 Manhattan has just come through the hottest July in millennia, and I have come home from a trip to find Aldo melted into a pool on the apartment. I recognize strands of his goatee and his crocs. How to revive my poor friend?One. Turn on the a.c. – I suspect he was in the process of reaching for the switch, but was already too reduced in size to succeed.
Two. Repair to the wine fridge and pick a bottle of rosé. We drink rosés all year round, Aldo and I, but before my trip we had focused on the happy exercise of tasting and rating bottle after bottle from New York stores. Our sentiment was noble: Wouldn’t it benefit and educate mankind if we set forth our thoughts on wines from the 2009 vintage, the ones being made available this summer? Wine sellers make their big rosé push in these hot months. Possibly the notion is that consumers, who generally prefer reds, will think of rosés as a red that has somehow lightened along with the season—it’s on vacation. The color of rosés is, indeed, a beautiful range of berry, coral, salmon, with flecks of ruby and orange, and a perfect match for a setting sun. And, if you’re an artist or decorator, that easily could be the standard by which you choose one at the store. But you may want a rosé that’s a good match for dinner, or for an appetitizer of cheese. You may want it with some heft on the palate. You may want it fleet, a bit sweet, fruity or dry. They’re versatile enough to hit those points solidly, and also differently, without being too expensive, or too demanding. These aren’t usually wines meant for aging. But some really fine rosés can. On the other hand, let’s start by noting that—well, a certain fatigue can set in with rosés, although the French ones were almost invariably our favorites. This is not a list that ranges from, say, Tolstoy to Harold Robbins. It’s more like a diet of EM Forster, encompassing both considerable delights and …. slight limits. Now our 2009 favorites: Puzelat Ko Rosé/ Sari Puzelat-Bonhomme. A welcoming nose of mint and floral aromas. On the palate, layered, long flavors of raspberry and honeysuckle, giving way to a finish of ginger and anise. Light-bodied, with an underlying sweetness. Under $15. (Importer: Louis/Dressner.) Cantalupo/”Il Mimo.” A very dependable Piedmont Nebbiolo rosé we’ve enjoyed in the past, and enjoyed this time too. In the glass, a deep salmon pink—almost sushi—with aromas of cherry soda, anise and rose petals. The first impression on the palate is of a bright cherryiosity, if you will, rounded out by rhubarb, nectarine, citrus and licorice. The slight tannin keeps the wine from a cloying fruitiness. Not a deep wine—and that masque on the label is a bit Phantom of the Opera—but approachable, pleasant and a good value for $15. (Importer: Polaner Selections.) Dom. Tempier. From Bandol, in Provence. A touch of beige lightens the salmon color in the glass. A delicate but rich nose: citrus, light floral, honeysuckle, peach. On the palate: medium-plus acidity, medium bodied. The flavors, which unfold broadly at midpalate, include lemon, melon, a little honey, baked apple, almond, grapefruit, and spice at the finish. Long length. It is rounded, understatedly complex and concentrated—quite elegant. Aldo described it as a fawn peeping out amid tall grasses. $38. (Importer: Kermit Lynch.) Bermejo Rosado. From Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. This boldly tart, nearly full-bodied wine was our favorite choice from Spain. Color: Cranberry with flecks of orange—very pretty, very inviting. On the nose, light notes of guava, cherry and tropical fruit. On the palate: High acidity, a slight oiliness and a burst of cranberry that fades to star anise. $29. (Importer: Vinos & Gourmet Inc./a Jose Pastor Selection.) Schloss Gobelsburger. From Austria. Medium aromas of musk, tea, orange and floral notes on the nose; and, in the mouth, medium flavors of lemon, spice, tea and orange, with a citrus finish—a subtly layered taste experience, delivered with crisp acidity. Good construction, mild and refreshing. At $14, a very good deal. (Importer: Michael Skurnik.) Mas des Bressades. The rosés of Provence were almost uniformly the most intriguing of the wines we tasted, with a particular delicacy of color and a light minerality that make them instantly identifiable. This one, a blend of grenache, syrah and cinsault, was a beautiful coral, touched by orange, with a sharp aroma of berries underpinned by leaves and earth. In the mouth, it was smooth, slightly tangy, balanced, with the dominant flavors being anise, orange rind and vanilla, with a slight cinnamon heat at the end. A rosé with some bite on the palate, but some nuance beyond that—broad, rapid layerings of flavor. Hardly a better rosé for $12. (Importer, Robert Kacher) Chateau Soucherie/Cuvée l’astrée. This Loire wine is salmon colored, of course, but with a lustrous pearliness and a pronounced nose of lavendar. Palate is dry, with high acidity and medium body, as well as medium flavors of citrus, lemon, pomegranate, almond and strawberry. Long length, with a citrus finish. Somewhat tart, even a little taut—which gives it a light, lithe muscularity amid so many of these rosés. $16. (Importer: Neal Rosenthal.) Clos Sainte Madeleine. This Cassis wine begins with a rather beguiling Provençal nose—peach, honey, wildflower—followed with a gentle palate of grapefruit, apricot, tropical fruit. It is both light and long, very well-made. Aldo described it as being like a little well-pitched tent in a field of blossoms. We can’t really do much about him, can we? $24. (Importer: Kermit Lynch.) Clos Roche Blanche. A rosé of Pinot d’Aunis from the Loire. Comes unfiltered, with a grapefruit nose, high acidity and focused grapefruit flavor too—it’s a palate cleanser, and charmingly breezy. You can imagine drinking it at a spa instead of taking the waters. $19. (Importer: Louis/Dressner.) Jean-Marie Raffault. Another Loire gem. This refreshing Chinon has a medium intense nose of cherry and musk, with a slight floral note. Concentrated palate of cherry, strawberry, rhubarb, lemon and nutmeg—some minerality, to boot. Lightly tannic, with crisp acidity—a balanced, firm wine, with long length and a citrus finish. $18. (Importer: VOS Selections.) Robert Sinskey/ Vin Gris of Pinot Noir. From Los Carneros, Calif. For all the pleasure of the French wines, this California rosé, made of pinot noir, is a great one, and possibly the most memorable of the 50 or so we tasted. Medium plus aromas of rose, rust, clove, tea, orange. Crisp acidity, medium bodied, no tannins. Flavors of strawberry, blood orange, ginger—an unusually harmonious palate, so concentrated it almost has the quality of distilled fruit. Smooth, silky mouthfeel. $30. Christian Lauverjat/Moulin des Vrilleres. This Sancerre rosé pours out a pretty coral—the most beguiling color in a rosé—and gives off a nose of red berries and citrus. Well-balanced, with refined flavors of lemon, hazelnut, pineapple and minerality. To-the-point, but elegant. $20. (Importer: David Bowler.) Gerard Boulay Rosé. This Sancerre from Chavignol gives off a ravishing color—pale pink flecked with orange—and a ravishing nose too: light aromas of cranberry, musk, orange rind and even a little bacon. The acidity is crisp, the body medium, and there is a faint drying in the mouth—a hint of tannin. Medium flavors of blood orange, lemon, grapefruit rind, cranberry and nectarine, with a stone-fruit finish. Concentrated, complex, even atmospheric—Matisse would have enjoyed having a glass at hand while painting. $26. (Importer: Polaner Selections.) |
We stayed at the W hotel in South Beach for a few days recently. The dark and airy lobby of the hotel, which opened less than a year ago, is decorated with striking pieces of contemporary art by major artists—Damien Hirst, George Condo. It’s a salute to Art Basel, but the place didn’t seem lit well enough to really encourage you to stop and look, only to admire their presence there, as celebrities.
Aldo was rather baffled while sitting in the lobby, next to a table adorned with a statue of a small, golden pig: A member of the staff stepped up quietly, said, “I think it looks better here,” and moved it over to the next table. Did she think Aldo would steal it? Or did she really think it deserved to be placed at Spot B instead of Spot A? To Aldo, it felt vaguely like a lost incident from Henry James’ Spoils of Poynton.
But our room was chic and light, with a sort of chandelier made of small cystal discs that reached from ceiling to floor. It was lovely, and stirred like a wind chime whenever the sliding glass doors were open. It also chimed when the air-conditioning was on a night: That was an odd effect, to lie there and hear the whoosh of the fan kicking in and, a few seconds later, the air stirring in the crystals.
We spent a few hours by the pool, but felt rather restless. There is the old wisdom of Pascal: Man’s problems could all be avoided if he would be content to just sit in a room. Or by a pool. Pascal probably never got invited along on anyone’s vacations.
So we drove into Miami and its Design District, where it always seems to be high noon: There’s a shadowless quiet to the streets. I’m surprised skinny dogs aren’t spotted loping around the corners looking hungry and worried. We had our first night’s dinner there at Sra. Martinez. This is a high-end tapas-style restaurant run by Michelle Bernstein. She’s best known for Michy’s, a zesty little restaurant further up Biscayne Boulevard in the funky-desolate row known as MiMo (Miami Modern).We settled on Sra. Martinez this time rather than Michy’s after Frank Bruni wrote it up—yes, we were on the Frank Bruni Trail. You didn’t think we’re the types who rough it, did you?
We can only lament, once again, the tragedy of the American tapas joint. The food was, on the whole, very good—the standout was a small risotto with calamari and chimichuri. But it’s frustrating to determine how much to order, and the plates keep coming out like some enchanted ballet from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The large box of a room (the building used to be a post office) was done up with reds and browns to create the ambiance of a prosperous old bordello or a place where Elvis might have ordered shots of tequila. We drank a rose, Quinta Clarisa 2007, produced by Belondrade y Lurton, but frankly you can’t enjoy a rosé with that sort of color palate. Or that large a space, or that prolific a menu. A rosé calls for less fuss.
The biggest culinary success in the Design District remains Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink, where we had lunch two days in a row—salads: one of rock shrimp, another of heirloom tomatoes and beets. Aldo thought he saw the photographer Bruce Weber there eating beneath the trees outside, but there are plenty of burly white-bearded men who wear bandanas on their heads. It could have been a retired pirate.
We returned to MiMo for our favorite meal, dinner at the enjoyably bizarre Red Light, stuck to the side of something called Blue Motel—old motels run up and down Biscayne, as if Norman Bates had gone on a building spree. Its ground floor looks like a cheap, retro diner. It made Aldo think of the old 24-hour Manhattan Meat Market hangout, Florent, and also of one of those twilight settings in a David Lynch movie. We ate outdoors and downstairs, at a table overlooking the Little River. This felt, strangely enough, like the waterfront club where Blanche Dubois does her damnedest to win over dumb old Mitch with the help of extremely dim, age-concealing lighting.
The wine list was rather frustrating, since that night it only offered, at most, five bottles. We settled on an albarino, which was served too cold—icy. There was a puzzlingly long wait for appetizer salads—the place wasn’t too busy—but our swordfish was excellent: deeply tangy. We would eat there again, without hesitation. Good food, and an atmosphere that’s both seductive and vaguely disorienting. Aldo in particular seems to enjoy this sort of thing.
Our last dinner was at Area 31 in the Epic hotel: We ate high up in the sky, on a terrace overlooking the city. Aldo, in fact, began suffering little twinges of vertico, and had to move his chair to look away. No one seemed to have thought to make this huge terrace a more attractive dining area: The lighting was harsh and, for some reason, clustered around the floor of the main entrance to the terrace. You felt as if accent lighting was being directed toward your seated torso. But we both had excellent servings of cuttlefish, which you don’t see often in Manhattan, and with it we selected a delightful Jura wine, the Arbois Puffeny 2003, from a very pleasing wine list.
We were seated next to a table of terribly arty people with two little dogs. Terribly arty people seem even more terribly arty outside the context of New York, and their little dogs seem even more ridiculously dainty—although these people and their dogs may have been from Manhattan.
This is snobbery, I suppose, but it’s true.
A memory from a few, very cold days spent in Alsace. One afternoon we left Strasbourg for a drive through the small vineyard towns to the south. Frigid air, intermittent sun, fields mostly brown and, one might think, shivering beneath a light blanket of old snow. Andrew Wyeth in France. This vineyard was just outside Ribeauvillé.
We were in Chicago for the holidays, and like everyone else in the country moved around huddled in a clump as a cold front settled in. The sky was blue only for a few hours in any given day. The rest of the time gray clouds tossed down snow, sleet or rain in sloppy indifference. Naturally we longed for warmth. We burned a synthetic log in the fireplace and admired the neat regularity of its flames. We thought of Miami, which also suffered from a cold snap. Then we went to dinner at two restaurants that welcomed us in with warmth and bustle—places that reminded Aldo of Dickens’ old Mr. Fezziwig, the kind soul who never stinted on hospitality at Christmas.
I don’t know why Aldo gets so worked up about Mr. Fezziwig. Sometimes he cries at Martha Stewart’s holiday shows.
Avec and the Publican are both owned by local celebrity chef Paul Kahan, with Koren Grievesonheading the kitchen at the first and Brian Huston at the second. Avec, which is on the same block as Kahan’s flagship establishment, Blackbird, is a handsome oblong room in blonde wood that, on a winter’s night, looked as if it should be filled with good-looking Swedes eating medallions of reindeer. For all I know that is who was eating there that night. The menu, described asMediterranean wine cuisine, is strong on meat, which is not a problem with us. Aldo’s father, before becoming independently wealthy due to the lottery, was a butcher. And the food is conceived more along the idea of tapas, small plates brought out as soon as they’re ready in the kitchen. We liked everything we ordered: chorizo-stuffed dates, fennel-and-pork sausage and an exceptional salad of prosciutto with roast quince. With it we had a bottle of Luis Cañas rioja that was perhaps too even a match for so much deep-flavored pork: Wine and food faced off and fenced, blade to blade—which is not the way these things should go.
Our server looked like Sally Hawkins from the movie Happy-Go-Lucky, which was a plus.
There was some frustration about the food arriving “family style.” It’s probably an efficient and economic way to run a kitchen, but the phrase “family style” always makes me shy nervously, like a horse reluctant to be saddled. You can’t really relax and be yourself as you’re forced to tuck into a quick succession of plates, and it’s hard to gauge how much food will make sense for the group’s appetite.
To me “family style” means my grandfather is still at the head of the table, throwing boiled potatoes at anyone who doesn’t listen to his very long list of enemies of the state who should be deprived of cooked meals.
But the experience was strongy good—very positive. We would go to Avec again.
The Publican? Mmm. The emphasis is, again, on meat—the menu doesn’t neglect fish, no, but the enormous portraits of Botero-scaled pigs tend to draw the unconscious to the wonderfully rich lineup derived from four-legged wildlife, especially pork. We ordered pork belly (excellent—pink and moist), beef and oyster pie, pork-and-duck rillette, with sides of brussels sprouts and escarole. Food was, again, served family-style, which means you can wind up glutted on meat if you don’t order carefully. But all that we ate was robust and unstintingly rich—Aldo, frankly, was in heaven, although my own tastes meant that we ruled out tripe and boudin noir.
We drank a tempranillo reserva, El Retiro 2005. It was fruit-forward but, beyond that, not terribly interesting. However, I appreciated the wine stewardess bringing me samples of several wines so that I could taste before ordering a fresh bottle for the table.
Unlike the much more intimate Avec, though, the atmosphere at the Publican didn’t really agree with us: It’s designed as a beer hall, a cavernous space with most diners seated at long communal tables. There are also some booths, which may very well be comfortable, but looked oddly like stalls, and so made the diners in my mind resemble cattle at the trough. I’m not sure this setup would work in Manhattan, where people are almost maniacal about turf—especially in restaurants. I think Midwesterners, in general, are less worried about sharing open space: Chicago itself, after all, feels like a great level plain across which the towering buildings give each other breathing room. In fact, Aldo says the city makes him oddly vertiginous. He says he’s not used to seeing so much sky between such tall buildings.
By the way: Here’s a question someone from the Windy City can answer. What and where is Chicago’s best wine store? We haven’t solved that yet. Thanks.
