Provisionary

WITH A FIXED grin, Norman Schapiro straightens the bottles of Schapiro's kosher wines that line the counter of his Essex Market stall: extra-heavy concord, sugar-free concord, chablis, malaga. The tiny booth is a dramatic example of Lower East Side downsizing. Before joining the government-subsidized collective of vendors in 2001, Schapiro was the owner of an entire block on Rivington St., the site of Schapiro's House of Kosher Wine since 1899. A few years ago he sold off the eight buildings and moved Manhattan's last kosher wine producer upstate. He comes to Essex Market simply, he says, to show his face.

Schapiro, who cuts a rakish figure, favoring belted jackets and blazers worn with turtlenecks, sings along with the Yiddish music on the radio. "You can cut it with a knife!" he translates. The music, it turns out, is the Schapiro's Kosher Wine jingle from the 1940s, and the slogan is an unapologetic reference to the syrupy texture of their signature sweetened Concord grape wine. Schapiro is in his sixties, but his ginger-colored hair and thick, dark eyebrows lend him a youthful look betrayed by his knowledge of Yiddish. After a few more loops, he turns the music down. "I love it. I just love it."

Norman is the grandson of Sam Schapiro, the Polish immigrant who founded Schapiro's House of Kosher Wine, the country's oldest kosher winery. Now a grandfather himself, Norman is every bit the golden child when remembering Sam.

"My grandfather was terrific," beams Schapiro, who started taking the trolley from Brooklyn to help Sam out on the Lower East Side at the age of eight. "Every day he gave me a silver dollar, every time he saw me, months, days, it was unbelievable."

In the winery's prime, Schapiro recalls the thousands of tons of Concord grapes that were shipped to Rivington St. from September through November every year.

"We used to crush it ourselves right over here," he says, pointing north. "We made 150,000 gallons a year," he boasts, referring to their original product and bestseller, the extra-heavy Concord grape wine. "From Purim to Pesach, 8 a.m. to 12 a.m., thousands of people came by Schapiro's Wine."

Even with that location gone, Schapiro's still does 60 percent of its sales during the weeks surrounding Passover.

Today, the only tangible evidence of Schapiro's century-long reign is a mural on the side of a building that can be seen from Essex and Rivington Sts., plus the booth in the Essex Market. "They made restaurants," Schapiro says of the stores that now occupy his old buildings (one is the Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery). "I got the money from them, but I'll buy the buildings back from them soon," he says. "It won't last."

Schapiro's Wine Sellers, Inc.

Essex Street Market, (Delancey St.),

212-832-3176.