Scolded by the Secret Service (or Why Haut-Brion is Not Opium)
Posted on by Mark Oldman

Cabernet Etiquette: “Don’t EVER say that in this situation!” sneered the Secret Service agent, his neck veins and eyes aflame just long enough to singe a look of terror into my puzzled face.

I was at a political fundraiser in the living room of a wine collector in the leafy suburb of Katona, New York. The host — a genial real estate czar with a craving for collectable Cabernets – had asked me to decant a selection of his vinous thoroughbreds and introduce them to the thirty or so supporters – designer Kenneth Cole among them — waiting to hear former President Clinton speak on behalf of Hillary.

As Bill made his way around the living room greeting donors, a guest who had seen me talk about the night’s wines asked me to pour her some of the ‘95 Lafite Rothchild. I informed her cheerfully that the host wanted the guests to enjoy the wine in a specific order, so by house rules, it was “illegal to pour the Lafitre Rotchshild before the Haut Brion”.

To our incredulity, that was all it took to trigger the venomous eruption — “Don’t EVER say that in this situation!” — from the Secret Service agent planted nearby.

In a flash, I wondered if his sudden imposition of a vinous speech code was compelled by his special knowledge of how first-growth Bordeaux from the 1995 vintage should be served: was this a secret sommelier hiding behind an ear piece and a Glock?

Or, in the heat of the moment, did his oversensitized, reflexes-at-the-ready mind process my utterance of “Haut Brion (Oh Bree-ohn)” as “opium”?

Whatever the case, this overzealous and ill-tempered power tripper – imagine a seething, monster-truck version of Bobby Flay – yanked the words “illegal” and “Haut Brion” out of their benign context and jumped all over them like they were an injured Gipper leaning on a limo.

No amount of misplaced malevolence from the Secret Service, however, could dampen the buzz in the room and in the decanters before me. Whether or not you are a Clinton (or Cabernet) supporter, you had to admire the former President’s personal magnetism and intellectual virtuosity.  And the wine was equally arresting, an all-star line-up from the 1995 vintage: a Napa legend, two first-growth red Bordeaux, and a fabled Super Tuscan:

  • Beaulieu Cabernet Sauvignon Georges de Latour Private Reserve 1995
  • Chateau Haut-Brion 1995
  • Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1995
  • Tenuta San Guido Sassicaia 1995

Two things surprised me.   First, given its critical praise (Wine Spectator had called it “the best Lafite in ages”) and illustrious reputation, I expected the ’95 Lafite to be the top dog, but the ’95 Haut Brion ended up winning the day. While the Lafite showed the building blocks of greatness — blackberries, pencil lead, cigar box – it was edgy and not yet ready for prime-time, like a great soup before its components have melded together.

The Haut Brion, in contrast, was a wine in full – a wholly pleasurable paragon of elegance, medium-bodied with perfectly-integrated essences of blackcurrants and cedar and smoke and a lush, almost Burgundian silkiness. The next week I mentioned my impressions to Patrick Cappiello, a sommelier at New York’s Veritas restaurant, and he confirmed that among the Bordeaux first-growths, Haut Brion is often more approachable in its relative youth, 12 years being still young for these titans. “With more recent vintages, I never steer customers [interested in Bordeaux first-growths] to Lafite,” Cappiello told me. “Haut Brion is more likely to be pleasurable early on.”

The other surprise was, well, with such stunning wines available and his reputation as a man of considerable appetites, Bubba remained a teetotaler that night – sipping on nothing more than a glass of Diet Coke. Perhaps the Secret Service sommelier had rendered another Cabernet intervention.

Buzz Management
Posted on by Mark Oldman

“Don’t you get drunk?” Everyone asks this when they discover that I am judging a wine event. And they asked it with conviction after hearing that I was recently required to slurp hundreds of wines for the Bordeaux Wine Bureau’s 2007 “100 Top Bordeaux under $25” competition. (The results of the competition are available here.)

Friends imagine such an event to be an orgiastic feast of Hefnerian proportions: If one bottle gives pleasure, hundreds must yield sensual nirvana. The truth, however, is that the experience was more like taking the SATs — well, the SATs with a buzz.

First, the other judges and I were separated like test-takers, each situated safely out of copying distance of one another. Then there was a sort of proctor who had flown from Bordeaux to New York just to monitor the proceedings.  During the tasting, the weight of her displeased, jet-lagged gaze was enough to instill a chill in our glasses. Excusez-moi: Was I swirling satisfactorily? Did my slurps suffice? Would she confiscate my scorecard and make me put my head down?

This tense mood had a way of manifesting itself on the tablecloths.  Octopusing our arms over a sea of glassware, we did our share of spilling and staining.  At one point, my elbow inadvertently sent my overflowing spit bucket aloft, creating a spill that even ExxonMobil wouldn’t have wanted to clean. Tablecloths ended up looking like the tunic of a defeated gladiator.

Like the SATs, our marathon tasting required constant focus on a torrent of information. In this case, the information, if not carefully managed, could get you tanked. So you spit. You spit for survival. After each wine, you let loose into the shiny bucket at your side. For me it wasn’t pretty. My chin-coating projections displayed not the crisp, laser-line efficiency of my fellow judges but something Danny Bonaduce would muster after chugging a fifth of Smirnoff.

Inelegant expectorating notwithstanding, spitting works. After two days of intensive tasting, hocking a good one — along with intermittent nibbles of bread, washes of water, and occasional leg stretches — kept the palate surprisingly operational. Such buzz management makes wine competitions a breeze, even after your 200th glass.

Written for Epicurious.com: http://www.epicurious.com/features/news/dailydish/022707

Have Coinstar, Will Truffle
Posted on by Mark Oldman

Truffle Shuffle: Setting out for the Coinstar machine at the Food Emporium in New York’s Union Square, I had gotten about halfway down 15th Street when the sound of spewing metal prompted me to look back and notice the trail of change snaking out of my roller bag and onto the rainy pavement.

“Oh [expletive]!”  I fell to my hands and knees and tried in vain to scoop up the four years of worth of pocket change now ascatter on the asphalt.  In the street dodging nighttime traffic, my fingers painted with the ashy, urea-rich brand of filth peculiar to New York streets, I felt as defeated as the Santa-suited Dan Ackroyd in Trading Places.  What have I been reduced to?! I picked myself up and walked off with my depleted bag, disgusted and dejected, leaving this trail of legal tender in the street for the numismatically needy.

That was five years ago.  Having accumulated a new stockpile of spare change, last month I set out on another Coinstar crusade, this time with roller bag fully zipped.  And on this mission I found success, leaving the Food Emporium with $139.83 in cold cash.

What to do with these spoils?  The incurable gastronaut in me could contemplate only one option: invest in one white truffle, the rare, uncultivable fungus that rolls off the Italian tongue mellifluously as tartufo bianco.

With late autumn being the heart of truffle season, I had recently read good things about a specialty store in the East Village called Trufette (also known by its wholesaler title, S.O.S. Chefs).  So off I went to this sliver of a shop, its barely-marked exterior leading to the kind of offbeat boutique your aunt would own – if your aunt were French-Moroccan and lined her shelves with mysteries like argan oil, pimprenelle powder, and geggenbauer vinegar.  I knew I was getting closer to the mark when I spied a blackboard listing fresh mushrooms that were equally Martian-sounding: yellowfoots, ovaly, mousseron, honshimeji.  In back things were lab-like, with metal tables and scales and two workers focused intensely on sorting through these precious specimens.  Then the owner emerged, a pixie clothed like a cat burglar, a black snowcap stretched over her head like a freedom fighter on the mycophilic trail.

“I’d like to buy a truffle,” I informed her, dizzy with a bit of the consumptive pride experienced by purchasers of big cars and small islands.

“Wait here,” she responded, a foreign accent drifting over solemn lips.

Disappearing into the back room, she soon reemerged cradling a plastic container like it was a kitten box.  When the cover came off, there they were: nine knobby balls of pungent gastronomic gold.  Wa-wa-wee-wa!

As she fished one out, I asked whether I could take a picture of this wondrous sight.

“No, no, no…no photos, no photos,” this culinary Che Guevara said with a swagger and finality that one dared not challenge.  (At least to her face: when she wasn’t looking, I snapped a few photos anyway).

She wrapped my truffle in purple tissue paper and placed it in a plastic container, poking a hole in the lid so it “could breathe”.  Surrendering all of my Coinstar winnings and adding a ten-spot, I finally took possession of the contraband and headed for the door.  Was that the chorus of “Smugglers Blues” echoing in the distance?

The question remained: how could I extract as much pleasure as possible from my ounce of Piedmontese perfection?  Lacking chef skills, I resolved to do it the easy way by improvising the concept of “B.Y.O.T.” (Bring Your Own Truffle) to a local eatery.  I figured that smuggling it into any place that actually might serve truffles could earn me a scarlet letter in the restaurant world, so I chose Pizza Gruppo, an East Village dive that serves ethereal brick-oven pizza and levies only a $10 corkage fee on diners who bring along their own wine.

Gruppo never knew what hit ’em.  With friends running interference, I sneaked in a duffle bag that contained the truffle, a truffle grater (resembling a miniature cheese grater with a metal handle), and two bottles of Barolo, which, like white truffles, derives from Italy’s Piedmont region and is often said to resonate with hints of truffles itself.

We ordered the blandest pizza possible and then took turns grating excessive amounts of the truffle on our slices, giddy like school kids chugging chocolate syrup when Mom isn’t looking.  The truffle had an inimitably earthy funk – a musky quality that evoked sautéed garlic, fried walnuts, even decayed leaves.  Lubricated with hearty hits of Barolo, it approached what a poet once described as a truffle’s ability to provide “a foretaste of paradise”.  And for only about two thousand pieces of pocket change, this was paradise at a deep discount.

bring your own truffle truffle truffles

baroloProducer: Paolo Scavino
Wine: Barolo Bric dël Fiasc
Vintage: 1998
Cost: $90

If you’re going to B.Y.O.B. while you B.Y.O.T., this is the bottle to do it with.  A wonderful core of ultra-ripe blackberries is joined by notes of leather, tar, licorice, and perhaps some truffle.  Full-bodied with just a trace of tannin in its otherwise smooth, enduring finish, it has the stuff to get even better over the next several years.

 

Sip Vicious
Posted on by Mark Oldman

Yellow Wine: A few minutes after I ordered a bottle of wine at New York’s Bette restaurant, the sommelier hustled over to my table like Tony Dorsett tumbling for the end zone, setting down a plate of gouda, pears, hazelnuts, and pecans.

“You’re gonna need this with your wine,” he warned.

 

yellow wine puffeney

 

When I zeroed in on the wine — a 2002 Arbois Savagnin from Jacques Puffeney — I knew I might be in for an unusual ride.  Puffeney’s wines hail from France’s obscure Jura region, which is nestled between Burgundy and Switzerland, and are known for their aggressive acidity and fino-sherry-like oxidized quality.  Vin jaune (or “yellow wine”) is the most famous of Jura’s wines, made from extra-ripe Savagnin grapes and aged under a layer of yeast for six years, producing a style said to be even more aggressive than the less-aged Savagnin I chose.

Okay, bring it on, I thought – I love taut sips like Chablis and Grüner Veltliner from Austria, and a little oxidation rarely rubbed me wrong; such vinous voltage can turbo-charge the tastebuds and heighten the flavor of food.

But was the Puffeney so high-wattage that it merited an unsolicited plate of nibbles?  To be sure, certain foods can buff the contours of an edgy wine — like red meat’s ability to tame the astringency of a tannic Cabernet or walnuts’ mellowing effect on an overly-dry glass of Sherry.  The sommelier’s offering — and his insistent, almost apologetic rendering of it — suggested that something more dire might be at play.  Did experience teach him that diners needed to be numbed before wetting their lips with this juice, like Xylocaine before a needle or a blindfold before the firing squad?

The wine arrived, and I took a hit.  First, there was a briny smell of the ocean — bracing, but not unpleasant.  A few sips later, however, we crossed the line into something considerably more sauvage — the yellow wine’s saline tang giving way to fifth-grade memories of nose-tweaking Testors paint.  Its taste was equally disconcerting—so salty doctors should prescribe it for sore throats.

Ever the optimist, I informed my tablemates that it would eventually come around.  Give it time.  Give it food.  Give it love.

“This is a black-diamond wine, an expert’s quaff, an acquired taste,” I declared hopefully.

I tried to acquire the taste.  I really tried.  I sampled the yellow wine it with nuts and cheese, and meats and cheese, and meaty cheese.  I yearned to like it, like a neophyte struggling to appreciate the baroque operas of Handel or the disjointed poetry of William Carlos Williams or any BBC comedy.

But I just couldn’t catch its groove.  It put a pall over everything we ate — an immovable distraction, like trying to picnic in the shadow of a Chinatown dumpster.  Like one’s inaugural visit with raw oysters or improvisational jazz, perhaps appreciating wine from Jura requires several attempts.  But until I explore more, I fear that many of them are like Siegfried & Roy’s saber-toothed Montecore: rare, unwieldy, and headed for your jugular.

Where Cortisone Fails, (Romanée) Conti Conquers
Posted on by Mark Oldman

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