Cross posted from my tumblr blog. (Nothing happening in my poker world)

I thought I had gotten as much as I could out of Das Rheingold when I got an email from the local Library informing me that the recording I had reserved with Sir Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic was now available. I had been listening to James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera, but really hadn’t gotten very far into it. I wasn’t expecting much of a difference, I mean, it was the same piece of music, right? Wrong. I don’t know how to describe it, and maybe I won’t do it justice, but if you just take for example the prelude, or vorspiel, that opens the opera and sets the scene in the Rhine, there is a profound difference. The Met version is very melodic, slow-building, almost dream-like. With Solti the waters of the Rhine are more crystalline and sharp, but retain a wildness in tone and tempo that are somewhat threatening, savage even. The waves splash a lot more against the blue slate on the river’s edge, but in precise angles and inflections that create much more tension. I never thought I would be writing anything on opera, and like I said before, I don’t count myself among the musically inclined, but the difference between the two recordings seems obvious if you are paying attention.

I have been getting in varied amounts of studying in the past few weeks, and mostly I have been reading Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route because I just couldn’t put it down. We are in escrow on a house right now, and it is fairly stressful even if it is something we have been working towards for quite some time. Hopefully, we will be closing on the 27th. It has made me less willing to start studying new territory, and more inclined to read something lighter. Lynch’s book is actually a very new perspective for me as far as wine goes, and it is very entertainingly written. A number of things he advocates really struck me.

First of all, when someone asks you if a wine is “good” or not, or if one wine is “better” than another, the proper, or at least most relevant, response is, “Good for what?” or, “Better for what?” In blind tastings, the biggest wine generally wins (and this sounds oh so familiar), but a blind tasting ignores the circumstances under which a wine is to be drunk. Some wines are better by the pool with some black olives and prosciutto, some wines are better with a complex, nuanced meal at a Michelin star restaurant. What kind of attitude should you have when tasting wine? Here is what he writes about Richard Olney: ”…as he searched for whatever distinguished each wine. He did not taste with a fixed idea of ‘the perfect wine’ in mind. He valued finesse, balance, personality, and originality. If a wine had something to say, he listened. If a wine was a cliche, he had little interest. If it was different, apart from the rest, he appreciated it more.” I think that if you are really going to be of use to your guests who come to your restaurant, you need to know what camp they are in and what they are looking for in a wine.

Market pressures seem to be as important in understanding a wine as the provenance of the wine. It is almost an extension of the terroir since many of the choices in the vineyard and winery are driven by money. It is, after all, a business, a money making venture, and so it is unrealistic to think that decisions to do with yield, filtration, sulfur dioxide, bottling, oak vs. stainless steel, assemblage, harvest date and more don’t revolve around money.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“Vintage charts are the worst kind of generalization; great wine is the contradiction of generalization.”

“Even in the bottle, wine prefers to develop in the same conditions under which the vine roots were nourished.”

Here he is quoting Henri Jayer: “They are perfect, perfectly neutral, worthless. Oh a lot of restaurants like them because they won’t receive any complaints. No compliments, no complaints.” (For what it is worth, I love the construction of those few sentences. One time a co-worker said, “I don’t do well with nothing to do,” and I almost fell over at the sheer Beckettian brilliance of it. I am funny like that I guess.)

Wine laws often govern the raw materials that can be used in a wine, but not the style of vinification. To illustrate, Chave says he can make his Red Hermitage by Carbonic Maceration, and no one can tell him he doesn’t have the right. He can still call it Hermitage. Wine making methods that are centuries old can contribute to a wine’s classic character.

Reading Lynch talk about wine and the people who produce it in so many different, varied ways has encouraged me to do the same. It can only help you understand the very thing itself better. And as someone who faces the daunting task of memorizing a large quantity of information over the next months or years, I have to say that attacking from different angles only makes something stick in my brain more easily. I learned more about Bandol by reading Lynch’s take on the evolution of Domaine Tempier than I possibly could have with flashcards and a map alone. Different descriptive styles build your capacity to think about a wine (or a piece of music…), and that is what I am after in the end, right?

The size of a swallow is key! Are you sipping your wine and examining it in detail with a subtle dish in front of you (Red Burgundy, Premier Cru or better) or are you eating a large, rich meal and need something thirst quenching with lower alcohol and more straightforward pleasures (Beaujolais Villages). Again, this could be key in recommending the appropriate wine to a guest, being the best Sommelier you can be.

Finally, he says, “My job is not only to taste and buy wine, I must sell them too.” And so he buys and sells cases of vintage chart stars even if he thinks they are lacking. I feel the same way to some extent, and my first question when I taste a potential candidate for the list is “Can we sell this wine?” (Lately, I have also been thinking “I would like to be able to sell this wine,” and, “What would it take to be able to sell this wine?” and, “How could we get our staff to be able to sell this wine?”)

Last night was fairly slow in the bar. A guest entered and brought a 08 Kosta Browne Pinot Noir in. I know it is in high demand, I know it is hard to get. I say, “That’s a nice bottle of wine you have there, sir,” and he smiles knowingly. Orders a Coors Light. Two more gentlemen show up to join him with an unlabeled bottle. They are in high spirits. They ask me to open both bottles and I offer to decant one or both if necessary since I didn’t know what the other bottle was or what their preference was. I was treated to a long speech on why decanting was unnecessary and snobby by the gentleman in the middle, and I opened both bottles without a word and poured small pours so that they can taste them side by side, which I gathered was the point of the evening for them. Before the speech, I was told I should taste them, but I was at the moment very busy and felt like charging them corkage for sure after the grandiose speech I was treated to, and wanted to keep things really professional. Twenty minutes pass and things slow down. They are ready to go to their table, but ask me once again to taste both wines, so I tell them I will turn around and they should pour me a taste of each and I will tell them what I think without knowing which is which. I turn around for a moment or two and then face them again with two blind wines in front of me.

I think they were surprised with how long it took for me to actually taste them, and I was talking out loud, going through the grid on color, viscosity, aromas, and giving some possibilities aloud for why each wine is exhibiting the characteristics it shows. One is clearly better than the other, and so I call it the Kosta Browne (although honestly, I was a little underwhelmed by the wine in the glass in comparison to the hushed, reverential tones with which I had heard people speak about it). The guy in the middle is silent for a long moment, and in that time I figure out that it is his wine that I called straight forward, short on the finish, and muted on the nose. He mumbles something like, “Let me try these again…(unintelligible)…I never had the chance…(unintelligible)…see here…” and is lost for a moment in a new inquisitiveness about his wine. I was glad I pulled some punches since he is, after all, a guest, and I want to make his time with us as pleasant as possible. I questioned him afterwards about how he made the wine and where he got the fruit and most importantly who was making the decisions in the vineyard because we were obviously at the wrong note to end on. He named the vineyard in the Sonoma Coast AVA and the type of French Oak he used, but brushed aside the vineyard practices much like he did the idea of decanting a wine. And he sort of explained it all away by saying, “Winemaking is really very simple, you taste the grapes in the vineyard, and that is what you taste in the wine you make!” It seemed appropriate to let it go at that, and I excused myself and arranged for them to be seated.

Maybe it is because I just read Kermit Lynch’s book that I thought the thoughts I thought in the thirty minutes afterwards. I thought of being a vineyard owner in the Sonoma Coast AVA (which is huge). I thought of selling my grapes by weight to winemakers who were demanding low yields and complex flavors. I thought of marketing my grapes to affluent amateurs who don’t know a lot about what goes on in the vineyard but have become enamored with winemaking equipment and which oak from which forest is best. I thought of increasing my yields threefold and charging the same price to these amateurs, thus tripling my bottom line. And I am surer than sure that is what happened to this gentleman.

With the move and all coming up, I am trying to be realistic about the amount of studying or blogging I will be able to do. At the very least, I will be able to master the flashcards I have made on Germany, but my ideas about furthering my Bordeaux knowledge will probably have to be amended a bit considering the tumult that is involved with moving. I will be in New Orleans for a cocktail convention a week and a half from now, and that will be my next proper blog, most likely.

In the mean time,

Play well. Do good work. Keep in touch.

PFJ