms; two more are being added. Private dinners are often staged in the cellar, surrounded by vaults of legendary labels.

This grand grape group is the grail of two men--Gene Mulvihill, a principal in the resort company, and former restaurateur John Foy, a wine expert who has guided purchasing for the restaurant's two years. Mr. Mulvihill's passion for a particular French Bordeaux is evidenced by his stock of 45 vintages of Château Latour acquired since 1961. Almost as stunning as the scope of the collection is its modest pricing--perhaps as potent a lure as the six golf courses ringing the Crystal Springs Resort.

learn more...

John Foy- wine consultant extraordinaire

“John Foy- wine consultant extraordinaire- guided me through the steps I needed to take for placing in the auction market a very valuable wine collection I inherited from my father. A passionate oenophile, his cellar consisted of wines ranging from the 1950s to 1990s; Chateaux Margaux, d’Yquem, remarkable Bordeaux and Burgundies, great Barolos and California Cabernets.

John reviewed and inspected the complete collection. He negotiated the contracts with Sotheby’s and Zachy auction houses, took care of the delivery, attended the auctions, and made sure I was paid on time and correctly. I could not have done this without his expertise.

John continues to be invaluable in assisting me with my wine cellar. Currently, he is helping me rebuild my wine collection with vintages for my drinking pleasure as well as future auction-quality wines.

John Foy’s services are unrivaled, very affordable, and indispensable.”

G. Green,
Member of La Chaine des Rotisseurs.


John Foy's odyssey to fine dining's heights

WHIPPANY, N.J. -- John Foy's views about fine food and wine always must have seemed a little strong-minded to others.

Even during the two years he spent as a Peace Corps volunteer in Jamaica, he managed to maintain his standards in the face of some pretty austere conditions. Foy would regularly take $30 out of his already inadequate $105-a-month salary, leave the small village in the hills where he was stationed and trek 40 miles to Kingston. There, he would pay out the $30 for 24 half-bottles of French wine.

He would then return to the hills with his purchase and, while his fellow volunteers were knocking back glasses of Jamaican rum, Foy would relax and savor a lesser chateau or two.

Today, Foy's enthusiasm for good wine does not appear to have waned any, although he no longer has to journey 40 miles for a drink. His 64-seat restaurant, Le Delice in Whippany, N.J., contains an 8,000-bottle wine cellar valued well above $65,000 and reputed to be one of the largest and best-stocked in the state.

Moreover, his kitchen, which specializes in classically influenced yet highly contemporary dishes, is beginning to establish a national reputation for itself. A customer entering the six-year-old restaurant for the first time cannot help stopping and stare at the wall in the narrow hall where awards from the Mobil Guide (four stars), Travel/Holiday magazine (four years in a row), the Chaine des rotisseurs and others seem to fight for space.

learn more...

The West Comes East

By FRAN SCHUMER - Published: The NY Times - December 15, 1996

PEOPLE say the wines on the menu at Sonoma Grill are so carefully chosen that you can't err in terms of price or quality, even if you make your selection blindfolded.

A student of ''Wine for Dummies,'' by Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan (IDG Books, 1995) recently tested this thesis and found it accurate. Both the Matanzas Creek Sauvignon Blanc ($25) and the Frogs Leap Zinfandel ($27) she ordered lifted the evening from ordinary to memorable and lengthened it by several hours.

learn more...

WINE TALK; Where the Lists Are Long and the Prices Are Low

By FRANK J. PRIAL - Published: The NY Times - July 29, 1998

TO sports lovers, this Bergen County town is strictly a stadium for football, an arena for basketball and a track for horses, cheek by jowl in a former swamp known as the Meadowlands. The real town, which few fans ever see, is a mile or two west, a gritty enclave dominated by the roar of Route 17, the old truck route that cuts through it. It is also an unlikely mecca for wine lovers.

Almost lost among the small factories and auto-body shops are two restaurants -- Park and Orchard, and Sonoma Grill -- that just happen to make East Rutherford the best place in New Jersey, perhaps in the entire New York metropolitan area, to eat well and drink truly exceptional wines at bargain prices.

learn more...