My wife and I are celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary next weekend and have reservations at a local restaurant here in Philadelphia.
I’m planning on paying the $25 corkage fee and bringing a bottle of 2001 JJ Confuron Romanee St. Vivant to go along with the latter courses of the meal. We’ll probably do the 7 course tasting and order some sparkling wine/white wine off of the list for the earlier courses. If we don’t finish the burg, we’ll bring the rest home with us.
I’m looking for some advice on timing… having the burg hitting its stride when we get to the latter courses of the meal.
This is a relatively young burg…
Should I have the wine poured off into a decanter?
Pour glasses off at the start of the meal and set them aside until we get to the appropriate courses?
Open the wine earlier in the day and try to bring the open bottle to the restaurant (my normal ‘tactic’ when opening younger burgs at home)?
I usually open the wine up an hour before dinner and pour a tiny amount into a glass to see how tight the wine is. You can then recork the wine and bring to dinner. If its tight, perhaps open the bottle and pour a few glasses (as you mention) so the wine in the glass opens over the course of the earlier plates and the wine in the bottle does the same. If the wine is drinking great right out of the bottle probably doesn’t hurt it much to open during the earlier courses and just not pour any glasses or you can just open the bottle right before you want to drink it. I personally try to avoid decanting burgundy with 10+ years of age on it because of how delicate it can be, but that’s probably more to do with my superstitions than real world practicality.
Thanks for the advice. Even though I know it’s probably ok, I too get nervous about decanting a Burgundy with any age on it. I know a lot of people do it though…
You’ve never had any issues bringing an already opened bottle to a restaurant? I’ve never done this… always feel like they’ll get weird about it…
Chris…I open and decant (depending on how much I think it needs; at least to clean it up if it needs it) and then put it back in the bottle and take them to restaurants all the time: white and red Burgs, FWIW.
I doubt something as young as a 2001 would be harmed by decanting. Burgundy might be “delicate”, but it’s not that fragile , IMO.
I decant 99% of my burgs…not to give them air (unless they are young), but to separate from the sediment. Although I know this does not bother a lot of people, I personally do not like wine with sediment in it, and if you are the last to be poured, it is going to happen if you are drinking aged wines. I don’t believe that a simple decant, then serving immediately, will ‘damage’ most wines.
As to your question, I usually will decant a wine at home (if there is sediment) , then place back into the bottle to take to the restaurant. Granted, I am not usually taking 30-40 year old burgs to restaurants…Those wines are enjoyed at home with a quick decant.
This seems to come up once in a while, presumably after the restaurant is hassled for some reason by the PLCB. IIRC one main line restaurant (perhaps Sola?) once had a notice posted stating that they would only allow bottles with the PLCB sticker for BYO. As far as I know, that’s no longer their policy.
I’ll date myself - I recall getting nervous when quizzed about the provenance of some bottles that I took to Django, but it turned out to be genuine interest (or perhaps buttering up the customer).
Congrats on the anniversary Chris - please write up the dinner.
Again, I might be dating myself, but, in the old days, there was kinduva shadow gubmint which was responsible for doling out the liquor licenses in that part of the country - staffed by a bunch of commissars with names like “Tony Soprano” - and they made darned certain that there was an outstanding return on the investment in [which is to say, the issuance of] a license.
So either you played nice with Mr Soprano, or else you’d be on the receiving end of a friendly neighborhood talking-to from your local PLCB compliance officer.
Don’t know anything about Philadelphia restaurants, but in DC it is ok apparently to bring in opened wines (at least I do so all the time). Somehow, I have found that in our offlines, the perfect decanting time is about the time it takes me to get from my office to the restaurant, plus the time we spend talking and drinking whites (with Randy always including Champagne) before getting to the reds. I decant the wines into a carafe, pour it back into the original bottle, put the cork back in, go by subway to the restaurant (all usually about 30-45 minutes) and then sit through the whites (usually 1-2 hours depending on where in the evening’s reds my wine is slotted). Seems to work out fine.
