Amoré del Amarone

Before you read the rest of this, you have to accept one thing: a fact; a reality. My friend Chris* is not normal. He can be the biggest ass there is. He is one of those people who never went to university because, well, he didn't need to. Not in his mind. Which is a pretty well built piece of equipment. His mind, that is. It is able to generate and rely upon, and even survive under, a regime of logic that pretty well only he subscribes to.

Chris is, well, he's Chris. And Chris is pretty happy with that. Ask him.

Chris also has this certain sense of time. As in some time. As in some time we are all going to die, so let's get on with living, OK? Because he values his time as if every day was his last (and sometimes those of us who know him probably wish that day were) he lives his life at certain extremes, despite the fact that his funds to live on are certainly not at an extreme.

Chris likes a lot of the finer things in life. He likes jazz. Specifically Miles Davis, but he'll listen to anyone else who plays with "half a brain". He loves Tom Waits. He also likes almost any music made by someone who has something true to say, and a gift to share. There was a lot of Randy Newman playing last night. In those loves, he and I share some common prejudice. We also both want to be able to listen to our music in peace, and to hear as much of what was actually played as we can. We both spend a lot of money on stereo equipment no one else would want. If you stole my stereo, all you'd get would be a hernia, and maybe (hopefully?) a near lethal shock as a capacitor discharged into your near-corpse long after you unplugged it. I'd come home and find you on my floor, probably having fouled your pants, and call the cops. I might take out a 5 iron for a bit first, though... Anyway, I digress. We were talking about Chris. He would not use a 5 iron, as he does not play golf. Let's just say, they would never find the body, and leave it at that. OK?

This is all a lead in to my night of wine drinking (heck, it was not tasting - I never spit one millilitre) last night. At Chris' place.

You see, Chris also likes to drink wine. And in true Chris fashion, he does not normally waste a lot of time putting bad wine into his mouth. Usually only when I am around, and that's because I almost force him to. He is also a believer in the reality that drinking is best done with friends. Drinking a great bottle of wine by yourself is like being abducted by aliens. It may be an amazing experience, but no-one will really believe you, and they will think you are a bit off.

Chris is on vacation this week. So he stayed home and spent most of yesterday getting ready for four of us to arrive at 7:00 pm. Waiting for us was a bottle of 1998 Henriot Le Millesieme Champagne. A Blanc de Blanc, I think. This wine is totally not for fans of the straightforward, down the middle Champagnes from Pol Roger or Moet and the like. It is complex, acidic, with some bitterness and anger. A terribly complex thing that with the 12 years may only have been more angry at being woken up.

In time, we moved to the table, set with four wines, poured an hour earlier, waiting for us to come and play.

This was no guessing game, nor was it an open book. They were not in any order, so we did not know which wine was which. We were given a sheet with all four wines named, complete with reviews of each as published by The Wine Spectator, America's top selling wine publication, and all the reviews done by James Suckling; and reviews from The Wine Advisor, Robert Parker's "organ" (to abuse Frank Magazine's term). The point of this was to taste the wines ourselves, and then decide if the reviews were of value, and if one reviewer was of more value that the other.

The wines were three well respected Pauillacs - all Chateau Batailley - 96, 99 and 03, and one great Margaux, the 1995 Chateau Palmer. My quick run through them suggested that one of these was not like the other, and that would either be the Palmer, or the 03 wine. I ended up wrong in guessing the Palmer (which in my defence I have never had before). But, in respect of the goal of the exercise, I can say with as much certainty as four samples allow, that James Suckling makes notes that are a lot like mine, and Robert Parker is somewhere out on another planet, again, in comparison to my own observations.

The Palmer opened up into an amazing Bordeaux. A great wine, and one that I'll remember for some time. The 1996 Battailley was also very very good.

That was good fun. I have never been a big "Speculator" fan, but perhaps I'll pay a wee bit more attention to Suckling's opinions in the future. If I ever buy Bordeaux again after my recent trip to Burgundy, that is.

Chris, meanwhile, has started hinting that there is more. As in a LOT more to come.

And he is not kidding. I had jokingly predicted that it would be the perfect time for a Quintarelli Amarone, as I knew he owned at least one. But that is just what he brought up next. A 1995 version.

This is one of those "life wines" - maybe something I'll never get to try again, and certainly never had until last night. And as our luck would have it on this evening, the Portuguese menace was nowhere to be found. The wine was clean, clear and beautiful. Some hints of higher alcohols, as to be expected, but underneath the brooding monster of a wine, with all the nuances and depth that this is so famous for. It sells now for about $400 US. Chris supplied a "simple" tray of chocolate, blackberries and strawberries to have with this wine. Perfect: if you know the wine, you understand.

Of course thee was a small problem - the wine is so massive it needed some time to really open up and show its true form. So Chris, being Chris, popped down into his cellar and came back with something worthy of the evening, to while away our time with while waiting for the Amarone to open up. Oh, what's this? Oh, it's just a 1998 Bouchard Pere et Fils Le Corton. Having just been right there, about 200 m from the grapes used to make this wine, I decided that this was an acceptable waiting wine.

This wine was so replete with mushroom in the nose, it was hard not to order out for a mushroom pizza from Salvatores. And then all the classic Corton character kept coming out as it opened up. A powerful Pinot. I know that may be hard for some to get their head around, but this terroir is not for the faint of heart. We were left wondering which wine was indeed the better, the one we were waiting for, or the one we were drinking.

We drank the wines, ate the chocolate, listened to Randy Newman and laughed. A lot.

Somewhere, the Amarone was gone, and so was the Corton. But then, like magic, the nightcap appeared. A wine I introduced Chris to some time ago. A great wine. A thing of beauty. Worth every penny and pure heaven in a glass. If you like figs and dry fruit, anyway. One person at the table had never had it before. We almost lost him to a sugar induced coma



A great way to end the evening. Over five hours I'd had about 7, maybe 8 glasses of wine, and I was happy, but not stupid. I was up at seven this morning, answering the call of the jackhammer right outside my window.

Oh, and one final thing about Chris - he is generous to a fault. My kind of fault.


* Name made up to protect the guilty