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William B. Gluckstern — known professionally and affectionately as Willie, sometimes spelled with the German umlaut — spent more than four decades shaping how New Yorkers understood wine. A longtime Upper West Sider with a personality as vivid as the neighborhood he adored, Gluckstern died recently, leaving behind a legacy that spans education, retail, writing, and countless friendships forged over food and drink.
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Gluckstern carved out an eclectic career as a wine importer, educator, writer, and agent, teaching at the Learning Annex for two decades and entertaining thousands with a witty, off-beat wine column in the school’s course brochures during the 1980s. He approached wine the way many Upper West Siders approach their passions: with strong opinions, sharp humor, and a firm belief that snobbery should never get in the way of enjoyment.Locally, his imprint is hard to overstate. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he served as consulting wine director at Nancy’s Wines For Food, the beloved neighborhood shop at 313 Columbus Avenue (at the corner of 75th Street) known for its sleek design and curated selection of small producers, especially from Germany — one of Gluckstern’s specialties. Many of the store’s clever write-ups were his, and its atmosphere became a model for a new generation of thoughtful, approachable wine shops.
His most widely read project, The Wine Avenger (Simon & Schuster, 1998), brought his irreverent take on wine to a national audience. The paperback went through multiple editions and became a go-to guide for anyone seeking to cut through industry pretense. He delighted in skewering inflated prices and absurd rituals. “There are just as many lousy $60 bottles as $3.99 bottles,” he once wrote — a line that still floats around wine circles today. Town & Country even included one of his Champagne quips in its list of top quotes: “In a perfect world, everyone would have a glass of Champagne every evening, no later than 6:00pm.”
Gluckstern’s expertise ran especially deep when it came to German wines, and he championed them throughout his career. Through his label Willie Gluckstern Selections, he sourced bottles from Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, often focusing on affordable, under-appreciated choices that could introduce new drinkers to unfamiliar regions. He even designed many of the labels himself, always aiming to make wine more accessible.
But on the Upper West Side, Gluckstern was known just as much for his presence as his palate. In 2000, The New York Times described him as “the quintessential Upper West Side resident” — a tall, thin man in sharp suits and trademark gangster-style hats, often spotted at Fairway on Broadway debating cheese or coffee with the same intensity he applied to wine. His brownstone apartment was famously filled with plants and opera music, and he was, according to friends, both fussy and warm in equal measure.
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That same year, his love of Fairway became neighborhood lore when he and his then-fiancée, Arina Hinzen, decided to get married in the store’s cheese department. More than 200 guests squeezed between the dairy and olives as shoppers pushed carts through the ceremony, oblivious or unfazed. At one point, a bottle of truffle oil was passed overhead crowd-surf-style, only to be returned to a shopper who wanted a different size. A rare Camembert was smashed like a wedding glass. It was chaotic, joyful, and perfectly Upper West Side — and very much Gluckstern.Friends remember him as charismatic, funny, and deeply kind — the type who could turn an ordinary moment into a memory and who loved surrounding himself with wine, music, food, and a jungle’s worth of plants. He was married three times and divorced twice.
He is survived by his spouse, Anna, his sister Jane, the family of his late brother Steven, his cousins, and many friends whose lives he touched.
If you spent time at Nancy’s Wines, wandered the aisles of Fairway, or learned about wine from someone who urged you not to overthink it, chances are you crossed paths — directly or not — with Willie Gluckstern. And whether or not you ever read his book, he’d probably want you to raise a glass at 6 p.m. tonight.
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