Dear Justin

a note about the passing of a dear colleague, Justin Chearno

This note was attached to a previous field note, but it has been haunting me. Surely, Justin Chearno who passed away suddenly, horribly too young, leaving a hole in the New York City wine community deserves a dedicated post. So if you’ve read this, be warned.

**

Just a half-hour south of Kingston on 87, the trill of a text rang. I glanced over to see.

“Justin Chearno is dead.”  I nearly drove off the road.  

He was only 54.

Justin, in July, captured in this image by @teddyfitzhugh.

Justin Chearno was the much-loved wine director and partner at the Four Horsemen restaurant which opened in 2015. He got his wine start at UVA in Brooklyn around 2002. He started out as a natural wine hater and in a year had jumped in as a whole-hearted believer.

This mid-July, I headed over to Brooklyn to interview Justin and James Murphy for the wine zine Noble Rot, as they were heading into their tenth anniversary and launching a cookbook. When I arrived for the interview, they had also just announced the upcoming arrival of a new restaurant. Italian. Justin was fired up by the new challenge. I loved that hour spent conversing about life, music and wine, of writing and gossip, sipping with him rather than just spitting into the crachoir at a tasting table. That assignment turned into a gift.

Justin and I weren’t inner-circle close, but there was always a lot of warmth. He was willing to stand up where others would not—I was the beneficiary of his courage a few years back.

The Noble Rot interview, which will run sometime in the fall, opened up with something like this: “When Four Horsemen opened up in 2015, the wine world had its very own celebrity, James Murphy, but those of us in New York were way more excited that Justin Chearno was behind the wine. When looking for a descriptor for him, I could only think of one, gentle.”

Justin has been eulogized by those who were far closer to him than I was. But I particularly love what Christy Frank wrote: “I’m realizing that what I admired the most about Justin was his ability to balance his wine world and his family world.” It is true, and there wasn’t one conversation I had with him where his wife, Stacy, and kid, Felix, didn’t come up. He was devoted and head over heels in love with them.

Death is death, and there’s nothing to be done but to accept it. There are those for whom this will be so incredibly difficult. I’m wishing them a safe passage through this massive loss.

If you are so inclined, there is a Gofundme to help with Felix’s college fund.

Have a great weekend, keep your loved ones near and use every damned minute.

Alice