The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture

by Michael Steinberger

  While it is easy to be snarky about all this sommelier worship, the rise of the American sommelier is actually a very interesting story. Although the role of wine waiter did not originate in France—it apparently dates back to the Greeks and Romans—the job took its modern form there, which was good in some respects, not so good in others. On the plus side, the French invested the otherwise ho-hum business of opening and pouring wine with ceremony and élan. On the down side, they brought a pronounced hauteur to the task. Many French sommeliers came to the job not by choice but by conscription, and the position has usually been a life sentence. In France, the sommelier was often someone who entered the restaurant trade as a barely pubescent teen with dreams of becoming a chef (and no prospect of attending university). Then, deemed unworthy of a place at the stove, our man—and it was always a man—got shunted off to the wine cellar, where he was condemned to spend the rest of his working days in the shadow of the egomaniacal prick who beat him out in the kitchen. This was not a recipe for service with a smile.

  By contrast, professional wine service in the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon—it only really started in the 1980s—and took root in very different fashion. The pioneering figures here—Kevin Zraly (Windows on the World), Daniel Johnnes (Montrachet), Larry Stone (Charlie Trotter’s, Rubicon)—were all college-educated and came to wine out of passion, not because they were frog-marched into the bottle room. They saw their role as mainly pedagogical, an outlook perfectly tailored to a time when Americans were developing an interest in wine. They made wine service educational, and they made it fun. They also brought an entrepreneurial spirit to the work. Rather than let the role of sommelier define them, they defined it, turning a dead-end, white-men-only métier into an exemplar of upward mobility and diversity.

  Consider, for instance, Johnnes, now (along with Stone) the dean of American sommeliers. In 1985, Drew Nieporent put him in charge of the wine service at Montrachet, a restaurant he was opening in New York. Johnnes, taking his inspiration from the restaurant’s name—Montrachet is the grandest of grand cru white Burgundies—assembled a spectacular cellar, and he and the wine list became the restaurant’s star attractions (not that the food wasn’t also good). In the late ’80s, Johnnes began bringing in some of the unknown wines that he had discovered on trips to France. Today he has a thriving import business with a roster full of impressive names, oversees wine operations for chef Daniel Boulud’s restaurant group, and has even done some winemaking himself: a few years ago, he produced a small amount of red Burgundy with the help of Frédéric Mugnier, one of the region’s most esteemed vignerons, and made an Oregon Pinot Noir with the assistance of the talented Eric Hamacher. In addition to all this, Johnnes organizes what has become in the eyes of many people the world’s greatest wine event, La Paulée de New York, a bacchanal modeled after the annual postharvest festival in Meursault. (It is actually a bicoastal event now, alternating each year between New York and San Francisco.)

  Younger sommeliers are following the same trajectory. Indian-born Rajat Parr originally made a name for himself on the San Francisco wine scene. These days he oversees wine service for all chef Michael Mina’s restaurants. He is also producing highly acclaimed Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays from California’s Central Coast—his label is known as Sandhi—and has become a de facto leader in the movement to bring greater restraint and finesse to California wines. He was one of the founders of an organization called In Pursuit of Balance, which promotes this new paradigm through seminars and tastings. Parr has also written a book; a few years ago he coauthored with wine writer Jordan Mackay a book called Secrets of the Sommeliers, which combined practical advice for consumers with an inside look at the fabulous life of sommeliers. And no sommelier leads a more fabulous existence than Parr. His Twitter feed, under the handle RN74 (RN74 is a wine-focused restaurant in San Francisco that’s part of the Michael Mina empire and which takes its name from the main north-south route in Burgundy; there’s a Seattle branch now, too), ought to be titled “Travels with Raj.” Every week seems to find Parr in a different city or wine region; one week it’s New York, the next it is Piedmont, the week after that it is Paris, Tokyo, or points in between, and invariably with pictures of the amazing wines he’s consumed. Yes, Raj has quite the life.

  What many sommeliers will tell you is that all this entrepreneurship and diversification is motivated in part by necessity. Wine service is a young person’s game; working the dining room floor night after night takes its toll after ten or fifteen years, especially if you have a family, and so sommeliers need to find different ways of putting their skills and knowledge to use. In this sense, they are like veteran chefs who open multiple restaurants, establish product lines, and so forth. Obviously, part of the motivation for these chefs is a determination to cash in on the renown that they’ve achieved, but it is also prompted by a desire to step away from the stove after years of toiling in kitchens.

  But while sommeliers are more visible than ever, how much value do they really add to the dining experience? For one thing, sommeliers are generally found at high-end restaurants, and a lot of high-end cooking has become so eclectic that it is almost pointless to try to create appropriate wine pairings. Some of today’s most influential chefs—Ferran Adrià of the recently closed El Bulli in Spain, Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck outside London, and Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago, to name three of the most celebrated among them—have a wildly inventive streak that, whatever its virtues, can fall a little short when it comes to wine compatibility. What exactly do you pair with, say, coconut ravioli in soy sauce, or a Parmesan cheese ice cream sandwich, two of Adrià’s dishes? Or how about sea urchin with frozen banana, puffed rice, and parsnip milk, an Achatz dish?

  Obviously, these are extreme examples, and I’m certainly not suggesting that chefs should restrain their creative impulses on account of wine. I’m merely pointing out that the trendiest cooking these days does not necessarily lend itself to straightforward wine pairings (or any wine pairings at all). And the problem isn’t limited to the most outré cooking; even more mainstream restaurants are using so many eclectic/exotic ingredients now that matching wines to these preparations can be migraine-inducing. Sommeliers would argue that the fusion trend makes their presence in the dining room even more vital—that the diner needs help from someone who understands how, say, the Asiatic spices in a dish will interact with different wines. I’m not so sure that’s true. Many of these dishes have such a broad spectrum of flavors that it is almost pointless to try to find that one “right” wine; they go with nothing and everything.

  Another major food trend also calls into question the need for sommeliers: the rise of the tasting menu. Sure, tasting menus have been around for a long time, but in recent years they have become ubiquitous. Nowadays every ambitious chef offers a ten- or twelve-dish tasting menu, and at some restaurants the tasting menu is the only option. This has lately provoked a backlash among some food critics, who resent these “hostage” menus and the four- or five-hour time commitment they require. But there’s another reason to regret this trend: in general, tasting menus aren’t particularly wine-friendly. One wine is not likely to work for all the courses, nor is it really practical to change wines with each new course (the wine-by-the-glass thing can get to be insanely expensive, and drinking ten or twelve glasses of wine during a meal is not a good idea). Here, too, sommeliers would respond that this is exactly the kind of situation in which a smart, creative sommelier is needed. I’m not convinced. With so many dishes and different flavors landing on the table, the diner can probably just pick a half-bottle of white, a half-bottle of red, and do just as well.

  And this leads to the most important point of all: a lot of restaurant-goers don’t need help from a sommelier. Generally speaking, the kinds of people who patronize restaurants that are likely to employ sommeliers possess enough wine knowledge these days that they don’t really need input from a sommelier. As long as you give them a smart, wel
l-chosen wine list—and you certainly don’t need a full-time sommelier to put together such a list—they can handle the rest.

  So is there anything sommeliers are good for these days? Yes, there is: they excel at turning people on to new wines. A first-rate sommelier can introduce you to an up-and-coming producer and can acquaint you with an unfamiliar region or style of wine. That’s an important function, but a good retailer does the same thing (and you don’t have to buy a fancy lunch or dinner to get the advice from a retailer).

  TIPS FOR HAVING A HAPPY WINE

  EXPERIENCE IN A RESTAURANT

  • If a restaurant makes its wine list available online, try to take a look at it beforehand; forewarned is forearmed.

  • It also helps to know the retail price of wines you may be considering. Back in prehistoric times—that is to say, up until a few years ago—that was often a difficult thing to do. But with a smartphone in every pocket these days, discreetly doing some price-checking while perusing a wine list is easy and will help you avoid getting gouged.

  • If a wine list is obscenely priced, order the cheapest wine on the list simply to spite the restaurant, or better still, drink water or beer with your meal. You might even make your displeasure known.

  • It is always nice to offer the sommelier or server a taste if the wine happens to be really good. With a Macon-Villages, the gesture wouldn’t be necessary (though it would surely be appreciated); with a Corton-Charlemagne, it would be a very nice thing to do, particularly if the service is good.

  • If you encounter a sommelier with a bad attitude, don’t hesitate to call him or her out in a calm, conciliatory way. In general, restaurant wine service has never been better, but some dining room wine tyrants are still around, and they can make your evening miserable. It is a problem that needs to be dealt with the moment it rears its head.

  • If you are inclined to let the sommelier choose the wine for you, make sure to let him or her know the price you are willing to pay. Good sommeliers will pick up on even the subtlest hints and make sure you drink well without paying more than you wish to.

  • Try to avoid ordering wines by the glass. The prices are often astronomical, and you have no way of knowing how long the bottle has been open.

  • One frequently encountered problem in restaurants is overpouring. Sometimes it is done purely by accident or because the person serving the wine doesn’t know any better. More often, though, it is done deliberately; the idea is that the more the server puts in your glass at the start, the more you are apt to drink and the likelier you are to order a second bottle. My solution to this problem is what might be called the two-strikes-and-you’re-out rule. If the waiter pours too much wine in the glass or is too quick with refills, I’ll gently indicate that I’d like him to back off; if the problem persists, I will relieve him of the pouring duties while trying to be tactful about it. This strategy generally works well.

  BYO

  Few topics get oenophiles quite as exercised as the issue of BYO, or Bring Your Own—bringing your own bottle of wine to a restaurant. Many restaurants let diners do this; those that do usually charge what’s called a corkage fee, and some impose limits on how many bottles you can bring. Others permit diners to bring in only wines that aren’t on the restaurant’s wine list. But a lot of restaurants don’t allow BYO under any circumstances, which greatly irritates many wine drinkers, who seem to think that all restaurants should allow it. I do BYO whenever I can; it enables me to drink a better wine than if I ordered off the list, and even with the corkage, it is usually more economical (a bottle that costs me $60 at retail is probably $120–$180 on most wine lists, and even with a $30 or $40 corkage fee, I’m coming out well ahead). That said, I understand why restaurants don’t allow BYO or seek to limit it. Restaurants make most of their money on alcohol sales, and if they permit diners to drink their own wines, they are obviously hurting their bottom lines. I also think that if a restaurant cares enough about wine to put together a thoughtful, appealing wine list, it should be rewarded for its effort, so long as the prices are fair. That last point is a key one: if restaurants don’t want to allow BYO, that’s fine, but they need to limit their markups. I find few things more annoying than going to a restaurant that doesn’t permit BYO and that charges extortionate prices for its wines. In such cases I’ll usually drink something other than wine and will make a mental note to never come back.

  SOME FOOD AND WINE PAIRING TIPS

  • Champagne and sushi is a great combination.

  • Champagne and lobster is sensational, too, and deliciously decadent.

  • In fact, Champagne is arguably the most versatile wine of all; it can even work with red meat. The great economist John Maynard Keynes said his one regret in life was that he didn’t drink enough Champagne. One way of avoiding that problem (and it is a problem I am certainly attempting to avoid) is to drink Champagne more often with meals. What you will find is that good bubbly is a great food wine. And it doesn’t just have to be Champagne: Excellent Spanish Cavas, Italian Proseccos, and American sparkling wines go equally with food and can be had for $15 or $16, a fraction of the price of even a good nonvintage Champagne.

  • The better the wine, the simpler the food should be. Sure, a bottle of ’89 Haut-Brion deserves to be paired with something a little more refined than, say, a ham sandwich, but if the intent is to showcase the wine, don’t go for overly elaborate or heavily spiced food.

  • Above all, don’t drive yourself nuts trying to find ideal food and wine pairings. In most cases, there is no such thing as an ideal pairing, and good enough is, well, good enough.

  • In general, wines that are lower in alcohol—say, under 14 percent—and have good acidity do better with food than high-alcohol, low-acidity wines. The acidity is especially important: it refreshes the palate between bites.

  • Rieslings, particularly slightly sweet German Rieslings, are often recommended as good wines for spicy foods. That’s true to a certain extent; the sweetness does parry the spice.

  • If you are having barbecue or hamburgers or even fried chicken, you can go with a heftier red—something like a Zinfandel or Australian Shiraz. Those big wines do a better job of soaking up all the fat and grease than daintier reds.

  WHAT GOES WITH ASIAN FOOD?

  A few years ago I attended a Sauternes lunch held at an Indian restaurant in New York. Sauternes is the great sweet wine of Bordeaux, but it had become a difficult sell—not many consumers were interested in dessert wines. So Sauternes producers decided to try to reposition Sauternes as a food wine, specifically a wine that could go well with spicy Asian dishes. But the problem with this lunch was that it was held at a restaurant that made no concessions to delicate Western palates. The food was very spicy, and the spiciness overwhelmed the wines. It overwhelmed one of the winemakers, too: as she was extolling the wonders of Sauternes and Indian cuisine, I noticed that beads of sweat were starting to trickle down her face. I toyed with the idea of coming to her rescue with a cold beer, but figured that under the circumstances the gesture probably would not have been appreciated. So she spent the rest of the meal trying, with no success, to douse the fire in her mouth with Sauternes.

  “Goes well with Asian cuisine” has lately become a battle cry among vintners who produce wines that have a certain degree of sweetness to them. Off-dry German and Alsatian Rieslings, Sauternes, Port—all of these have been touted as the perfect arm candy for Asian dishes. What’s amusing about this meme is that the winemakers and their trade organizations talk about “Asian cuisine” as if there is one common cuisine for the whole of Asia, from Karachi to Kyoto. That is obviously not the case, and some Asian cuisines are wine-friendlier than others. I think wine does very nicely with Japanese fare. Champagne, white Burgundies, and dry white Loire Valley wines are great with sushi, and they match well with Japanese preparations generally. Chinese cooking, too, lends itself well to wine, the exception being fiery Sichuan cuisine. Those same Champagnes, white Burgun
dies, and Loire whites also do well with most Chinese food; with meat, pork, and poultry dishes, you can go with a red wine—preferably something on the lighter side, with good acidity.

  But with other Asian cuisines, wine can be a real challenge. Authentic Thai food is very hot, for instance, and can completely dull the flavors of a delicate German Riesling. The same is true of Vietnamese and Indian cuisine. If the spiciness is toned down, the wine can perhaps stand up to the food, but if not, the wine can too easily become a casualty of the meal. It might be heresy for a wine writer to say this, but I think beer is usually the best option with these cuisines, and that is unquestionably true of another Asian cuisine, Korean. I happen to adore Korean food and have learned through hard experience that Korean cuisine and wine don’t mix. I don’t even try to mix them anymore; I just order beer to go with the bulgogi. Many of us are eating a lot of Asian food these days—it is more readily available than ever before, and it is delicious. But don’t let all this chatter about how gloriously certain wines match with Asian cuisines deceive you. Some Asian cuisines lend themselves to wine drinking, and others emphatically do not.

  6

  Back to the Future

  in California

  IT IS POSSIBLY the most famous wine story ever, but on the chance that you are one of the three people who hasn’t heard it, let me recap it. On May 24, 1976, a blind tasting pitting some illustrious French wines against a group of unknown California reds and whites took place at the Intercontinental Hotel in Paris. The event was organized by Steve Spurrier, a dandyish Brit who owned a wine shop and wine school in Paris. It was America’s Bicentennial year, Spurrier had been impressed by the wines that he’d tasted on a recent visit to California, and he thought it would be fun and enlightening to assemble a group of French wine eminences for a comparative tasting. Little did he expect that they would choose the 1973 Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon and the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay as their top wines, besting the likes of Haut-Brion and Mouton Rothschild. The United States beats France at wine! The Judgment of Paris, as the tasting came to be known, made headlines around the world and heralded in the most dramatic way imaginable California’s emergence as a wine region. Far from being a viticultural backwater, Napa turned out wines that could go toe-to-toe with the finest wines that France had to offer.