When you get to the point as a wine lover that you know a little more than the average wine drinker, you get used to being asked to make wine recommendations. Your friends tend to hand you the wine list in restaurants or they call to ask what they should buy to drink for a special occasion or for no occasion at all. I have made choices of what to serve to many people at my home for one event or another. As I related in the last issue of this publication, I have also acted as the Wine Ombudsman to my friend, Kristin Watt, and others for charity events.
None of that really prepares you for that first time you are actually making a recommendation and taking someone’s money for a glass or bottle of wine. I felt a very strong sense of responsibility, not that the wine be good for my taste, but for theirs. I was responsible for the customers’ enjoyment of their meals, and in part for their entire dining experience.
The Guest Sommelier Experience
How did I end up in this position? I found myself serving as a Sommelier in Alana’s Food and Wine, working with a Chef, Alana Shock, who takes a great deal of pride in the dining experience she and her staff provide to their customers. Alana’s husband, business partner and Sommelier, Kevin Bertschi, had family obligations out of town recently, and he and Alana asked me to serve as guest Sommelier for a night.
Alana’s is known for its innovative, ever-changing menu based on the freshest ingredients available. It is also known for having an extensive and varied wine list, catering to a wide variety of palates and price points, served at or near the state minimum price, eschewing the extra mark up found in most restaurants. In addition to its regular wine list, Alana’s also has a special cave selection featuring wines that are on average longer-aged, of greater reputation, harder to find and more expensive than those found on the main wine list. It is a treasure trove for the wine enthusiast.
In addition to the regular dinner service, Alana suggested preparing a special small plates menu as part of a wine bar service. Because the menu at Alana’s is dependent on what is available at local markets or delivered by farmers that day, Alana could not tell me what the menu would hold for the night I worked, but she did tell me some of the flavor profiles she was anticipating for certain dishes. Armed with that knowledge, I spent a couple hours one afternoon prior to my debut in Kevin’s cellar, familiarizing myself with the special selections and identifying certain bottles to feature with the anticipated flavor profiles.
Small plates menu, with notes, from my night as guest Sommelier.
My personal cellar is filled with wines I know well, most of which I have tasted, often more than once. Serving from someone else’s cellar poses an additional set of challenges. I had virtually no personal tasting experience with the wines in Kevin’s cellar. For many, I knew according to the reputation of the producer that it would be a complex and well made wine, and sometimes even the particular style of winemaking practiced by the producer. But to determine which wine might match with a particular dish or flavor, I had to rely on what I had learned about the characteristics of different varietals, and how those characteristics vary as a result of climate, location and vintage.
The Big Night
I arrived at the restaurant about two hours prior to the start of the dinner service and saw for the first time both the main dinner menu and the wine bar small plates menu. Alana suggested we might expand the usual by-the-glass wine offerings by adding some premium by-the-glass selections, at a higher price to cover the higher costs of the wines, from the cellar or from the by-the-bottle wine list. This way I could showcase some of the small plate dishes by creating pairings at a more attractive price point than if diners purchased a full bottle, especially of the higher-priced cellar selections.
I began my shift by sitting at the bar with the two food menus, the wine list and my notes from the cellar. I decided on four wines to offer by the glass, hand wrote a list for the bartender, and brought her the wines she would need from the cellar. As part of the selection process, I determined which of the dishes I would be pairing with the specific wines I had selected.
As it came near the time to open the restaurant, my nervousness peaked. I was keenly aware that I was a replacement part in well-oiled service machine, and I desperately wanted to avoid embarrassing the restaurant or myself. Julie had let a number of our friends know about my service debut, and I knew that many of them would be coming to the restaurant that night. I am grateful to Julie and to Kristin and Rhonda, her stepmother, Jenn, Joe and Mary, Dr. Mike and Dr. Jenny, Molly and Meghan, Rebecca, Lynn and the many other good friends who came that night. You helped calm my nerves, and made the evening that much more special.
The Food and the Wine
The dishes at Alana’s can be complex. Sometimes the ingredients are intended to complement one another, and other times, they are intended as a counterpoint, but there is usually a lot happening on a plate, and that can further complicate a wine pairing.
Consider the dishes our friends Dr. Mike and Dr. Jenny ordered: “Simple summer spaghetti with seared scallops, baked ricotta, zucchini noodles, fresh basil and olive oil.” Cool climate Chardonnay like a Chablis is a classic match, serving as a counterpoint to the natural sweetness of the scallops. The inclusion of basil and olive oil in the dish makes me think of Sauvignon Blanc, using the grassy or vegetal characteristics of the wine to draw out those flavors in the dish. The inclusion of the baked ricotta suggested a wine with substantial body that also carries acid notes, like a beautiful Provençal Rosé.
The second entrée: “Roasted ruby trout with corn bread, brassica greens and a pecan vinaigrette.” Trout is mild flavored with a hint of sweetness and you have to be careful about wines that could overpower the fish. The corn bread would bring a lot of sweetness to the dish, suggesting an acid counterpoint in the wine, and the greens would have a vegetal character. The vinaigrette provides some of the acid, suggesting that the wine could be more mildly acidic, although it is said that acid loves acid, so you would not want a wine that is too soft. Then there is the nuttiness of the pecans which made me think of a wine with some fruit, but also some tannin.
2013 Chateau Pradeaux from AOC Bandol in Provence, France.
Considering all of this, I recommended the 2013 Chateau Pradeaux Cotes de Provence rosé, a beautiful, structured wine from along the Mediterranean coast of the Bandol wine region (AOC, or appellation d’origine contrôlée, Bandol.) You may recall from some of my earlier blogs that AOC is the highest quality regional designation in French wine law. Alana’s carries the Chateau Pradeaux on its regular wine list for $40 per bottle. It is made from 95 percent Mouvedre, a powerful red grape also known as Monastrell in Spain. In this style, Mouvedre produces a wine with a pretty orange/pink color, subtle fruits on the nose and palate, a pleasant and balanced acidity and a noticeable tannin structure.
For other diners, I recommended they choose from the by-the-glass service on offer that night. Wine service by the glass has a number of advantages. For some customers at some times, a full bottle may simply be too much wine. By-the-glass service offers the opportunity to try a number of different wines without making the financial commitment of a full bottle, and that becomes even more attractive if the glass service includes higher-priced cellar selections.
Michael Madrigale is the head Sommelier at Bar Boulud, Épicerie Boulud and Boulud Sud in New York City. Michael began several years ago to offer nightly glass pours of high-end wines. He has been using large-format bottles, magnums (1.5 liters or the equivalent of two regular bottles of wine) or double magnums (3.0 liters, the equivalent of four bottles) or larger, and posting to his Instagram account a photo of the day’s bottle shot on the streets of New York. His purpose is to make available wines the typical customer might never get to try.
Glass pours also make it easier to make pairing recommendations. The Sommelier can focus on selecting a wine for each diner and each course, rather than, as I described earlier, having to find a wine that can bridge different plates. I tried to bring all of those advantages together in pairing glass pours with several dishes on the small plates menu.
The 2004 Reva Alban Estate Syrah.
“Baharat spiced and grilled lamb chop with spinach and chick peas” I paired with a 2004 Reva Alban Estate Syrah from Edna Valley in California’s Central Coast region for $18 a glass. Syrah is a classic pairing with lamb. It is big and bold and can stand up to the strong flavors of the meat. In this preparation, with a Middle Eastern spice profile and the addition of the chick peas, this warm-climate, ripe Syrah seemed the perfect match. This wine comes in at 16.1 percent alcohol, one of the highest levels I have seen in a non-fortified wine. I had some concerns that the alcohol would combine with the spice and overwhelm the palate, but this wine was well integrated. It worked. The wine was spicy and loaded with dark fruit and violet flowers and had a wonderful, silky feel in the mouth, great balance and good, soft tannins that coated the mouth but did not overly dry it. It was a gorgeous match with the dish.
2008 Achaval Ferrer Finca Bella Vista Malbec.
“Brisket quesadilla with beans, enchilada sauce and a fried duck egg.” Can I just say, you had me at fried duck egg? This was another interesting combination of flavors and textures. I wanted a wine that was big enough to play off the beef and the beans, that had some fruit to smooth out the spice profile of the enchilada sauce, but still had enough acid to cut through the creamy fattiness of the egg yolk. I decided on the 2008 Achaval Ferrer Finca Bella Vista Perdriel, also for $18 a glass. This single-vineyard Argentine Malbec was loaded with blue and black fruits, plums and blackberries, with notes of violets and anise. The vineyard is very high altitude, about 3,100 feet, which helps even the ripening of the fruit and cools the vines at night, preserving the natural acidity of the grapes. Very well balanced with a good, long finish, this wine was a wonderful match with the dish.
The Judgment
Alana’s food is always spectacular. My goal as the guest Sommelier was to find ways to highlight certain aspects of the dishes and to provide a tasty and enjoyable overall experience to our customers. At the same time, because I was a new and unknown entity on the floor, I had hoped to be able to avoid getting in the way of the rest of the staff and, optimally, to help them do their jobs.
I felt good about the night. The diners, many of whom were friends who had come in because it was my first time, loved the wines I recommended and the way the wines worked with the different dishes. A lot of very good wine was drunk, by the glass and by the bottle, on a rainy Thursday night. I would call that a success.
Alana and I have talked about doing this again, with the small plates menu and special wine selections. I will be sure to let my readers know ahead of time, and I hope to see you there.
Once again, a fun read and I learned some ideas about how to go about selecting wines for different food pairings. I loved the small plate format and the opportunity to try a couple different food and wine combos.
An absolute pleasure to have a trusted, person-in-THE-know, Mark, select wines to drink paired maticulously with fine cheeses, salad good enough to be your meal & a small seafood plate satisfying enough to be dessert. …BUT of course… we had dessert too! Alana is a charm as is her namesake restaurant. The conversations with lucky guests ranked equal to the night’s experience. Thank you.