Great & Unique Wine Service In Miami!

I highly recommend Wine and Cellar Concept; what a unique and great service! Alexander Barrellier knows exactly what you are looking for when it comes to wines and cellar building. Once you tell him what you want; he pinpoints what you are looking for effortlessly. He was born and raised in Paris, France. Wine selection is second nature to him! He studied at L'Ecole Du Vin in Geneva, Switzerland, has a restaurant one hour northwest of Paris, not far from Giverny Gardens, has relatives in the wine business in Bordeaux, but above all, he loves what he does. After you describe what you like or what you are looking for, a wine tasting is done at your home that lasts one to two hours. Usually four to five bottles are opened and tasted, depending on you. Then you decide what you want, place your order and the wines are delivered at no additional cost to you within 48 hours! There is a wide selection of wines from all over the world and for different budgets. He also has wine tastings at restaurants. Next month he will host a French wine tasting at a restaurant in Coral Gables and will be giving wine tasting classes at Alliance Française de Miami. More information about these events and his unique concept can be seen at: www.wineandcellarconcept.com.


Happy Client
Pinecrest, Fla.

One sommelier issues a call to savor

There's time in that wine bottle, he believes -- why the rush?

PICTURE a few people at a table in a restaurant or at home, with sumptuous food on the way, getting ready to pull a cork on a good, 10-year-old bottle of Côtes du Rhône.

First we anticipate the wine (I've included myself in the gathering -- who wouldn't?), bought five years ago but approaching its prime now. Then we pour and take our first smells from the glass. Then the first sips, and then, on our own time, as the evening progresses and the wine relaxes, we might consciously or unconsciously take a dreamy wander through a vineyard on a warm September afternoon in 1998, when the guy who made this wine was tasting grapes and decided it was time to pick.
Scenes such as these, at the dinner table and in the vineyard, are what give wine its reputation for romance. When we put a corkscrew into a cork, our experience is characterized by anticipation, by the sensuality of smells and tastes and the sharing of that sensuality, and by the fantasy of imagining the origins and the life of the bottle.

But if we don't take our time, if we don't consider what we're drinking, if we turn the bottle upside-down and drink the contents as if it's light beer, there aren't any flavors in the world that will make up for what we've lost. And as much as we might hope that pleasures of the dinner table might be exempt from the global rush to quicken, miniaturize and streamline, there is ample evidence to suggest that they need some defending.

To survey the gastronomic concepts that have most powerfully captured American imaginations and curiosities over the last 20 years -- critics' scoring systems, which have encouraged wine drinkers all over the world to consider the differences between 92 and 96 point juice; or the popularity of wine flights, which invite tasters to compare and contrast sips of wine in multiple glasses as though they are examining laboratory specimens -- is to find that we might not be savoring as much as we could be.

The last few years have seen a proliferation of what might best be called wine dispensaries, little shops where patrons purchase single ounces of wine at a time by swiping their credit cards in much the same way that we pay for gasoline. The upside of this presentation is the opportunity to sample from a huge selection of wines, some of them very expensive, without committing to buying more than an ounce. Just like numerical ratings and wine flights, these shops can be great resources, especially for those working in the industry.

But I'm reminded of a remark the French chef Mimi Hebert once made to me while decrying the sudden popularity of menus offering small plates. "If the dish is good," she said, "I don't know what's really happening until the fifth or sixth bite. It takes me that long to figure out all the flavors and textures."

She might just as well have been talking about good wine, which becomes eminently more approachable as it's shown the courtesy of a little patience. From its infancy as a bubbling swamp of fermenting grape juice to its shining moment on a dinner table years later, wine is an ever-evolving living organism, with vulnerabilities, and expressions of maturation, and distinct personal quirks and harmonies.

Complex flavors are what make great food delicious, and the nuance they bring to the dining experience is no different than what great character development does for novels or subtle foreshadowing does for great symphonies. None of these elements is discernible immediately, of course, nor would anyone want them to be. Their very appeal is that appreciating them is a gradually evolving process.

That the same is true for good wine is something that anyone who has ever drunk a full half of a good bottle understands. The experience of that wine after 10 ounces and 40 minutes is entirely different than what it was when the cork came out of the bottle.

I once heard Aubert de Villaine from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in Burgundy say that he thinks of his wines as prisoners until they are let out of their bottles -- living in suspended animation until they are allowed to breathe again.

Here again, one is reminded of all the world's great art forms and the time it takes to appreciate all of them. Who would want to absorb the emotional experience of a great film in 30 seconds or a painting in one glance? What charms us is the duration of the thing, the consideration, the chewing on it.

At a winemaker event last summer at the restaurant where I work, winemaker Bob Lindquist, who has spent the better part of the last 30 years tending the vines and barrels at Qupé Wine Cellars outside Santa Maria, stood before a small gathering of people who had assembled to taste his wines and hear him say a few words about his work. When the chatter subsided to the point that Bob could be heard, he chose not to speak about the flavors of his wines, the qualities of certain vintages or macerations and fermentations. He simply said that when he started making wine in the 1970s, he did so mostly because he was struck by the sanctity of one simple experience: the act of two people drinking a bottle of wine together over dinner. The sharing of the bottle, he said, was for him the holiest part of the process and was the most important motivating factor behind his life's work.

Probably because I work so closely with wine, tasting dozens every week and spending countless hours dissecting flavors and considering values and looking at scores, and probably because I'm something of a romantic, I'll never forget what Bob said that night. There are few pleasures in the world as magical as savoring a great bottle of wine, and all we need to enjoy it is patience and time.

Matthew Straus
Los Angeles Times

Photo
Edouard Layeillon
France

Unfinished Bottle Of Wine

I always try to polish off what is left in a bottle. Serious wine drinkers feel that leaving half a bottle or a little bit of wine is a crime. Many people use gadgets attempting to conserve the elixir of the gods. Restaurants and some households practice this aberration, but it never tastes quite the same. After countless experiments, I've come to the conclusion that the closest to the best solution if you cannot finish off the bottle, is to cork it and refrigerate it.
The humane thing to do is not to leave even a drop!

Wino

French Wine Cellar For Sale

Approximately 600 Bottles
For More Information
Contact:
bacchusforyou@bellsouth.net

Only Drink Bottles That Have Been Opened In Front Of You

Wine is divine and it's quality is a matter of taste; however there are tastes and there are tastes. Drink bottles that have been opened in front of you just in case
the good host is your host.

Bacchus

The Good Host

I got tired of serving my prized wines to guests that did not appreciate their quality. For a long time now, I take the finest wines from my cellar that I want to drink and the guests "think that they are drinking" and do a swicharoo. When they arrive, the bottles have been decanted, a lower grade of wine has been put in the decanters and the really good wines are somewhere else in the house, while the empty bottles are in front of them to look at, hold and admire while they drink the other wine. After we toast, and I have finished my first glass and refilled it in front of them, I go to the other room and pour out what they are having and refill my glass with the good stuff for myself and my wife. Mind you, before they arrived, I had already poured my first glass of the good stuff for myself and have told them that the wine has been breathing and has passed the taste test.
I never drank a drop of what they were having and everyone is happy.
Poetic justice without arguments, who said life is not fair?

The Good Host