Jerry Hey and Alan Weinberg were nice enough to organize a dinner for me in LA. I really liked the intimate feeling of meeting at somebody’s house (in this case Jerry’s) with only 6 persons around the table. But that was probably the only “low-key” part of the evening, as you will see.
We started with appetizers that Alan and Denise had prepared, 2 types of meatballs (from memory chicken and peanuts in a spicy sauce, and pork in a soy sauce), I particularly liked the chicken and peanuts ones, as well as bruschetta (with or w/o Fontina cheese) and pretty much the same but with caramelized onions. Actually I pointed out that the caramelized onions + cheese + bread really reminded me of a “soupe à l’oignon” without soup! 
To go with all this we had a 1991 Philipponnat Clos des Goisses - to be honest I didn’t even know there was any vintage champagne released in 1991, but this one must have been the gem of the vintage with good complexity and enough acidity to lift it up. It paired well with the appetizers.
We then moved on to a flight of white burgs, the first one was a 1986 Ramonet Chassagne Morgeot (served blind, Alan immediately picked the Ramonet mintiness), alongside a 1995 Leflaive Bienvenues Batard. The Ramonet felt incredibly youthful. There was really an opposition of style, the Ramonet being much more “shy” and understated, compared to the bold style of the Leflaive. The Ramonet had more mint and freshness, honey notes, high, cleansing acidity whereas the Leflaive had more structure, beeswax notes, a bit more length too (here I guess was where the GC was really showing for me), maybe a bit less elegance. I generally prefer the style of Leflaive but I have to say the Ramonet was shining, really loved it.
We then had the main course (although it turned out later that it was actually the starter), an incredible piece of salmon from Copper River on a bed of lentils, this was magnificent to say the least. The salmon was really something, amazingly soft and flavorful. And as if that wasn’t perfect enough we had a bottle of 1983 DRC La Tache with it - my first La Tache ever and all I can say is wow wow wow. The nose was simply out of this world for me, I won’t even try to give descriptors for it because I’d need a real-time newsfeeed - the nose kept changing every time I put my nose in the glass. I called it the “chameleon” wine, it was simply impossible to nail. The palate and finish were not on par with the nose but still of superior quality. Needless to say I enjoyed this tremendously. It showed a lot of characteristics from an aged wine (guess it’s not that much of a surprise after more than 25 years) and started to fade a bit in the glass after a few hours but that was still a completely amazing bottle of wine and I would hate to focus on the negative side of such an incredible bottle of wine, that’s really not what it was about - just pure pleasure in a glass. Thanks so much to Alan for introducing me to this.
We also had another great wine with it, the 1988 Leroy RSV - it was quite different, feeling much younger and the fruit was simply so much brighter. It had some funk on the nose at first but that dissipated quite fast (thankfully enough!), after that it was very clean with a very pure expression of the fruit. It was still very primary, dark coloured and although enjoyable right now there’s no doubt it has everything to last for many more years. What I always find interesting with Leroy is that I’m not supposed to like this style on paper, but every time I drink one it’s just so great and likeable. I really enjoyed this, thanks to Jerry for sharing this with us.
At this point we had the actual main course, sausages with a tomato filled with… so many things that I can’t recall them all off the top my head (seriously!) and a moussaka style side. Again a great dish, I simply love veggies when they are cooked like this. The cheese platter was very nice as well, I think the Comté was pretty much everybody’s favorite, although the goat cheeses were also very exciting.
We had the final wine of the evening 1989 Roty Griottes before a few of us were courageous enough to try the dessert - at this point I could barely eat anything more but the carrot cake was too good to resist! The Roty was a bit harder to approach than the Leroy - also still very primary but at this point mostly the structure comes through. It still needs a lot more time, the fruit is very dense, I think we were all expecting to be a bit bothered by the oak but not at all, I thought it had great balance but it’s next to impossible to guess that this wine is already 20 years old. The drinking window on this wine is just huge. It was fun to drink now though, and to get a “sneak preview”.
All in all a perfect evening, the conversation around the table went in all directions, which I loved - we even had a sales talk about the iPhone that would have made the Mac geeks here proud Jerry and his wife visited France so many times, it was great to share stories with them and I’m of course always very happy to meet francophiles - even though I sometime have the weird feeling that they know more about my country than I do - that’s dedication!
Thanks again to Jerry and Alan for making this possible, hopefully we will meet again in France very soon!
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