Last From the Past I

Sadly since real attention was paid to regular entries there were many meals eaten, many miles traveled and many glasses lifted by us but much of it seems to have passed in a fog, or like juice from a raisin. Of course it had nothing to do with the wine we degusted for you, Dear Reader, that was research! Ah the sacrifices of an aging blogger.

Maybe age is part of the problem as there was a birthday hurdle to pass over. The when’s of this are not important but it was well enjoyed for all its fun. A friend once remarked that she celebrated her birthday all week, we liked that idea and that is rather the way this one went along. With warnings to the faint of heart among you, Loyal Audience, we cannot remember enough of the week’s festivities to comment intelligently on details at this late date!

There was dinner at Corton where Paul Liebrandt, the wonder chef, has landed after his two years of wondering in the wilderness thanks to Drew Nieporent of Myriad Group. Corton is housed in the old and hallowed site of Montrachet (smell a trend here, Avid Reader?) which has been completely and totally redone. The ‘80s minimalism’ of Montrachet has been renovated into an elegantly stark (‘naught’s minimalism’?) riff on the ‘90s open room-open kitchen theme except here the kitchen is viewed through a long rectangular window in which one could see Paul’s head bobbing all night long.

Unfortunately, his “bad boy cuisine” has been tamed, either by his wondering or by the hand-slap at Gilt that sent him on that trek because while the dinner was exquisite the dishes did not challenge as they had when we first stumbled upon him in Papillion on Hudson Street. As Alan Richman said in his GQ review on October 21, 2008, "Everybody has theories as to why … state-of-the-art cooking has failed to catch on in New York, the most fascinating one being that New Yorkers eat out so often that they don’t want to be surprised at dinner, just fed.” We can assume that Paul is answering this cry, tant pis. However, we only whimpered silently as there was one of his signature chicken dishes on the 3-course tasting menu.

Regardless of our selfish need to be challenged and entertained when eating out, we cannot recommend Corton highly enough. It is beautiful, formal without being suffocating, expensive but not too, and there are some of Paul’s evil twists if you know where to look, and that is all without mentioning Pasty Chef Robert Truitt, formerly of the ground-breaking (for NYC) Room 4 Dessert and the internationally groundbreaking elBulli. Now you begin to comprehend the connection between Paul and Robert!

One recommendation prior to your visit, if we may in our role as your humble tester, take some time to review the menus and the wine lists on line before the dinner. Not that they are obtuse or need to be memorized and the servers are lovely about explaining each ingredient included in every dish, but the wine list is a period piece, a list that offers a glimpse into dining in another time. What time? Avant-Crise (AC), before the crisis.

There is a gorgeous panoply of Burgundian wines with a focus, naturally, on Côte-de-Beaune, and Corton in particular but with a reasonably strong sampling of other regions in Burgundy and a broad flank of what the restaurant is calling “French Country” wines. Hmm, go figure. What will be most noticeable on this list to you, Attentive Audience, is the price for wines not yet of age, not drinkable. It’s wine pedophilia, we say!

Don’t misinterpret our critique here. They are not flogging only les enfants, there is a perfectly drinkable Nuits-St-Georges ‘Les Boudots’ Premier Cru, Domaine Leroy, 1996 for $625 and a probably slightly tired Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Domaine Leroy, 1978 for $375… Wait, what is that again? Now we love 1996, it’s one of our favorite years for red Burgundy – thin, elegant, raffiné – and never having tasted a ’78 we’d jump at the chance. But for $625 and $375 respectively?

That is what we mean by the AC period piece. Additionally, there is a Reserve Wine List, where the “wines are housed offsite in a temperature controlled facility and are available with 24 hours notice” according to the website. This list contains one of the most comprehensive lists of fine California wines we have ever perused in NYC; as a novice we’d label it exhaustive. And the prices, for recent vintages, would make that 96 Nuits-St-George blush.

In all fairness, the economics of running a restaurant in a major city like NY or Paris dictate certain realities, and the archaic liquor laws in the US layer on additional costs like so many fine couches de ganache. Additional insights into wine pricing can be seen at another of our blog sites - http://insiderswineclub.blogspot.com/ (Loyal Readers will also recall our earlier columns concerning this outrageous scenario in this blog as well.)

We all have heard of the various levels of mark-ups on wine in our fair city, anywhere from 300 – 500%. And it is correct to assume that if a restaurateur is lucky enough to have his or her own cave à vin, aging a bottle should add 10% annually to the original purchase price. In NYC, there are several locations where wine can be stored in excellent conditions for reasonable prices so we could 'guess-timate' a 20% increase on purchase price annually if storage is in these sites. We wonder, however, if Myriad group does not have its own cellar; if one owned six well reviewed restaurants in NYC, including Nobu and Corton, as well as a wine and spirits shop, Crush, wouldn’t you, Clever Reader, invest in your own wine cellar?

That said, let us take a small pop quiz:
If Drew sells a bottle of Marcassin 'zio tony ranch,' Sonoma Coast, 2004 (a California Chardonnay) for $250 a bottle, how much did he pay for it? (as you sharpen you pencils, Loyal Audience, make the charming musical ticking clock sound here to add suspense…)

Okay, time’s up; put down your pencils and let us check if you were indeed paying attention. If ‘ x ‘ represents the original purchase price upon release from the vineyard in 2006 (yes, yes, that was a tricky part), then ‘ x + 10%x ‘ equals the value of the investment one year later, and ‘ x + 10%x + 10%(x +10%x) ‘ equals the value of the investment at the end of year two when we’ll assume the wine was priced. Further assuming that the sommelier wishes to sell this wine, we can say that the menu price equals (x + 10%x + 10%(x + 10%x)) * 300% , correct? As we know the menu price is $250 working out the value of the algebraic expression gives an original purchase price of about $72 per bottle.

Are you as shocked as I am? Let us try it another way; assume the high end of each range – 20% appreciation and 500% mark-up. That gives us an original purchase price of around $35 per bottle.

We are still a little ‘bottle shocked.’ Maybe we’ll go sit in the cool cellar for a while. ‘Til later…