inversions

from anjou and the ardèche. the same, but very much not the same.

1) "ça faye douze" from philippe delmée in anjou, 2012 vintage. a VDF from cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, grolleau noir, pineau d'aunis. on opening, it was frothy from a tiny bit of bottle fermentation; there might have been volatile acidity too. it reminded me of what envol de la fille is like when first opened: light in texture, high-toned bright acidity, juicy berries, a crisp and lightly crunchy tannic profile. but with the leafiness and pepperiness of young cabernet franc (bell pepper) and pineau d'aunis (peppercorns). i could not tell what the cépage was from drinking it, but then i never can tell these things. it was the most perplexingly lively, joyous wine imaginable; a wine to make you smile and take another gulp. i saved much of it to see what would happen after a cold, slow airing. turns out, this wine is toast by day 2. the day after, it was not undrinkable but i wouldn't have gone back for a second glass.

2) "l'epicurien" from gregory guillaume in alba-la-romaine in the ardèche meridionale, 2012 vintage. 100% grenache from what i usually think of, apparently inaccurately, as syrah country. on opening, it was undelicious, with a pronounced funk and a bit of effervescence. i closed it up after a glass and left it in the fridge to air out slowly. on the second day, it was a different wine. slightly ashy with a fuzzy raspiness, it had all the good bits of the earlier cornelissen contadinos. the fruit was intensely present with a lazy sort of freshness just sufficient to stay interesting and not to tire. on the fourth day, it became bizarrely delicious: fresh strawberries, very soft tannins, and—at the very end of every sip, just after the swallow—the delicate puff of intense cherryskin aromatics that drift up through the sinuses and prolong the experience.

the right order

despite the FAA sequester, we managed to converge on the lotus of siam for lunch on friday and i managed to order just enough food.

outstanding: fried dried beef (nua dad deaw), a uniquely textured and tenderly fibrous dish of wok-cooked pounded jackfruit and pork (thum-ka-noon), and a warm salad of fermented sausage and fried rice (nam kao tod).

late in the game, after the lunch crowd had dispersed, we really splashed out. the scholium project's nutty blend of cabernet, merlot, and petite sirah from separate vineyards (the 2005 "satrapies of the east") needed more air than we had time to give it. it was tangy and vibrating but quiet and reflective nonetheless; lighter-seeming than its 15% of alcohol. filled with dark purple fruit and plenty of tannins still, a wondrous, confusing silk purse made from a sow's ear.

a most remarkable and delicious beverage

made by gilles azzoni. unsulphured, unfiltered, perfectly pristine, and alive—an odd thing to say about a beverage, but accurate here—this mostly syrah vdt from the ardeche is absolutely wonderful, and even better if you let the considerable sediment settle before a careful decantation. this is the first rhone blend i've ever wanted to drink a whole bottle of. you wouldn't call it complex but it is not simplistic. a gentle but enveloping aroma of blackcurrants, though not all fluff and fruit: there's meatiness and savor underneath and a bit of animal. light-bodied enough to hang out with cassis sorbet or a plum tart (hey, what about cassis sorbet on a plum tart?), but would be brilliant with pork braised with prunes. this will not last long enough for me to report on how it develops over the course of a few days. why did i buy only one bottle? dans un respect du vivant indeed.

margaux, dauzac, 1988

i made dinner (venison, fried peaches, corn, feta, kale, basil, tomatoes, etc) and a bottle of reasonably old bordeaux (AOC margaux, the chateau dauzac is a fifth growth managed by andré lurton's management company) showed up; i'm lucky to have generous friends.

though there was a layer of mould under the capsule, the cork was intact and clean: it emerged from the bottle without incident. other bottles from the same batch had been opened and found wanting, but this one was fine. it was more than fine. for having spent 24 years in the bottle, this was remarkably fresh. the colour had not faded as old reds sometimes will, and in the glass it was full of distinct fragrances: tiny bird chilis, prunes, talcum powder, smoke. in the mouth, it was soft, round, and green like green tea and parsley. maybe a wine better suited to the fall than to high summer.

time is tannin's friend. recently, a bottle of young rhone grenache proved almost undrinkable despite smelling wonderful in the glass; it was like stuffing a styptic pencil down my throat. this was ... quite different.

a short lunch at the bar

last june, a pleasant and generous surprise: what, for noma, counts as a short lunch at the bar. an unusual and thought-provoking meal, both the food and the service. this was most evident at meal's end. sweet courses at noma are light, to the point of seeming austere to those used to dessert as a soothing, unchallenging combination of richness and sweetness (and often chocolate). instead, a bowl of perfectly ripe strawberries with cylinders of barely sweet hay-flavoured gelled cream and a scattering of young chamomile buds. and a pile of shaved fresh carrots, rehydrated dried carrot chips, marinated carrot slices, bronze fennel, lemon thyme, carrot greens on top of a mound of whipped buttermilk. dazzling stuff.

there were many "snacks," an amusing description considering many of them had more fiddly components than your average main course. at the time, each diner would receive over a dozen snacks to open the meal. enough to dedicate one station (with a chef de partie and several stages) in the unusually organized and extraordinarily low-temperature kitchen to making them.

the food was outwardly simple—the art that conceals art—but nudged me nonetheless to attend, to eat in the moment. a few snacks in, rené brought a plate on which a napkin lay, a variety of fresh, dewy flowers nestled in its folds. in his other hand, a saucer.

a plate of undressed flowers and a saucer of unmixed dressing left on a table with no place setting forces the eater to use his hands, but also gives him the opportunity to eat the flowers either dressed as the kitchen intends or unadorned: no-choice and choice. a nasturtium flower, peppery and papery at the edge, with crunch in the middle. an umbel of yarrow flowers, bitter, green-tasting, yet pure white and sweet-smelling. eating the flowers alone emphasised the differences in their flavours and textures. eating them by hand highlighted their delicacy.

eating the flowers dressed was more curious. the saucer contained a spoonful of pumpkinseed emulsified in its own oil, surrounded by a bright orange sea buckthorn reduction sweetened with honey. the flowers were the only tools at hand to mix the dressing with. combined with a flower and then eaten, the sea buckthorn's intense acidity met the fat from the pumpkinseed, leaving a rich green note in the background and the floral aroma of the honey riding clear and distinct over ... a flower.

just a plate of flowers if you don't pay attention; a discovery, a private joke, a meditation, if you do. the kitchen team had spent a week, maybe more, figuring out what the dressing would be and how to present the flowers.

bright, acid food, needing a light touch with the beverages. the bar poured a flute of "entre ciel et terre" from francoise bedel, a glass of olivier horiot's riceys rouge "en barmont" (2003), and a bottle of noma novel (a belgian strong ale brewed for noma by mikkeller), each a brilliant working contradiction in terms.

everything at noma, food or drink, is brought to you by someone who knows it well. often it is a chef, sometimes even the chef who made it. meeting the people who are cooking for you is usual in a home, and an unusual experience of hospitality in a restaurant. even in a kitchen of enormously competent chefs, this style of service is demanding. it takes tremendous investment of time and energy, not to mention money, by a restaurant and its staff to reliably reproduce the rare and magical experience of eating at the table of a good friend who cooks well and wants to make you happy (and maybe impress you a little as well).

vinibrato, "envol de la fille," NV

at the wine bottega, they said: "you like jura reds? you gotta try this one!" still, i was dubious about this $35 bottle of table wine with the mysterious labeling. (vin de france is the relatively new fancy name for table wine, the stuff you quaff with your coq au vin, or whatever. no vintage can be listed on a bottle of vin de france.) i took it home, then forgot about it for about 6 months. last week, cleaning out the basement, it hove back into view. hot day = perfect for beaujolais.

jean-marc brignot is a jura winemaker who apparently now mostly purchases grapes from other regions and vinifies them through vinibrato, his négociant operation. from patchy information found on the interweb, i deduce that brignot generally works with a light touch. according to this source, vinibrato wines will not repeat names across vintages. an interesting approach. the grapes in "envol de la fille" ("flight of the daughter") are grown by cathy and jean-luc gauthier in morgon (an appellation in beaujolais).

upstairs, i popped it open. there was a rush of tiny bubbles, suggesting that fermentation had continued in the bottle. the first sip was at cellar temperature, probably in the low 50s. a pronounced dark sour cherry aroma, with the barnyard in the background (by which, of course, we mean poop). light red with purple lights, light bodied, yet tastes warmish and as if there was more alcohol than the labels claim (11%, the back label says; the front claims 12%).

i let a glass of it sit out for an hour or so. the barn vanished, replaced by camphor and sandalwood. the nose on this wine was extraordinarily powerful. for the longest time, it smelled like the stereotype of asia: the heavy perfume of roses, precious woods, exotick resins (myrrh, mastic), honeysuckle, a mediterranean hillside covered in scrub aromatics on a hot day. eventually, the resinous aromas converged into the scent of a powdery shellac cut with ethanol. was this the ethyl acetate of which wine geeks speak? not, perhaps, entirely pleasant.

on the second day, i started it very cold. the aromas were dramatically different and more austere: strawberry candy (like these morinaga hichews) and fresh-cut cedar. when it warmed up, the nose was less opulent than before, a little quieter. no longer completely distracted by the nose, i began to be able to taste it in the mouth: transparent in flavour, water-sweet like birch or maple sap, with much bright acidity. a few hours later, the cedar and candy had also gone away. no longer funky or resinous, the wine was extraordinarily clean with a bit of sparkle in the mid-palate.

then i forgot about the remaining half-bottle. when i remembered it again, it was the sixth day. i poured it cold, just for kicks, and the nose was back! but this time, powerful without being hot. in fact, it was the essence of sugary cool: blackcurrant leaf, coconut, cilantro (in a good way), fennel seed. in the mouth, the taste of fresh sweet cream and lightly cooked soft wheat. finishing it on the spot was not a problem.

a remarkable wine. and one which makes me wonder: why do i try to drink through whole bottles mere hours after they're opened? envol de la fille was way, way better on the sixth day than on the first. and why do i so often drink reds warm when they change so much as they come up through a range of temperatures? clearly more morgon (and beaujolais) is in order.

jacques puffeney, "M," 2008

in search of a light, refreshing, floral red wine, we split a bottle of this at journeyman. jacques puffeney's jura wines (all from the arbois AOC) are, in my limited experience of them, generally great though often initially inscrutable. where is the alcohol? where is the sweetness? where is the jammy fruit? why's it so sour? if you like jammy, high-alcohol, show-off wines, these are not for you (and, possibly, this blog is not for you either). puffeney's wines repay a slow and contemplative drinking. they often unfold slowly as they warm up and air out; keeping a bottle around for a few days is not a bad idea. they are like the new england of wines.

poulsard is one of the red wine grapes of the jura, thin-skinned and light-bodied. though made "naturally" (native yeasts, minimal sulphur, no fining, no filtering) there is no trace (not the slightest) of funk: this wine was all clarity and transparency. in the glass, a clear pale red with purple lights. plenty of acidity that left the mouth clean, filled with the taste of stone and ripe raspberries, and definitely wanting another sip. and another, and another. some wines taste of cooked fruit; this one was the essence of fresh fruit. the tannins were polite and in the background. light in body but not a lightweight, it more than stood up to seared bluefish, grilled squid, and veal. we fought, politely, over the last pour.