Joseph Swan Chardonnay 1977

A beautiful wine, this; amber with orange highlights. Like an old Burgundy, but with muted tropical notes replacing the lemon. Waxy texture, smooth and powerful, with a slightly bitter, acid finish defeating the hint of incipient marmalade. We were warned in advance of the fine sediment and left it standing for two days before we drank it.

Alinea

The arrival to Alinea is a little unusual. Beyond the garage door exterior, which N1 walked past insistent it couldn’t be the entrance, a glowing red tunnel curves slightly out of sight. Stepping in, one has the feeling of entering an Anish Kapoor sculpture; and this theatrical introduction underlines the fact that one has indeed arrived somewhere beyond the bounds of usual experience. Alinea is Chicago’s primary contribution to the world gastronomic scene.

As seems to be increasingly the case in restaurants of this category, there is no à la carte anymore, only a tasting menu; quite understandably, these high-fliers do not wish to let anything get in the way of their display of maximum virtuosity. In the spirit of pre-dinner drinks, our tasting menu begins with a series of frozen cocktails as palate cleansers, in the form of variegated dollops of coloured ice. The first, Girolamo, is the best; amaro and grapefruit, a bitter outside, a sweet central icy nugget. Jack Rose is very alcoholic, a blend of calvados and grenadine with a small piece of apple that has soaked in the calvados. The anonymous third is a burnt-tasting blend of butternut squash and buffalo trace bourbon.

Steelhead roe comes as a lovely mix of temperature, texture, and taste; modernist cooking at its very best, where innovation does not trump sheer mouth pleasure. Pearls and roe burst against seeds, and the flavours of liquorice, butter, grapefruit and mustard are brought into relief by the fact that some come warm and some come cold. Top marks.

Yuba is tofu skin; this dish seems to be a cheese stick wearing a coat of fried soy skin and chicken, with miso paste acting as a dollop of glue, and a daikon tentacle to throw in a dash of heat to offset the soy umami. Truly out there, I say; N1 dissects it down to being a luxury crisp, but no less spectacular for that.

Sea urchin – on its way to becoming as much a staple of these restaurants as foie gras - comes in a vanilla gel; it is a shock for the palate to have it beside such an intensely bitter watercress soup. It is difficult to pin down these bitters; we grope for descriptions, such as non-alcoholic amaro. The waiter does tell us that some of the bitter comes from oil of orange peel.

Halibut is one of the star dishes in an evening of star dishes. Everything on the plate is white, and yet the flavours contrast so much; vanilla grass, coffee pearls, lemon. Mouth feel is lovely; a crumble breaks up, like halva, against a star anise gel.

By now I’m thinking we haven’t had a “so what” dish yet; and this sort of menu does tend to sneak in a dish or two that feel as if they are there to act as a backdrop to better things, to properly bulk out a long tasting menu.

Rabbit comes as a trilogy, triform, in a curious ovoid receptacle we have to take apart bit-by-bit to consume the dish in stages. The parfait is served in a nest of dry squash, with the flavours of bacon and calvados permeating. Underneath, the rillete tastes more of sage than rabbit, with trinkets of black pudding and golden sultanas to accompany. The conclusion is a consummé whose excess of cinnamon leads to a taste that reminds me of Yogi Tea.

Mushrooms: morel, beech and maitake come flavouring a snow of pine nut crumble.

Hot potato, we are warned (we like to linger) is a time-sensitive dish; it comes in a cold, salty, truffled soup and the temperature contrast is part of the dish’s mouth-shocking attraction.

Beef ravioli comes with a tobacco emulsion, blackberries, niçoise olive and fermented black garlic; is there no end to the startling and delicious combinations here?

Hamachi (Yellowtail, a classic Pacific sushi fish) comes as a semi-sweet dish, wrapped up with ginger and banana on a cinnamon stick. The stick serving is starting to look like an Alinea signature flourish.

The Escoffier dish is a rather shameless – if delightful – plug for chef Grant Achatz’s new restaurant, Next, which aims to creatively recreate key moments in the history of cooking. Canard à la Cussy, a vol-au-vent filled with duck breast, coxcomb, foie gras and chestnut purée, wrenches us out of molecular gastronomy and into the Paris of 1906; the current theme at Next.

Back to modernism with venison, served with eucalyptus leaves and cocoa nibs, followed by another form of ravioli as a carrier for a thick, truffly liquid. 

The dessert servings follow. A yuzu snow cone gives us a sweet, citric slurp; then - a marvel - comes the sweet potato as a deconstructed American dessert. Hot chilli cotton candy accompanies the Bourbon-flavoured sweet potato, with cedar smoke wafting out of the wooden serving feature. Back to the lab for the next dessert: a test-tube plugged at each end with lime gel and filled with a sweet, herby distillation of lemongrass has to be drunk in one gulp. A lychee transparency tastes to me very like the discontinued British sweet Spangles. A white chocolate truffle tastes like nutella with banana and crunches like a breakfast cereal. Bacon and butterscotch thyme is one of those delicious sweet-savoury hybrids.

The very last dessert is a play-with-your-food concession to theatre. The table is cleared, and covered with a rubberized cloth. Then chef attacks it with white chocolate mousse, honey crème brûlée, and berries in red wine vinegar. Delicious, but too much – it is tempting to fold up the tablecloth and take it home.

Spectacular, delicious, fascinating, surprising and utterly enjoyable, frankly a mile ahead of the Fat Duck, and with much more natural service than at Per Se, Alinea is a restaurant at the very top of its game.

Giovanni Accomasso & Figlio – Barolo Riserva – 1997

Black in colour, bitter and powerful on the nose, this is clearly a serious wine. Dry coffee and medicine cabinet notes dominate the opening, with orange pith rather than fruit. Very drying on the palate, to the extent of reminding me of whisky. Not initially fruit-driven, the opening bitterness does begin to smooth out, allowing notes of blackcherries in tea to emerge, along with some discreet spiciness and a showing of oaky vanilla. As the evening progresses, a more chutney-like relish appears along with Bordeaux-like lead pencils. Powerful, smooth, and built to age. 

Château Carbonnieux 1971 – Blanc – Grand Cru Classé

Given that, by and large, red wines are supposed to live longer in bottle than their white counterparts (with the signal exception of Riesling) I’ve been recently amazed by the staying power of white Bordeaux. I’m tempted to say Sémillon goes the distance, but there’s often as much Sauvignon in these wines.

The Carbonnieux ’71 opens with a slightly waxy, slightly floral nose, with notes of dried orange and creamy vanilla. There is a slightly empty mid-palate where I presume the fresh fruit once was, but a beautiful delivery of those drier orange notes at the back of the tongue.

I would have expected the wine to have nowhere left to go, but it continues to open beautifully over the evening. The remaining floral note disappears, but the orange becomes more intense, reminding me of Puligny-Montrachet. N1 finds passion fruit and white chocolate. A slight but unmistakeable whiff of matches accompanies a final explosion of star anise that only appears as we are draining our glasses. Overall, very reminiscent of white Burgundy. The waxy (Sémillon) note is certainly present, but not as dominant as in e.g. Château Bouscaut, and we hazard a guess that it is a Sémillon-Sauvignon blend. That would certainly tally with more recent vintages, which have been 60-70% Sauvignon and 30-40% Sémillon.

Roka, Charlotte St.

To the provincial eye, London seems excessively stocked with Japanese restaurants; what is it about Londoners and Japanese food? At least in the centre, there seems to be a Japanese restaurant on every street. No doubt there are some gems (I can vouch for Café Japan in Golders Green) as well as some establishments better left untried, but Roka is clearly one of the capital’s most special. It comes in two flavours, Charlotte St and Canary Wharf; I can only vouch for Charlotte St, having been there twice now. Apart from sheer high quality, what makes Roka different from the average Japanese restaurant is the Robata grill. In Charlotte St, the grill dominates the room, and if you get a (non-reservable) seat at the bar, and prevent your drinks from falling over on the not quite flat, very deliberately rustic wood finish, you will get a great view of the chefs at work – at the price of the occasional odd smell or puff of smoke coming your way.

A study of the menu suggested that a lot of the things we most wanted to try were not on the tasting menu, so we set about assembling our own bit-by-bit, for slightly less money. Salad first: Sake No Miso Zake Salada is a miso cured salmon with a konbu daikon (kelp prepared with Japanese radish) and nama nori (a variety of the edible seaweed used to wrap sushi). The salmon is beautifully cured; apparently the dish has sweet vinegar in it, but there is no acid edge. The dish feels like Japanese gravadlax. Kaiso Salada is also from the salad menu; a mix of seaweed, cucumber, gem lettuce off the Robata, umeboshi (pickled plum) served with a shiso (or perilla, a minty, slightly soapy tasting herb) dressing. The saline quality of the seaweed cheated my palate into thinking small pieces of marinated melon were seafood.

The first of our Robata grill dishes was Ko Nasa, eggplant in mirin (sweet rice wine), ginger and soy. As well as the nutty flavour of slightly burnt eggplant, the dish has some chilli supplying heat. Then we had the lovely Kobuta No Ribs Yawaraka Nikowi, baby back ribs with a honey glaze, all sprinkled with cashew nuts and spring onions. Gin Tara No Saikyo-Yaki - black cod marinated in yuzu miso - had a citric edge that cuts against the cod and the flavour of burnt, black sesame. Atsuage No Mugi Miso-Yaki is flame-grilled tofu. I’m used to tofu as a soft, quickly disintegrating substance, but this is a solid log, crisp on the outside, with the rubbery texture of preserved scallops. However, it is no less bland than normal tofu, the strong flavour of the dish coming from ginger and pepper.

For dessert, we shared a dish of iced coffee and black sesame crumble, a rather lovely meeting of east and west, made up of a coffee parfait, a savoury sesame crumble – looking like instant coffee granules – yamazaki whisky balls, and mandarin. The meeting of mandarin and sesame is a particularly lovely combination, with a shiso leaf on the side offering bitter, soapy contrast.

Sake is a particular attraction for us, and Roka has one of the most interesting sake lists we’ve found in London (Nobu is also very good). These sakes - a mix of guest and regulars – are among the most interesting I’ve ever had.

Daishinsyu “Teppai” Junmai Daiginjo Muroka

Very much like fruit salad on the nose, but with herby notes I associated with coriander; it varied through the evening from being especially pear to melon-like. By the end of the evening, the herby notes had moved on to be replaced by a slightly spicy, yeasty quality. This sake went particularly well with the salmon.

All Koji 2009

A very dark amber colour, clearly a different beast from the Teppai, both savoury and sweet on the palate. It has an interesting mouthfeel, going heavy – light – heavy again as it moves across the palate. There are fruit notes, but they are subservient to the toasty yeastiness. By the end of the evening, it is like marmalade with black beans.

Nanbubjin “Oke No Tami”

Pale and comparatively light, but nonetheless complex, the bouquet offers milk, cod liver oil and a clarifying minty note that becomes more eucalyptus-like as the evening progresses, before disappearing altogether, ending the evening tasting of sesame.

Pommier Chablis

Isabelle et Denis POMMIER Chablis 1er Cru 2006 Côte de Léchet

Chardonnay is a grape variety we tend to associate with oak aging; from beautiful toasty Burgundies to blowsy Californians and perma-toasted Australians, a well-made, oaky Chardonnay can be a thing of joy. Although in New World wine-making it is now common to make unoaked Chardonnays – as a reaction against the overoaked but under-performing wines that were common in the 1990s – Chablis is the one fine wine area where Chardonnay is not automatically given some contact with oak. Some Chablis makers use nothing but stainless steel to make their wines, believing this gives the purest expression of the Chablis terroir; an austere, mineral quality often described as “gunflint”. Other makers will use oak barrels to age their Chablis, arguing that the slow process of oxygenation that results from barrel-aging imparts an extra level of complexity to the wine. These will always be old barrels, so that the oak character never becomes dominant.

The Pommier Chablis, it turns out, belongs to this second class. Quite pale, even for a Chablis, there is just a wispy hint of oak on the nose along with a gentle but discernable tropical fruit note; guava, followed by cooked apple. Fine, light on the palate and slightly oily, not quite as steely as a more classic Chablis would be. Elegant, although it doesn’t show a great deal of development.

Barry Smith talk and tasting

This tasting was the practical coda to a talk given by Dr. Barry Smith, oenophile extraordinaire and Director of the Institute of Philosophy, on the philosophy of taste (Edinburgh University, Fri 18/2/11).

Barry’s position, as I understood it, was to set a limit on how far we can consider taste a subjective experience. His starting gripe was with some wine critics who, on the one hand, insist that the taste of a wine is a subjective, individual experience (we are often told at wine tastings that we must define the taste of a wine in terms which are meaningful to us and which may be very different from those used by others) but who then go on to give a categorical recommendation (and a score out of 100!) to individual wines. Surely there is an inherent contradiction here?

We can contrast phenomena such as lighting and our mood, which may subconsciously influence our evaluation of a wine, with criteria such as acid, tannin, sugar, sulphur and carbon dioxide, all of which are scientifically measureable components. A tannic wine will produce a classic “mouth-puckering”, drying sensation, which we should all recognize. Is this sensation not telling us something objective about the wine?

80% of what we perceive as flavour is in fact smell. This can be easily observed by taking a swig of wine while your nostrils are clamped firmly shut, and this phenomenon has interesting implications for what we describe as the taste and the aftertaste of a wine. During inhalation – orthonasal olfaction – we are able to perceive some 630 different characteristics. However, during retronasal olfaction – when we release air through our mouth – we can only perceive some 300 different characteristics. Since what we perceive as flavour is the result of retronasal olfaction, the more limited retronasal scent box leads us to perceive a different flavour profile from when we are merely nosing the wine.

WHITE

Les Champs Blancs - Chablis 2009 – Pascal Bouchard

A fairly classic, if relatively simple, Chablis nose; a moderate if not clearly defined fruit character that approximates pear and lime, with a note of lanolin.  

Vaillons Millésime – Chablis Premier Cru 2007 – Simonnet-Febvre

Notably darker and more viscous than the Champs Blancs, the slightly Brie-like cheesiness gives this wine away as corked. It’s not so egregious as to hide the basic character of the wine, though, which has an interesting flavour profile (a.k.a. development of the wine as it moves across the tongue, as Barry so eloquently explained). After the initial fruit character (masked by the cork taint), there is that classic sheepy Chablis lanolin note, and a hint of oak. (Some Chablis makers eschew contact with oak entirely, while others, as here, use it only with moderation). It finishes with notes of acacia honey – a rather unexpectedly sweet note for the normally more flinty, austere Chablis.

Joseph Faively – Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru 2008 – Les Folatières

An exquisite, complex nose, blending over-ripe mandarins with coconut. (“Over-ripe” mandarins may sound unappealing, but one of the curiosities of wine is how one can find smells that in other contexts would be unappealing – diesel in aged German Riesling, manure (“farmyard” is the polite euphemism) in red Burgundy, or glue in some very oaky Portuguese reds – and nevertheless find them attractive.) The coconut is a facet of this wine’s stay in oak, since we have moved out of Chablis and into the commune of Puligny-Montrachet in the Côte de Beaune, where the winemakers do not shy away from oak aging. This wine is similarly elegant on the palate, creamily blending fruit (again those mandarins, but also with lime beneath) and oak. Good length, and would age very well – though also a delight to drink now.

RED

Pirie Estate – Tasmania – 2007

The one joker in the pack, the point of this, the only non-Burgundian wine of the evening, is to make a stylistic contrast between Old and New World Pinot Noir. The rather undistinguished fruit on the nose leads on to a quickly-disappearing attack of fruit on the palate, which is rather stemmy and drying. A bit too tannic for what it has to offer in terms of fruit and acid.

Dureuil-Janthial – Bourgogne Rouge – 2005

One doesn’t tend to get particularly good value-for-money buying Burgundy (unless perhaps buying directly from the producer) and as this came in cheaper than the Pirie (£12 compared to £15) I didn’t have great expectations for it. In fact, however, it turned out rather well. The nose has more defined fruit notes of plum and cherry, and the spices too are similarly well-defined: cloves and cinnamon. (Not infrequently in wine tasting one can say “fruity” or “spicy” without it being obvious exactly which fruit or spice; but better wines tend to be more clearly defined). There is also a characteristically Burgundian note of wet earth. A definite winner over the Pirie.

Les Lavières - Louis Camus-Bruchon –  Savigny-lès-Beaune 2003

2003 was a scorching summer across Europe, and many wine regions suffered for it – if the winemakers did not respond adroitly, they ended up with heavily overbaked wines which smell of jam more than fruit. This wine certainly has a slightly jammy quality – fruit compote – but is in no way unattractive. Beginning with strawberries (a classic Pinot Noir note) it goes on to offer cocoa and vanilla, closing with some rather burnt fruit. Showing its upfront vintage character, it seems rather blowsy in comparison to more elegant 2000 to follow. However, we had some of the 2003 left the next day, and it had evolved some beautifully savoury notes; granite, wet dog hair, and very pointedly, ribs with barbeque sauce.

Les Lavières - Louis Camus-Bruchon –  Savigny-lès-Beaune 2000

2000 was also a hot year, but nowhere near as hot as 2003, and it shows in this comparison of the same wines from the two vintages. The 2000 has a lovely, classically Burgundian mix of fragrant and more meaty smells, notes of red fruit, saddle leather and game. It has higher acidity than the 2003, and a certain density of fruit on the finish making it port-like. On the evening, this seemed to me the far nicer of the two; I wish I’d had some of this the next day to see how it developed. It felt as if both needed more time, but this one especially – ironic, given it is already three years older.

Les Perrières - Jean Chauvenet – Nuits St.Georges 2002

2002 was a wonderful year – “If you couldn’t make good wine in 2002, then give up”. This wine is very dark for a Pinot, almost opaque. Similarly, the nose offers notes I’d expect more from the much more heavily-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon grape; green leaf, blackcurrants, leather, mint. On the palate, it doesn’t (yet) taste as good as it smells; the acid is very pronounced, and is probably needs some years in bottle to come out of itself and into balance. There is a pencil lead note that reminds me of Bordeaux – that Cabernet note again. As the evening closes, it has become noticeably better – one for the cellar.

Ghislaine Barthod – Chambolle Musigny – 1998

This wine has a lovely, faded colour, with a browning rim which betrays its age. It is a deliciously complex mix of aromas that span truffle, soy sauce, Demerara, liquorice and mint, keeping a sweet fruit element to the finish, which is long. 1998 was not a good year, but this is a beautiful wine drinking beautifully now. Extremely harmonious.