At the Table
Written By: Brian Freedman on Mon, Apr 20th 2009
Once a month, I get together with a small group of local wine professionals for dinner and a good old fashioned cellar-purging. And while the wines that clutter the table by meal’s end are never anything short of staggering, having the chance to taste great bottles is not the most important part of the evening.
Rather, it’s the re-calibrating of how all of us look at wine. As professionals in this line of work, after all—the group includes a sommelier, a restaurant consultant, a wine and spirits importer, and occasional other guests from the food and wine industries—we each have the good fortune to taste new and interesting wines every day. And while you’ll never find me complaining about having to assess, say, the latest releases from the Northern Rhône on a Tuesday morning, it does tend to throw wine into a very different light than was probably intended by the winemakers.
Because no matter how interesting, rare, or carefully assembled a lineup of wines is in a tasting situation, I rarely enjoy them more than I do at the table. In fact, though the relative sterility of a tasting environment is necessary to assess the bottlings on their individual merits, it is not the stage on which they shine as brightly as they potentially can.
I have found this to be the case time after time, even when I’ve had the privilege to sample a selection of bottlings at the winery itself. Tasting the latest releases of Star Lane and Dierberg this past March at the Santa Ynez winery was delicious—they’re doing wonderful work there. Enjoying their crisp sauvignon blanc with an elegant, local salade niçoise on a terrace overlooking the vineyard threw the wine into an entirely different—and fabulously flattering—light.
The same was true with a Pio Cesare barbera I tried both at the winery in Alba and at a nearby restaurant following the morning’s tasting, the second time with a silky vitello tonnato that softened some of the wine’s natural acidity. In Portugal last year, even humble, inexpensive Vinho Verde was transformed into something altogether more joyous when sipped alongside meaty, char-edged sardines.
The almost alchemical magic of the right food is not limited to only one type of wine or another.
Which is exactly why each month’s gathering, no matter where it’s held and regardless of the wine-theme for the evening, is governed by two rules that do not change. First, each of us is required to bring something light, fizzy, or pink to start the meal. And second, whether we’re focusing on Left Bank Bordeaux, the Southern Rhône, or New World pinot noir, we each have to pull a bottle from the cellar that we’ve been staring at for a time and waiting for the perfect moment to open up.
Because even among wine professionals, the tendency, as I’ve written about before, is to hold onto “special occasion” wines for too long. Whereas the truth is that, paired with the right food and in the company of friends who will appreciate the wine, there cannot possibly be a better time.
Plus, I have a hard time believing that any of the wines we open at the table during these dinners would taste or smell better in a more “official” setting than they do alongside food that we’ve ordered for the specific purpose of framing them.
During one recent gathering, at Philadelphia’s excellent Lacroix Restaurant, Chef Matthew Levin was kind enough to send out a number of courses that matched perfectly with the wines we were drinking. My personal favorite in the pairing department was—believe it or not—the fabulously named Some Young Punks “Naked on Roller Skates” Non-Vintage Sparkling Shiraz, sipped alongside Levin’s otherworldly seared foie gras with root beer, Marcona almonds, and rhubarb.
The wine world is full of surprises. And at the table, if you keep an open mind, you’re likely to have your worldview changed by something as simple as an appetizer.
Of course, if you’re the lone wine lover among your group of friends, you can always keep your eyes open for wine dinners in your city. They’re rarely cheap, but the opportunities they offer—to not only taste great wines, but to do so with dishes that have been specifically created with those bottlings in mind, and in the company of like-minded enthusiasts—are priceless.
A Veuve Clicquot Champagne dinner at Philadelphia’s Le Bec-Fin this past June, in fact, not only afforded guests the chance to taste legends like the majestic La Grande Dame 1996, but also to benefit from the explanations and guidance of both the restaurant’s sommelier, Brian McMahon, and Moët Hennessy’s Director of Wine and Spirits Education, Charles Curtis (he has since left the company). Plus, who doesn’t love drinking Champagne throughout a six-course meal?
In the end, though, where you enjoy your precious bottles matters far less than whom you open them with, and the fact that you’re drinking them at the table. Doing so will not only allow you to see the wines in the best possible light, but also to enjoy them as they were likely intended to be. For all but a very small number of them, that means paired with food, friends, and a sense of occasion.
