SNATCHING VICTORY FROM THE JAWS OF...

Went to Webster's Wine Bar tonight, which is far and away my favorite wine bar here in the Third Coast. Drank three bottles, all very different from each other in origin, price, and style.

First rabbit out of the trap was a bottle from Austrian superstar Weingut Prager, their 2005 Weissenkirchen Riesling Smaragd Klaus. This opened with a powerful wave of honeyed green apple followed by a milder wash of sweet green melon, finished off by pointy acidity. Pretty monolithic for the first ten minutes, not that it was a simple wine but all the composite elements played 'king of the mountain' for a while before integrating. Later on this enfant terrible fleshed out, bringing the surprisingly high residual sweetness into check with some beautiful notes of lime zest, white pepper, and talc. I always finish a bottle like this with mixed feelings; yes it is utterly delicious, but I also know that it's still a baby and won't show its best stuff for another ten years. Not that I'm complaining. Just wish they had the '92 on the menu instead.

After this we deliberated awhile. I was tempted as always by Burgundy, my first love in the world of red wine, and there were some alluring choices for Victim Number 2, namely a 1999 Coste-Caumartin Pommard "Les Fremiers" and a Drouhin-Laroze 2002 Gevrey-Chambertin. But after poring over the French section I took a look at New Zealand's reds and saw a producer I knew from my days with Maverick: Valli from Central Otago, Pinot Noir made by a very talented guy named Grant Taylor. He produces several single-vineyard bottlings, of which I have had the 2004 and 2005 Bannockburn and Waitaki Pinots and found them to be profound, elegant wines more evocative of Burgundy than the New World. Not that you'd confuse them with Bonnes Mares, but still, crazy-good wines, right? So I mention my prior experience with Valli to my drinking and dining companion Jimmy, a brainy young lawyer and oenophile, and he gets excited and wants to order it in spite of the fairly hefty $80 price tag. We order the bottle, the 2003 Valli Pinot Noir Bannockburn, waiter eventually returns with it, pours me a sample to smell - wine's not flawed - then pours it around. Sniff, sniff, taste... sniff some more. Flash of bacon fat on the nose and I think hey, this might be pretty cool. Then the typhoon hits, and too late I learn this Pinot Noir is a Starburst with fine wine aspirations. Blueberries, huckleberries, and raspberries. Just a wad of blueberry that hangs on the tongue like a cheap suit, some tannins briefly popping through on the finish but never long enough to stop the fruit parade. I look around to Josh and Jimmy who are seated at opposite ends of the table. Josh is nosing the glass, looking perplexed and, if I may say so, downright bored. Jimmy is nursing his own glass without much enthusiasm. The only effusive response comes from Jimmy's wine-rookie friend who qualified all her judgments earlier in the evening by stating, "I don't like one type of wine better than any other... as long as it's wine, I'll drink it!!" She, of course, was just ga-ga over this Pinot, saying things that I'm sure were well-meant but embarrassed the piss out of me, like: "This wine is just berry fruit from beginning to end!! It never lets up!!" And: "Oh my god, Jimmy, you're right, this DOES taste just like one of those cherry throat lozenges!!!" I just cringed inwardly and swirled my glass, hoping something brilliant would emerge therefrom to save the day. It was not to be. In the end, the wine wasn't unpleasant, just unremarkable and conventionally New World in style: no mineral, no earth, no pizzazz, with a faint but aggressive alcohol heat that assailed the nostrils. I don't know why this should be; looking at vintage reports later I found that 2003 was an unseasonably hot year in New Zealand - as it was nearly everywhere else in the winemaking firmament - but with such a talented winemaker at the helm and a track record of excellence I'm still surprised. Worse was the fact that this was Jimmy's first high-end New Zealand Pinot, and it was one of the most disappointing examples of the category I've tasted in a long time. More's the pity, he had offered beforehand to pony up extra money on this pricey bottle.

We were about knee-deep in our cups at this point, but I felt driven to rectify my error and cocked an eyebrow at Josh as I sounded the table for interest in another bottle. Stout fellow, he knew my state of mind and was quick to agree to one more before adjournment. The others, cowed by his decisive mein, uttered no words of protest. Josh noted this and a thin, cruel smile curled on his lip. He opened his frock coat just wide enough to expose the gleaming butt of a revolver of American manufacture, then placed the incriminating letters on the table. I was vaguely aware of the sound of a cart and four approaching the house in the growing dusk. Even as I fumbled for my sword cane, the room continued to fill with acrid smoke from the deskside lamp, and as the windows dimmed ghastly, spectral images flitted before my eyes, such things as I have never seen in life...

DAMMIT AARON this is the 20th century and you are NOT the protagonist of a Sherlock Holmes story, alright? This is a simple recounting of your evening with friends at the wine bar, and you are not, I repeat NOT on the trail of the dastardly blackmailer who keeps attack lemurs at his country estate and burns rare Indian alkaloids to render his opponents incapable of resistance! Can we get back to the story at hand? Thank you! Now, as you were!

....................................

Sorry about that. Anyway, I am a firm but compassionate despot; also I'm not exactly flush with disposable income right now, so I knew this final bottle had to atone for my earlier failure without laying waste to anyone's bank balance. I settled on a category I know and love: Loire Valley reds. On my last outing at Webster's I drank a bottle of Pierre et Catherine Breton 2005 Bourgueil "Les Galichets," so this time I went for the other economy bottle in the section, the Chateau Gaillard 2005 Saumur, another Cabernet Franc from the central Loire. I make no exaggeration when I say that This. Wine. Saved. The. Night. Washed the jammy taste of shame and defeat right out of my mouth like so much Lysterine. If the Valli was blowsy and aimless, this was all verve and minerally ambition, lean and lithe, with beautifully balanced fruit, tannins, and acid all working towards a common goal: the goal of deliciousness. It was ripe enough to avoid the weediness that so often befalls Cabernet Franc, instead showing lovely crushed violet aromas and flavors of dark fruits, topsoil, and freshly cracked black pepper. Plus just enough of that trademark bretty Loire Cabernet Franc funk to let you know just where in the world is Carmen San Diego. Lovely, and light enough to leave us energized rather than torpid as we departed. A great nightcap to a delightful evening.

Oh, and as I rushed across the lawn to the dog-cart I could hear the pitter-patter of many tiny feet scampering after me. I felt as though my heart would burst from my chest, but ran as I had never run before, spurred on by terror as the Rear Admiral's attack lemurs converged in a pack behind me and began to close the distance. Reaching the dog-cart I turned to stand and fight the prosimian horde, drawing from my evening stick the Burmese sword-cane that had on so many occasions served.... OK!!! OK!!! I'll stop!!! No more Holmes!!!

Jesus, you people are touchy.