Where Cortisone Fails, (Romanée) Conti Conquers

Where Cortisone Fails, (Romanée) Conti Conquers: Dagger-like nerve-shocks pierced my ankle as the jet touched down at SFO, the pain from these Shining-esque hatchet-hacks enveloping my ankle as if it swelled forth from Phlegethon, the river of blood in Dante’s Inferno. I was in the Bay Area for a dinner which featured offerings of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s — among the most treasured pleasures extant on the planet, even for the merry circle of illustrious collectors hosting the dinner. But all I could think about was my acutely inflamed ankle — a product of some reckless play in New Orleans the day before and even more reckless play the weeks leading up to this trip.

cortisone wine medications pain

Since my sprained-and-bruised high-school wrestling days, I have taken pride in an elevated threshold for pain, but my normal resiliency was now being supplanted by darker thoughts.  While flying, the specter of an air disaster seemed no longer so horrible – at least the daggers would be done.  Low-altitude wind shear?  Sure, go ahead.  Spark in the fuel tank?  Not so bad.  A Valujet plunge?  I’m ready.

The next day found me doing everything I could to contain this gangrene before the dinner that night.  I became a limping trashcan of treatments — stomach-curdling-doses of naproxen, a Snoop-Dog cane, Bio-Freeze, Lidocaine patches, oral doses of notoriously potent cortisone — none of which made even a dent in the agony. Isn’t Cortisone supposed to offset this pain?

“Bite the bullet, boy,” my inner-Louis Gossett, Jr. chided me like I was Mayo on the roof in An Officer and a Gentleman.  But I didn’t really need the extra motivation: I’d have to be in a coma and shackled to my bed to miss this tasting.

When night fell, I pried on my tuxedo and hobbled from my hotel to the dinner. Effective Cortisone or not, I couldn’t miss this. Thankfully, distractions awaited. The evening commenced with Dom Perignon Oenotheque 1973, a 33-year-old sparkler that still tasted fresh because it had been recently “disgorged” — that is, recently removed from its lees (i.e., the sediment resulting from the bubbles-creating secondary fermentation induced in each bottle of Champagne). The DP indeed had a sprightly citrus quality and a chimney of pinpoint bubbles, while also showing the richness and depth you’d expect from bubbly that has had so many years of contact with its lees.

We then sat for dinner and the featured attraction: thirteen red Burgundies, three from the fabled Domaine Leroy and the rest out of DRC.  Except for one corked bottle, there were no disappointments, just a succession of peaks, with certain bottles — namely, the 1952 and 1978 DRC Richebourg and the 1959 and 1978 DRC Grands-Echezeaux and Echezeaux — exemplars of complexity, length, and texture.

Sounds great, you might say — but what is the take-away for the budding enthusiast?  To the extent that it is even possible to describe commonalities among night’s favorites (and also other fine, aged Burgundies), this is what I noticed:

* hints of what I call “glowing licorice” — a kind of incandescence of minty fruit that for some might seem more like some combination of Asian spices or raspberries or violets or roses

* a fascinating earthiness evocative of smoky autumn leaf piles or mushrooms or even cooking cabbage.  Those hopelessly infected with oenophilia have been known to call this quality “sous-bois” — French for undergrowth or forest floor.

* other crazy nuances that sometimes emerge as the wine wakes up — leather, tea, musk, bullion, wax, green beans, oats, or even soy sauce.  At its best, Burgundy portals you to exotic locales.

* flavors more intense and long-lasting than its agile, light-to-medium bodied frame would suggest

* a velvety texture that coats your tongue and throat like nothing else

So the night went.  And somewhere in the middle of our feast it dawned on me: the veil of intense pain had finally lifted — the daggers had melted into a tourniquet stitched from the rarest Burgundian silk.  As I ambled back to my hotel, pain-free and happily under the influence of DRC, it became apparent: where cortisone fails, (Romanée) Conti conquers.

THE NIGHT’S LINE-UP:

Dom Perignon Oenotheque 1973
Domaine Leroy Le Corton 1966
Domaine Leroy La Romanee 1953
Domaine Leroy La Romanee 1962
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Echezeaux 1959
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Echezeaux 1966
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Echezeaux 1978
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands-Echezeaux 1957
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands-Echezeaux 1959
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands-Echezeaux 1966
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands-Echezeaux 1978
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Richebourg 1952
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Richebourg 1966
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Richebourg 1978

The Parisian Speedo Police

Before I get to this entry’s featured wine, I ask you to indulge a digression into an indignity that happened on a recent wine-tasting trip to Paris, France.

paris speedo

Being an avid swimmer, I sought out a decent pool in Paris, and all suggestions pointed to the enormous Piscine Suzanne Berlioux at the underground Les Halles shopping mall in Paris’ 1st arrondissement.  So I grabbed my goggles and hopped the Metro to Les Halles.  Entering the lobby, I encountered a curious placard: “Pas de Bermuda”.  That’s odd, I mused, but if this means what I think it means – pas de problème – I have in tow not knee-length Bermuda shorts but just a standard-issue boxy bathing suit – the kind adorning any guy around any pool in Normal, Illinois.

After a quick change in the locker room, I headed out to the pool area, set down my bag of gear, and prepared to dive in. Suddenly, from the shadows charged a pool employee with her face twisted in a pretzel of consternation, as if I were about to heave a boa constrictor into the pool.

“Arrêter, arrêter [stop, stop]!…pas de Bermuda!” this Frenchified Roseanne Rosannadanna barked. “You must buy zee proper suit in zee locker room.”

“Really?” I asked, “In America, swimmers wear these,” pointing to my comfortably baggy suit.  She wasn’t buying it, waiving her finger at me in a French figure-eight of finality.

Defeated, I slinked back into the locker room and found the female attendant (yes, there are female attendants planted in the men’s locker room at the Les Halles pool, though their appearance were more lunch lady than Lindsey Lohan).  I scraped together a few bits of my shoddy Jersey-trained French to ask to buy an approved bathing suit.

This sent the attendant rummaging through a box of bathing suits in a nearby closet.  She fished out a black satiny swatch – a miserable sliver of cloth whose rightful place is parked on a Brazilian pinup or on Borat from Kazakhstan – not on a jetlagged wine writer just looking to swim laps.

“You can’t be serious!,” I protested, my guttural McEnroean scorn in full flower.  She shrugged, her face a scowl of intransigence, the man-thong hanging from her fingers like a gift from Euripides’ Medea.

Then the thought of trekking all the way to the pool for nothing – and the solace of knowing not a soul there – tempered my disgust.

“Okay, fine, give it to me.” I handed her four Euros and most of my self-respect.

The swim ended up being less horrible than I expected.  When every other guy is dressed in the manner of a marsupial – imagine the Mike Myers-parodied dancer in Madonna’s “Justify My Love” video – it’s easy to blend in.  And those Speedo-sporting Olympians may be on to something: there’s definitely less drag in the water.

However, the question remained: why on Earth is this Paris swimming pool enforcing a Speedos-only policy?

I pictured the mystery woman for which the pool is named, Suzanne Berlioux, as a militant feminist, sitting with her girl-power cronies in a smoky backroom. “Errr, I ’aave it,” she exults, her eyes beaming with anti-patriarchal righteousness. “If zee women must wear zee beekini, then zee men must too!”

I held fast to this silly theory until my friend’s Parisian girlfriend – a frequent swimmer herself – revealed the real reason. She said that the policy was borne not of misguided gender politics but of simple hygiene – to prevent French men from wearing their shorts all day and then swimming in them.

That’s a novel idea, I thought, but does it really work? “What’s to prevent these filthy boulevardiers from wearing their Speedos underneath their shorts all day and then swimming in them anyway?”

Her answer explained everything.

“Why ask all of these questions? We’re French.”


paris wineProducer: Jacquart
Wine: Brut Champagne Mosaïque
Vintage: NV
Cost: $35

The French may have singular notions of swimming pool hygiene, but they know a little something about bringing back the fly in flying. Whereas you can’t even buy bubbly in economy class on most U.S. airlines, Air France dished it out gratis both ways between New York and Paris — and decent stuff to boot.

Not your usual monochromic, medicine-bottle coach-class quaff, the Jacquart Brut pushes all the right buttons with its bright, Granny Smith perfume and hints of toast and honey, culminating in a persistent finish that is both tangy and smooth


 

Hugging, Chugging, and Banging It Out at the Emmys

If you’re an Entourage fan, you’ve seen Jeremy’s Piven’s character “hug it out” many times during the HBO show’s run.  At the Emmy Awards this past Sunday, some friends and I witnessed a supremely celebratory Piven chug it out with Möet & Chandon rosé, which was the official bubbly of the annual HBO post-Emmys bash, held at Los Angeles’ massive, tented Pacific Design Center.
emmys
Celebrating his much-deserved Emmy as Best Supporting Actor, the stubbly, sweaty, ascoted Piven held court at a table in front of the venue – pink bubbly flowing like faucet – as industry honcos and starlets buzzed around him like electrons around an atom.  With the volcanic energy we expect from his HBO alter-ego Ari Gold, Piven later jumped up on a platform near the dance floor to join the live percussionists who were playing along to Madonna and Michael Jackson, banging it out on a set of steel drums with the possessed look of a man set aflame by Möet and victory.

Grape nuts should know that post-telecast the Governors Ball — traditionally the first-stop on the Emmys party circuit — saw three wines being poured.  The bubbly was Laurent-Perrier L-P Brut NV, a rich swig with faint apple aromas and lemony lift, while the white was 2004 Beaulieu Vineyard Napa Chardonnay, a classic New World smoothie with pineapple and apple scents and a kiss of cedar wood.  Most compelling was the red: the 2002 Beaulieu George de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet – a ballsy blackberry bomb infused with licorice, earth, and muscular tannins, the kind of hug-it-out bruiser that Ari would pop celebrating the close of Aquaman III.

Veiling the Veuve as Newark Begins Anew

Why was this wine writer crouching in the bushes of Newark, New Jersey, feverishly attempting to hide a magnum of Veuve Clicquot, like a dog burying his bone?

cory booker Veuve Clicquot

The Victor                                    The Contraband

I had traveled to Newark for the election-night celebration of Cory Booker, a college friend who was on the verge of becoming this troubled city’s first new mayor in two decades.  Smart, charismatic, and innovative in his approach to urban reform, Cory is a brainy Vin Diesel who’s got the goods to effect real change and help Newark achieve its potential.

So what Champagne is grand enough for to celebrate the rebirth of New Jersey’s largest city?  I reflexively thought of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label, who, like Cory, is loved by legions and so distinctive looking that its orange-yellow label is immediately recognizable across a crowded gymnasium of jubilant supporters.  To my consternation, however, when I arrived at Booker headquarters toting this grand bottle in a satchel, I was immediately descended upon by no less than five security guards, who sternly informed me that no alcohol was allowed in the venue.

“But what if I don’t open it?” I pleaded, not even believing my own words.  The beefy security chief wasn’t buying it either and pointed me to the exit.  I slunked out of the building, defeated and thirsty.  Feeling like a suburban high schooler forced to hide a six-pack of Moosehead from his parents, I found myself having to elude the police officers milling about the venue and find a deserted patch of shrubbery in which to hide this magnificent bottle.  I then returned to the festivities.

But all ended well: Cory won in a landslide victory and the magnum of VC was still there after the election party — undisturbed, still somewhat chilled, and ready to inaugurate an era of hope and opportunity for Newark.


newchamProducer: Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin

Wine: Yellow Label Brut

Vintage: NV

Cost: $45 (or about $90 for a magnum)

Track it down: ubiquitous (including the lonely shrubs of Newark)

A crowd favorite famous for its balance of force and finesse, Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label is everything a richer-style, Pinot Noir-dominated Champagne should be.  This golden-yellow potion consistently delivers tiny, pinpoint bubbles, joined by notes of apple, honey, vanilla, and baked bread, culminating in a creamy finish that lasts longer than a politician’s smile.