By-the-Glass Gouging

I had planned to share in this space the fortuitous news that the 1991 Cascina Morassino Barbaresco from my wine cellar was neither oxidized nor corked, and thus served as a fitting tribute to the life and death of Brandyn, my companion of 20 years. February 9 marked the end of her life in 2005, and Andie and I held a private memorial service for her last night, toasting the spitfire whose memory lives on so indelibly that it should survive any dementia or Alzheimer's that may shadow my waning years. Lift your glass, fellow lovers of wine, and repeat after me: To the Queen of Felines, the Queen of Wines, a garnet-shading-to-amber vision of Italian smoothness. And a taste like no other.

My beloved cat notwithstanding, I go where my mind leads me. So it is that I found my thoughts this morning consumed not by the pain of love's loss, but by indignation about restaurant wine lists. I refer not to their quality or readability, but to the Enron rapaciousness that allows dining establishments to so cavalierly charge outrageous prices for wines by the glass. I take you to the environs of Washington, D.C., and give you as a prime example the 2002 Newton Claret Napa Valley offered at 2941 Restaurant, which apparently thinks it perfectly permissible to demand $15 for an unassuming Merlot/Cabernet Franc/Cabernet Sauvignon blend. As Lucy might say, Good Grief.

Now, 2941 is an excellent restaurant; how could it be otherwise, given the previous and present chefs? But it is LUDICROUS and PAINFUL, it is ludicrously painful, to charge almost as much for a glass of wine as the cost of a bottle retail. We know that it is customary for restaurants to charge 200 or even 300 percent of retail for a bottle of wine -- but to put this by-the-glass gouging in perspective, a bottle of the Newton Claret at any decent wine shop will run you about $18. Not that I'm recommending the Newton Claret, because I am not. Certainly not at a 400 percent markup, which is conservatively the case in this case. And probably not at a 200 percent markup, because I've had the Newton Claret. 'Nuff said.

To add wine insult to injury, we're talking an ungenerous 6-ounce pour. I submit that, at $15 the glass for an undistinguished wine, the pour should be a fat seven to eight ounces. Have these wine purveyors no decency? At long last, have they no decency? I cannot begin to imagine what the Wine Autocrat at 2941 would charge for a small taste of my Barbaresco (okay, I CAN imagine, but it's obscene, since one could conceivably, for the same price, order up the Black Truffle Love Letters, the Seared Yellow Fin Tuna AND the Dark Chocolate Fondant. Which I would love to do, believe you me, but then I wouldn't have any money left for wine pairings. So what would be the point???)

Perhaps this outsized love of profit is but a deliciously subversive way of inducing customers to smuggle in their own wine. I rather hope not, as that might work for a time with white wines, but we lovers of reds would invariably, sooner rather than later, ruin our suitcoats and/or handbags with our leaky sneaky carry-ins. Oh HEY! Perhaps this is where the corkage fee custom originated! "You there, with the stain in your hip pocket: That'll be $20, buddy. And be happy we're providing the wine stems."

I'll concede that storing wines carries a cost, and that wines by the glass have long been what I call "Big Ol' Moneymakers," and I would not quibble with this American tradition. More than I have already. However, I would suggest that, when tempted to order an expensive wine by the glass, there are alternate wine routes to consider. The first of these, if you have never had the wine before, is to ask your server for a wee taste. That's the beauty of wines by the glass, you see: You can try them out to see if you like them. It's doubly painful to spend an inordinate amount on a glass of wine that is not to your liking, and it's a simple matter to dip your taster (lips, shnozz, tongue) into a modest half-ounce sample.

If you've never asked for a small advance taste, let me assure you that I have never been refused in this. In fact, I have had servers offer me tastes of three or four wines in one evening, helping me to select just the right one. A good server will do this, cheerfully.

If you fear the censorious frown that may appear on the face of a lesser server, you can either stretch your bravery muscles and plunge ahead nonetheless, or charm your dining partner into ordering a half bottle. This is often a better deal than the wine-by-the-glass approach, although perhaps not as good as ordering a full bottle. Half-bottles may be marked half-bottles, or the wine list may read "375-ml." As most full-sized wine bottles hold 750-ml., 375-ml. means exactly half that. Watch for that designation on the wine list whenever you think you're getting a reasonably priced bottle, lest you be disappointed at what arrives at your table.

At Restaurant Eve, they kindly mark the entire half-bottle selection "Small Bottles," bless them. I do not bless Eve for the pricing on the Green and Red Zin. Yes, it's a 2001, and a fine example of Zinfandel, with vivid berry and black cherry, redolent of earth and spice. I LIKE this wine, and I am not offended when asked to pay, say, $8 a glass. But $61 the bottle? When I can go out and buy it for $19? I clearly need a course in wine pricing. Because it makes no sense to me; Restaurant Eve offers a full bottle of David Bruce Petite Syrah 2003 for $40, and THAT, my friends, is the real deal. Not EVEN double the retail price, and a wonderful wine in its own right.

It is possible that I'm being too hard on these fine dining establishments, which surely pay less per bottle for their wines than we do, meaning that their markups are even more exorbitant. Or perhaps the word I'm looking for here is "extortionate." Oops, I'm pounding the sommeliers again. What I was GOING to say is that perhaps they're not so much greedy as mathematically challenged. You know, the Ignorance Defense so prevalent in our capital city. "Sacre bleu! You mean to say that we are making more than $50 profit on a $20 bottle of wine? Astonishing, monsieur!"

What is truly astonishing is that we're expected to bend over and take it. (Now I'm starting to sound like the Rude Pundit. I do apologize.) Me, I don't like to be so door-mattish, merely because I like wine and am fortunate enough to have the funds to dine out and sample them. Because that's surely the rationale, don't you think? -- "If these people can afford to eat here, they can bloody well afford any price we choose to slap on our wines." My response to that, apart from a brief tirade about the rapidly escalating income gap and disappearing middle class, is to vote with my feet. I love good meals, and I love good wines, and I will likely seek them out more often where the price-to-value ratio is less liable to tweak my Inner Tightwad.

For fair pricing, I like the wines-by-the-glass list at 1789 Restaurant, where most of the offerings are $7 to $8. The list features a St. Supery Sauvignon Blanc, as well as a Babich Sauvignon Blanc from the wondrous New Zealand Marlborough County. Get one of each, for delectable comparison, and try to talk your dining companion into the Baby Barbera d'Asti. I'm a fan of Barbera, and at $6 the glass, SOMEONE oughta try this Baby out.

The Art of Wine Tasting

Tasting wine is clearly an art, not science - at least for the millions of us who are not wine masters. Wine tasting is such a SUBJECTIVE experience; it's colored by company, atmosphere, circumstance, mood. I can think of two occasions in the past year when I absolutely loved a wine ordered with dinner; went out the next day and purchased said wine; and discovered it didn't taste quite as good as I remembered. Same wine, same vintage -- different setting.

So when I'm asked to name favorite wines, it gives me pause. Easy enough to say, "Ooh, ooh! The Altumura Cab! The Tomassi Ripasso! The Stag's Leap Chimney Rock Merlot!" But there are so many wines out there, thousands of them that are GOOD. I think of the Cain Cuvee NV -- but do I remember it fondly because I first tried it with good friends at Pierponts? I LOVED the Seghesio Sonoma Zin we had at Pot Pie with Leeser and Nancy on my birthday last year, and the Hess Cab we had there on Andie's birthday. Ditto for the Flora Springs Cab I had with Linda and Danny in Tucson. And yet something is missing when I try these wines at home. They are still good, but something is lacking.

And anyone who tells you she's not swayed by a pretty label or a glowing review is, like our Commander in Chief, a Big Fat Liar. For example, I was just reading about the Thorn-Clark 2003 Barossa Valley Shiraz Shotfire Ridge, about $16 a bottle. If I saw this wine on the shelf, I know I'd buy it. Why? Well, just look at the name: Shotfire Ridge. How fun is that? And then one reads, "A huge mouthful of peppery black cherry, plum and exotic spice flavors pulling themselves together into a supple wine that actually strives for elegance. It's all in the balance, which lets the rich flavors ride on a sleek track and linger beautifully."

Linger beautifully. . . rich flavors riding on a sleek track. . .striving for elegance. . .see there, a wine with a fun name, and a poetic description. I am predisposed to like it.

One night in the not-too-distant past, at The House of Ellen, we cracked the 2001 Dry Creek Mood Hill Cabernet Saugivnon we carted back from California in July. To accompany the "Mood," Ellen whipped up sauteed spinach and a killer szechuan dish, one of three meals at which she professes culinary mastery. (No, I don't know what the other two meals are. But I intend to find out.) Her dish was delicious, and so was the Mood Hill - - named after a vineyard named for the years in which a single father raised two teenaged girls. Heh-heh! Yet I'm guessing that both dinner and wine would have tasted less scrumptious in other company; Ellen and Andie were delightful companions, and mostly I remember good tastes and lots of laughter. Also a visit from a neighbor who was locked out of her house. Alas, like the nice neighbor's key, the Mood Hill by that time was history, so we were unable to share it with her.

Then there was the happy hour at Poco's Latin American Grille, with Katie and Darcy, and eventually, Laura and Sus. Some of my favorite people, which is probably why all the wines I tasted tasted great. ALL of them, even the Santa Barbara Pinot Noir that Katie ordered (the winery's name escapes me), and I am NOT a Pinot Noir fan, as readers know, although I loved "Sideways" and wish I DID like that finicky grape, so I could preen like the connoisseur I wish I were. Just as I wish I liked dark beers, and salmon -- it seems the thing to do, but I lack the tastebuds for it.

Along with our topnotch appetizers (goat cheese and veggie tamales, crab cakes, fish tostadas, white bean puree and some barbecued oysters that were every bit as weird as I'd feared) I had the Equis Something-or-Other from Spain, a Tempranillo-based red that is blended with Bobal, a grape I had never heard of but which has a GREAT sound to it, don't you agree? -- as if it belonged in a nursery rhyme. Or perhaps I'm thinking of Babar. The elephant. And as any good progressive will instruct you, Don't Think of an Elephant.

I also sampled the Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon, a tasty offering from the Concha y Tora estate in Chile. The name supposedly derives from the winery's founder, Don Melchor, who in the 19th century discovered that his vineyard workers were sneaking samples of his greatest wine. As the story goes, the Don spread the rumor that his deepest, darkest cellar was the devil's abode - Casillero del Diablo means, literally, Cellar of the Devil. THAT kept the thieving tipplers away, and a legend was born. More to the point, this smooth, deeply red Cab is mixed with a touch of Carmenere, and a nice touch of toasty American oak. A great nose, with tastes of cherry, vanilla and plum, along with a great finish. What's GREATest about it is the price, a steal at $11 or so retail.

The Red and Green Zinfandel also took my fancy during this evening of tasting. It's full and fruity, with rasperry and cherry and something herbal. The 2003 R&G rates highly with Wine Spectator, but in that price range (around $18 retail), I prefer the Seghesio Zin. I also prefer my red wines served a bit cooler, so perhaps that was why I found the Red and Green Zin less compelling than I might have. But lordy, it was so much FUN to try all these wines!

Yum, yum and yum. Since every wine offered by the glass was $3 during happy hour, I felt free to knock myself out tasting, and so I did.

"Sir, this wine is a dog."

Corked, battered, and fried

I've been thinking about how some wines are like stray dogs. I don't (necessarily) mean that these wines are smelly or cheap, or frisky; they may be, like some strays I've known, pregnant . . . with possibility. What I mean by this comparison is that you, the putative owner of said wine/stray, do not know its history, its true age, its potential.

Take Dio, my aging canine. Please. Dio wasn't impressive-looking when he showed up, but he turned out to be quite a dog. Like when you pay $12 for a wine and get it home and it is so much better than $12, and you're happily surprised because you were drawn to the wine but the bottle is dusty and the label unprepossessing. Although Dio is a good-looking dog, with a beautiful blue eye and a gorgeous brown eye and a big-chested body that would appear to make him a blend of Malamute, German Shepherd, and Collie. Like a baby meritage, only more expensive.

Thing is, I don't know how old he truly is. The vet examined him when first the wayfaring, slutty stranger showed up, and pronounced, "He's somewhere between two and five years old, near as I can tell." Which is not so near, when one considers that that was in 1996, and Dio is a large dog. So he's, I dunno, older than God, or at least 12 to 15 years old, near as I can tell, which means he's teetering on death. Although many days he doesn't act like it.

*WARNING: Tortured segue coming up.

Large, like the Dio-dog, only not neutered, Barbaresco* is called "The Queen of Wines," like Barolo is the King. But the 1991 Cascina Morassino Barbaresco in my wine cooler is more a stray dog than a queen. It was given to me, and I don't know its pedigree, nor what its life circumstances were before I adopted it. Is it an OLD 15-year-old wine? Has it had a rough life? Been bounced around? Stored poorly, subjected to repeated temperature fluctuations? I have to open it to find out its life story, and once I open it it's either yummy or not, and either way it has less than a week to live once I pop the cork. So I guess that means some wines are like stray dogs that you ultimately kill, or on which you perform autopsies. Eeeewwwww.

Perhaps this is an imperfect analogy. What I think I was aiming at initially is that, while I'm looking forward to trying this Barbaresco, which costs a fair amount and is rumored to be hugely tannic, I'm also fearful that it will be dead already. Corked, or mistreated and heated to the point of Thanks but NO Thanks. And a wine doesn't even have to be very old to be on its last legs, or dead already, like the 2003 Goats do Roam Laurie Lou provided a few weeks back. Determined to more precisely identify the nose and taste of said South African wine (call it my New Year's resolution, Mastering the Art of Wine Description), I pulled out a tasting wheel chart as I sniffed the Goats. Which is more accurate a phrase than you might guess, if goats are, as I am guessing, a bit musty-smelling. A definite whiff of damp cardboard. The odor of old basement. Not an aroma that induces one to plunge one's mouth into one's wineglass.

The wine smelled gamey, or moldy, something that was saying to me, without benefit of tasting chart, "Don't." I did anyway, and it wasn't awful. It was scarcely drinkable, but it wasn't deathly awful. I'm not familiar with this wine, but I think it's safe to say that Eau de Goats/Cotes du Moldy Basement is not the nose OR flavor at which the winemaker was aiming. The dang wine was corked.

What IS "corked," really? I'm so glad you asked. A "corked" wine is a wine that smells and tastes goaty, a wine that has been bottled with a cork that is contaminated with TCA (Sus, my slender chemist friend, this one is for you: 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole). This TCA contamination usually comes from the cork itself, but it can also come from the wine barrels or even the wood in the walls and beams of the wine cellars. So sometimes, a "corked" wine isn't directly the fault of the cork, a conclusion I have just drawn and find weirdly entertaining.

Still, given a winery-admitted TCA contamination rate of at least 3 percent (that's a LOT of wine bottles), many wineries are eschewing them. Corks, I mean. (Aside: I saw an actual cork tree at the Ferrari-Caranno estate, and it was way cool, not having been made into bottle stoppers. So I don't really mind if corks are replaced with plastic or even screwcaps. Long live the cork tree!)

TCA doesn't present a health risk, but it does foul the wine. Even in tiny tiny quantities, it can screw up the fruit flavors. As my preferred google result had it, "it imparts the aromas and flavors that are found objectionable." What is also entertaining, at least to me, is that most contaminated bottles are not returned to stores or sent back in restaurants. And I will just bet that that is because most people a) have lousy palates or mistakenly think the wine is MEANT to be goaty; or b) they don't want to deal with snooty servers who imply that they are wrong or morally suspect for impugning the expensive bottle of corked alcohol they have just opened. Or c) like me, they open the wine years and years after they bought it, and who knows where they bought it, or when? If it's b) for you, pal, and you're afraid to return a wine that tastes "off" because you're afraid the pretentious wine steward is gonna give you trouble, make HIM taste it. Works every time.

Did you know that the REASON one is supposed to swirl and sip just a splash of wine in the glass BEFORE sharing it with guests is precisely to identify corked wines BEFORE everyone else has a glassful? So you can replace that bottle immediately. It's corked, or it's oxidized, or lightstruck, or has "undergone unplanned secondary fermentation," which sounds like getting drunk twice in one night when you only meant to get sozzled once.

"Lightstruck" is a wonderful word, don't you think? It sounds as if one is dazzled by beauty. "Rarely have I been so lightstruck, but when that luminous redhead sashayed by the table, I fell to my knees and begged her to have my baby."

What the term actually describes is a wine that has been exposed to light (duh), causing a reaction that produces offputting flavors and aromas. The French call this ickiness "goûts de lumière," and it's more likely to happen to white wines in light bottles. A wine that is lightstruck will have a nose of what is described variously as cooked cabbage, corn nuts, wet dog or wet wool. See there? "Wet dog." I managed to get back to the topic of dogs! Oh ye of little faith. . .

You just don't know what you're getting with a wine until you try it out. Like Dio. Man, I love that dog more than all the wineries in France. And then some. No matter how old he really is.

*Postscript: This post is already too long for me to wax eloquent or otherwise about Barbaresco. Suffice it to say that it is one of the great wines of Piedmont, of ancient origin, and is, like the King, Nebbiolo-based.