Just like clocks striking twelve, our cellar coughs up one bottle of 1985 wine every year on April 14.  My wife and I were lucky to be married in this vintage year.  The Bordeaux have aged gracefully despite the vintage’s early accessibility, northern Rhones are holding onto their fruit even now, 1985 Sassicaia made our evening somewhere in the late nineties, southern Rhones were glorious in the teen years of our marriage, and some California cabernets are still hanging in there with alluring secondary aromatics.  This year, the wine and our marriage’s 27th, we drank 1985 Jaboulet La Chapelle.

Anticipating how the awesomeness of this Hermitage would set up our evening, the bottle stood for two days in the cellar and was decanted one hour before service.  But it was unusually warm for mid April in Boston, hovering at 85°F.  It called for a refreshing start to our quiet meal at home with friends. Last year I bought, and forgot about, one bottle of $21 2010 Donkey and Goat Isabel’s Cuvee Grenache Rosé.  The warm evening and accompanying northern Rhone elder wine framed a perfect backdrop to the salmon colored grenache from  Jared and Tracey Brandt’s limited production natural wine program.

While the La Chapelle sat in the decanter, familiarizing itself with its first new glass enclosure in 27 years, we lifted the rosé off its thick sediment that lined the bottle’s punt for all its 360° (you can see it at the bottom of the bottle in the photo to the left if you look carefully).  Evidently, the unfiltered wine tossed this grey/white ringworm effect even before release.

Pause. Wine experiences are streams of never ending improvisational jams around familiar compositions.  Wines like these, served together with one meal, create exciting musical juxtaposition by contributing their utterly different, yet beautiful and complementary tonality.  Combinations of wines like this create experiences that will never render wine enthusiasm boring.

For sure, I assumed the La Chapelle would be the highlight wine.  It was wonderful; browning at the edges. The nose had old leather, dank cellar and cardboard aromas with dusty black cherry notes.  It achieved full maturity and was probably in decline.  Still, the purity of the old fruit flavors were hanging on by their finger nails, with the tannins standing a bit firmer than I would have preferred in the context of the thinning fruit. The wine was still a beautiful old thing, elegant with herb and cassis flavors and a regally smooth, if not really luscious, mouthfeel.  It finished with all the beauty that fully mature wines can muster.  It’s a classic old syrah that yielded the rewards of patience.  It’s time to drink all the 1985 La Chapelle you have left.  While storage and bottle variability could yield different results for you, mine will no longer improve.

The Donkey and Goat was full of zippy acidity, feigning (or actually having?) sprtiz.  The salmon color was enticing, tasting at one moment like raspberry baked goods, and then showing off serious herbal fragrances.  A little more time in the glass and stewed strawberries arose alongside the herbal aromas.  The acidity always remained strict.  The wine wakes your senses, exciting, every sip another monumental and playful indulgence. It is one of the most exciting and interesting rosés I have ever experienced.  We had some left in the bottle two days later and the acidity remained powerful while the intensity of flavors did not wane nor hardly change a bit; a powerful rosé it its own right.

The old and the new, side by side creating a symphony of riveting wine experience, yet from opposing corners of the geographic and stylistic spectrum of wine.  Who dreamed a newborn northern California natural pink wine would hold our attention next to a venerable 27 year old Hermitage?  The beauty of wine…happy anniversary to us!

Like all great cities, eating and drinking in Chicago is a dual proposition.  While the likes of Alinea, Moto, and Green Zebra ping away at culinary pleasure sensors, the city’s midwest soul food circuits beckon.  I developed my own ritual patterns for Chicago’s simpler local eating more than twenty years ago, always making sure to integrate pilgrimages to Sam’s Wines & Spirits.  Chicago’s best pizza, hot dogs, and ribs learned to live side by side with Sam’s vinous bounties inside a city honoring BYOB far better than my current hometown (read: prohibition village); Boston.  This past weekend we revisited two old time favorites, a new twist on hot dogs, and a metamorphic iteration of Chicago’s old time retail wine mecca.

Sam’s Wines & Spirits (Now Binny’s)

Back in the day, Sam’s Wines & Spirits was a smaller Lincoln Park shop on North Avenue with a treasure trove of end bins that brought civilized wine collectors to their knees, crawling around floors laden with dusty wood crates in search of a few buried prize bottles at ridiculous discounts. Then, Sam’s moved a few blocks away to larger, more modern retail space. With serious selection and depth in all formats of Bordeaux, Rhone, and California wines, among others, the shopping experience became more comfortable and less geeky.  Competitive pricing accompanied vast selection.

Involving a long sad story of family disagreements and serious miscalculations, the Rosen family consolidated ownership under brother Brian, who turned around to sell majority interest to local private equity firm Arbor.  Things went bad with that expansion plan and deal.  It brought Sam’s to it’s knees, ending up in a sale of it’s locations to Binny’s in 2009, a local big box wine retailer busily scooping up local wine shops and outfitting them in shiny new Binny’s branding.  It was a sad moment in Chicago wine retailing history and I had not been able to convince myself to pay a visit to the old Sam’s, current Binny’s, until this weekend.  Three important notes on that visit:

1. Selection is still vast, especially California, Rhone, and Bordeaux. Format variety is robust and prices are competitive.  A glass front, temperature controlled cellar full of classics is on display at the back of the store. Staff is friendly and courteous.  But the place, just like in the Sam’s era when it departed from the retailing practices that once made it legendary, feels boxy and antiseptic. If you can get beyond nostalgic remorse, it lives on as a dynamite Lincoln Park wine retail spot, on the way to or from the airport or your favorite BYOB.
2. Turns out that last year the Rosen’s got back into the game as active consultants to Chicago start up Evolution Wines & Spirits in Northbrook, Ill.  Regional expansion plans exist and hopefully the Rosen’s will remember what originally made them successful.  I couldn’t get there this trip, but a visit to Evolution is firmly on my next Chicago agenda.
3. I picked up some of the newly arrived 2010 Chateau Pesquie Terrasses for $13.  More on that in a moment.

Twin Anchors Ribs and 2010 Pesquie Terrasses

I really like pork ribs and these are my favorite. They are slow cooked, moderately sauced, not smoked.  The meat falls off the bone; not the least bit of exaggeration.  Twin Anchors has been operating since 1932 and the ribs beat anything I have ever eaten in Kansas City, St. Louis, or Memphis. It’s probably worth sticking with classic Zesty sauce, even though there’s a new Prohibition sauce now that adds more heat. Since they’ll load your table with deep bowls of any sauces you want, try both out for yourself. While Twin Anchors is an institution, it’s nothing more than a simple, local Old Town neighborhood bar scene, nothing fancy at all, positively no dancing, a decent beer list, and a $10 corkage fee.

That’s right, a bar with the best ribs in the world and proprietors more than happy to let you pop the cork on any wine you want to bring from home, or in my case, Sam’s (woops, Binny’s).  You can’t be too fancy with ribs (leave the ’45 Petrus home), but the Zesty sauce is restrained enough to not overwhelm young wines.  I have popped new vintage Bordeaux, massive young California Cabs, and newly released Rhones inside this bar since the mid-eighties, washing down full racks of pork ribs that melt in your mouth.  It’s been a hedonistic ritual that I fully recommend.

I have been waiting for the 2010 Chateau Pesquie Terrasses to show up.  Chateau Pesquie was an early player in the Cote du Ventoux, getting in at the establishment of the appellation in the early 70′s.  While production is large, the wine is a ridiculous and intense value at $13-15.  While some vintages can be stylistically modern, chewy, and fruity, the region’s terroir is mostly present in this primarily grenache and secondarily syrah blend (70%/30% in 2010).  I have been curious about the 2010 ever since Parker awarded it 94 points, favoring it over Pesquie’s 2009 luxury cuvee Quintessence.

It’s stunning and Parker is on point here.  Fully reflecting the scorched earth of the Provencal region’s heated terraced vineyards, full of the aromatic wafts associated with its local wild herbs baking in mid day sunshine, the dark purple wine is so pretty and elegant in your mouth, showing tremendous rich cherry grenache fruit and sweet floral notes.  It is a complete and multi faceted wine of classy flavors and intensity without being overwhelming or in your face.  It might remind you of $100 Chateauneuf du Pape.  How amazing is it that a large production bottling can deliver such a stunning wine for $15 or less.  This is the kind of reference point value European wine I think about when I bemoan the lack of quality and value in California wine production. Buying a case of 2010 Chateau Pesquie Terrasses will most likely be one of my top recommendations this year for sensible wine appreciation.  Opening it at Twin Anchors for Sunday lunch with a full slab of ribs and bowl of Zesty sauce can not be underestimated.

Pizza and Hot Dogs

I tried one new spot for dogs and returned to a favorite deep dish haunt on this trip.  I can fully recommend The Art of Pizza; an easy quick drive from Wrigley Field.  It’s a simple spot in a small strip mall.  While the strip mall looks are deceiving, the deep dish pizza is mind blowing.  For me, raised on Brooklyn’s best pizza, deep dish is all about crust and sauce just like Sicilian pies back home.  Here, the sauce is sweet, light, and pure tomato joy.  The crust is crisp on the bottom, and light and doughy throughout.  I tried the sausage and cheese stuffed version.  It is ethereal.  I couldn’t eat more than a slice, but will hang onto its memory until my next visit to Chicago.  Very highly recommended.

At Franks ‘N’ Dawgs, you will be hard pressed to find a traditional Chicago dog experience.  But what better city to try “Dawgs Gone Wild”?  The Chicagoesque dog will remind you of traditional local renditions, but cranks it to a new level.  I don’t prefer it over the real thing, but it is a mighty rewarding dog experience.  It has all the usual toppings, but takes it to a gourmet level, if you will.  We also tried the Truffle Mac ‘n’ Cheese dog, and it is decadent.  But that’s what you come her for, along with another BYOB policy that allows you to wash down your dog and must-try Tripple Truffle Fries with more Chateau Pesquie from, ok, Binny’s.

See how easy it is to forget about obsessing over an Alinea reservation?

The world is better off for places like Barcelona.  Wines such as Anima Negra AN/2 from Majorca’s red callet grape and Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 from Rioja’s white viura variety don’t make it onto just any wine list.  But at Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bar, ten minutes off of I-84 in (of all places?) West Hartford’s suburban trendy Farmington Avenue retail district, they sit comfortably on a comprehensive Spanish wine list that rekindles memories of my two favorite Spanish lists in this country; Taberna de Haro in Boston and Casa Mono in New York City.

All three lists have something in common besides size and volume.  They hold pricey classic choices like Vega Sicilia, Pingus, and Clos Erasmus while featuring depth in less popular and remote wine growing regions like Bierzo, Majorca, and the Basque country. Wines of great elegance, food friendliness, and unique terroir hail from these hidden spots to challenge juicy modern garnachas, classic tempranillos, and racy monastrells. Great rewards hide beyond modern fruit driven values and classic producers for curious wine adventurers as hungry to learn as I am.  On a recent and lively Saturday evening of tapas indulgence at Barcelona, I was reminded one more time that zagging instead of zigging straight to the proven producers can pay large dividends. $110 at the restaurant bought these two magical bottles of wine. You can buy both at retail for $30 and $19 respectively

**** $30 2008 Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894

The wine is a blend of primarily 95% viura, the most popular white variety in Rioja blancos, and then 5% malvasia. News to me, viura is the name used in Rioja for the macabeo variety, more commonly relied on in northern Spain for Cava production. I ordered this wine with memories of tasting my first white tempranillo at a Rioja tasting earlier this year.  In this case, the viura/malvasia blend showed a caramelized, lime, and honey nose with hints of toast and cotton candy to lure you in.  Most remarkably, the wine lands with amazing richness and contains an acidic linearity to provide structure and framework to the wine’s lusciousness. Cosme Palacio is co-fermented in barrel and aged in oak, but retains a bright fruit core that never yields to the wood.  This is an amazingly sexy wine because of its richness and tantalizing aromas, and its great structure gives enough balance to render it a classic choice.  I could linger over this wine all night, it’s that good.

***1/2 $19 2008 Anima Negra AN/2

I am a sucker for wines made on islands.  Call me silly, but I dream about the isolated terroir, surrounded by water, connected to no other spot. I think about the wines I have tasted from a small island off Sicily’s coast and how it is possible to imagine tasting the salt air, morning dew, and volcanic soils.  Or at least I thought I did.  So experimenting with this second wine from Majorca’s Anima Negra made from 65% callet, 20% mantonegre and fogoneu, and 15% syrah was an easy move.  The fruit is fermented in steel and then aged for a little over a year in French and American oak.  It’s a medium light ruby color, with rich and bright cherry aromas buffeted by wafts of tobacco.  The wine’s distinction comes in its weight; a softness without hard edge and a fruity lightness that appears to actually melt in your mouth. No major league forward ripeness and volume that you are accustomed to in big garnachas, just a pleasantly round and mellow mouthful of wine that is light on its feet and washes over your palate like it belongs there.  It’s a great food wine, and had enough acidity and brininess to stand up to the boldly spiced tapas that covered our table.  I am not sure I have ever tasted a wine just like it.  It has elements of gamay and pinot noir, but is not like either of them.  As the wine lingered in the glass, even some clove and cinnamon spice emerged.  It is a fascinatingly complex wine that just wants to please and accomodate your meal.  A killer value.

Wines like these keep me enthusiastic about wine discovery and realizing there is always something new just around the corner that I won’t ever believe I’ve never tried before.

Drawing up the perfect attack on a classic restaurant wine list creates the same adrenaline level NFL coaches experience prepping for Sunday games. At least it seems that way; it’s both exciting and nerve wracking knowing one or two calls can define a dinner’s outcome. Planning is required. Have we worked with the restaurant’s wine list before?  What language can we use with this particular sommelier to trigger the right personalized advice?  Are we value or treasure hunting? Older or new releases?  Hard to find limited production wines or a repeat favorite known to please?

At dinners with a bunch of wino comrades, debating and decision making are as much a part of the evening’s fabric as any other stage of the meal. Other nights involve guests less willing to sacrifice time and brain cells debating wine selection. Last week at Veritas (oenophile nirvana) with Dan, I found myself somewhere in the middle.  We had a significant amount of news to catch up on, but the wine was equally important to both of us.  I had not worked with the Head Sommelier Rubén Sanz Ramiro before so I did not feel comfortable enough turning the entire experience over to him nor burying my head in the epic Veritas wine list for twenty minutes.  Here is the game plan I followed:

Proven White Wine Value: Kick-Off

We needed something to drink immediately, but didn’t want to trump our early catch up conversation with solitary wine list huddles.  Nor did I want to rush into a big up-front cash investment without enough time to think things over.  Not having established rapport with the sommelier yet, delegating was off the table.  I turned to the Loire section and quickly ordered the **** 2010 Huet Clos du Bourg Sec.

Our Boston tasting group had just conducted a blind tasting of Loire Valley chenin blancs and this Vouvray was my favorite.  It jumped off the list as an easy choice for the straight forward enjoyment and palate awakening I was hoping to quickly uncover.  While the “sec” designation is true to the wine’s overall dry nature, there is enough residual sugar framed by significant acidity to qualify it as a shoe-in for a pleasing start to the evening.  The later vintage did not disappoint with familiar steely notes, hints of background sugar, grapefruit and lemon meringue delivered in a round and luscious mouthfeel, chalk, and a crisp finish.  It’s a go to wine, and one that didn’t break the bank at roughly $70 on Veritas’ not-so-cheap list.  While we had a long game ahead of us, it was a perfectly designed kick-off play.

Cellared But Not Tried: Third Quarter Audible

With the dinner unfolding and middle courses arriving, this was no time to fool around.  I called time out and spent three minutes on the sideline scanning the list.  Without leaving the Loire section, I stumbled upon the ***1/2 2007 Clos Rougeard Les Poyeux.  I am an admitted sucker for Clos Rougeard, had tasted the already immediately enjoyable 2007 Saumur Champigny, but wondered if the Les Poyeux would provide as much immediate accessibility.

The wine also sat in my cellar and this was the perfect chance to check it out without draining my limited 2007 Clos Rougeard stockpile. Not wanting to waste too much more time with the list, I went with it.  I called for a producer that always knocks me to the turf.  This particular cabernet franc made by Rougeard’s Foucalt brothers showed trace hints of its truffle and licorice bones, but remained seriously tight all the way through to the end of the bottle.  It never opened up.  The wine seems like it will stay closed down for at least several years to come.

While the move informed delaying future 2007 Les Poyeux drinking, it did not do as much for our dinner.  It was a win/lose; I should have consulted the sommelier.  With just one question about its approachability (admittedly, a doubt I quietly pondered) he would have known the wine style I leaned towards and could have dealt a more accessible alternative.  Live and learn; turnover.

Consult Sommelier, He Understands Me Now: 4th Quarter

Rubén agreed the wine was too tight to really appreciate.  But, we went to school on that experience together and now had the beginnings of mutual understanding.  I asked him what he would drink next if he wanted something similar, but at the peak of its development.  He suggested the ****1/2 1998 Bois de Boursan Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee des Felix.  I knew ’98 to be a prodigious year in Chateauneuf du Pape but had never heard of the Cuvee des Felix blend.  It turned out to be the first Cuvee des Felix vintage.  Rubén assured me this Boursan held the style I had probably hoped for with the Clos Rougeard, and was perfectly ready to drink now.

Touchdown!  The Boursan was a massive mouthful of well aged wine that smoothly coated the palate with unabashed silkiness, delivering rich and advanced raspberry and black cherry fruit flavors, animal fur and mushroom aromatics, and a streak of serious acidity to keep the wine as lively as it was exotic.  It generously expressed the licorice flavors the Clos Rougeard held closer to its vest.

The strategy worked and created a rewarding evening of drinking.  The structure of the ordering, inside this wine temple called Veritas, helped to keep my adrenalin in check.  Step 1: Known delicious white wine value.  Step 2: Classic wine laying in my own cellar to monitor drinkability.  Step 3: Ask the sommelier to follow your early moves with his own superior list knowledge.

What’s your game plan?

I just finished reading Dave McIntyre’s recent piece in the Washington Post about ways to enjoy wine more in 2012.  He delivers a handful of useful, but ordinary suggestions for etching a couple more garden variety notches into your wine bedpost. Honestly, I was hoping for more.  Alas, a missed opportunity to share some geeky unknown rituals living at the edge of extreme rock star wine indulgence.

I was in a San Juan, Puerto Rico Salsa club last week and overheard somebody mention how the locals dance like rock stars.  I wished someone from the local Salsa mafia had dragged me onto that floor and showed me the right moves, similar to the way I hoped McIntryre would have slipped me a  rich, more cranked up idea or two for truly drinking wine like a rock star in 2012. While San Juan Salsa rooms are infectious happy places, joining the coordinated dancing masses can be entirely intimidating to uninitiated rookies like me, lacking experience, heels, tight black clothes, and built in Latin beats. But, if I was going to dance Salsa, I would want to experience it like the Puerto Rican rock stars do and not inside some vanilla mainland suburban dance studio.  Likewise, if I was considering trying my hand at serious wine indulgence for the first time, I’d hope to mimic some patterns of the most experienced wine connoisseurs. Here are some sensible and accessible ideas that I would have wanted somebody to share with me when I first yearned to start drinking more like a wine rock star:

Glassware:

my "ready service" glassware

Before thinking about anything else, get the right glassware.  Diving into serious wine appreciation without appropriate glassware is like starting an aquarium hobby with the fish and live coral before you have a tank to put them in.  It’s not dissimilar to hiring a Salsa band without a place for them to perform or for you to dance.  The wrong glassware will inarguably strip a potentially religious wine experience of all its excitement while the right glassware will showcase and enhance the wine’s virtues.  Also, you’ll need a bunch of it.  If you are starting out and motivated to try a few suggestions you will read about in Wine Rock Star-Part 2 next week, you will need at least six identical pieces of fine glassware per person (buy eight to accomodate breakage).

At the top end, if you are inclined to make the splurge, are Zalto wine glasses.  You can buy a set of eight Zalto Bordeaux style glasses at Winemonger for $488.00.  If that’s too rich, you can feel good about the Riedel Crystal Vinum Series Bordeaux glasses at less than half the price of Zalto, or $200 for eight glasses at Brown Derby.  Lastly, a fine budget conscious alternative are the Spiegelau Grande Bordeaux glasses. You can buy a full dozen for $100 at the Wine Enthusiast Catalog for $100.  Of course, there are multiple styles and shapes of all these lines, but if I could only own one shape it would be the Bordeaux glass.

Decanting Vessel:

If you’ve made it through the glassware hurdle and are still on track to some rock star wine fun, you will need something to decant old and young red wine into.  As a rule, old wines need to be taken off their sediment that sits at the bottom of the bottle after you have stood the wine up for a day or so, and young red wines want and can handle more vigorous decanting to make their flavors and aromas more immediately accessible.  There is a great new post by the Brooklynguy on serving old wines that offers lots of useful decanting information from really knowledgeable wine service experts.  I would read through it before attempting to open or decant an older bottle of wine.

I prefer very plain crystal pitchers; the kind you can buy for $10-$15 at your local discount home accessories store. I got hooked on this strategy nurturing my wine enthusiasm for more than a dozen years at 231 Ellsworth, a once fine eating establishment in San Mateo, California that the past owner of Pichon Lalande, Madame Lencquesaing, compared to Paris’ two Michelin star spots after leading a tasting dinner at the restaurant.  They look good on the table, are neither pretentious nor goofy looking, allow you to stick your whole face in the pitcher to get a good whiff, and are sturdy as well as simple to handle.  Here are my own two favorites that I use most often:

.

 Time To Drink a Bottle:

For me, it took one dinner and one good bottle of wine to turn my head twenty seven years ago.  Set up a dinner for you and the most special person in your life.  Don’t invite anyone else (more wine for the two of you!).  Prepare a high level meal that involves the food and style that you are most competent and comfortable preparing.  It needs to be special, should include either red meat, lighter meat, or fowl…..but most importantly you need to love the food.  If you can’t cook, call in a personal chef for the evening.  You want the food to rock.

I am not sure that rock stars would exactly pick from these two wines for this special moment, but I would:

1985 Lynch Bages and 1989 Beaucastel

You can look back here and read what I wrote about the Lynch Bages.  It is a wine to revel in.  The 1989 Beaucastel is a perfect example of what a great producer can accomplish in a top regional vintage and how a patient collector can maximize its enjoyment.  Both of these wines are at the apex of their development and are ready to be fully appreciated.  The Beaucastel would be my first choice with its amazing elegance, texture, advanced aromatics, and sweet fruit flavors.  It is a mind blowing wine and could be the most enjoyable modern day Beaucastel I have ever experienced.  The 1985 Lynch Bages is by no means an also ran.  You can find a bottle of the 1989 Beaucastel for approximately $150-$200 here.  It is a steal compared to what you would pay in a restaurant for so many run of the mill wines.  You can click and source the 1985 Lynch Bages here, and it will cost you just about as much as the Beaucastel.

Follow Brooklyguy’s decanting suggestions.  Stick your nose in the pitcher and take a deep breath through your nose with your mouth wide open (open mouth allows for better aroma detection).  Pour two glasses about 1/4 full of wine.  Sit down to your meal, forget about everything else in your life except for your companion, the food, and oh yes…..that amazing wine.  You are now drinking like, and probably better than, a rock star.  Plus, if you are anything like me, this moment of indulgence, discovery, and personal connection just might set you on fire like a Jimi Hendrix guitar.

Come back next week for Wine Rock Star- Part 2 tips.