Bringing a really special bottle to a really special restaurant?

WINE TALK
41

Hi Steve - It’s Persimmon with chef Champe Speidel. Great place but the pandemic has kept me away over the past year.

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42

I think it really depends on your goals. If the food is the experience and you’re doing a 10 course tasting or something over several hours at a 2 or 3 Michelin star restaurant, the bottle is likely going to get overshadowed and have some courses that pair ok, some that pair poorly and maybe one that really screams. With large tasting menus, I prefer small pour wine pairings from the somm.

However, if the plan is just to enjoy some good food at a nice restaurant and you’re only going to do a couple of courses, take a special bottle and order around the bottle and enjoy. I’ve had many a bottle of LT or RC at a fancy restaurant and the purpose was to enjoy the wine, so we made food choices accordingly and it was always a great experience.

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43

It looks great! It’s now on my list. Gracias.

44

Woa. basically sums it up exactly how i feel. [cheers.gif]

  1. Yes to bringing great btls to great restaurants w/ great food
  2. Burg/Bubbles works for almost anything i order
  3. Wine pairings for tasting menus are usually meh
  4. People overthink food/wine pairings way too much. Outside of some obvious offensive pairings, gimme great food, gimme a liger, and i’ll really struggle to figure out how they work together!
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45

Burg/champagne combo has worked for pretty much all tasting menus I’ve had (which is a lot). It worked great with the Oriole one which is 20 courses or so. The last time we went we opened 00 Cristal and 97 chave which was nice.

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46

I avoid tasting menus. There are enough great restaurants on this planet where you can choose what you eat. I especially avoid tasting menus with wine pairings.

In general I agree with the idea that the greatest wines are best with simple food and vice-versa. My exception is dinner in a great restaurant on a special occasion. In that scenario, plan every detail in advance, definitely with the help (complicity if it’s a surprise) of the restaurant. Great restaurants are about pleasing the customer and normally will cooperate for a special evening. Especially if you share with the staff and tip lavishly.

Trying to bring a bottle that’s on the list is, IMO, a big no-no.

Dan Kravitz

47

Happy happy birthday to you as well! Too bad you are not closer. It’s always fun to share. Have a wonderful birthday!

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48

I should have been less dogmatic… “seriously consider”, and should defer to those with more experience.

But I have had good pairings at places like Fat Duck (even ignoring the Yquem they comped us with the Botrytis desert) , Oriole, and some local places. Yes they tend to be expensive but offer the variety you can’t do with BYOB unless you are a large party.
I agree with you that a special bottle needs a simpler menu (which does not mean unrefined) , otherwise it’s duelling divas.

49

I gotta echo what Sarah said again. but I will admit that sometimes I BRING that well made but maybe not crazy expensive wine. biggest thing that makes the difference there is the corkage fee. one time that immediately comes to mind is bringing a Patricia Green library wine to The Grey in Savannah. awesome meal and wine, but I dont think the meal would have been served by a DRC or Screagle. The PGC allowed us to share some with the house, drink it when the courses it made sense with, but also explore other wines on the list and not feel bad. would I have brought it if the corkage was $50 though? no way. but we also would have missed out on a great wine, an excited somm, and the chance to send some wine back to Mashama Bailey.

50

My problem is not that the pairings are expensive - they often are, but it’s secondary to the fact that they almost always aren’t very good. And there is almost always something natural, or orange, or beer, or cider or something else “cool” thrown in that I don’t want, even if it’s an inspired pairing.

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51

(1) Fancy steakhouse = 100% chance I’m bringing a bottle or two of Cal Cab or Bordeaux along with me. It feels like it’s almost the purpose of corkage being a thing. Steakhouse wine lists are required by law to be crappy and overpriced. This is an incredibly obvious workaround.

(2) The fancier the restaurant, the more likely I am to do the pairings not because they are usually good (they usually aren’t), but because they are occasionally amazing, and when someone talented actually takes the time and puts them together thoughtfully, the result can be tremendous. I’m reminded of a 2009 visit to Rockpool in Sydney. When we sat down, I asked for a wine list, and it was comically overpriced even by fancy restaurant standards. I noticed that they offered a pairing and asked to speak to the sommelier. The kid (there’s no other word) who came over looked like he was about 14 years old. I asked him to give me some idea of what the pairings were, which he did with great confidence. I asked him if he was the one who put the pairings together, and he said yes, again with confidence bordering on the cocky. And while I don’t remember the wines, I distinctly remember thinking that the pairing sounded cheap and terrible and “this kid is full of crap.” But it was much more affordable than anything off the list, so I ordered the pairing mostly out of spite. Well, this kid was some sort of food/wine savant. Every single one of the pairings made for a marriage that was vastly better than the sum of the two parts. It was an almost Olympic level of talent on display. While the meal was otherwise good, his cheap Aussie Semillons and Cotes-du-Rhones magically turned it into something I remember fondly 12 years later. If I bring my own, there’s no chance of that happening. And if the pairings are bad, it gives me something to bitch about on the car ride home.

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52

Reading through, it’s great to see how the preferences divide.

For me, I often eat tasting menus with other wine folk and we always bring wine. I’ve found those experiences much more enjoyable than when I don’t.

53

Yeah oriole has bordelet cider and vin santo on the wine pairings…

54

I find aged drc and Rousseau seem to pair well with every restaurant I’ve gone to.

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55

Admit it. U had to realllly focus on the food pairing choices tho.

56

A couple of thoughts …

I don’t know what they do currently, but a few years ago The Inn at Little Washington’s policy was to waive corkage on a bottle if you purchased a bottle from their list. This screamed bring some nice bottles to me. We ended up drinking a Champagne - Andre Clouet 1911 - and a CA Chardonnay - one of the Liquid Farm bottlings - off the list along with an '85 Monte Bello and a '93 Mount Eden Pinot Noir. I don’t know how these would have compared to the offered pairings, but both the food and the wine were very memorable.

A group of us ate at TFL last month. We were celebrating a 40th birthday and a 40th wedding anniversary and had brought a 1981 Joseph Swan Pinot Noir and a 1981 Dunn Howell Mountain Cabernet. The sommelier selected most of the wine pairings, but “slotted” these 2 bottles perfectly to accompany dishes in the tasting menu. Both of the bottles we brought showed amazingly well and I think everyone enjoyed these special bottles alongside the incredible food.

57

Love those old Swan Zinfandels. Ad they are pretty versatile with food.

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58

I agree that any one or two wines in a multi course tasting is not going to please you throughout the meal, it is a reason to go a la carte, and do your own matching.

We used to do 11 courses for our OTT BYO lunches, spending a lot of time working the chef on wines pairing with the food. The pairings were often magical, and the chef usually knew not to slip in sugar or vinegar.

So it can be done, but you will need half a dozen wines and a chef who is totally on board.

59

Wow, what are the odds that someone is born on their parents’ wedding day??? [wink.gif]
Those sound like very cool bottles to bring to such an affair. [cheers.gif]
Regards,
Peter

60

For a special family dinner at a local restaurant I brought along some prize well aged Burg and BDX magnums. I researched the menu well ahead of time so that there was no problem with wine-and-food pairing. Besides wanting to share some amazing bottles with dear relatives, the wine list at the restaurant did not have anything really attractive to me. This was a good experience largely because I knew what food was being served and the style of the cook. When I went to TFL however, I did not open any of the bottles I brought as they did not make much sense as complements for the entire menu, and instead I ordered multiple half bottles from their list, which worked out fine.