Wine Bar

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The Classics: Apicius & Aglianico

I have always been a history buff.

Packed off to boarding school in England at the age of 7, my saving grace growing up were my history classes that started with Egyptian pharaohs and moved through classical Greece and Rome. Interestingly, my teacher, Kenneth Woodall, was a bit of a gourmand, and I remember quite a few of the classes focusing on the food and wine of the ancient world.

I clearly recall the story of a baker in A.D. 79 in Pompeii who had placed a few loaves of bread in his oven. While baking, Mount Vesuvius erupted, raining down ash and stone that would extinguish life from the town, but enshrine its final moments for us to discover thousands of years later. When he showed us photographs of the carbonized loaves from the oven that were discovered during an excavation, with their shape and texture intact, my jaw literally dropped. This was like a portal into the past.

Decades later, when I began to study wine seriously, it was the potency of its history that attracted me…perhaps far more than the wine itself. And as luck would have it, studying wine in Beaune, the very heart of Burgundy, I was surrounded by the stories of monks and cardinals and chevaliers and kings and their favourite wines.

A few years ago, whilst expanding my wine knowledge beyond France, I ended up quite taken by the wines of Campania, the Southern Italian region that encompasses the ruins of Pompeii and Paestum, the sybaritic Amalfi Coast’s towns of Positano and Ravello, Mt. Vesuvius, Capri, and the fascinating city of Naples.

Around the same time, someone presented me with a copy of a first century Roman cookbook called Apicius.

“Let’s try making some of these recipes,” I suggested to a good friend of mine.

“Are you mad?” she replied. “You want to make 2000 year-old recipes?”

“Why not?” I replied.

“But what about the ingredients? They probably don’t exist.”

“We’ll improvise,” I shrugged.

So we invited a few friends and threw a dinner party. On the menu were mussels, sea bream, duck in a red wine sauce, turnips, homemade bread and olive oil for dunking, and for dessert we made a cheesecake of goat cheese and figs, which the book said was used during a sacrificial ceremony….!

For wine, we tried to find wines that were made as close to Pompeii as possible. Back when Pompeii was thriving, the Pompeiians produced a red wine that was exported in abundance, but there wasn’t much information we were able to dig up on that.

So we focused on Campanian wines that are all made from unique, local varietals: the most prevalent reds are Aglianico , Piedirosso, Pallagrello Nero and Casavecchia. The dominant whites are Coda di Volpe, Greco di Tufo and Falanghina, all blended in Lacryma Christi (Tears of Christ), the region’s evocatively named and well-known wine.

The pairing of the food with these wines was outstanding, suggesting the very close relationship between the two starting thousands of years ago.

The dinner party was quite the success…for many reasons: it was truly different. It was a pairing of food and wine in modern times to what the Pompeiians would have done a couple of millennia ago as they reclined in their dining chairs and feasted, the same way we did, except of course we all sat upright at a table.

But much like the Romans, our tastes are still linked with what we see and hear around us: a memorable dinner is made up of food, wine…and the people we are with and finally the ambiance. To the Romans, eating and drinking was a celebration of life. In fact, the Latin word for dinner party is “convivium…” or living together. And with death being the inevitable outcome of life, they seized every day and enjoyed it.

We ought to take a page out of their book. Carpe Diem and mean it.

 

 

 

 

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Travelling Through the Loire Valley

Many years ago, driving through the Loire Valley, I was astonished at how many gorgeous buildings seem to appear out of nowhere…the Cathédrale de Chartres was one such building that suddenly appeared as I rounded a bend, towering regally above the tall field of wheat. Another such building appeared on the right bank of the Maine River flowing through the town of Angers as I drove slowly, one eye on a map and the other on careening scooters, trying to find my hotel.

I stopped and got out, staring up in awe at the ecclesiastical grandeur of the Hôpital Saint Jean d’Angers, inside which was the Hôtel-Dieu d’Angers, the town’s infirmary founded in the year 1153 by Etienne de Marsay, Henry II’s treasurer. Henry Plantagenêt, then King of England and Duke of Anjou, commissioned the hospital as atonement for his murder of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury.

What does this have to do with wine, you may ask?

Well, where medieval healers were concerned, wine was always present. Wine was used for medicinal purposes, which is why so many vineyards were planted around the various Hôtels-Dieu around France during the Middle Ages.

As such, a few years after the Hôpital Saint Jean d’Angers was built and functioning, the monks who ran it established vineyards on the left bank of the Loire and that was the beginning of the Château de Bois-Brinçon in a hamlet known as Blaison-Saint-Sulpice.

The year was 1219, making the vineyard one of the oldest in the Loire Valley if not the oldest.

Six centuries later, as the power of the Church and aristocracy declined, and after the French Revolution of 1789, the property was sold off to the bourgeoisie and came into the hands of the  Cailleau Family in which it remains today.

Xavier Cailleau is the current owner and winemaker who took over from his father in 1991.

“At the beginning, it was a real challenge to return to winemaking and the desire to make wines with a terroir identity,” Xavier acknowledges. “It was a steady evolution, first to organics, then biodynamics. And the vines responded and the grapes began to offer the true face of the soil.”

The wines of Bois-Brinçon are vinified by terroir. “The Anjou region is a mosaic of very varied and rich terroirs,” Xavier explains. “Being at the junction of the Armorican Massif and the Paris Basin, the Bois-Brinçon vineyards offer a rare diversity of soils and landscapes spread over six communes and eight different terroirs.”

Intervention in the cellar is minimal. “We accompany the wines without useless and traumatic interventions,” Xavier says, “like a parent who sees his children grow up and accompanies them so they take the right path.”

I first tasted the wines of Bois-Brinçon at a small bistro not far from Domaine, but I wasn’t a “wine person” back then…just a tourist but they stayed with me.

Five years ago, at a Christmas lunch with two other sommeliers, one of whom brought a bottle of “Les Saules de Montbenault,” one of their cuvées, I was blown away: the chenin blanc was laser sharp and sang from whence it came. And the red…the cabernet franc could not have come from anywhere, but this particular corner of Anjou.

 

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Château Musar: Singular & Special

The wines of Château Musar are very special to me for several reasons:

Firstly, due to heritage, I am very proud of this wine, a Middle Eastern wine made in a region that has been producing wine since classical times, one that has become the obsession of sommeliers and professionals around the globe, people whose eyes light up when you mention the wine, happy to wax poetic about the wine and why it’s so special.

Secondly, Musar and the Hochars are family. Growing up, there was always a bottle of Musar on the dining table, especially at dinner or Sunday lunch. Additionally, my uncle, the then Lebanese ambassador to the UK, served the wine with great pride at every cocktail and dinner party at the embassy or the residence, telling everyone who would listen about this great Lebanese wine made by his even greater friend, Serge.

And Serge Hochar was indeed great. When he passed away in a tragic swimming accident six years ago, the wine world lost a dynamic, passionate man who brought Musar out of the shadows of the Bekaa Valley and into the conscience of wine professionals in the west, but the family lost a father, a husband, an uncle…a man who loved life and his wine.

I was born in Beirut shortly before the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975. My immediate family stayed on, but by 1982, the situation in Beirut had become ridiculously dangerous and as the bombs dropped and snipers manned the rooftops, I was sent off to boarding school in England. Around the same time, Serge sent his wife and sons to Europe…but he stayed. He was not going to abandon the winery in Ghazir, 25 miles up the coast from Beirut, nor his vineyards in the Bekaa that was by now swarming with Israelis, Palestinians and Syrians.

As his neighbourhood was razed to the ground, Serge sat quietly in an armchair and drank an entire bottle of Musar. “Everytime a bomb hit, I would take a sip,” I heard him say. “Needless to say, I drank the whole bottle pretty quickly!”

Musar made wine every year of the war (1975-1990), missing only one vintage. Those picking the grapes did so at night as rockets and bombs lit up the sky and the trucks carrying grapes took hours to make the short trip from the vineyards to the winery, the truck drivers risking their lives trying to evade the battlegrounds the various factions had carved out in Beirut and its environs.

The wines of Château Musar may not appeal to everyone: made from a combination of cabernet sauvignon, carignan and cinsault, the wines tell stories, they are “living beings” that corral the energy of an entire season in a place that was Serge’s home, and whilst he would never admit it, his spirit and personality.

 

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To Be Or Not To Be … A Wine Sommelier

I read somewhere recently that one should be proud of one’s choices…and not necessarily one’s talents.

Hmmm…?

Because choices involve working hard, and the achievements that follow are worth every drop of blood, sweat and tears you put into it.

Let’s just say for a moment you are lucky enough to have a gift, if you work hard, that gift will pay off. Left to its own devices, the gift will wither.

Passion is a gift. To have passion for something is exhilarating, exciting, and so fulfilling.

I didn’t find my passion until I was in my late 30s. Actually, I have two: writing and wine.

Now…the writing is a solitary existence…but wine…that’s a different story…

At Somm Time, I am so often reminded how much I love working with people who are as passionate about wine as I am…but honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with more passion for or knowledge of wine that my colleague Ciprian Toma. His knowledge is encyclopedic: every time I suggest a little-known wine from a tiny winery tucked away behind the fields somewhere in deepest, darkest Andalucia, he’ll say, “Oh I know that wine…”

What?

Or some obscure Cabernet from Georgia that he had me taste, matured in clay kvevris…or…well the list goes on and on.

I feel so privileged to work with someone like Cip because I learn something every single time. His way of talking about wine opens my mind and my palate beyond my personal likes and he does that with all the guests who come through the door. “Spend a little time with the wine,” he’ll say to someone who may be on the fence about a brand new orange wine…or an all-natural trousseau from the Jura in Eastern France. “You will love it, I promise.”

And when Cip likes a wine…it is a rather grand performance, worthy of a Shakespearian play. He walks around, gesturing, gesticulating, shaking his head, pacing the room, looking up at the sky, throwing his arms in the air…and no words…at least not until the second sip.

Clearly, he is not the stiff, pompous sommelier who takes himself overly seriously, of which there are so many running around New York City. One I recently met reminded me of Lurch Addams. It is wine after all…not brain surgery. And wine is meant to be a celebration, so go ahead…enjoy it…the Cip way!

Originally from Transylvania in central Romania, he started life as a political journalist, followed by public relations, finally finding his way to New York City, where he started tasting wines, mostly Italian and discovered he had a “thing” for wine…certainly a nose, a palate and a passion that led to a sommellerie diploma.

I feel a certain camaraderie with Cip, and even though I don’t know him very well, I know enough to realize that he is a serious fellow with a keen sense of humor and we have alot in common respective to the roads we have traveled, switching around before we got to where we were meant to be.

Nonetheless, I have huge respect and admiration for someone who has realized what he loves and goes for it, full throttle.

Once you figure out what you love, it really lights up your life and it will make it easier to succeed.

And one last thing…Cip really loves the desert!

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Wine & Warmth

These days, when you tell someone that you’re a wine sommelier, they inevitably register a look of awe: eyebrows raised, eyes wide, mouth gaping…

“You must be really smart,” is the opening line that invariably follows.

Thank you “Somm,” the 2013 documentary that follows four wine captains in their quest for the Master Sommelier certification.

And whilst a good sommelier indeed should know his/her wines, varietals, flavour profiles, terroirs, geology and geography, I believe the job of a good sommelier requires a few other qualifications: namely a hospitable nature, of which warmth is the most important ingredient; good instincts and some psychological insight that gives him/her the ability to read the table.

I am one who admittedly goes out to eat at restaurants a lot, and have worked in my fair share of them and therefore have come across many a sommelier…and the ones who remain indelibly etched in my mind are the ones who smiled when they greeted me, the ones that made me feel good about the wine I had chosen and gently waltzed around a few suggestions of their own, explaining in simple words why their choices might be more appealing. Sometimes I agreed and sometimes I didn’t, but either way, we both ended up extremely pleased with the choice.

Years later, I may not remember much else, but I shall not easily forget Luis Garcia de la Navarra, the owner and Master Sommelier at his restaurant that carries his name on the Calle Montalban in Madrid.

Luis is tall for a Spaniard and handsome to boot. The first time I ate there, I had picked a simple Verdejo for lunch. It was a hot summer day and he applauded my choice and came back with:

“Perhaps the Senora would like to try a wine that just arrived in my cellar?”

Of course, I agreed.

That lunch, my friend Maria Jose and I ended up drinking the most delicious Godello…it was ‘As Sortes’ from Rafael Palacios, a honey-coloured liquid made from grapes that came from Palacios’ seven oldest plots. It wasn’t even that much more expensive than what we had originally picked, but it was so much more interesting than the Verdejo, and way more complex and layered.

And Luis suggested a simple plate of Pata Negra Jamon to start out with and rounds of juicy tomatoes drenched in a spicy green olive oil and warm bread to go with.

I must say it was probably one of the best lunches I’ve ever had.

And Luis…well, he won my confidence with his smile and twinkling eyes.

Then of course, there are the sommeliers who take themselves far too seriously and when they approach a table, they live up to their reputation of being unapproachable and borderline arrogant. Why? I’ve often wondered. Why be in the hospitality world if you’re not hospitable? Why can’t they smile. Why so stiff? In fact, I recently bumped into one who came off as quite rude. After all, it’s about the wine, not about them; and isn’t it all about the guest and helping their experience to be an unforgettable one?

Somm Time in New York City is a wine bar where a warm smile and hospitality go hand in hand with a spectacular wine list…the kind of list that wine aficionados might put up with a dour, dull sommelier, just for the pleasure of drinking the bottles curated so thoughtfully by Maria Rust. But in fact, you get it all at Somm Time: the warmth and the wine.

And with that combination, you just can’t lose.

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A Time To Wine

Back in the day, there was a bar on Greenwich Avenue called “The Bar.” It was truly a neighbourhood dive, with a great jukebox and a man called Johnny with a long ZZ Top-style beard behind the bar. Open until 4am, it attracted all kinds: nurses getting off their shifts, servers, other bartenders, writers, artists and the occasional lost soul.

I used to go in there for the odd dirty martini and put coin after coin in the jukebox, listening to The Cure and The Rolling Stones over and over.

I remember once asking Johnny for a glass of wine and he looked at me and raised a sardonic eyebrow.

“Lady, this is a bar,” he said.

That was in 1995.

A few years later, just as I had begun to gravitate towards the wine world, I happened to be at “The Bar” late one night and asked Johnny the same question.

“What color?” was the reply this time.

“White…” I said, shrugging slightly.

He bent down and pulled out a box, put some ice in a rocks glass and poured some of the golden liquid over the ice. “Here you go,” he pushed the glass towards me. “Wine.”

15 years later, after a particularly superb dinner of paella with Maria and Angie, two of my closest gal pals that included five bottles of vintage Burgundy and Bordeaux, I decided they needed to know about “The Bar.”

We piled into a cab and off we went downtown.

It was just as I remembered it. A real dive. Except that the jukebox now took debit cards and Johnny proudly served Pinot Grigio, Sancerre, Pinot Noir and Cabernet.

All this to say that wine is now a beverage of choice, and not just among aficionados and connoisseurs, but it is now accessible and available to all. And wine bars have cropped up all over the city. But they’re not all alike.

These days, I hang my hat at Somm Time, a wine bar par excellence, that is the brainchild of Maria Rust. A sommelier and wine maverick, she had always wanted a wine bar where wine was celebrated and enjoyed…and not for any particular reason, but just because.

When we worked together several years ago, we always said, we would have such a bar and lo and behold, now there is Somm Time.

Somm Time is a wine bar with a list that is extraordinary, filled with wines that appeal to everyone: from the sommelier and master of wine to the young law student who lives next door. But it’s not just about the wine: it’s also about the atmosphere, the ambiance and the sheer warmth that emanates when you walk in. People say it feels like their living room…and there may be some truth to that. But that is what we want. We want people to feel comfortable and happy…whilst they try new wines and teach their palate about something new.

None of us who work at Somm Time (and there are only three) preach about wine…it’s a conversation; we put people at ease with a smile and let them tell us what they want before we make gentle suggestions.

And for us, the greatest reward is when someone’s eyes genuinely light up when they take that first sip. That is what makes the very hard work we put into Some Time worthwhile.

Somm Time isn’t just any wine bar. It is a quintessential wine bar run by people who care not only about the wine but about the experience…because while the average person may or may not remember the wine, he or she will most certainly remember how we made them feel and hopefully come back again and again.