Listing to port

Do restaurant wine lists give you that sinking feeling?

Uncorked by Thor Iverson

It lands in front of me with a heavy thud: 40 pages, single-spaced. This is the wine list at the Simon Pearce restaurant in Quechee, Vermont, and it brings even wine fanatics to their knees. The waiter smirks and walks away. I start to sweat.

When confronted by a novel-length wine list, we all experience some justifiable anxiety. What should be a chance to explore the infinite complexity of wine, and perhaps show off a little expertise, becomes a stressful battle of wills with the list, the waiter ("I just need a few more minutes"), and our wallets. After all, any money-for-brains schlub can plop down $500 to impress his friends. What the rest of us need is a way to wrestle this sort of list into submission, emerging triumphant with the One Perfect Wine while avoiding a second mortgage.

I'm going to assume you know a little bit about matching wine and food (if not, don't worry, future columns will explore that subject until you're thoroughly sick of it) and concentrate on the process. To that end, I hereby propose a strategy borrowed from the warlords of years past: divide and conquer.

Start with the most basic decisions. How many bottles? One wine all night, or one per course? A different wine for each guest? How much can you afford? Keep in mind that restaurant markups can turn your favorite $15 "everyday" wine into a $40 bottle. Also plan for any pre-dinner drinks or sparkling wine, post-dinner dessert wine, and a digestif; and remember that someone is going to have to drive home.

Being entrusted with the wine list is a big responsibility, but it also means less time to study the menu. So why not just pick the wine first, and then select food to complement that wine? You'll be assured of a pleasant (possibly exceptional) wine-food match. Select a rich white Burgundy, then choose between the butter-soaked veal with wild mushrooms and the dry-roasted capon. If a restaurant's principal appeal is its wine list, why proceed any other way?

When it comes to actually picking the wine, don't be afraid to indulge your individual preferences and biases. For me, this means eliminating from consideration food-unfriendly wines like big, oaky California chardonnays, merlots, and some cabernet sauvignons -- though there are always delicious exceptions. Conversely, I pay special attention to food-friendly Italian and Spanish reds, Alsatian whites, and Oregon pinot noirs (all with moderate-to-high acidity) when faced with difficult food-matching dilemmas. A nice bonus: some of these regions' wines are excellent values.

And finally, there's the question of age. While I do enjoy young, bold, fruity wine, I crave the complexity that maturity brings. My personal restaurant strategy is to find the most mature wine that I can afford (which varies, depending on the occasion, the restaurant, and just how much desire I'm experiencing for that bottle). Restaurant wine lists overwhelmingly gravitate toward younger vintages (storing wine to maturity can be prohibitively expensive), but even a year or two can make a big difference in the taste of a wine. A few lists specialize in older wines -- and, given the insane prices that newly released wines are fetching, these are frequently better values than their younger counterparts. You can find some surprising bargains if you ignore the currently hot regions (Bordeaux and Burgundy) in favor of less-heralded areas like the Rhône Valley, Alsace, southern France, Spain, Germany, South Africa, Australia, and, domestically, Oregon and Washington.

On the other hand, if you absolutely must have Bordeaux or Burgundy, look for "lesser" vintages. Americans are extremely vintage-conscious and often seem to believe that wines like Bordeaux are only worth drinking in great years like 1986 -- which means inferior years (1992 or '93) are completely ignored. Yes, an '86 red Bordeaux is unquestionably "better" than a '92, but the '86 is a tannic monster that's a long way from mature (or even drinkable, in some cases). The '92, on the other hand, is wonderful right now, and it costs probably half as much as the '86. Remember: the goal is to find something tasty to drink with your meal, not to impress the people sitting at the next table.

Two quick recommendations:

1994 Château La Roque Pic Saint Loup (Coteaux du Languedoc) ($9.99). One of the dozens of wine bargains coming out of southern France, with an utterly compelling, earthy tobacco-and-black-truffle structure underneath some dark, gamy fruit. There's still a good deal of tannin lurking about this bargain red, so either let it age (at this price, buy a few bottles and try one per year) or air it out for an hour before serving it with strongly flavored red meat and game.

1995 Ravenswood Zinfandel Napa Valley ($14.99). Fermented grapes don't get any tastier than this. A brambly, spicy witches' brew of plums, cherries, cassis, blueberries, prunes, and strawberries with a mysterious thread of licorice running throughout. This high-alcohol quaffer won't improve with age, so drink up (alone or with aggressively piquant cheese).

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine[a]phx.com.

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