Last week, I wrote about going to the iconic Toronto restaurant Splendido to debauch myself in a sybaritic eight-course meal. I was lucky enough to be invited to this dinner by two friends of mine, who plundered their cellar and brought more than a case of various wines to the restaurant to open with our meal. It was a BYOB blitzkrieg.
The selection of home-cellared wine illustrates how to match the richest of dishes with the richest of wines.
- Duval-Leroy Brut 1996 Vintage Champagne, France (
£48.25[Ed. note: No longer available])
We popped this champagne with a rich seafood appetizer: Tunisian Octopus in a bacon vinaigrette. Vintage Champagne is a rare luxury. Most champagnes are non-vintage, meaning that the winemakers blend grapes from a variety of years in order to achieve a uniform taste. During particularly good years, however, winemakers will declare a millesimé and create vintage Champagne to express the qualities of a unique harvest. Vintage champagne is especially age-worthy.
The Duval Leroy was exquisite. Age has given this champagne a rich nose of marzipan that intensified as the wine continued to breathe throughout the meal. Despite being 13 years old, the mousse was still lively and the ripe apple and citrus was full and luxurious. Complex and exquisite. 93/100
- Ostertag A360P Pinot Gris 2000, Alsace, France (
$55 U.S.[Ed. note: No longer available])
This wine was paired perfectly with white asparagus poached with pungent morel mushrooms. Pinot Gris is a grape which is usually prized for its lightness, elegance and freshness. It is widely thought that exposing Pinot Gris to oak would ruin it. But Andre Ostertag is an iconoclastic winemaker: he not only ages this wine in oak, he also ferments it in the barrels (a process which deepens the integration between the wine and the wood). The result is a bottle which is oily, thick and eccentric, with pronounced flavours of spice and toffee enveloping the notes of apple, pear and apricot. 91/100
- Beringer Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve 2002, Napa, California (
$115 U.S.[Ed. note: No longer available])
Although many would match a Californian Cab-Sauvignon with a steak, we paired it with a breast of squab. After all, squab is one of the richest kinds of fowl with a texture somewhere in between a Marsh Hen and a Pterodactyl.
Beringer is a huge California winery whose reputation perhaps suffers among wine snobs because its products are so ubiquitous. But Beringer’s top-of-the-line wines are some of the best that Napa can produce. The 2002 Private Reserve is an astounding triumph. Drinking it is like getting punched out by an angel. It has an intense plumy fruit that tastes more like plums than plums do. Add to this a hearty mouthfeel, and flickering complexity. 94/100
Matthew Sullivan is a civil litigator in Toronto. He writes a weekly blog entry here on lawandstyle.ca. The Short Cellar column appears in the print edition of Precedent. Matthew can be reached at matthew@lawandstyle.beta-site.ca .NEW! Follow along on Twitter: @shortcellar .