Meet the globetrotting, oenophile journalist behind Astoria’s newest and vibey-est wine store.
BY COLE SINANIAN
ASTORIA – It was inside the ancient ceramic vessels known as amphoras that wine spread from its birthplace in the Caucasus region of West Asia throughout Europe and North Africa, sprouting unique winemaking traditions virtually everywhere it landed.
Some places, like the Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Alsace regions of France or Spain’s Rioja, blossomed into wine-producing powerhouses that now dominate the global market. But elsewhere, winemaking remains a casual affair, with local winemakers still selling their bottles roadside, often without a label, to be enjoyed among friends and family.
Amfora, a tiny new wine shop on 31st Avenue opened in July by journalist Arman Dzidzovic, is dedicated to these lesser-known winemaking traditions. Wander through the amber-tinted glass doors, and you’ll find a curated selection of imported bottles from Tunisia, Lebanon, China, Brazil, Mexico, Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Croatia — wines for the curious and globally minded, meant to both reflect the diversity of the surrounding neighborhood and offer an accessible entry point for the uninitiated.
”In my mind, an amphora holds a lot of really cool things, like wines, oils, or tobacco,” said Dzidzovic. “And this is a small little place that holds a bunch of interesting stuff inside.”
Born in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in 1988, Dzidzovic and his family emigrated to Astoria as refugees at the outbreak of the Bosnian War in the early 1990s. The family got into the local restaurant business, opening a restaurant on 31st Ave that later became the natural wine bar Diwine, just a few doors down from Amfora, which Dzidzovic and his family still operate.
Dzidzovic earned his Masters from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, taking classes by day and working at the wine bar by night, before pursuing a journalism career, directing videos for The New York Times and HBO. He then took a job in Jakarta, Indonesia as Head of Video for Vice. Alternative media connoisseurs might recognize Dzidzovic’s camera work from Vice documentaries like “The Infamous Leader of Indonesia’s Debt Forgiveness Cult,” or the surprisingly joyful exploration of funerary rituals on the island of Sulawesi, aptly titled “Sacrificing Hundreds of Buffalo for One Funeral in Indonesia.”
But as Dzidzovic moved around the globe, wine seemed to follow him. While working as a freelance filmmaker on the front lines of the Russian invasion in the Ukrainian town of Izyum — at the time under Russian occupation — Dzidzovic befriended a local Ukrainian fixer who turned grapes harvested there into homemade wine, which she’d then sell to raise money for the war effort. While on assignment in the town of Bakhmut, not far from the Russian border, a local fire captain gifted Dzidzovic a bottle of Artemivsk, a local sparkling wine that’s become hard to find since the city fell to Russian forces.
It was while covering the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests for the South China Morning Post in the early 2020s that Dzidzovic met Viola Zhou, a Chinese tech journalist currently with the digital outlet, Rest of World, who became a friend and later business partner. Dzidzovic approached Zhou with his idea for a wine shop and the two formulated a business plan, with Zhou coming on as a silent investor and Dzidzovic focusing on sourcing wines and running the shop.
Designed by Dzidzovic and his wife, Beau Mahadev, Amfora’s interior is a living room-sized minimalist fun house: in the corner sits a giant smart mirror with a rotating graphic of an anthropomorphized ceramic jug. The tinted wall-to-wall windows protect the wine from UV rays and casts an orange glow onto the inner walls, which are painted in limewash to resemble the inside of an amphora. The wines themselves are arranged by region on waist-high shelves, designed as such to promote accessibility.
“People have a very a lot of different views about wine,” Dzidzovic said. “The main theme is that everything’s extremely accessible, from the pricing to even the physical store.”
For Dzidzovic, wine is not something to be studied and scrutinized, but a means of interfacing with the cultures and the land that produce it. As a foray into Bosnian wine, Dzidzovic points to a bottle of orange wine made from Zilavka — a traditional Balkan grape variety— from the Skegro Family Winery near the village of Radišići in the country’s south.
“I have more of a cultural connection with wine than I do an academic connection with wine,” Dzidzovic said. “The culture of Bosnian winemaking is not like putting a suit and tie on. You’re outside, picking grapes with your hands. That’s the raw culture of wine.”
Amfora is located at 4111 31st Ave and is open weekdays from 1-9pm and weekends from 12-9pm. Tastings are held every other Thursday and each features wines from a different region. For more information, check out @amforanyc on Instagram.
