THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409080053
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HUMBLE STEWARD
SOURCE: JIM RAPER
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
IT HAS BEEN a summer of lazy nights and fine meals and wonderful wines - blissful counterbalance to the hot and wet weather.
Two tales:
On a Sunday night at Elizabeth's Cafe in Duck, N.C., we forget the threatening skies and high winds, and put our epicurean hopes in the hands of the restaurant's owner, Leonard Logan.
We start with a champagne new to me, J. Lassalle. This is one of those fine, petite houses that send little more than a bathtub full of bubbly each year to the United States. Our bottle is a 1982 vintage brut (about $50). One sip is enough to make the evening a success. The champagne is remarkably complex, nicely aged but acidic enough, creamy, toasty, lovely.
With a tasty starter of crabcakes we move on to a Flora Springs 1991 Chardonnay Napa Valley (about $35) that is buttery and rich, but lightly citrusy on the finish.
As the appetizer plates are being cleared, Logan appears with a glass of white wine he wants me to identify. It is very light in color compared with the Flora Springs, but one sniff tells me it is a chardonnay. I taste it and am impressed by the depth of flavor coming from such a transparent wine. I taste oak, but don't see it. I rule out California. I wonder if it is a French Chablis. But the wine is nicely round, perhaps too mellow to be a Chablis. Finally I guess that it is a French Puligny-Montrachet, one of the lighter examples.
``Nice guess,'' Logan says. Then he produces the bottle. It's the Jermann 1991 Dreams ($75), more or less a chardonnay and from northern Italy. Logan says Dreams is the rage in the swank restaurants of Los Angeles, and, as I should have detected, it is not 100 percent chardonnay. But Friuli's Silvio Jermann is silent about the other grapes in the blend.
While we are still comparing the Dreams with the Flora Springs, Logan comes cradling another bottle. Before I know it, he is pouring from his private stock the J. Drouhin 1990 Corton-Charlemagne (retail about $90), which I had tasted previously and know as one of the finest chardonnays I have ever experienced. Vanilla and pear fill the mouth, and the finish is long and crisp.
Before the arrival of my main course - roasted quail and pork tenderloin in a dark mushroom sauce, with garlicked mashed potatoes - I am given Logan's permission to fetch two cabernets from my car. I want to see if we can tell a Caymus 1986 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley from a Chateau Gruaud-Larose 1985 St.-Julien Bordeaux. Each of these wines has a retail value of $40 to $50, but I think they taste every bit as good as wines costing two or three times as much.
The bottles are shrouded by the waitstaff, but I happen to see which is which. I invite the others to guess, and as I taste them myself I am delighted by how close they are in quality. The Gruaud has a note of earthiness that leads me to believe I would have known it right away. But the two are close in rich blackberry fruit and spiciness. Tannins are there to give each more aging potential, but neither is bitter.
Logan tastes back and forth and grins. ``Not easy,'' he mutters. Someone else at the table hollers out a guess and it's right, so we unveil the bottles. Before the dining experience comes to an end, we toast to California and to France.
On another Sunday evening six of us gather for dinner at my cottage in the woods of Zuni. I have experimented with goose, roasting it the day before and letting it sit overnight - mini-confit - in its heavily garlicked fat. For two hours before dinner time, I smoke it over a hickory fire. And I have homemade blackberry sauce to ladle over the gamey flesh.
To go with the goose, my friend will prepare risotto with blanched bits of zucchini and carrots from our garden.
The afternoon had been hot, calling for light, white wines. But as we sit down to dinner on my screened porch the heavens blacken, and soon heavy rain is falling on the tin roof. A cool breeze blows, which is a good thing considering the heavy meal we have prepared and the thick red wines I have selected for dinner.
I open a Giacomo Conterno 1970 Barolo Riserva, a Kenwood 1979 Cabernet Sauvignon Sonoma Valley Jack London Vineyard, a Shafer 1983 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Hillside Select and a Chateau D'Issan 1983 Margaux. I had obtained these wines a while ago and could not remember what I had paid for them, probably a total of about $100.
The Conterno Barolo is a real treat, smoky and orange-ish at its edges, clearly old, but with nice prune and coffee and licorice flavors. (Barolo is made in the Piedmont of Italy from nebbiolo grapes.)
The Kenwood cabernet may be a little past its peak but, nevertheless, a delightful mouthful, raisiny and spicy.
The Shafer Hillside Select is slightly marred by intrusive oak, but is still a very good wine.
The Chateau D'Issan, I decide, is the best of the three cabernets. It shows some fresh black currant fruit together with mineral and cedar notes.
The risotto is wonderful.
The goose? Well, I learn a few lessons. First, I shouldn't have smoked it over wet heat. The skin is tough. Second, I should seek out an expert and learn how to cut up a goose. My pieces are unwieldy; one guest said she felt like she was dining with Tom Jones. And lastly, I will make more blackberry sauce next time. The goose is interesting; the sauce is very good. MEMO: The Humble Steward is a regular feature of Sunday Flavor. Send questions
or comments to: The Humble Steward, Sunday Flavor, The Virginian-Pilot
and The Ledger-Star, 150 W. Brambleton Ave., Norfolk, Va. 23510. If
possible, give complete label information when naming wines, and list
the vintage year. Please include your name and phone number. by CNB