The Feiring Line

Being Debauched, Sweetly

I lost my Domaine de la Romane virginity this past December at the Zachy�s pre-DRC auction dinner held at Restaurant Daniel. Yes, it was an orgy. Yes, it was worth it. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Seated at my table were Forbes� �inimitable� Alan Farnham, Zachy's irascible Ned Benedict and adorable Christin Wingo. The wise Paul Roberts from the French Laundry attended as did Mr. Burgundy himself, Daniel Johness and dapper Robert Bohr, Wine director of Cru�who by the end of the night got my vote for MVP.

At these kinds of bacchanals the faster wines come at me, the tipsier I get, the more regressive my wine notes, the more incomprehensible my penmanship. While I rarely get sloshed, at an event as precious as this, slosh is forgivable though still embarrassing.

The night kicked off auspiciously with DRC�s Le Montrachet, 1987, one of the giddiest white Burgundies ever to slide down the gullet. It had a riveting element of deep, blushed apricot, toffeed butterscotch and finish that just kept on going on and on with intact lilting acidity. The �91 DRC Montrachet which appeared out of nowhere (hm, I think supplied by Johness?) was a neurotically nervous wine, and not near ready to drink. Ms. Wingo offered up a 1971 Grange as an off-beat palate cleanser. I have had the misfortune to taste the newer Granges made after wine manipulation was brought to a high art in Australia. I now understand the reverence the wine gets, or used to get. Here is depth and character Aussie style. There is a cabernet-ish earth and twig with a nice dose of old nag horse from the syrah.

Robert Bohr, bless his heart, lugged a magnum of 1989 DRC Grands chzeaux . However he made me beg for it, scolding me to have patience. Waiting was easier than I expected when Daniel Boulud, big smile on his face, plomped down next to me and offered me a taste of the 1966 Romane Conti in his glass, which came from the prestigious table where Robert M. Parker, Jr., was sitting. Pretty fascinating stuff: a dash of Tabasco and red pepper as well. Then it was all a tumble and jumble of spice box of allspice, nutmeg, like sticking my tongue inside a cinnamon stick. A west coast young man with a big cellar, pretty famous with this bunch, unknown to me and I to him, came around holding a '99 DRC chzeaux by the neck. Yes, this is the least grand holding of DRC, but still, why would any one be so cavalier as to open this bottle with only five years of age? Only a guy with more to burn in their cellar, and this thought does bring out envy in me and makes me wonder how I get to be his new best friend. I admit it was drinking gorgeously but it was such a shame the bottle was too young to die.

I finally prevailed upon Mr. Bohr to pour me a small sample from his big magnum. Thank you Robert. I was and am very appreciative. Shortly thereafter, something odd happened. Mr. Farnham, with no compunction about leaving wines behind he never tasted and probably will never again taste in his lifetime, sprinted for a train. In classic greener grass syndrome, everyone except for Ned went in search of other wines they could sneak tastes of�the La Tches, Richebourgs, St. Vivants, Grands chzeaux out there as well as the Roumiers and Ponsots, the 1947 Lafleurs and the 1971 Haut Brions�I was suddenly alone with Ned and the magnum which hung out on the table lonely as a girl in search of a waltz partner. I continued to torture Ned with questions and nurse my private bottle.

I've gotten a little wiser about some things in my life, one of them is that when the mag of 1989 Grands chzeaux appears on your table in need of attention, give it to her. And when you spill your second glass of wine of the night, quickly teeter off in your heels to the coat check before you're in danger of not walking a straight line.

Being Debauched, Sweetly

I lost my Domaine de la Romane virginity this past December at the Zachy's pre-DRC auction dinner held at Restaurant Daniel. Yes, it was an orgy. Yes, it was worth it. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Seated at my table were Forbes' inimitable Alan Farnham, Zachy's irascible Ned Benedict and adorable Christin Wingo. The wise Paul Roberts from the French Laundry attended as did Mr. Burgundy himself, Daniel Johness and dapper Robert Bohr, Wine director of Cru who by the end of the night got my vote for MVP.

At these kinds of bacchanals the faster wines come at me, the tipsier I get, the more regressive my wine notes, the more incomprehensible my penmanship. While I rarely get sloshed, at an event as precious as this, slosh is forgivable though still embarrassing.

The night kicked off auspiciously with DRC's Le Montrachet, 1987, one of the giddiest white Burgundies ever to slide down the gullet. It had a riveting element of deep, blushed apricot, toffeed butterscotch and finish that just kept on going on and on with intact lilting acidity. The '91 DRC Montrachet which appeared out of nowhere (hm, I think supplied by Johness?) was a neurotically nervous wine, and not near ready to drink. Ms. Wingo offered up a 1971 Grange as an off-beat palate cleanser. I have had the misfortune to taste the newer Granges made after wine manipulation was brought to a high art in Australia. I now understand the reverence the wine gets, or used to get. Here is depth and character Aussie style. There is a cabernet-ish earth and twig with a nice dose of old nag horse from the syrah.

Robert Bohr, bless his heart, lugged a magnum of 1989 DRC Grands chzeaux . However he made me beg for it, scolding me to have patience. Waiting was easier than I expected when Daniel Boulud, big smile on his face, plomped down next to me and offered me a taste of the 1966 Romane Conti in his glass, which came from the prestigious table where Robert M. Parker, Jr., was sitting. Pretty fascinating stuff: a dash of Tabasco and red pepper as well. Then it was all a tumble and jumble of spice box of allspice, nutmeg, like sticking my tongue inside a cinnamon stick. A west coast young man with a big cellar, pretty famous with this bunch, unknown to me and I to him, came around holding a '99 DRC chzeaux by the neck. Yes, this is the least grand holding of DRC, but still, why would any one be so cavalier as to open this bottle with only five years of age? Only a guy with more to burn in their cellar, and this thought does bring out envy in me and makes me wonder how I get to be his new best friend. I admit it was drinking gorgeously but it was such a shame the bottle was too young to die.

I finally prevailed upon Mr. Bohr to pour me a small sample from his big magnum. Thank you Robert. I was and am very appreciative. Shortly thereafter, something odd happened. Mr. Farnham, with no compunction about leaving wines behind he never tasted and probably will never again taste in his lifetime, sprinted for a train. In classic greener grass syndrome, everyone except for Ned went in search of other wines they could sneak tastes of the La Taches, Richebourgs, St. Vivants, Grands chzeaux out there as well as the Roumiers and Ponsots, the 1947 Lafleurs and the 1971 Haut Brions I was suddenly alone with Ned and the magnum which hung out on the table lonely as a girl in search of a waltz partner. I continued to torture Ned with questions and nurse my private bottle.

I've gotten a little wiser about some things in my life, one of them is that when the mag of 1989 Grands Echzeaux appears on your table in need of attention, give it to her. And when you spill your second glass of wine of the night, quickly teeter off in your heels to the coat check before you'e in danger of not walking a straight line.

Roasting in the Rhone

That's me, this summer in Tain Hermitage. I was roasting in the Rhone, looking upward, wondering just how hot it was going to get in an hour. Or maybe I was thinking about the beautiful blushed apricots that grew all over the region, plump and firm at the same time, utterly sweet with just a dash of luscious tart. I'd come to France to work on several wine stories. The one in the Northern Rhone was about syrah. Later on that day, I would have lunch smack in the vineyard of Hermitage. Later I'd discuss native yeast fermentation with winemakers whom I deeply respected. I'd taste some remarkable older Hermitage and Cornas (which just doesn't get enough respect), get a huge crush on wine maker deity, Thierry Allemand, I'd walk across the river at sunset. I would end up across the street from my dive hotel- until the wee hours of the night with some friends at "George the Greek's" wine store/ wine bar. a makeshift affair set up gutterside. This, a nightly summer soire, with a rotating crew of cronies; winemakers and their wives. George was very accommodating; he kicked off the evening with Jacques Selosse champagne. At 3 in the morning, I crawled across the street and tucked myself in between into the bad sheets. It was too late to read any of the Philip Roth I was rereading. Tomorrow, I said. In the morning, we show up at George�s for breakfast and are forced to drink a bit of the Vin de Paille Jean Louis Chave had given us to give to George. We try it before the espresso. It is nectar with razor edge acidity. All good. George's nephew had secured a whole crate of apricots from one of best winemaker's property. Such sweet hospitality is so touching. Apricots installed in the back of the car, I was headed south, to the giant white stones of Chateauneuf. The cicada cacophony was fierce, I thought there something wrong with my engine. This has become my life. What the hell was I thinking, coming to the Rhone to drink big reds in July. Crazy.

Roasting in the Rhone

That's me, this summer in Tain Hermitage. I was roasting in the Rhone, looking upward, wondering just how hot it was going to get in an hour. Or maybe I was thinking about the beautiful blushed apricots that grew all over the region, plump and firm at the same time, utterly sweet with just a dash of luscious tart. I'd come to France to work on several wine stories. The one in the Northern Rhone was about syrah. Later on that day, I would have lunch smack in the vineyard of Hermitage. Later I'd discuss native yeast fermentation with winemakers whom I deeply respected. I'd taste some remarkable older Hermitage and Cornas (which just doesn't get enough respect), get a huge crush on wine maker deity, Thierry Allemand, I'd walk across the river at sunset. I would end up across the street from my dive hotel- until the wee hours of the night with some friends at "George the Greek's" wine store/ wine bar. a makeshift affair set up gutterside. This, a nightly summer soire, with a rotating crew of cronies; winemakers and their wives. George was very accommodating; he kicked off the evening with Jacques Selosse champagne. At 3 in the morning, I crawled across the street and tucked myself in between into the bad sheets. It was too late to read any of the Philip Roth I was rereading. Tomorrow, I said. In the morning, we show up at George�s for breakfast and are forced to drink a bit of the Vin de Paille Jean Louis Chave had given us to give to George. We try it before the espresso. It is nectar with razor edge acidity. All good. George's nephew had secured a whole crate of apricots from one of best winemaker's property. Such sweet hospitality is so touching. Apricots installed in the back of the car, I was headed south, to the giant white stones of Chateauneuf. The cicada cacophony was fierce, I thought there something wrong with my engine. This has become my life. What the hell was I thinking, coming to the Rhone to drink big reds in July. Crazy.

Vive le Rapprochement, Forbes

Vive le Rapprochement!
Alice Feiring, for Forbes Magazine 11.24.03

We can't hate the French forever. Plan now for the day you'll drink their wine again.
Sooner or later the diplomatic rift between France and the U.S. will heal, and the two nations will be able to resume their traditional roles. The French will send us burgundy, and we will send them dopey comedies to pay for it. Americans who love French wine--but whose political scruples have restrained their palates--can act now to reserve a future treat, one they can enjoy guiltlessly once hostilities are over.

We refer to the Bouilland Symposium, a semiannual weeklong immersion in the glories and secrets of wine from Bourgogne. It costs $7,600 or so, depending on the exchange rate, and accepts just ten participants per session, many of them returnees who book at least six months in advance (becky@leserbet.com). The fee includes lodging, food, wine and tuition.

The setting: a 15th-century farmhouse in Bouilland, France, home to Becky Wasserman, American expat and naturalized wine trader. She migrated from the States to this tiny village 35 years ago, when the wine world was still so innocent that she and her friends could picnic in the now-sacrosanct La Tche vineyard. Wasserman got her start by selling oak barrels to the California wine industry. She later segued into exporting wine. Ten years ago she and her husband, Russell Hone, together with their friend Clive Coates, editor and publisher of the Vine (a monthly magazine published in England), began offering their wine course.

The spring symposium takes place in June, when the grapes are the size of baby peas. The fall course is in September, right before the harvest. The formula for each is simple: Live, walk, eat and drink burgundy for an entire week. The vineyards are pilgrimage worthy, and the winemakers who come to dinner at Becky and Russell's table each night include such regional stars as the Seysses family of Domaine Dujac, Laurent Ponsot of Domaine Ponsot, Anne Gros of Domaine Gros and Christophe Roumier of Domaine Roumier.

Attendees are a varied bunch. At past symposia they ranged from auctioneer and Napa Valley cabernetist Ann Colgin to an emergency room doctor from Texas. Spring 2003 had a semiretired burgundy fanatic from Hawaii, a couple from Costa Rica who own a coffee plantation, two young investment banker types (one from Chicago, one from Los Angeles) and Thomas J. Stewart, chairman of Services Group of America, a food distributor.

Near the end of the kick-off dinner Stewart, a newcomer, began to crow about the Screaming Eagle he had bought back home for $800 a bottle. No one was impressed. Burgundy lovers view California supercabs as overoaked and overpriced.

Roger Forbes (no relation), a third-time participant, broke the awkward silence. "Anyone with money," said he, "can buy a Napa cabernet or Bordeaux. Burgundy is about being clever." Not quite true. To score the rare bottle, money obviously helps. But to get bottles from a winemaker who produces just 30 cases a year--from Richebourg, say--one must have connections. "So � who do you buy your wine from?" Stewart asked innocently. Forbes swirled his glass, smiled and said nothing.

If you think you could arrange your own high-caliber burgundy orgy, forget it. Franois Faiveley is not going to pop the cork for just anybody on that rare 1923 Corton (it faded after 20 minutes, but, oh my, with dried sweet rose petals--on the nose and in the mouth--delicate as a wisp, it was thrilling). And you wouldn't get to taste the 1949 Le Musigny from the obscure ngociant Camille Giroud, or the 1990 Richebourg from Domaine Gros.

Nor, on your own, would you realize that whites from Domaine Ramonet are probably overpriced ($125 a bottle for 1996 Chassagne Montrachet Premier Cru Boutdriotte), or that you'd be better off buying something like an Hubert Lamy St. Aubin Premier Cru at about $85 less--assuming you have the backbone to drink something with an unflashy appellation.

Local gossip isn't bad, either. You'll find it's highly fashionable in this part of the world to dismiss the advice offered by both the Wine Spectator and Robert M. Parker Jr. Do understand that Wasserman's business is to represent tiny estates in the export market, and that some of these are not rated by Parker. Still, she makes the legitimate point that in 1995 Parker mostly panned the 1993 burgundy vintage, which today is drinking just beautifully, thank you. Critics who rate higher with locals include Coates and Allen Meadows, a former southern California banker who now writes exclusively about burgundy at burghound.com.

The daily routine of the symposium is both simple and luxurious: After breakfast at the hotel, a few steps up the road from Becky's, it's into the van for the morning vineyard romp. One day it was off to the intense Jacques-Frdric Mugnier's pink-petunia-strewn Le Musigny. Back at his domain, he offers a few wines from 2000: Chambolle-Musigny, Les Fues, Les Amoureuses, Bonnes Mares and Le Musigny. The latter is a knockout, its sweet, rosy aroma tempered by a touch of caramel and rosemary.

After a lunch of plump coq au vin, it's nap time. Five o'clock brings Clive's nightly tutored tasting, followed by a Russell-prepared multicourse supper--stuffed veal, perhaps, or duck confit. The guest winemaker of the evening arrives, bearing bottles. By the time Romain Lignier of Morey St. Denis had poured us a 1989 Clos de la Roche, all of us had become fondest friends. Great burgundy can be a great unifier.

Proof? Tom Stewart and Roger Forbes. After Stewart's blooper about Screaming Eagle, he had asked intelligent questions and taken notes. By week's end he could tell an old burgundy from a young one and had drafted a list of wines he wanted. Forbes, won over, directed him to a California buyer. If burgundy could bridge the gap between these two, there's hope for French-American relations.

California-sur- Rhone, LA Times

California-sur-Rhone
Alice Feiring, Special to The Times

When the powerful wine critic Robert M. Parker Jr. first tasted Wells Guthrie's 2000 Copain Wine Cellars wines, he turned up his nose, giving the winemaker's various bottlings scores that ranged from 87 to 89 out of 100 possible points � a sorely disappointing response to Guthrie's second vintage. Worse, Parker showed no interest in giving the neophyte winemaker a second chance by retasting his wines.
Last spring, Guthrie's distributor sought damage control for the next vintage. He brought the riper, lusher 2001 Copains to lunch with Parker in Hagerstown, Md. They dined � and tasted, of course � at the critic's regular haunt, Oregon Grill, where he frequently holds informal tastings.
Parker took notice and, within six months, was sitting with Guthrie in the Copain winery and custom crush facility, a bare-bones outfit in a dumpy Santa Rosa, Calif., industrial park. Parker swirled and spit, talked tannin and high-altitude grape growing and extolled the glories of single-vineyard wines.
The result: Parker rated Guthrie's 2002 Hawks Butte Syrah an attention-getting 96 points in his December 2003 newsletter, proclaiming it Hermitage-like.
And so a new winemaking star is born.
The surprise in this success story is 33-year-old Guthrie's wines. Rather than the high-alcohol fruit bombs everyone associates with Parker's darlings, the Copain wines are, for the most part, elegant, firmly tannic, European-style Syrahs, Pinots and Zinfandels.
Unlike most California winemakers, who fear the hard edge tannins can impart to a wine, Guthrie reveres it. He crushes whole clusters, including the pips and stems; these, he says, "give wine delineation and hem in the overly fruity aspect you can get from most California wines." Serious tannins also are necessary for long aging, a big plus because many California wines don't have great aging potential.
If that weren't enough to make him feel like the lone wolf of the West Coast, Guthrie also picks earlier than many of his peers. He does this in a concerted effort to avoid the high alcohol levels typically associated with California wines, while keeping acidity higher. Last year his grapes came in at around 23 brix (a measure of sugar concentration), while, he says, some neighboring winemakers pushed ripeness to over 30 brix. His 2003 wines are labeled at 13.5% alcohol levels, not low by European standards, but they have ample acidity to balance it.
Seeking the complexity that stressed vines can bring, Guthrie's strategy is to source his wines from high elevations, such as Eaglepoint Ranch in Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, which is at 1,800 feet. He also favors unsung viticultural areas such as Booneville, where he can farm on his own or at least exert some measure of control over the farming.
Although he's proud of his tiny, five-acre vineyard in Sonoma's Moon Valley and wants to purchase more acreage like it, he's thrilled to work with any grapes from edgy, minerally, rock-laden land, such as the Hawks Butte Vineyard in Mendocino's Yorkville Highlands.
He so prizes such grapes that his single-vineyard Copain wines come from as far north as the Walla Walla Valley and as far south as Paso Robles. Priced from $25 to $35, they are wines that Caroline Styne, partner in A.O.C. and Lucques, says work for both fans of European wine and ready-for-the-next-step drinkers of California wine.
The 2001 Arrowhead Mountain Zinfandel (originally priced at $25 but now found at the Wine Commune in Berkeley for $50), squeezed out of a rocky, steep vineyard overlooking the town of Sonoma, has Zin's hallmark delicious brambly fruit, with a good dose of spice-dusted raspberry. But the wine is tempered by its serious structure, and a squeeze of great acidity brings it all into balance.
The 2002 Cailloux & Coccinelle Syrah ($35) also comes from a stony vineyard � on the Oregon side of the Walla Walla Valley. More like Chteauneuf-du-Pape than Cornas, the young wine is full of personality, with a racy animal undercurrent, a fierce, stony, dusty component, touches of violet and a substantial but not in-your-face dose of blackberry.
Syrahs from the Rhne are in fact Guthrie's passion.
On the heels of his first job in the wine business, a low-paying two-year stint as a tasting coordinator for Wine Spectator magazine, Guthrie accepted an apprenticeship in 1997 in the northern Rhne � Syrah central � at the venerable ngociant M. Chapoutier. Chapoutier is an organic and biodynamic operation.
By the time Guthrie returned to California, he had become a devotee of low-intervention wines, organic when possible, biodynamic perhaps. That means no laboratory yeast, no inoculation, no enzyming, no tricks.
When he was back home and looking for work, Helen Turley made him an offer he couldn't refuse: his first California winemaking job. He stayed with her for only one year.
"Helen was very instrumental in encouraging me to start my own label," he says. "It wouldn't have happened without her. She let me use her bin trailer for harvest, she tasted crushed samples of my fruit and gave me her unsolicited opinion. She gave me the Zin vineyard we have today, saying she thought it could be the equal of Jackass Hill or Hayne Vineyard."

Sticking with his own style
Stylistically, however, the two were worlds apart. "I love Helen and her work for Marcassin," he says, "but I learned more about what I didn't want to do with my wine than what I wanted to imitate." He distanced himself from Turley's "hot fruit and oak-driven wines," like Martinelli, "that are just not my style."
Through mutual friends, he found business partner Kevin McQuown, who took a chance and sank his entire million-dollar nest egg from the high-tech industry into Copain.
"It was a big risk putting that much money into a person with two years of experience," says Guthrie. "We're not completely there, but as long as the wine stays, we'll be OK. So far, so good."
Before his Parker anointment, Guthrie liked having enough of a supply for his word-of-mouth fans. His 1999 vintage sold out because of a rave review posted on Robin Garr's Wine Lovers website.
Paul Roberts, wine director for Thomas Keller's restaurants, created special blends of the Copain Syrahs and Pinots for the French Laundry in Napa; they'll also be offered at Per Se, Keller's new restaurant in New York.
With the 2003 vintage, Guthrie's Copain has grown to 3,000 cases. His latest addition is a $15 label called Saisons des Vins, from a biodynamic vineyard in Mendocino's Potter Valley, yet another unglamorous area.
Guthrie continues to draw inspiration from the Rhne. At the 2003 Hospices du Rhne, Thierry Allemand, a renegade Rhne winemaker who works with little or no sulfur (a controversial practice that can make a scarily unstable wine), admired the Eaglepoint and mentioned he was looking to do a project in California. "After a few glasses of wine," Guthrie says, "he asked if I'd be into it."
Starting work with Allemand in California this fall, Guthrie is eager to explore no-sulfur winemaking, a hot topic in today's natural-winemaking circles.
"I am not familiar with the details of the technique. That's why I'm fired up to work with Thierry, who is a bit of a master on it," he says. He notes that it involves leaving carbon dioxide in solution, "like that of a Moscato d'Asti," to keep the wine stable.
"It helps to be in touch with French winemakers to remind me that I'm not just about reviews and press," says Guthrie. "America is just taking baby steps when it comes to wine. We don't know anything."

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

Article licensing and reprint options

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

�

Not Exactly for the Faint of Palate, New York Times

June 9, 2002

Not Exactly for the Faint of Palate
By ROBERT M. PARKER JR. With Alice Feiring

've been sued for all sorts of crazy things. A Beaujolais producer I had never heard of took me to court for not reviewing his wine.

I'm not feigning modesty. I know I'm the most influential wine critic in the world, but to say I can make or break a wine is just not true. In fact, I can think of a number of wines that are very successful that I think are pathetic. There's nothing I can do to keep people from buying them.

I taste 120 wines a week, except when I'm on a tasting trip. Then I taste that much in a day. This might seem like a lot, but not nearly as much as I get credited for. The challenge is to keep all of them straight. I have to think about taste, smell and texture. I have to figure out where the wine is in its evolution and where it's going to go. Then I have to figure out a way that I can use real language, so it has some sort of meaning to readers.

When I taste quantities of high-acid wines, I can feel as if the roots of my teeth are rotting. Other hazards include black teeth stained from rich red wines. I joke that I can tell the quality of a great, concentrated ripe vintage by how stained my hands are. Sometimes even scrubbing won't clean them.

I don't get palate fatigue, which I attribute to drinking up to five liters of water a day. However, when I'm tasting wines high in alcohol and tannin, I can feel as if I've taken head shots from professional boxers.

The most punishing tasting was in Tokyo � sake. I was confronted with about 200 samples. A third of the way through, sweat pouring off my brow, I'm like, "What have I gotten myself into?" I started to rely more on my olfactory sense. If it didn't smell charming, I passed.

Generally, when I'm tasting (and that means spitting), alcohol doesn't affect me. I'm a big guy, and this works in my favor. A while back, I was warned that some of my enemies might set me up and alert police to watch out for me after a tasting, which would be really embarrassing. So I bought one of those Sharper Image digital alcohol-monitoring devices. I check obsessively and have never been over France's 0.05 percent limit.

When on the road, I start at 8 a.m. and go for 12 hours. Lunch saps my energy, so I only grab a sandwich. Dinner is often in my room � a salad and mineral water. When I was in my 30's, I would go out every night. But now? Look, I'm going to be in California for two weeks, and I'm going out for dinner once.

I love hot, spicy food, but it blows my palate, so I avoid it three or four days before I go on a trip. Garlic doesn't really affect me. I can drink a cappuccino in the morning, but not espresso � and no coffee, chocolate or watercress during the day. Watercress is the worst.

ERobertParker.com just started up. It's great to have The Wine Advocate posted there, but I'm having fun on the site's food and wine chat rooms, too.

I don't want to be perceived as some freak in a lab coat tasting wines clinically. In a clinical situation, it's important to remember that wine is a beverage of pleasure. �

Robert M. Parker Jr. is a wine critic and publisher of The Wine Advocate.

Kitchen Wisdom, New York Times

Kitchen Wisdom
By ALICE FEIRING

Published: May 30, 2004

HAVE what may be one of the few remaining kitchen bathtubs in New York. While I think it's a blessing, my mother thinks otherwise. When she first visited me on Elizabeth Street, in its long-lost, pre-chic days, when the neighborhood was still known as Little Italy rather than NoLIta, she had little tolerance for my choice in real estate. Insult on injury, the first object she saw upon entering the apartment was my tub.
Advertisement

"What did I do wrong?'' she demanded. Was I not raised to aspire not only to a doorman but private bathing facilities as well?

In my early days of living in the apartment, my bathtub was pathetic. A shower ring, like a tawdry halo, had been rigged around it, ruining the kitchen's classic vintage lines. The floorboards underneath it were so rotted, all sorts of odd creatures could crawl through.

One of its early uses was as a party go-go cage. Later on, as I got a little less wild and my boyfriend and I braved my landlord's wrath in an effort to make the apartment habitable, we rebuilt the floor beneath it, patched the chipped enamel and presented the tub to the world unapologetically. While my tub is not the most beautiful of its kind - more pig foot than claw foot - it works.

But on holiday weekends like this one, my tub and I go into high gear. For wine tastings or dinner parties, it's indispensable. My dining table is an arm's reach away, and the tub provides ample space for overflow of dishes or for next course storage; no conventional breakfront could be as functional or multifunctional. At the risk of sounding clichd, there's no better ice bucket for a methuselah of Champagne.

Float tea candles and rose petals in the tub, and the look is very shelter magazine. Add fish and it's an aquarium. For one party, my boyfriend surprised me by bringing home twin carp from Chinatown, which I promptly placed in the tub, although the poor things, probably terrified of ending up as gefilte fish, ended up dying before the party's end.

My landlord would love to rip the tub out and replace it with a shower stall, as he did for three-fourths of the apartments in our building. He'd move for a capital-improvement rent increase, which I'd contest, citing service reduction. In winter when he pulls back on the heat, a tub full of extra hot water radiates warmth and humidity. When the hot water goes off, I need walk only a few steps to fill the tub with stove-ready hot water. It's equally useful in steamy weather; a tub full of bracing cold water, especially when we bounce a fan's breeze off it, helps keep the room cool.

A kitchen tub is a perfect example of both form and function. During the blackout last August we turned the tub into a light source by filling it and sinking a couple of waterproof L.E.D. flashlights to the bottom. During the blistering next day, we kept refilling the tub with cold water, floating the perishables in it to keep them from spoiling. We dunked a watermelon, which chilled down refreshingly for our dinner guests; we also took the hot edge off a bottle of Beaujolais.

Oddly enough, not a lot of research exists about the history or culture of the kitchen tub. The tub at the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side is made out of soapstone; not a bathtub per se, this early tub was designed for laundry and for anyone tiny enough to fit inside.

As part of the Tenement House Act of 1901, running water (but not hot water) was required in all tenements. With running water on tap, even if only cold water, home bathing was on the way to becoming a modern city convenience.

THE bathing revolution presuming a hot tub for everyone started 28 years later with the Multiple Dwelling Law of 1929, in which it was written, "Every wash basin, bath, shower, sink and laundry tub shall be provided with an adequate supply of hot and cold water.'' But landlords with an eye on the bottom line were unlikely to go out of their way to install two sets of hot water pipes, so the pipes went to the kitchen and the tub stayed.

Despite the close quarters in which many early 20th-century New Yorkers lived, privacy must have been an issue from early on. The daughter of my late super said that her father didn't get an enamel-clad iron bathtub until around 1940, at which point, she said, "he was old enough to hate bathing in front of the family while his mother was making dinner.''

Her father continued to go nightly to the Y.M.C.A. for his baths, as did most of his friends. Some apartments had privacy screens; other families just made do, but in both cases these tubs became a symbol of primitive early-century living.

In 1969, under Mayor John V. Lindsay, legislation was passed to address the needs of landlords who wanted to renovate these old apartments. Local Law 77 allowed bathtubs to be enclosed as long as there was adequate ventilation. Many tubs were lost in this first rush of renovation.

In the late 70's, I had one of these remodeled apartments on East 87th Street. The tub had been removed, and a shower and a sink as small as a doll house's were squeezed next to the toilet.

When my current landlord took his very first apartment off rent stabilization he was quick to yank out the tub and plunk a shower stall next to the kitchen sink. He was incredulous when he learned that as the new tenants moved in, they ripped out the stall and replaced it with a comfy claw-foot tub. As soon as those tenants moved out, the shower was reinstalled, where it remains.

Unlike my mother, most of my friends are charmed by my kitchen tub. Young children giggle; my 8-year-old niece from the Midwest said she had never seen anything so silly in her whole little life. But if I think back to my first experience with the tub, I realize that I wasn't so cavalier. It was 1982, and I was visiting the friend who later handed over to me the lease on his Elizabeth Street apartment. Submerged in the bubbles, I felt a confusing intimacy while my host made me breakfast.

Today when an out-of-town sleep-over guest sees the bathing facilities, they first think they'll skip the bath, but then enjoy being handed a cup of tea or coffee while immersed. (Of course if they want privacy, I can offer that as well.) But conversation flows freely where water is involved.

After all, next to the bedroom, the kitchen is the most intimate room in the house. In 14 years in my tenement apartment, it never occurred to me that I was missing something.

Alice Feiring is a wine columnist for Time magazine's Generation section.

West County Cider, Redfield

Forgive: Cider really does belongs in the "other" but we don't have an "other" category as yet. But, never the less, this cider is wine worthy. The Maloney's produce their lovely hard ciders in Colrain, Massachusetts and have been putting them on the market since 1984. And though I wish Terry would make this with natural yeast, he makes a very natural cider from a variety of different apples that are really classy.

This is West County Redfield cider. Made from a combo of Redfield--an old apple with some real red flesh and Dabinett. It's got a beautiful blush, as if it was the rose of the cider world. And it's a classic cider for me with a real apple-like aroma, faintly honeysuckle floral. Gently tannic which gives this drink a solid structure. Gently fizzy and just nice and tart on the lingering finish. This has enough of a touch of sweetness to give serve any easy drinking need, as a classy beer replacement or an aperitif, but the tannin gives it the bite you might like for food. Try it with a kasha knish.

Herve Souhaut, Sainte Epine, '03

I was treating myself to three Chandon de Brailles burgs when somehow, this wine slipped into my hands. It's brought in by "Jenny & Francois" a duo I need to know more about who bring in some kick-ass wines into the States. It's beastly expensive at $36 and yes, worth it. But before you think you�re plunking down the big bucks on some no �name appellation, you might want to know that this S. Joseph-like terroir, and from vines quite near the appellation. The wine dances the line of dense and elegant. It's got a chalky, limestone minerality that is much appreciated. Underneath there's a touch of over ripe cherry and pruney plum in a syrah like silk texture and a nice tart acidic finish. So, yes, quite good. Interesting as a novelty, even a delicious wine, and I drank the bottle much too soon. It has a few years in it for sure.