Tag Archives: lifestyle

Premium Wine by the Glass

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This is my second night in Melbourne and also my second night without any wine, an unusually long time for me!  That is becasue I am alone and do not usually like drinking a full bottle by myself.  I have been working extremely hard and also networking a great deal, so thought I would take the two evenings to be by myself (missing my loved one though!), rest up, and read and write a bit.

I don’t mind going out to eat alone.  When doing so though, I typically will not drink wine a I am reluctant to order a full bottle by myself and very few restaurants have a good wine list of half bottles (a few certainly do, but I am not aware of one close to where I am staying in Melbourne).  There are certainly restaurants that sell a number of wines by the glass, but usually these are not the type of wines I like to drink, especially at $14 – $17 per glass!  I have too many very good bottles of wine in my cellar for which I paid less per bottle than that!

One of the well known restaurants in Sydney proudly proclaims that they sell 60 different wines by the glass, but there was not one on the list I would pay the per glass price for.  There are a few emerging small wine bars that focus on selling premium wines by the glass, but I was not interested in going to a bar – I was interesting in eating a meal and accompanying the meal with a good glass or two.  Some of the wine bars that are selling premium wine by the glass also have good tapas and small plates of food to share, so a drink and nibble combination with friends can result in a very nice evening out.  But again, I was without friends and looking for a restaurant.

James Halliday shared sage advice when he said it was far better to drink a good beer than poor wine, and I agree with him.  Therefore, when I am not aware nor can find a restaurant with good wine by the glass when I am alone, I will usually order a beer, or just water or juice.

And the last two nights I have been quite tired, so after walking around for a while and getting a little fresh air, I decided to just once again get a take-out Subway sandwich and bring it back to my room.  Yesterday, I had a Diet Coke with it and today an Iced Tea.  Not very exciting, but also no chance of disappointment.

If anyone knows of a decent restaurant (in Melbourne, Sydney, and any other Australian CBD or US city) that has a larger and good selection of very good wines by the glass, it would be great to know.  Please comment on your recommendations or write me, and I will keep updating and sharing the list with everyone.

Why I think Chataeu D’Yquem is the best wine in the world

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Many people believe that Chateau D’Yquem is the finest wine in the world and it is difficult not to agree with that assessment.  For starters, the French classify their wines according to an appellation rating of Premier Crus and Grand Crus of First, Second, etc. growths down to Village and Table wines.

In the top tier are such stars as Lafite Rothschild and Haut-Brion, and a few others.  However, only one wine in the world has ever been given a ‘premier cru superior’ and that is Chataeu D’Yquem.  I was first introduced to the wine by my great friend, Michael Axarlis, when four of us were out drinking one evening.  We had the 1997 vintage and it was truly magnificent.  Several months later, it was Deanna and my 9th anniversary and we celebrated by having a bottle of the 1997 and then tried the 2004 for comparison.  It was sinful to drink the 2004 that early – most Chateau D’Yquems should be laid down for 20 – 50 years or bought for the next generation.  We then found a few bottles of the 1997 and the 1998 vintages at a ‘reasonable’ price (it is also one of the most expensive wines in the world!) that we now have in our cellar.

Thomas Jefferson also proclaimed it as one of his most favorite wines and purchased a lot of it for himself and the White House when George Washington, and then he,were President.

In total, we have have drunk 7 bottles of Chateau D’Yquem in our life, including 4 of the 1997 vintage (a great year!), one from 1998 (which we just had for our 11th anniversary, and the 2004 vintage which was part of our 9th anniversary.  But the greatest bottle of all was the full bottle we bought and shared at Deanna’s 40th birthday party.  As Deanna proclaimed, “It’s like having sex in my mouth”!

Now I will be a bit more restrained and just say that it is the best wine I have ever had, and I will tell you the reason why it is different from all other wines that I drink.  When I open a great bottle of wine and pour a bit into the glass to ‘nose’ it and taste it to make sure it is OK, I am often taken by the great bouquet the wine has and how it seems to fill my senses.  But with EVERY bottle of Chateau D’Yquem I have ever had, my reaction to ‘nosing’ the wine is one of a physical reaction and pure elation.

My nostrils flair and my chest starts to pulsate.  (I could graphically compare this to another experience where this happens, but will pass for now!)  The intense pleasure of smelling a Chateau D’Yquem actually overwhelms my body which is no longer under my direct control.  It is like my body has struck a perfect harmonic motion with the universe.

While I have had some truly great wines over the years, it is only Chateau D’Yquem that does that to me and it has done it EVERY time.  These pictures (the two immediately above) have been taken from our 11th anniversary dinner (a few weeks ago) and the vintage is 1998 which was not a great year (by Chateau D’Yquem standards!).  However, it was still a remarkable wine.  At our 9th anniversary dinner when I did this with the 1997 vintage, I brought the glass to my nose about 15 times in a row and the physical reaction occurred each and every time.

Chateau D’Yquem is a unique wine in terms of the labor that goes into making it, combined with the perfect location to be able to grow the grapes.  They use a Botrytis Semillon and have 11 pickings over 21 days.  This is much more labor intensive than most makers of a Bortytis Semillon desert wine which have one picking when they think most of the grapes have enough botrytis on them.  With Chateau D’Yquem, each grape is ripened almost to perfection, and not an average of the entire batch of grapes, with some being too ripe and others not ripe enough.

We only open a bottle to celebrate very special occasions, but have great joy when we do.  I have drunk many outstanding wines in my day, but nothing makes me pulsates like Chateau D’Yquem!

A “wino’s” photo album

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Our leaving Qatar and returning to Australia in the middle of 2009 was a bit of a shock.  I was feeling bitter about what had happened, how unfair it was and how it cost us a fortune because of petty politics, both within the bank and within the royal family of Qatar.  We were jobless and homeless and had only enough money to pay the previous year’s taxes and live for about 6 weeks before we would have gone broke.  Prospects were pretty grim, especially given the GFC was rolling downhill quickly at the time!

Fortunately within two weeks, Deanna had her old job back, and my prospects were looking good, with three job offers firming nicely.  Once we found a place to live and both secured jobs, I was starting to put the terrible experience behind us, and really wanted to treat myself to something special, and for me, that would be a most special bottle of wine, which seemed to be a good cause for celebration, especially after coming from a controlling, alcohol-restricted country!

My wine was all stored in a public cellar as I had moved it out of the cellar I built in our house (which we were leasing out at the time).  Therefore, once we purchased a car, I headed over to my cellar and pulled out my oldest and dearest bottle of a 1954 Lindemans Vintage Port.  It was a truly heavenly drink and I had it over several months, relishing every drop.  It came in a beautiful bottle (the label actually) and was a real treasure.  I wish I had a picture to show you, but I threw the bottle out when I was finished as we were living in a small apartment and space was at a premium.  This was a mistake I have regretted ever since.

As much as I missed that bottle, it taught me from then on to save my ‘precious’ wine bottles and to display them.  They provide great memories and for each great bottle of wine, I can remember the time and the people I shared it with and with reasonable clarity (especially difficult since most of these moments involved a lot of wine!).  I call this ‘my photo album for winos’.

In fact, I almost get as much joy out of my empties and my memories as I do walking through my cellar and selecting new bottles to drink.  With the bottles in the cellar comes a great responsibility to (1) drink them at the right time (always a challenge if one takes this seriously), and (2) who to drink this particular bottle with?  I sometimes find ‘friend matching to wine’ even harder than food matching!  Whereas with the empties, I just have fond memories of times gone by and the great friendships we have shared.

Yes, this does take some’ real estate’ to store so many bottles, but as you can see, we have used the tops of cabinets and the tops of bookcase for ‘display’ and for very special events such as Deanna’s 40th birthday party, we have turned the display into ‘art work’.

Wow – what an evening that was all around and probably the very best wine tasting evening I have ever experienced (see line-up in picture above)!  9 courses of food perfectly prepared and matched to the wines I selected.  Most of the wines came from Treasury Wine Estates and we had the perfect party served up at Lindemans, organized by Michelle Tracey, with Damien Harrison, who was our personal sommelier for the evening and contributed from his own collection a bottle of 1957 Lindemans Vintage Port (it was as close as anyone could find to the 1954 Vintage – thank you so much Damien!) and the food prepared by Craig Parkinson, Lindemans Head chef, with Pip Mason also serving us that evening.  But Deanna’s 40th and the wines deserve their own blog entry which will follow soon.  This one is really about why to save your empties and how to turn them into memories.

Look at the character of this old bottle of the 1957 Lindemans Vintage Port from Damien!  Water damage to the label, but the wine was exquisite.

These empty bottles really mean a lot to me and I greatly enjoy them over and over again.  Most are displayed at our place in the Hunter Valley.  I only keep one bottle of each (a separate bottle though for each vintage), except for the two best wines in the world – Chateau D’Yquem and Penfolds Grange.  We drink so little of each that we do keep each and every empty we have created!

It takes a bit of room, but after tossing the 1954 Lindemans Vintage Port bottle, I learned a lesson.  That was a bit like tossing a 1951 Willie Mays rookie baseball card!  I greatly regret it and make sure to keep all the precious great bottles I have drunk since.  And if anyone can find me a bottle of the 1954 Lindemans Vintage Port, it will be greatly appreciated – filled or empty!

Wine Snob versus Wine Enthusiast – which one are you?

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I must admit that I have a true avocation for wine.  I enjoy wine on its own, with food, and to share with friends.  I also enjoy reading about wine and learning more about how it’s made, where it is best made, how to buy and store it, and how to drink it.

Over time, I have developed a deeper appreciation for the exquisite and multi-dimensional nature of wine and it has become an important part of my life, but no more important than my faith, my job, my friends, my passion for reading on a wide variety of topics, and a general zest for life overall.  I have been able to achieve a deeper experience and understanding of the wines I drink, and that has enhanced some of my other experiences.  For example, we are having a chicken and mushroom risotto for dinner tonight.  My wife makes a really good risotto (you can view the chopped-up chicken and mushrooms below)!

With the chicken, Parmesan cheese and mushrooms, I knew I wanted a rich, aged chardonnay to go with it.  I selected my last bottle of the 2003 Saddler’s Creek Reserve Chardonnay. (Look at the beautiful golden color of a perfectly aged white wine!)  I did so because I have had a few bottles previously and felt it would pair beautifully with a chicken and mushroom risotto, and I also knew the bottle should be drunk in the next few years and I did not want to wait too long or it might go off.  Fortunately the wine was perfect and I am drinking some as I write this posting.  We paid $10 per bottle for the wine as Saddler’s was trying to clear older inventory and we bought the last 8 bottles they had.  But it drinks like a $130 bottle of Penfolds Yattarna or a decent Montrachet.  This turned out to be one of the best buys of my life!

As you can tell, I put a bit of thought into buying the wine in the first place and also when to drink it and what food to drink it with. Some people would claim “I take my wine too seriously, so I must be a wine snob”, but I hardly think that is the case.  To me it is a natural passion or avocation as I mentioned, much like others have a passion for working out or art or literature.  Because I have developed a bit of knowledge over the years, it has become much easier to select a good (and good valued) wine to go with an everyday dinner.  And I put more thought into the wines that match up with dinners when we host our “Single’s and Strays” dinner parties, have friends over, or a special birthday or anniversary.  (BTW, all birthdays and anniversaries are special!)  But then, most of those events become special occasions and lifetime memories.  Does that make me a wine snob?  I don’t think so.

I discussed this with some other wine aficionados and we felt that a wine snob had the following characteristics:

Wine Snob

  • They bragged about the excellent wines they had, but never found the opportunity to share the wine with friends or to give a bottle to a friend
  • They want to have you admit to them having a superior knowledge of wine over you – they are as uninterested in sharing their knowledge as they are their wines – they just want to ‘show off’.
  • They talk a great deal about how much they have paid for expensive wines, and seem to only drink expensive wines

Whereas a wine enthusiast, we felt, had the following characteristics:

Wine Enthusiast

  • They are happy to share wine, either by contributing a bottle, or by asking all who share to chip in for a special bottle of wine, or by setting some rules to have each person bring a bottle according to the rules established
  • They listen to others and want to learn and also share their knowledge and are excited to help others develop an appreciation of wine and mature as a wine drinker and possibly collector
  • They get as much and even greater pleasure out of finding a ‘cheap’ but great wine and would rather drink that than an expensive bottle of wine

We have two friends who are studying to become international Masters of Wine (MW).  An international MW costs about $200,000 to buy, taste and compare wines to develop an internationally acclaimed palate and ability to compare and describe wines to others.  (There are only about 475 MWs globally!)  They are also professional wine judges (in addition to their full-time jobs), but in no way are they wine snobs.  They get great excitement over finding a Canberra (ACT, Australia)  Sangiovese for $20 per bottle and a Marsanne for $15 which they have introduced us to.  A wine snob would not even try a wine from Canberra, yet alone a wine under $20.  We have had a 9-hour lunch at their house (he is French, she is Australian – what can I say?) and we bring over wines we really want to share with them and they pick out wines they really want to share and introduce to us.  These wine may be in the $10 – $20 per bottle range or they may be $40 – $60 per bottle, but it does not matter – what matters is sharing our wine, our knowledge and our friendship with each other.

I therefore, prefer to call myself a ‘wine enthusiast’, not a ‘wine snob’.  How about you?