We are happy that Bernard, who has sampled so many wines, has shared his notes with us. We do have, or have had for sale a few of the wines Bernard writes about, and we include a link to our stock page whenever it is a producer we carry (but since the stock page is kept up-to-date and the wines are sold, don't expect any but the newest of wines to show up in our stock!). Mostly though, since we specialize in County of Santa Barbara Wine and Central Coast Wine, we don't carry a lot of the wines Bernard writes about. But we think it is important that you be able to have an idea what they're like in case you are planning to buy some somewhere, or have them in your own collection. Enjoy.

Here are Bernard's notes from March 30, 2003:
 

The first big affair was my niece’s wedding on Sunday, March 30. After spending most her life in Israel (though born in Miami), my oldest niece had been feeling the old maid (at the ripe age of twenty-one) after her next older sister and her next older cousin had gotten hitched and had babies in the past two years. Anyway, she got engaged to a rich, street-smart Sephardic guy from Brooklyn who seems to have his head on a lot straighter than the typical full time Yeshiva puhtz that these Orthodox girls usually get set up with. OK, so family comes in from all over—Israel, Miami, LA, Long Island—for the big to-do at Great Neck Synagogue. As Kosher food goes, Prestige Caterers did pretty good with the hors d’oeuvres. Decent sushi, great rack of lamb, excellent sweetbreads in a savory brown sauce, accompanied by acceptable jazz by the Yiddish band (including some ‘trane and Miles). Only the wine sucked. The saving grace was the Baron Herzog Chenin Blanc, a good white sipper that I buy from time to time for $6 a bottle. The dinner was less good. Although the soup and salad were OK, the medium rare prime rib I ordered could not be achieved by the kitchen because, unexpectedly, “too many people ordered their rib roast well done!” So instead of serving the rarer pieces first, the boss decided to just keep all the meat in the over too long. Go figure. He served me sliced marinated flank steak that tasted like marinade, not beef. Pathetic. And the Hora Band was so loud I spent more time outside the dining room than in it. 
 

Sam and I stayed with her aunt on 10th Street in the Village, a prime location for its convenience to restaurants and public transportation. That evening I longed for pasta, so we walked to a very good traditional Tuscan restaurant, I Coppi, on 9th between 1st and Avenue A. The atmosphere seemed much as one might find in Tuscany, and perhaps because we arrived late on a slow night, we got very fine service and a lot of attention. The menu is all Tuscan, with not so much as a Caprese this or a polenta that. The pasta with ragu was Florentine, not Bolognese. The Branzino was fresh and delicious. The ribollita (reheated vegetable and bread soup) was very hearty, thick, with a good variety of veggies, perfect for a cold night. The 2000 Rosso di Montalcino (Il Poggione, I think) by the glass was very good, not overoaked, and acidic enough for the fish. The waiter/sommelier/manager gave a very generous pour, split between my wife and me, in Spiegelau Bordeaux stems. Before dessert of three sorbetti, he gave me a tour of the all Tuscan wine cellar, pointing out a couple bottles of 55 Biondi-Santi BdM I had noticed on the wine list. With dessert, he gave us fresh pours of the Rosso, on the house. To top things off, he wrapped up half a loaf of the home baked bread (truly authentic in the Tuscan style) gratis, to take with us. True hospitality! Recommended. And when the weather is better, I Coppi has a garden patio in the back.

Tuesday morning we devoted to a search for a bathroom faucet set to complement an antique basin we happened upon for a song in Santa Barbara. After meandering around fixture supply houses in Chelsea for a couple hours, we walked back to the village for lunch at Mario Batali’s and Joseph Bastianich’s latest venture, Otto on Eighth Street, off 5th Avenue. Otto (“eight” in Italian) is a pizzeria/vinoteque. The wine list is surprisingly long and well priced. The menu is pretty basic. Pizzas star. Otto makes two types of pizza, the traditional stone oven thin-crusted one that is very old world, and an innovative version that is cooked on a griddle (or some such thing). We stuck with the traditional. The mushroom was passable, using simply crimini. But the Margherita was spot one, using bufala mozzarella fresca. Crisp crust, clean deep flavors. The salads were excellent, especially the beet salad. We ordered a 25 cl pitcher of one of the house red wines (a teroldego from Elisabetta Foradori) which was just what you’d want for lunch if you were in Italy.

That evening, Sam and I went our separate ways—she for a girls’ night out and I for a wine-themed dinner at Craft. Joining me were 4 physicists and a record producer. Steve P. instigated the dinner, informing me that Andrew Zachary (an occasional Wine Board participant) is a Friend of Neil (Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium). Neil, accompanied by his wife Alice, were both grad students with me at Texas in the 80s. Andrew and Neil were undergrads at Harvard in the mid-70s. The sixth of our group was my friend Seth Rosenberg, who I met in Santa Barbara where he did his Physics PhD. As often happens at such a gathering, we brought to much wine and left some pretty desirable bottles unopened.

We chose to have the kitchen prepare us a chef’s tasting menu instead of going with the concept menu. This was a good idea as the kitchen hit on all cylinders. Each course was served family style and each consisted of 5 or 6 platters of food. We started with a raw fish course (hamachi, ahi, halibut, marinated baby octopi) accompanied by plates of shaved fennel salad and lightly cooked favas topped with EVOO and light herbs. The hamachi was just OK, the ahi slightly better. The halibut was a revelation, impeccable, served surprisingly with sautéed mushrooms on top. The wines were a 99(?) F.X. Pichler riesling smaragd (I forgot which vineyard designatation) and a 96 Dönnhoff riesling spatlese. The impressive Pichler was a bit tight, very stony, needing probably a good 5 years to emerge. The Dönnhoff was the complete package, vibrant, structured, with its white fruit resonating around the acidic framework.

The charcuterie course had a fabulous duck terrine that included a foie gras layer, duck prosciutto, rabbit pate, great smoked quail, and a couple dishes I have forgotten. With this we drank 90 A. Conterno Barolo Gran Bussia, a spectacularly great wine. This has pretty much everything you’d want in an adolescent Barolo, expansive aromatics, some bottle development, rich fruit, complexity, finesse, linearity in the structure, good acidity, ultra-fine tannic support, expansiveness in the finish, and length. A brilliant bottle of Barolo!

One doesn’t normally follow such a monumental red wine with white, but the warm fish course that followed begged for white wine. I forget most of what was served, but I do recall a roasted sturgeon dish and wild striped bass. The wines were unforgettable. 81 Coche-Dury Meursault was still alive, maybe just the other side of peak, but with gold fruit flavor and good balance to go with the developing hints of dolce de leche and roasted nuts. Better, still, was the 83 Trimbach Clos Ste.-Hune (regular), probably a few years yet to peak. A great glass of stones, minerals, crystalline white fruits. It continued to broaden as the wine had a chance to breathe.

The meat course consisted of lamb (great riblets from spring lamb, roast loin, a braise, and a couple other preparations) along with rare duck breast slices. The sautéed salsify that came with it was excellent. The wines were 70 Latour and 85 G. Roumier Bonnes Mares. The Latour showed concentrated plum, black cherry, and cassis fruit, ferric minerality, tar, dried meat, charred cedar, and secondary characteristics. Still seemingly a good decade or more from its prime, it still drinks kind of chunky. Chewy and thick on the finish. The Bonnes Mares was fantastic, just beating the Gran Bussia by a shade for my WOTN. Even more brilliantly aromatic than the Barolo, the Bonnes Mares is at its peak of perfection. Suave, silky mouthfeel, dancing acidity, yet very rich and layered on the palate. This is what Burgundy should be. 

As if this weren’t enough, the dessert course consisted of 7 different platters of various things. A crème brulée was quite perfect. A hot chocolate cake was dark, bitter, and contained the proper molten core. A gelati and sorbeti sampler had 4 flavors of each, each in its own cup. This was served with a pitcher of hot fudge, one of hot caramel, and a bowl of schlag. I’ve forgotten a few of the other desserts, but the best of all was a nearly caramelized, baked apple cobbler. Ethereal. The wines were up to the task. The 95 Kracher Chardonnay TBA #13 is monumentally sweet, a panoply of exotic fruit and flower nectars, but on this occasion it did not seem to have the acidic cut that I remembered from past bottles. Still, it would have won most sticky battles were it not for the 94 Lingenfelder Scheurebe TBA. The Lingenfelder rocked. Real crisp acidity created a dynamic interplay with the spicy tropical fruits and botrytis. This kept evolving all over the map. Great TBA! On any other night, the TBA would have been WOTN, but the Barolo and Burgundy strutted their pedigrees admirably.

The next day, after shopping for bathroom fixtures in Chelsea, we lunched at Otto, the new Mario Batali/Joe Bastianich pizzeria/enoteca at 8th Street and Fifth Avenue. The space is a bit too big, almost cafeteria-like, except the décor is less industrial. We began with two fine salads. The tricolore was fresh and crisp, a touch underdressed even by my standards (I prefer lightly dressed salads with no puddles). The roasted beet salad was generous, the various varieties of beet sweet. We had two varieties of the classic pizza, which they bake in a pizza oven. They also make a Mario-innovated pizza cooked on a griddle, which seemed suspect to me. The pizza by which I size up any pizzeria is the Margherita. If they screw up the Margherita, I see no point in venturing farther afield. Otto’s Margherita was perfect, a thin crispy crust that held up to eating out of hand without drooping. The marinara was fresh tasting, rich and sweet, without heavy pastiness, dried herb or stale garlic flavors that mar many pizza sauces. The fresh bufala mozzarella oozed just enough juices into the marinara to lend a deep lactic quality to soften the tomato’s natural acidity. This was wonderful pizza. The other one we ordered was a mushroom pizza. I found the button mushroom topping pretty boring and ordinary. We also ordered a 250 ml carafe of Foradori Teroldego, one of the more interesting selections available by the glass or carafe. I do not recall the vintage (99 or 00), but it was just the kind of straightforward, slightly rustic red you’d expect to have at lunch in the Veneto and Trentino.

Thursday lunch was a real treat at Jonathan Waxman’s village destination spot, Washington Park, a short walk from that eponymous epicenter of the village, located at Fifth Avenue and 9th Street. The décor is stylish without being lavishly excessive, letting the diner focus on the food rather than the designer. Bravo for the choice of music, which included a spectrum of 60’s village folk songs. They may have even played Plotnicki’s Greenwich Village retro album titled “Bleeker Street”.

 Lunch is a bargain, with 3 courses for $20.03, and for an extra $10, they’ll give you three generous pours of wine to match each of the courses. My wife and a friend each ordered the prix fixe with wine. I do not recall the wines, but they included a Spanish white that I’d never heard of. I ordered a la carte, a delicious piece of wild striped bass. I drank a very fine NV Gatinois Champagne (Ay), $10 for a flute. At the table next to ours, a new NY wine importer (I think the name was Jeffrey Kaplan, or some similar Jewish name) who was pouring for the staff the only wine in his nascent portfolio, a 00 Montagny from 50+ year old Chardonnay vines. I apologize for not remembering the producer, but it is a woman with a hyphenated name. He generously poured us samples. The wine is light, crisp, minerally, stony, not unlike a St. Joseph Blanc in palate feel. Very high QPR retailing under $20. The food was terrific. I highly recommend lunch here.

The wine list at Washington Park reads like it was a John Kapon project, featuring legendary wines, producers, and vintages galore. If you want 61 Latour or 61 La Chapelle, be prepared to part with $7500. For a bit more, though, you can upgrade to a  great vintage of Romanee-Conti. If you’d rather save a couple grand, you can settle for La Tache from equally great years. Anyway, you get the idea that this is a list to satisfy CEO’s and international power brokers. If you are interested in obscure gems, or real wine drinkers’ wines, you can find a lot of connoisseur’s bottles for $30-100. 

That evening, I met some NY locals (Elise Fradkin, Paul North,???) for an offline at an old east village staple, a French bistro called Café Loup. The food was workmanlike, nothing distinctive or reflecting a chef indulging in creative impulses. I do not recall the wines, except the two I brought. The 2000 Hirsch Zöbinger Heiligenstein Riesling (Kamptal, Austria) was dry, stony with white fruit and good acid. It’s probably a few years from showing its best. The 2000 Saxum Syrah (Paso Robles) was less exuberant than it was 3 months earlier in DC. Big, dark fruit, grippy tannins, on this night it was somewhat aromatically closed and a bit chunky on the palate. It is probably time to let this sleep for a couple years.

Friday dinner, we met friends at the Red Cat, a popular Chelsea neighborhood scene spot. The interior is reminiscent of (how shall I say it?) a cathouse, with dim red lighting, and a decibel level to drown out the screams of tomcats fighting in the alley. I had an appetizer bowl of pretty tasty sweetbreads in a brothy brown sauce. I had an OK piece of fish for an entrée. We ordered a Cotat Sancerre Rouge off the wine list. I do not recall which Cotat. Slightly earthy and moderate weight, it had fine red fruit flavors. Think of it like a hypothetical cross between a Marsannay in flavor and young Volnay in palate feel. I had also brought along a bottle of 00 Cedarville Grenache (El Dorado), a wonderful expression of the grape. Chewy, succulent, dark and earthy flavors, with a bright acidity that keeps the whole thing alive. After John Alban, Jonathan Lachs and Susan Marks make the second best grenache in CA. 

Saturday was our 11th anniversary. We arranged to meet friends old and new at Eleven Madison for a dinner that was originally intended to feature a bottle of 45 Yquem offered by the restaurant for a very reasonable amount. But two days earlier, we learned that the old sommelier who had priced the bottle and reserved it for us had been replaced. Apparently, he had been incompetent when it came to running the financial end of their wine business and had some bottles priced below cost, including the 45 Yquem. We decided to pass on the corrected price of $1500. Nevertheless, the wines we bought and brought were stellar.

99 F.X. Pichler Reisling smaragd Loibenberg
83 Trimbach CSH Riesling
90 A. Conterno Gran Bussia
85 G.Roumier Bonnes Mares
94 Lingenfelder Scheurebe TBA
89 Z-H Riesling Brand VT
72 Vogue Musigny
92 Leroy RSV
90 Hudelot-Noellat Richebourg
91 Ridge Montebello Cab
83 d'Yquem

A few others were worth trying:

81 Coche-Dury Meursault
70 Latour
95 Kracher #13 TBA
86 La Tache
85 L'Eglise Clinet
 

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