An inexperienced sommelier ruins a magnum of 1961 Jaboulet Hermitage la Chapelle
Adventures Of A Black Belt Sommelier
A vinous tragedy
Well, welcome back to Adventures of a Black Belt Social Yay. This is a really sad story. You might want to get some Kleenex. In about 1994, my business partner and I were at dinner. There were six of us at dinner at a fabulous restaurant in New York City called Lesvinas. They were great things, it was brilliant. If the Michelin guy had existed in the United States at that time, I think it would have been a three-star restaurant. It was tied and influenced French cuisine with a great wine list and really just excellent service. As I was always the case, I was given the wine list. And I was astonished to see that they had a magnum of a 1961 guy of barbersco on the wine list for $900. I just checked on wine searcher and a bottle of 1961 guy of barbersco today sells for $2,850 bottle, not a magnum. And they also had a magnum of '61 Chab-a-Lay Para Feas' amletage wash-up towel for $900. I just checked on wine searcher and a bottle of that wine today sells online for $5,500. A bottle, not a magnum. And, of course, the Amletage wash-up towel is widely regarded as one of the handful of greatest wines ever made. And, of course, '61 has got a potential guy at first vintage and the '61 barbersco is kind of a legendary wine. My partner, who would be paying the tab, was more of a main guy than a necessarily really sophisticated wine guy. So he really wanted to have the guy of barbersco, but I really, really wanted to have the Amletage wash-up towel for goodness. You know, widely regarded as one of the greatest wines ever made, so we argued about it for a few minutes. Finally, we decided we'd just have both, so we had the '61 guy of barbersco with the main force. And it was magnificent, glorious, incredible, absolutely wonderful, wonderful wine. You know, the actual guy is third deserving of his reputation and his acclaim in the world. And this wine was a very good illustration of his brilliance, the wine was superb and memorable. But then we had this Amletage wash-up towel with the cheat scores. And it was also deserving of his reputation as one of the greatest wines ever made. It was a magical, profound, memorable once in a lifetime bottle of wine, the magnum of '61 Amletage wash-up towel. Or at the same $900 bottle seemed like a lot of money, but not really on a restaurant wine list. I thought both wines were kind of a steal, actually, for magnums of wine of that age and that reputation. And certainly now, in retrospect, it's like a steal. But lastly now, it was a very formal restaurant, so they didn't, after they presented us with the wine, they decanted it, but they kept the bottle and a canner on a sideboard off the side, rather than putting the bottle on the table, or the canner on the table, as most restaurants do. And unfortunately, there's only a, it was his first night on the job, and he got confused. And before I knew what realized what he was doing, he was pouring Saintsbury peanut oil into our glasses of air-metage wash-up towel. We'd probably, at that point, drunk about half the magnum. And what was left was in our glasses. And all of a sudden, we had, instead of '61 air-metage wash-up towel in our glasses, we had probably, I would guess, 1990 Saintsbury peanut oil mixed with air-metage wash-up towel in our glasses. In equal, about equal amounts. The tragedy, of course, is that, well, number one, he ruined our wine. But there can't have been very many magnums, so the air-metage wash-up towel in existence in the world, thirty-three years later, they can't have actually made very many. And most of them would have been drunk in the assuming thirty-three years. So, one of, I'm sure, very few magnum, a very metabolized bottle in 1964. Just got wasted, twelve half of it did. I will say that, to make it up to us, they gave us no charge, a bottle of 1967 Chateau to come with dessert, which was also 900 holes on their wine list, which was a lovely thing to do, an appropriate thing to do. And the chef, Greg Queens, gave us a personal tour of the kitchen in wine cellers after dinner, which didn't happen very often, I don't think. And also the shame is that the dinner was remarkable. I mean, he was a great chef, but the memory is not a remarkable dinner. The memory has been a mixture of, thanks very pune of the iron, sixty-one air-metage wash-up towel, which is something that, I guess, in wine terms, is a tragedy. Very sad, very, very sad woman, the wasting of the magnum of one of the greatest wines of the age. Certainly one of the greatest wines I've ever tasted, and I've tasted a lot of really great wine. Not that the mixture, since very pune of the iron, air-metage wash-up wasn't drinkable, it just wasn't anymore one of the greatest wines ever made. Thanks for tuning in to Adventures of a Black Belt, so may I appreciate your time and interest. Hope to talk to you again soon.