Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh

by Unknown

  They guessed the grape. I never said they weren’t good.

  Wine collectors are not like stamp collectors. They are not passive or diffident, and they do not hoard. They are aggressively social, and their labels are their calling cards. They arrive accompanied by Baron Roth-schild of Bordeaux and Rene Dauvissat of Chablis. They do not serve their wines; they trumpet them. When a half-dozen wine collectors of equal stature get together, not one will entirely agree with another man’s choice. They want to drink what they like. They are type A–plus, one and all, correctly perceiving themselves as winners in the wine world.

  F O R K I T O V E R

  3 0 5

  The three words you will never hear one wine collector say to another are these: “You know best.”

  My friends frequently argued over who was getting to pick the wines and who was being ignored, but these discussions always took place at lunch, when the wine was not too serious—a modest vertical of young, $200 J.L. Chave Hermitages, for example. Dinners were amiable. No matter how much wine was consumed, the men became more mellow the more they drank, as though the wines passed along their harmonious qualities.

  Wine collectors are seldom, if ever, aware of their shortcomings, because they are rarely pointed out. They always assume they will be admired wherever they go, and the fact that they arrive with their wines makes it so. They are certain their ability to drink well and con-verse articulately about what is in their glasses makes them desirable companions. So self-assured are they that they believe people in less fortunate wine circumstances are pleased to have them around. Generally speaking, they are correct.

  I have sat spellbound, listening to their tales of excess. A few years back the two merchants and the two collectors lunched at Alain Chapel and noticed a 1929 DRC Romanee-Conti on the list, although without a price. They inquired and thought they heard the sommelier say 14,000

  francs (just over $2,000). When the bill came, the price was 40,000

  francs. Even after paying just under $7,000, they reveled in their good luck. The wine was that wonderful. It is probably unnecessary to add that these gentlemen are willing to spend fortunes on wine but nothing on French lessons.

  So it was on this trip when the connoisseur of rarities saw a 1929

  Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle on the list at La Beaugraviere for $1,300. By reputation, this is a wine of majesty, produced in a region beloved by Thomas Jefferson and the Russian imperial court. The owner of La Beaugraviere announced that it was the last of a full case of twelve bottles that had been topped off and recorked at the winery in the 1990s. Knowing something is the last of anything makes my friends want it all the more.

  3 0 6

  A L A N R I C H M A N

  A bottle that old is not a guarantee of pleasure but a venture into high-stakes poker. If it is as magnificent as the 1929 Romanee-Conti consumed at Alain Chapel, the experience can be existential. If not, it is merely expensive.

  Sommelier No. 2 accepted the responsibility of tasting the ’29 Hermitage.

  Merchant No. 1 whispered to me, “I wouldn’t order it, because I don’t want to take the responsibility.” Sommelier No. 1 disagreed. “It’s worth having so we don’t regret not having it for the rest of our lives.”

  The cork came out, perhaps too easily. The wine burbled into the glass. The designated taster sniffed, then breathed deeply. I looked at his face and did not see rapture. I saw $1,300 worth of perplexity. I saw costly indecision. He chewed. He stared. The table hushed. He spoke the three words I would soon learn to loathe.

  He said, “Tastes like wine.”

  I felt as though I had opened the door to greet my mail-order bride and the best I could utter was, “Well, it’s a woman.” (Did I mention the testosterone level of wine collectors?) He tasted again and added, “Wine’s been cooped up a long time. A slight Madeira and chocolate to it.”

  To that I’d add tea. We had a $1,300 bottle of Lipton’s. La Beaugraviere’s owner tasted and pronounced it fine, one of the best bottles from the case. Added La Beaugraviere’s sommelier, “Very good.” I felt these were not disinterested opinions.

  We drank it in silence, and silence is a bad thing at dinner, particularly the silence of despair.

  In the course of our trip, we sent back just one bottle, a 1989 La Mouline from Guigal that was indisputably corked. We accepted many that I would have sent back had I any influence with my friends. Their attitude seemed to be that if it was still recognizable as wine, we were obligated to pay for it. Their most charitable act, in my opinion, was accepting a 1967 Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape that cost $380 at La Beaugraviere.

  F O R K I T O V E R

  3 0 7

  It came to the table with such a low fill that I immediately would have said non, had I spoken French. As the bottle was being opened, the glass collar that holds the cork, in essence the entire top, snapped off. To me, this constitutes defective goods, since I’m the kind of picky fellow who doesn’t like drinking beverages containing shards of glass.

  The wine was accepted and it was surprisingly good, with a lovely, complex nose and fast-fading, dark berry flavors, more Burgundian than Rhône-like. Nevertheless, drinking it gave me the willies.

  The worst bottle we accepted was at Paul Bocuse, the gaudy shrine to the most famous chef in the world. For sentimental reasons, Sommelier No. 1 wanted to have 1976 Guigal La Mouline ($770). He told us he was working as a waiter in 1983 when he bought this wine in a shop for $30. It convinced him that he wanted to spend the rest of his life in the wine business.

  Although the wine was still full of fruit, it was also cloudy and murky, so dark and ugly that it could be studied only by somebody wearing a miner’s hat. The Paul Bocuse sommelier insisted it had been stored impeccably. We decided the only way it could have looked the way it did was if the waiter assigned to bring it up from the cellar had tripped on the steps and shaken up the sediment. I found it entirely without pleasure and left almost all of my share in the glass.

  If the finest white wine (and possibly the best value) of the trip was the ’92 Coche-Dury Corton-Charlemagne at Le Louis XV, the two best red wines came from the cellars of Troisgros, a restaurant of unparalleled finesse. Unrivaled was the 1971 Romanee-Saint Vivant Marey-Monge ($700), a profoundly rich, impeccably aged Burgundy with a hint of pleasing gaminess. The moment I tasted, I blurted,

  “This is it.” Almost as impressive was the 1985 La Turque ($820). The release of this celebrated wine in the late eighties incited a stampede among collectors, but since then it has been largely ignored. I tried it young and thought it was good. This bottle was magnificent. It had hints of smoke and licorice, and the structure was unusually elegant for a Rhône.

  3 0 8

  A L A N R I C H M A N

  .

  .

  .

  Finally, my time came. Weary of my complaints, my friends announced that I could select all the wines at Guy Savoy, a small, austere establishment down the street from the Arc de Triomphe. I went to the restaurant early. I grabbed a wine list. A kindly captain served me slivers of foie gras while I made my choices. My budget was $3,000.

  By now I knew what everybody liked, and I was certain I could come through. The Ostertag Pinot Gris served blind to begin the meal was just a tease. I planned to follow it with 1995 Gagnard Batard-Montrachet in magnum, several 1985 Domaine de Montile Pommards and a magnum of 1985 Dujac Clos de la Roche. If they wanted to go for the jackpot, I would suggest 1947 Gaunoux Pommard Rugiens ($1,470).

  I announced my selections, and praise came showering down upon me. I was declared a man of perception, taste, and thoughtfulness.

  Then they picked up their wine lists, chatted with the sommelier and overrode everything. They didn’t order a single bottle I wanted. When I requested an explanation, Wine Collector No. 2 said, “I have to say we didn’t find the wines we really wanted until the professionals got here.

  By “the professionals,” he primarily meant himself.
<
br />   Later, I asked the group what I had done wrong. One friend told me I hadn’t spoken loudly or authoritatively enough. Another said I had lost confidence in my own selections. I was about to protest, but then I remembered something.

  It would do me no good to complain. Wine collectors never admit they’re wrong.

  Food & Wine, july 2003

  G R A T U I T Y

  “ P L E A S E , P L E A S E , M O R E ! ” G A S P E D S H A R O N S T O N E

  She canceled three times while she was in California, offering explanations a gentleman would have to accept: the rescheduling of a movie opening, a debilitating case of food poisoning, the tragic death of a friend. When she came to New York, she had ingenious new excuses for not dining with me. I always lied and said I understood.

  What I was never certain of during the long months of eager invita-tions from me and effortless cancellations by her was whether Sharon Stone was acting like a woman or like a movie star. I have dined with both, and neither satisfies my fantasy of an ideal table companion. Dining with stars tends to be rushed, simplistic, and humorless, although Oprah Winfrey was a magnificent exception during her chubby, all-you-can-eat years. Friends reporting to me from the Coast suggested that Stone was another glorious anomaly. They said she appeared to possess the two most precious dining attributes, curiosity and capacity. In other words, she was a woman who knew how to eat like a man.

  When it comes to dining with women, I have become skeptical. I simply don’t bounce back from those experiences the way I used to.

  Once I was wonderfully resilient, but these days I question the fundamental concept of men and women going to a restaurant together. I even wonder where it all began, when the dinner table became the preferred venue for men and women to get better acquainted. It is now one of the burdens that men bear.

  3 1 2

  A L A N R I C H M A N

  I have been dining with women for well over a quarter-century, and I feel as exhausted as a war-weary veteran approaching retirement. I understand that younger men, those about the age of the Bordeaux I enjoy, might feel otherwise, that they still look upon a meal as the setting for a seduction, but I am beyond such expectations. All I desire after a long, languid dinner is a long, languid night’s sleep.

  Young men, for the most part, are blessed. They can look forward to the companionship of callow, indulgent females who have not yet metamorphosed into dinner-table dominatrices. All the women I know start snarling instructions the moment they are seated: Don’t touch the rolls! Hands off the butter! (My wife is so irrationally against bread that I now think of her as the Anticrust.) They glare when men order foie gras, the health food of southwest France, and they believe a creamy mille-feuille followed by a plate of petits fours is the same as having two desserts. They fail to understand that the tiny cookies and candies served after a four-course meal are not an indulgence but a tasty transition between the richness of the dinner experience and the emptiness of the long journey home.

  For men, food is a well-earned indulgence. For women, it inspires ambivalence. They sit down with the general presumption that the best meal has the least food. Men are gastronomically guided by an inner glutton, but women almost never feel comfortable enough about themselves to eat what they desire. It’s a miracle they ingest enough to survive. Ultimately, most women become perverse portion-control tech-nicians who look upon delicious food as the enemy of health. They resent men who refuse to join in their obsession.

  I believed Sharon Stone would be different somehow, more like a man, but as the months and then the seasons passed and still our dinner date failed to materialize, I felt increasingly hopeless. Her evasive tactics suggested she cared little for food, yet my sources in California reported seeing her in restaurants all the time. What concerned me was whether I had tried too hard, made myself too available. As a movie star, she would expect anyone like me, a meek supplicant, to have total disregard for his own needs and make myself eternally available.

  F O R K I T O V E R

  3 1 3

  However, this is precisely the wrong way to treat women, who respond to excessive tolerance with disdain.

  Finally, after months of waiting, I got the call. Battle stations. This was not a drill.

  Her person was on the line. I picked up the phone. Dinner was imminent, I was informed. “What is the cuisine?” her person asked.

  (A note of clarification here: At no time in the course of any of the calls and cancellations did I speak with Stone herself. Throughout the negotiations, she relied on subordinates—seconds, if you will—to speak for her. I tried looking at this in a positive manner, imagining it a form of Old World formality. Instead of an arranged marriage, we were to have an arranged meal.)

  I told her person I had selected the Manhattan restaurant March, a fine and thoughtful establishment. The chef, Wayne Nish, approaches the dining experience with restrained originality. I wanted the food to be correct enough that she would not think me careless, but creative enough that she would have little opportunity to be bored.

  The cuisine, I said, was “eclectic.”

  “How should she dress?” her person asked stiffly.

  “Appropriately,” I replied formally. I realized we were assuming the roles of characters on Masterpiece Theatre.

  I was astounded how in control I felt. For the briefest moment, I was a partner, not just a pawn, in the life of Sharon Stone. I was her future companion, not the social equivalent of the guy who drives the catering truck to the set.

  That phase of our relationship ended immediately. Her person told me that Stone would be available for dinner from eight p.m. until ten p.m. With that pronouncement, I felt the star had ducked back into her darkened limousine, leaving me gaping on the sidewalk. How like a woman, I thought, to insist on ending an evening at the very hour when civilized persons are ordering port.

  She was allotting me two hours. What are two hours at a dinner table with a woman? A gathering of men could eat a great deal in such a meager allotment of time, but women do not believe in relentless 3 1 4

  A L A N R I C H M A N

  consumption. Women waste minutes fussing over the fat content of dishes. They spend enormous amounts of time doing whatever it is that women do when they leave their seats and disappear in the direction of the restrooms.

  I asked Nish if he could feed us satisfactorily in such a brief period.

  He said he had envisioned a tasting menu of seven courses and seven wines and could get the food to us in the specified time. He explained that he, too, had endured the heartbreak of dining with women.

  He told me this story: Many years ago, he and his ex-wife-to-be set out to eat the meal of their lives. They had saved for it. He ordered a stellar Bordeaux, one so expensive he was certain they could never have it again. When the captain took their order, she requested scallops, a disastrous pairing with a Cabernet Sauvignon–based wine. Horrified, Nish asked her what she planned to do about the Bordeaux, the wine they had waited so long to enjoy together. She replied, “Oh, you go ahead and have the wine.”

  Yes, Nish understood.

  Sharon Stone arrived almost on time. She was escorted from her black limousine to the foyer of the restaurant by a bulky but cordial gentleman who waited by her side until I came forward and acknowledged receipt of the valuable property. I felt as though I were being handed classified documents.

  I told Stone how nice she looked. She smiled genially but did not reciprocate. She looked much as I thought she would, only better. She wore a black crêpe Vera Wang cocktail dress, and I was flattered, since Vera Wang is what everybody is wearing to the right places with the right people these days. Hers was low cut, but modest. She wore no jewelry. She needed none.

  The maître d’ seated us at a corner table tucked away in the back.

  Stone stirred her Bollinger Champagne with a spoon to dissipate the bubbles, a French custom she must have picked up at some banquet in Paris, while telling me of the sacrifice sh
e had made in order to be F O R K I T O V E R

  3 1 5

  with me. She was supposed to have gone to a reading, but she had canceled. I was tempted to make a little joke, ask if it wasn’t a little late in her career to have to read for a part. I kept my mouth shut.

  She asked me about the restaurant. I told her it was underappreci-ated, and she replied, “I know the feeling.” She told me one of the difficulties she encounters whenever she dines out: “I go to the ladies’

  room, everybody goes.” She was perfect—understated, self-deprecating, endearing. When a woman that beautiful is that well mannered, it’s hard not to appreciate her. I reminded myself that she had yet to show any interest in food.

  Our first course, the amuse-gueule, consisted of twin beggar’s purses, which are tiny crêpes filled with pricey ingredients, gathered up and tied at the top like little sacks. One contained caviar and sour cream, the other lobster and black truffles. Her admiration for Nish’s lobster-truffle creation was precisely the sort of restrained admiration I admire in a food critic. “I have to say, ‘great,’ ” she said.

  Her evaluation of our second dish, a carpaccio of lobster, essentially raw lobster, was harsh. She found it “a little sad, droopy.” This was accurate enough but a bit unfair, inasmuch as virtually any dead fish will droop. The entire world of sashimi sags, for that matter.

  The third course transfixed her, and Stone enraptured is a welcome sight. She liked (and I loved) the jumbo lump crabmeat with corn juice and black truffles, the juice accenting the sweetness of the crab, the truffles its faint earthiness. Yet it was her enthusiasm for the wine that made her irresistible.

  The wine director of March, Joseph Scalice, had paired the crab with Château de Beaucastel white Châteauneuf-du-Pape, not the ordinary bottling but the rare 100 percent Rousanne from old vines. After sipping, she changed from a remote figure into an eager, open, giving, vulnerable one. This is what wine is supposed to do to a woman, but I’m saddened by how infrequently the transformation takes place. I believe this is because women now understand the power of alcohol and struggle against it.