A Hedonist in the Cellar

by Jay McInerney

  Like regular bubbly, Blanc de Blancs comes in both vintage bottlings and blends of different years. The vintage to buy, if you choose to spend the money, is ′96. The ′98 and ’99 aren’t quite as rich and powerful. The tête de cuvée superluxury wines are released much later—the current Clos de Mesnil as of spring ′06 is the mind-blowing ′95. Salon’s latest release seems to be the exquisitely complicated ′96. And I have seen both the ′88 and ′90 Ruinart in stores recently—relative bargains at anything near one hundred dollars. But there are also many excellent nonvintage Blanc de Blancs, starting at around thirty dollars.

  So have a blanc Christmas. And a blanc New Year.

  MONK BUSINESS

  The Secrets of Chartreuse

  The history of wine and spirits in Europe is inextricably, some would say excessively, bound up with that of the monastic orders of the Catholic Church; by the end of the Middle Ages, asceticism had become nearly synonymous with dipsomania in the popular imagination. The Cistercian, the Benedictine, and the Carthusian orders all contributed to the preservation and development of viticulture, winemaking, and distillation. Among the most glorious examples of the symbiosis of spirits and the spiritual life is the mysterious elixir created by the Order of Chartreuse, the Carthusians, one of the oldest religious orders in Christianity.

  The order was founded in 1084 by the scholarly ascetic Bruno in the shadow of the Chartreuse Mountains near Grenoble. In 1605, the monks at a Carthusian monastery in Vauvert received the gift of a manuscript titled “An Elixir of Long Life” from the marshal of artillery for King Henry IV. Already ancient when it came into the possession of the monks, this manuscript has a history as eventful as that of the Ark of the Covenant as narrated by George Lucas. The formula contained therein was so complex that it was more than a hundred years before the apothecary at the order’s headquarters in Chartreuse finally unraveled its mysteries.

  The first batch of the medicinal beverage that came to bear the name Chartreuse was created in 1737, and rapidly gained popularity in the region.

  In the wake of the French Revolution, members of religious orders were forced into exile. The Carthusians fled in 1793, after making a copy of the manuscript and entrusting that copy to one monk, who was allowed to remain in the monastery, and the original to a second monk, who was eventually arrested by the authorities and sent to prison in Bordeaux. Miraculously, he was not searched and managed to pass the manuscript along to a supporter, who smuggled it back to Chartreuse to a third monk, who was hiding near the monastery. Convinced that the order was finished, this monk sold the manuscript to a pharmacist in Grenoble, who was unable to understand the complex recipe. When Napoleon issued an order that all medical formulas be sent to the minister of the interior, the pharmacist obliged. The recipe was promptly rejected and sent back to him. When he died, his heirs donated the manuscript to the monks, who had returned to the monastery in 1816.

  The Chartreuse monks might have hoped that history had finally passed them by, until, in 1903, the French government nationalized the distillery, once again expelling the monks, who repaired to Spain with their precious manuscript. They built a new distillery in Tarragona, and another in Marseille, both of which continued to produce the genuine Chartreuse. The government, meanwhile, sold the Chartreuse trademark to a group of distillers, who marketed a beverage that bore no relation to the original, and who went bankrupt in 1929. Shares of the now worthless stock were bought up by friends of the order and presented to the monks, who thereby regained possession of the Chartreuse trademark. No sooner had they returned to their monastery, however, than an avalanche roared down the mountainside and destroyed the distillery. A new distillery was built in nearby Voiron, although the selection and blending of the herbs and botanicals is still performed at the monastery by three monks entrusted with the secret recipe.

  Chartreuse has inspired a cult of secular devotees over the centuries. Its mystique was probably sealed early in the past century with the endorsement of the ultimate host, Jay Gatsby, who, according to his biographer, Nick Carraway, served the drink at his glittering parties on Long Island. I find it stimulating to contemplate this history while passing a glass of Chartreuse under my nose; the survival of the recipe, with its obscure origins, seems nothing short of miraculous. Equally stimulating are the aromas from the glass, which provide endless opportunities for speculation—one of the reasons that Chartreuse is of interest to wine geeks like myself. The most prominent feature is the anise/fennel/licorice note. Dozens of other nuances tease you as they evanesce on the alcoholic vapors. More than 130 varieties of roots and leaves are allegedly involved in Chartreuse’s production (including, according to rumor, wormwood, the active ingredient in absinthe).

  My friend Jim Signorelli, a Chartreuse aficionado and movie director, suggests that it’s enough just to smell the stuff. Hunter S. Thompson, another Chartreuse devotee, presumably swallowed. Alice Waters, also a fan, can probably parse out more of the herbal aromatics than most of us. Three kinds of Chartreuse are currently produced. Green Chartreuse, the standard, was first adapted from the original recipe in 1764 and weighs in at 55 percent alcohol, slightly mellower than the original elixir of life, which was 71 percent. Milder still is yellow Chartreuse, at 40 percent, first distilled in 1838. A small portion of production is selected for extra aging in wood and is sold in reproductions of the nineteenth-century bottles as VEP (Vieillissement Exceptionnellement Prolongó) Chartreuse. Chartreuse benefits from aging. It is possible, especially in France, to find dated bottlings from the distillery in Tarragona, which finally closed in 1989.

  Aficionados ascribe various curative properties to the liqueur, which was originally conceived as a life-prolonging medicine. A French winemaker of my acquaintance insists that a blend of one part green and one part yellow Chartreuse is the ultimate hangover remedy, though I haven’t yet summoned the courage to test this theory.

  TINY BUBBLES

  Artisanal Champagnes

  If you come to my apartment during holiday season, chances are excellent that you will be served a glass of Egly-Ouriet, Larmandier-Bernier, Jacques Selosse, or some other small-grower Champagne. It’s true that my 2005 balance sheet was anything but Cristal-worthy, but, more to the point, these and other small grower-producers are the most exciting trend going in Champagne. If you’re lucky enough to score a table at Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York, you’ll discover that they’re pouring small-grower Champagnes such as Pierre Gimonnet by the glass.

  Here at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it is a principle universally acknowledged among grape nuts that great wine is produced in the vineyard—the product of ripe grapes, low yields, and meticulous viticulture that lets the true personality of the vineyard shine through. Except, of course, in Champagne, where farmers who are paid by the ton grow as much as their poor vines will bear, pick the fruit before it’s ripe, and sell these wan grapes to vast industrial concerns that mix them all together. The Champenois sometimes cite their unique terroir as the reason they make the world’s greatest sparkling wine, and yet in practice they usually ignore the nuances of the concept.

  After spending a day visiting the headquarters of the Grandes Marques Champagne houses in Épernay, it’s refreshing to knock on the door of Francis Egly’s little half-timbered house in the village of Ambonnay, where you literally trip over baby toys in the foyer. Egly’s mother offers cookies while his wife shouts for Francis out the back door. Egly finally turns up, apologizing for the dirt on his hands—he has been in the vineyards.

  I had sought out Egly after an epiphany a few months earlier when the then sommelier at Daniel, Jean Luc Le Dû, handed me a glass of Champagne. “Whoa!” I said. “This is wine!” By which I meant it would be good even without bubbles. And what impressed me when I was tasting with Egly in his spanking-clean new chai was that, unlike many young Champagnes in their prebubbly stage, his tasted like good wine. Like most great artisanal growers elsewhere in the world—though like very few
growers in Champagne—Egly regularly cuts off up to half the fruit from his vines in midsummer to promote the ripening of the rest.

  “When I first started importing these small growers, the people I sold small-domaine Burgundies to had no interest in Champagne,” says David Hinkle of North Berkeley Imports. “If we were going to interest these people, it had to be wine first and Champagne second.” Terry Theise, the self-proclaimed Riesling wacko, who added small-grower Champagnes to his portfolio in 1997, puts it this way: “Champagne, like any other wine, is fascinating to the extent that it’s distinctive.” Sounds obvious to me. But the larger Champagne houses would argue that blending the wines of many different villages will create a sum that is greater than its parts.

  Champagne is a world unto itself, but some of the best producers are those, like Burgundy-obsessed Egly, who look to other regions for inspiration. Pierre Larmandier, of Larmandier-Bernier, worked in Alsace and Burgundy, where he was surprised to learn that small growers were, if anything, more highly regarded than the large negotiants. With minimal intervention in the cellar, Larmandier-Bernier (not to be confused with Guy Larmandier, another excellent domaine) makes subtle, complex, Chardonnay-based Champagnes, including an all-Chardonnay Blanc de Blancs.

  If artisanal Champagne is a movement, Anselme Selosse, also known as “the madman of Avize,” might be regarded as its leader—the Angelo Gaja of Champagne. Selosse farms biodynamically, keeps his yields low, and makes his wine with the goal of expressing the character of his vineyard. Avize is located in the Côte des Blancs, where Chardonnay predominates; like Ambonnay, which is Pinot Noir territory, Avize is one of seventeen villages rated grand cru.

  Jancis Robinson informs me that in this one area at least, we are well ahead of the British: “Americans are lucky to have importers who have scoured the countryside of Champagne in search of these small growers.” At present there are more than 130 small-grower Champagnes imported here. In addition to the aforementioned, my short list includes L. Aubry, Gaston Chiquet, René Geoffrey, Pierre Gimonnet, J. Lassalle, Pierre Moncuit, Alain Robert, Michel Turgy, and Vilmart & Cie.

  These small producers represent less than 2 percent of the domestic market. But they are being noticed. Moët recently launched three single-vineyard Champagnes.

  Smaller isn’t always better. I usually have a bottle of Veuve Clicquot or Perrier-Jouët in my refrigerator, and I happen to be very fond of Krug Grande Cuvée, Bollinger Grande Année, Dom Pérignon, Taittinger Comtes de Champagne, and several other Grandes Marques Champagnes. But this year I’m making more room in my cellar for handcrafted, artisanal Champagnes.

  THE WILD GREEN FAIRY

  Absinthe

  It certainly feels illegal—what with all the paraphernalia, the special glasses and spoons, the hookahlike silver-and-crystal fountain at the center of the table, and the ritual aspects of preparation. I’m getting that anticipatory tingle I used to get when drugs were being readied for consumption. We are sitting in a courtyard in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Our connection is Ted Breaux, a compact, muscular New Orleans native with fashionably spiked hair. Breaux is slowly drizzling water from the fountain into a silver funnel balanced on a crystal glass; the emerald liquid in the glass gradually turns milky with the infusion. We are preparing to drink absinthe.

  Breaux was cruising the French Quarter one afternoon a decade ago when he spotted some absinthe glasses and spoons in the window of Lucullus, an antique shop dedicated to the culinary arts. “I found it fascinating that there was a special type of glassware and paraphernalia,” says Breaux. “It was evidence that the drink existed.” An environmental scientist whose family arrived in New Orleans in 1724, Breaux had been curious about the outlawed liqueur since college, when a fellow chemistry major had mentioned it. “I looked it up in the Merck Index. It says that the ingestion of absinthe can cause hallucinations, convulsions, and death. I wondered, What did people get out of it?” That very week he happened to notice Barnaby Conrad’s Absinthe in a book catalog. He ordered the book, corresponded with the author, and sought out other researchers. An obsession was being born.

  Breaux would hardly be the first to become obsessed by the so-called Green Fairy. Some of the greatest artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came under its spell; writers like Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Oscar Wilde—a roll call of the premodern decadents—not only drank it but wrote about le Fée Verte. Painters like Manet, van Gogh, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec were devotees of the cult. Absinthe was to Symbolism and Postimpressionism what heroin was to Seattle grunge. Absinthe cultists ascribed mystical, meditative, and even halluncinatory powers to their beverage of choice; opponents saw it as an insidious poison. Both sides agreed that it was something more than just another alcoholic beverage. In 1905, when a Swiss farmer killed his wife and children, allegedly under the influence of absinthe, the calls for prohibiton swelled. Within a decade it was banned throughout Europe and the United States.

  Outlaw status has only enhanced the mystique of absinthe over the years. Ted Breaux, for one, was haunted by the myth. After discovering a recipe in an old French book on the subject, he decided to make a batch. “I made it and tried it and I was underwhelmed,” he says, sitting in the courtyard behind Lucullus. “It just didn’t taste like something that could be that popular. But then a friend of mine popped up with a bottle of vintage Edouard Pernod absinthe.” It was as if an amateur paleontologist had suddenly gotten his hands on a live triceratops. “Finally, I could taste it.” At almost the same time, he came across a second bottle, through his friends at Lucullus. After he tasted this one too, he says, “I could definitely see why it was so popular. But the vintage samples were so different from what I made that I got discouraged.” Not for long, however; he had the old samples analyzed in a French lab and started experimenting again. In the meantime, new European Union regulations eventually superseded the old national laws banning absinthe. Through a friend, Breaux got into contact with a Frenchman who’d bought an old distillery in the Loire with original absinthe stills, from which he now produces some three thousand bottles a year.

  Absinthe is made by distilling herbs in spirits and then distilling the infused spirits again. The color of a properly made absinthe comes from chlorophyll. Breaux’s is far more complex and refined than the other two alleged absinthes I’ve tried—a little bitter, with a strong anise flavor in the middle and a touch of fennel and a bit of mint toward the end. “Some of the herbs are excitatory and some are sedative,” Breaux says. “You combine the two and it’s kind of like a mild herbal speedball.”

  This pretty well describes the sensation I am experiencing after a couple of glasses of Breaux’s absinthe, which starts out at 140 proof, before being diluted with water. I feel completely alert and slightly buzzed at the same time, floating a little above the company even as I am thoroughly present and engaged. My scalp and fingertips are tingling, whether because of the slight November chill or the liqueur, I can’t be certain. I notice for the first time the blond flecks in Breaux’s hair, which look like tiny flames. I feel that something wonderful is surely about to happen. If anything, this state I’m in reminds me of sitting back after doing a couple of lines and a shot of tequila. But it’s somehow different. Breaux is talking about thujone, the chemical compound found in the absinthe plant that is suspected of being the active and potentially dangerous compound in the drink … about how cheap imitation absinthe was responsible for ruining the reputation of the real thing … about how his house was destroyed in the flooding after Katrina.

  Sometime later we float over to the Old Absinthe House, the famous if somewhat shabby bar on Bourbon Street, which specialized in absinthe cocktails before Prohibition. Still later we will drive through the desolate streets of flood-ravaged neighborhoods outside the Quarter. But before that, for a perfect hour or so, I am under the spell of the Green Fairy, listening with keen attention to Breaux and listening to myself talking with unusual precision and grace
, or at least so it seemed to me then.

  WHAT I DRANK ON MY

  FORTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY

  My friend Jancis Robinson, who has celebrated several birthdays with me, asked me to send a report on my forty-eighth, along with wine notes, to be posted on her Web site.

  Dear Jancis:

  Here’s what I drank for my birthday last week. Of course I went through eighteen different plans, several of which involved my cooking. However, when the guest list reached nine I decided to leave the cooking to the pros. I didn’t, however, want to leave the wine to the pros—i.e., I didn’t want to pay a 200 or 300 percent markup on wines that probably wouldn’t be mature anyway—which is the position we find ourselves in when we dine fashionably in New York. So I picked Canton, one of the few places here that I knew wouldn’t mind my lugging in a case of wine, plus Riedel glasses. (Actually, I had thirteen bottles, this being my birth date and lucky number.) The cuisine was a challenge—Cantonese. Not your average oenophile’s first choice. But I like a challenge.

  I started us off with a magnum of 1990 Dom Pérignon, a great vintage for them that has been drinking nicely since its release. Even in this big vintage it’s got a feminine delicacy, especially when you compare it to something like Bollinger. Unfortunately, I compared it to 1990 Veuve Clicquot rosé, which seemed a little clumsy following the DP but which came into its own with the Cantonese lobster—very yeasty, which is a good thing with soy sauce, though one bottle was slightly corked. In retrospect, a Chard-based bubbly would have been better. Next we had the ′99 Zind-Humbrecht Clos Hauserer Riesling, a beauty: appley, very fat for a Riesling, with a long, sweet finish—definite residual sugar. Near-perfect match for the squab wrapped in lettuce leaf—this dish having a fair amount of sugar itself.