The queer wine bar redefining community in NYC

BABE, Ren Peir’s innovative pop-up bar in New York, blends expertly curated wines with a powerful mission – creating a welcoming space for queer wine lovers to celebrate representation, connection and the stories behind the bottle.

“There’s this idea that wine isn’t meant to be politicised, but it’s an interesting vehicle to talk about our value systems,” says Ren Peir. “There’s so much that goes into wine, from the economy, to the environmental impact to whether it’s being mindfully made… then, there’s the experience of it: Who are you sharing it with? How are you creating that experience?”

That’s why she thinks wine is the “perfect tool to spur conversation”. Last year, Peir joined forces with food and beverage consultant, trent, to launch BABE – a pop-up queer bar for New York winelovers. “This prioritisation, it’s a shifting of you as the subject, not the object,” Peir explains. At BABE, LGBTQ+ BIPOC sommeliers are intentionally hired. “It’s important to highlight that representation,” she continues, “because we exist – we’ve been in these spaces, and we want to place emphasis on that.”

BABE takes wine seriously. It’s more than just a bar however, but a vital space to find community. Peir describes a ‘safe space’ as a place “where you look around and the people reflect you  in a way that is really meaningful, because we, as queer and trans people of colour, 99% of the time, don’t get that opportunity.” 

Safety is partly practical. Events are always ticketed, and behaviour monitored. But it’s also emotional: “It feels like a sigh of relief, or like you can actually breathe – like you’ve been constricted in something that’s been tight for a really long time, and you’re finally able to loosen up. That’s how it feels to be in a space where you know all these people around you are in community with you, and know all these folks just celebrate and lift you up.”

Building community

The first BABE event was a leap of faith. Peir remembers being terrified no one would show up. But she didn’t need to worry – it sold out within a day. BABE’s been growing steadily since: the one year birthday party sold out in seconds: “I thought the website was broken, but it wasn’t”.

Relationships have been sparked, and friendships formed. There’s one couple that comes to every session for their date night, and one somm confided that it’s the first place they’ve been able to combine their job with their true self. A friend quipped, “I never thought of myself as a wine girlie, but now I think I’m a wine girlie” – a success story to rival all success stories.

While much of New York’s LGBTQ+ nightlife caters to the younger, party-focused crowd, BABE fills a quieter, more intentional gap, creating space for slower pace, rich conversation and thoughtfully chosen wine. There’s no thumping bass, no crowded dancefloor. It’s an ode to connection, and Peir and trent soon hope to launch a permanent location. She’s watching a long-held dream, fostered in a previous tech career, come to life.

While working in the corporate world, Peir fell in love with “the physicality of wine – the grounding element of it”. Feeling like her creativity was restricted, she quit on the spot, and trained as a sommelier, spreading her wings in New York’s restaurant circuit, before moving into teaching (“I love talking about wine in a way that doesn’t feel stuffy”). Today, as well as organising events at BABE, she’s also resident wine director at Brooklyn’s Nin Hao. 

Serious about wine

But wine, for Peir, isn’t simply a profession. It’s a practice that’s helped her cope with chronic pain. “Lots of people say yoga, meditation and breathing have grounded them in their bodies. But getting excited about the story of a bottle of wine – opening it, experiencing it, then really sitting with it – has  been my meditative practice.”

And BABE’s a love letter to wine, as much as it is to those drinking it. At the moment, Peir’s passionate about championing classical wines, as well as shining the torch for less-traditional regions like China and Croatia. “We love all taste profiles,” she makes clear. “We embrace the spectrum of what wine can be, and we’re not shuttered into a corner of this or that.”

That spirit of openness and inclusion is part of a larger movement Peir is proud to be part of. “The cool thing is, we’ve always been here – but now we’re getting louder, we’re taking up space, and we’re putting our foot down on what we deserve,” she says, of queer BIPOC in the wine sector. “It creates a snowball effect. The more you see people who look like you doing something, the more you think those spaces are for you.”

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