A Hedonist in the Cellar (15 page)

The most exciting wine book I’ve read in recent years, without question, is the
carte de vin
at La Tour d’Argent, the renowned Paris landmark on the quai de la Tournelle in the Fifth Arrondissement. Founded in 1582, the restaurant is famous for the views of the Seine from the sixth-floor dining room, for its elite clientele, and for its
caneton pressé
, a.k.a. pressed duck, the millionth of which was served last April to great fanfare. I personally consumed duck no. 999,426, and have the commemorative postcard to prove it. The more exciting number, to my mind, is the half million plus bottles that reside in its wine cellar. The five-pound document that catalogs these riches is pure porn to wine geeks.

The keeper of this legacy is David Ridgway, an Englishman with twenty-five years of service at La Tour d’Argent, who puts me in mind of Bob Hoskins playing a French sommelier. It’s hard to believe anyone younger than Methuselah could have tasted all the wines on the list, let alone have perfect and detailed recall of each of them, but after quizzing him for a few hours last spring I’m inclined to believe Ridgway has and does. His manner, on first encounter, seemed to combine a bit of British reserve with Gallic institutional pride bordering on hauteur. (No, he will not be shaking your hand and
saying, “Hi there, my name’s Dave.”) After an hour or so, I began to see the passionate fanaticism of a true Bacchanalian initiate.

It was Easter lunch; I had planned to attend Sunday Mass at Notre-Dame but was discouraged by the throngs. Fortunately, my table commanded an excellent view of the cathedral; I was able to hear the bells if not the homily. And the meal, with its accompaniment of wines, was pretty close to a religious experience.

My friend and I were greeted by the late proprietor Claude Terrail, an octogenarian wearing a perfectly draped Huntsman suit and shod in purple velvet slippers with the toes sawed off to reveal his socks—an ensemble that seemed emblematic of his public personality, combining courtly formality with self-deprecating humor. Terrail talks about Clark Gable and Ernest Hemingway as if they had just left the room. The guests that Sunday were mostly Parisian families and American tourists; for us, the big stars were down in the cellar.

With a certain kind of customer—rich American collectors who come specifically to plunder the stores of rare Burgundies from Coche-Dury and Henri Jayer, for instance—one can imagine sommelier Ridgway keeping his own counsel. “Americans can be a little too obsessional,” he says. “But when they relax they can be the most knowledgeable.” And if you’re not knowledgeable—Ridgway shows his softer side. When an American at a nearby table remarks that the wine list is daunting, Ridgway says, “That’s why I’m here,” in the sommelier equivalent of a soothing bedside manner. “Tell me how much you want to spend” is his straightforward advice for
the novice. And if the sight of Ridgway in his tuxedo intimidates you, keep in mind that this is a guy who told me that what he liked best about school was getting drunk at the end of the term.

With the exception of Ports, the cellar at La Tour d’Argent is stocked exclusively with French wines, with a special emphasis on Burgundy, that most ethereal and temperamental of all beverages. The list opens with a hundred-odd pages (they’re unnumbered) of
vin de Bourgogne rouge
, including twenty-three vintages of Romanée-Conti stretching back to 1945 and ten vintages of Jayer’s Cros Parantoux, including the 1990 for 410 euros. These are some of the reasons Burghounds from around the world jump on planes to Paris for the weekend. Bargain hunters like myself will find a huge selection of modestly priced mature Burgundies, like the ′85 Pousse d’Or Clos de La Bousse d’Or Volnay for 105 euros, or the 1990 Ecard Savigny les Beaune aux Serpentières for 94 euros, both of which Ridgway gently steered me toward.

“I get more excited by Burgundy,” Ridgway says, relaxing after lunch with a glass of 1947 Armagnac in his tiny window-less office down in the labyrinthian cellars, beneath the quai de la Tournelle. “It’s a more living wine.” It’s also a relative bargain since he buys direct from the domaines—something that’s not possible in Bordeaux, with its long-standing negotiant system. Every Monday Ridgway and some of his staff visit a different wine region to taste and hunt for new treasures.

The staggering collection of white Burgundies (Lafon, Coche-Dury, d’Auvenay, Raveneau) provides hundreds of complementary matches to the classic pike quenelles. When I
selected the pike for my first course, Ridgway hooked me up with an ′83 Drouhin Puligny-Montrachet Caillerets, all honeyed flesh around a core of limestone. The signature pressed duck, an extremely rich,
ancien-cuisine
concoction—the sauce is thickened with the blood of three-week-old ducklings— is probably most easily matched with one of the thousands of Bordeaux or Rhônes on the list, like a ′75 Meyney for 136 euros or an ′81 Beaucastel for 184. For a special occasion, there’s a ′47 Pétrus (14,680 euros) or ′61 Mouton (8,342 euros). You’ll definitely want Ridgway’s advice if you’re eating the duck and drinking Burgundy. This is even more true of the duck à l’orange, a tricky dish for dry reds, though the version served here is less sweet than many.

La Tour d’Argent’s dedication to the wine drinker’s pleasure is perhaps best reflected by the number of bottles that are unavailable for immediate drinking; recent, immature vintages are listed without price, alongside the phrase
en vieillissement.
They are maturing. Want to drink a ′96 Bordeaux? You’ll have to wait. La Tour d’Argent is one of the few restaurants in the world that truly sells no wine before its time. Wish I could think of an American restaurant of which I could say the same.

Since Brittany-born siblings Maguy and Gilbert Le Coze brought their fishy act to New York in 1986, no restaurant has done more to elevate and celebrate the role of seafood in this country than Le Bernardin, the four-star midtown temple to Poseidon, which consistently captures the top food rating in Zagat and earned Alain Ducasse’s vote as the best fish restaurant in America. Where better to ask the question, What do you drink with fish? And whom better to ask than Michel Couvreux, the diminutive, dynamic sommelier? In a puckish mood, Couvreux likes to flout conventional wisdom and pair chef Eric Ripert’s baked red snapper in a spicy-sour Puerto Rican
sancocho
broth with a powerful red such as Jean-Luc Colombo’s 1999 Cornas Les Méjeans. But he is the first to admit that white wine is the default setting for seafood—and to argue for the complexity of whites—or, as some of us prefer to call them, golds and silvers.

The iconographers of the vast right-wing conspiracy have demonized white wine as the drink of the effete Martha’s Vineyard liberal elite; even self-professed wine enthusiasts like myself often regard white wine as, at best, foreplay, much the way some carnivorous gourmands have regarded fish—as mere prelude to the crimson climax of the menu. Poor misguided bastards. They’ve probably never eaten at Le Bernardin, never experienced the electric epiphany of Ripert’s meaty steamed wild striped bass with a pineapple-lime nage, paired with a racy, stony 1985 Ampeau Meursault Les Per-rières. Wimpy? I think not. Just about the only thing more exciting than experiencing this epiphany in the serene dining room of Le Bernardin—a cross between a Zen teahouse in Kyoto and a teak-lined corporate boardroom—is fighting a big striper on a fly rod while standing on the deck of a skiff in eight-foot swells.

The simple fact is that eight out of ten sea creatures prefer white wine to red, in part because the bright acidity of white wine acts like lemon juice in highlighting the flavor, particularly of white-fleshed fish. “Some people say white wine is boring,” Couvreux marvels, a look of boyish astonishment on his face. “This is simply not true. The purity, the complexity, the minerality of great white wine…” He shrugs Gallically, rubbing what is left of his dark hair as if to say, What more can one say?

If Couvreux, who was sommelier at three-star L’Arpège in Paris, were limited to one wine for all fish, it would undoubtedly be white Burgundy. “Puligny-Montrachet, Chassagne-Montrachet, and Mersault,” he says, “account for almost half
of our sales.” For all the Asian spices, and the Spanish influence of Ripert’s childhood in Andorra, this is a French restaurant, after all. And the fact is, the complex, neurasthenic Chardonnays of the Côte d’Or, with their subtle fruit, their racy acidity, and their trilling minerality, are about as fish-friendly as any wine in the world. At Le Bernardin, you can get a 2001 Chassagne from Michel Niellon for $125, or a ′92 Montrachet from Etienne Sauzet for $1,000 (not bad for one of the greatest makers and one of the greatest vintages of the greatest white vineyard in the world). Couvreux generally reserves the big, buxom New World Chardonnays for lobster: “With its rich texture and its heavy, almost meaty flavor, lobster can stand up to the fruit and the oak of wines like Kistler Les Noisetiers or Peter Michael.”

In the eight years that he has been the sommelier at Le Bernardin, Couvreux has developed some rules of thumb that can be applied in the real world, for those of us who, unlike a corporate lawyer of my acquaintance, can’t manage to dine daily at Le Bernardin. Most important, what I call the lover/ fighter rule: “Sometimes you want the wine to match the food, or the sauce, and sometimes the wine must stand up to the food. Zey must challenge each ozer; zey must fight.” For example, in the latter category, Couvreux likes to offset heat with sweetness, as when he pairs Ripert’s hamachi tartare with wasabi and a ginger-coriander emulsion with a 2003 Chateau Ste. Michelle Eroica Riesling from Washington State. “With spicy dishes I like Riesling with a little residual sweetness. The sugar balances out and fights the spices.”

When fish is served in richer sauces, Couvreux concentrates
on matching the flavor and texture of the sauce, as with Ripert’s poached halibut with a lobster cardamom emulsion, which he pairs with a rich, floral-scented, almost oily Condrieu La Doriane from Guigal. Condrieu, made from the fragrant, glycerol-rich Viognier grape, is one of his secret weapons. For those who still yearn for red wines, heavier sauces involving red wine and mushrooms provide a bridge. Salmon always takes well to Pinot Noir; with Ripert’s morel truffle sauce it can handle even a big earthy Burgundy like the 1999 Leroy Gevrey-Chambertin Le Fonteny.

If you’re a red-wine-drinking fish lover, you have a role model in chef Eric Ripert, who trained with Joel Robuchon and Jean-Louis Palladin before joining the late Gilbert Le Coze at Le Bernardin in 1991. Like many of his countrymen, Ripert drinks red Bordeaux with just about everything— much to the exasperation of Couvreux. On the other hand, Ripert did admit to me that a 1972 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Montrachet he drank recently was the most profound wine he has ever had in his life, so there may be hope for him yet.

Not far from the spot where Romeo secretly married Juliet, in the Valpolicella hills overlooking Verona, I discovered a more fortunate and successful match. I had just finished lunch with Stefano Cesari, the dapper proprietor of Brigaldara, in the kitchen of his fourteenth-century farmhouse, and I was trying to decide if it would be incredibly uncouth to ask who made the beautiful heather-toned tweed jacket he was wearing, when he put some dark chocolates from Perugia in front of me and opened a bottle of his 1997 Recioto della Valpolicella. One hesitates to describe any marriage as perfect, but I was deeply impressed with the compatibility of his semisweet, raisiny red and the bittersweet chocolates. Cesari later took me up to the loft of the big barn and showed me the hanging trays where Corvina and Rondinella grapes are dried for several months after harvest, which concentrates the grape sugars and ultimately results in an intense, viscous wine that, like Tawny Port, Brachetto, and a few other vinous oddities, enhances the already heady and inevitably romantic experience of eating chocolate.

The Cabernet, Merlot, or Shiraz you drank with your steak may get along well with a simple chocolate dessert, especially if the wine is young and the fruit is really ripe, but
real chocoholics should check out the dried-grape wines, many of which are fortified—that is, dosed with brandy, in the manner of Port, a process that stops fermentation and leaves residual sugar. “Fortification seems helpful in terms of matching chocolate,” says Robert Bohr, the wine director at Cru, in Greenwich Village, which has one of the best wine lists in the country, if not the world. Bohr likes Tawny Port with many chocolate desserts, finding Vintage Port too fruity. (McInerney does too, and advises that some of the best Tawnies come from Australia’s Barossa Valley.) But most of all Bohr likes Madeira.

If you were to order the Hacienda Concepción chocolate parfait at Cru, Bohr would direct you to a vintage Madeira like the 1968 d’Oliveiras Boal. Madeira has become so unfashionable in the past century that many putative wine lovers have never tasted it, but I’m sensing the stirrings of a cult revival spearheaded by supergeeks like Bohr. The sweeter Malmsey style seems to be best suited to chocolate desserts. And by chocolate, I mean, of course, dark chocolate. Milk chocolate should be consumed only by day, if at all, and accompanied by milk.

The cough-syrupy Umbrian
passito
wine is made in the same fashion as Recioto from the mysterious and sappy Sagrantino grape. These powerful, sweet reds seem to have originated as sacramental wines, and they continue to inspire reverence among a small cult of hedonists, myself among them. This practice of drying grapes goes back thousands of years; there are references to drying wine grapes prior to fermentation in Homer and Hesiod. (“When Orion and Sirius
come into mid-heaven,” Hesiod advises in
Works and Days
, “cut off all the grape clusters and bring them home. Show them to the sun for ten days and ten nights.”) I like to imagine that these dried-grape wines resemble those that were drunk at Plato’s symposium or Caligula’s bashes—although chocolate wouldn’t appear in Europe until the sixteenth century, Columbus having stumbled upon a stash of cacao beans on his fourth and last voyage to the New World.

Two of the finest wines for chocolate, Maury and Banyuls, come from remote Roussillon in France’s deep southeast. These so-called
vins doux naturels
are made (mostly) from late-picked Grenache grown on steep, terraced, wind-scoured hillsides near the Spanish border. The standard-bearing Banyuls estate is Domaine du Mas Blanc, one of the world’s most famous obscure domaines. I first tasted this wine at JoJo, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s pioneering New York bistro, alongside the warm Valrhona chocolate cake, a nearly erotic experience that I try to re-create at least once a year. (And I’m a guy who doesn’t usually even bother with dessert.)

Banyuls’s neighboring appellation Maury also produces a chocolate-loving
vin doux.
The village cooperative makes the classic example; I recently had, alongside Le Bernardin’s warm chocolate tart, a 1929 that was spectacular, with lots of caramel, date, coffee, and vanilla flavors, plus an oxidized Sherry note, which the French and Spanish call
rancio.
The finest estate in Maury is Mas Amiel (which once traded hands in a card game), producers of several cuvées of heady Maury, including one raised in the traditional manner of the region, spending a year outdoors in huge glass demijohns, exposed to
the extremes of the Roussillon climate. The demand for these labor-intensive wines, like that for most sweet wines, has been static in the past few decades (Mas Amiel is increasingly focusing on the production of dry table wines), and prices remain modest when compared with Vintage Port or Sauternes.

America’s answer to Banyuls and Recioto is late-harvest Zinfandel—a fairly rare, sweet style of Zin that is eminently delicious with chocolate, the darker and more bitter the better. This is a good general rule: chocolate with a high cocoa content and a lower milk and sugar content is the most complex, intense, and wine-friendly. As for the desserts, the more complicated they get, the harder they will be to match. Chocolate already has some five hundred flavor compounds— how many more do you need? A chocolate soufflé is a beautiful thing, but it’s hard to improve upon a simple piece of Valrhona, Bernachon, or Scharffen Berger dark chocolate, unless of course you pour a Madeira or a Maury alongside it.