23

A NIGHT OF MYSTERY AND ROMANCE

‘Kevin Hopko,’ I said, ‘this is Jane Thornton. Jane, Kevin.’

‘Well, well, well,’ said Kevin, shaking Jane’s hand. ‘I have been looking forward to meeting you, Jane.’

‘Likewise,’ Jane said, smiling.

‘And if you’ve been invited to an Options Dinner,’ Kevin continued, ‘our man here obviously has a high regard for your wine knowledge.’

Jane laughed, maybe nervously, and said, ‘I hope so. I’m certainly chuffed to be here.’

‘Well, let’s not get carried away, you two,’ I said. ‘It’s only a dinner.’

Wine Options Dinners were something a group of us ran for a decade or so in the late nineties and the first few years of the new millennium. It was a fun concept. A group of wine retailers or makers, people who worked in the industry but had a true love of the product, would come together for a dinner every three months or so. Occasionally, a consumer from one of our shops, who we rated for their knowledge and their cellar, would be invited along as well.

The night had rules. Only eight people were allowed to attend, with the cast changing depending on who was available that night.

Most importantly, you had to have a pretty good palate and know your wine, which is why it was so enjoyable for me to be able to bring my new partner, Jane, along as a genuine participant. I knew that her knowledge of wine, from her work, was at a level where she could contribute to the evening and fully enjoy it. In the hand not shaking Kevin’s was a bottle of wine wrapped carefully in brown paper, with foil around the capsule so nobody could spy on the cork. Even I didn’t know what it was.

Which was the major point of the evening. All eight attendees would bring a similarly disguised bottle of wine and then we would taste the wines in order, while enjoying the restaurant meal. For each wine, the person who had brought it would ask five questions and it was the other seven attendees’ job, as the blind tasters, to see if they could correctly answer the questions and, by question five, actually identify the wine.

It was a genuine challenge, even for the most professional tasters, but of course the real joy of the evening was in tasting eight seriously good and diverse wines, because nobody brought an everyday wine from the local bottle shop. Well, if they did, it meant they didn’t want to be invited again.

Tonight’s dinner was at The Welcome Hotel in Rozelle, just west of the Sydney CBD in the backstreets of Balmain. It was a gastropub serving excellent food and one of our Options Dinner crew was a friend of the owner which meant they didn’t mind us having BYO wine.

At most Options Dinners, the wine would be reasonably new, sometimes ageing back to ten years old, occasionally even twenty. The point was to showcase different styles and wine making regions. But you really didn’t know what you were getting as corks were popped.

We settled into the evening and it didn’t disappoint.

Frank Dangelico, my old cellar manager from Double Bay and my partner in setting up these Options Nights, stood first and poured us a white wine. Having been to almost all of these dinners, he didn’t muck about. ‘Question one,’ he announced. ‘Northern or Southern Hemisphere?’

We all swirled wine, squinted at it, put our noses to the glass. Frowned. Took a tiny sip.

‘Wow, a lot of intensity,’ said Kevin.

‘Quite high acidity,’ somebody else offered.

‘Frankie, have you let it sit, decanted for a while?’ I asked.

‘I did, John. It’s a wine that is better for it and I wanted you to taste it at its best. But stop avoiding the question! Come on, which hemisphere?’ Frank asked.

We sniffed and tasted again. Most of us agreed Northern Hemisphere. A couple weren’t sure. One guessed Southern.

‘Northern Hemisphere,’ Frank confirmed. ‘In fact, I can tell you that it is French. Question two: the type of grape? Grenache Blanc, Roussanne or Picardan?’

So, that clue told most of us that this wine was almost certainly from the Rhône Valley because these are some of the main grape varieties of that region but, even so, it split the group. I was adamant Grenache Blanc was in there, but Jane was just as sure she could taste Roussanne. The rest of the table was equally unsure, naming several other grapes as well.

‘Well it was a bit of a trick question,’ Frank admitted. ‘All three are in there, plus, yes, Bourboulenc, Clairette Blanche and a few others.’

We all complained that the question wasn’t fair, but only in a good-natured way. This wine really was an excellent one to start with.

‘Question three: more or less than five years old?’

Four were adamant it was a new wine, less than five years old. Three were equally sure it was at least that old.

‘It’s a 1996 vintage,’ Frank confirmed. ‘So, seven years old – which means, yes, you can still get hold of it. Okay, let’s bring it home: which region of France?’

This was a classic Options Dinner question. As I said, Frank’s earlier clue had pointed directly to the Rhône Valley which made me wonder if this was a trick. We had no way of knowing if Frank was trying to lead us down a false trail. Sometimes, the person producing the wine was only interested in seeing if the audience could tell a Bordeaux from a Burgundy but I knew Frank well enough to suspect there was more at play.

We all carefully agreed it was from the Rhône, waiting for an ambush, but no, Frank just smiled at us, before asking: ‘is it from the northern Rhône, southern Rhône or elsewhere?’

The table began to be split. Several people opted for northern Rhône, especially because it was a white wine. A few of us went for the south. We all agreed ‘elsewhere’ was only an option to try and throw us off, and there was much friendly banter between Frank and the table. He gave as good as he got.

It was from the southern Rhone.

‘All right, know-it-alls,’ he said, ‘would anybody like to take a stab at question five and name the wine?’

The table fell silent.

‘I’ll have a go,’ I said. ‘You’ve confirmed it’s from the southern Rhône, where more than 90 per cent of the wine is red, which actually narrows down the options for an excellent white like this. I wonder if it could be a Château Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc?’

‘Well played, John,’ Frank said, bowing slightly. ‘You are indeed correct.’

‘Thanks, Frank,’ I said. ‘And it’s an excellent choice for an Options Dinner. I’ve only tasted it twice before, I think, and not this vintage. What a magnificent white.’

Jane was looking at me incredulously and I leaned in to say quietly, ‘Welcome to an Options Dinner, Jane, where it can be about playing the man and not the wine. We had that wine at Double Bay and Frank often recommended it to customers who wanted something a bit special, so it was an easier guess than it probably looked.’

She laughed. ‘No kidding. Nobody could be that good!’

‘Well, some probably can. There’s a guy called Rudy Kurniawan in LA who apparently has an incredible nose and has started buying serious wines to build a cellar.’

‘He’s young, too,’ said Kevin from across the table. ‘You’d think it would take decades to learn.’

And so the night went on. We had a very fruity French Gewurztraminer, from the Alsace: the 1997 Wolfberger Altenberg de Bergheim. We enjoyed a 1995 Clonakilla Shiraz, which was more of a Shiraz Viognier. A 1991 Cape Mentelle Cabernet was correctly guessed by Kevin, understandably a regular at the dinners. Jane’s bottle turned out to be a delicious 2000 Jasper Hill Nebbiolo, which segued beautifully into wholesaler Ian Hunt’s 1980 Penfolds Bin 80A. Another industry friend, Melissa Parker, surprised us all with an NV Ste Genevieve Texas Red – several diners managed to narrow it down to North American origins, but nobody got the maker or the wine – and there was also a very fine 1992 Kenwood Artist Series Cabernet, from Sonoma.

Kevin produced what we all agreed was the wine of the night, a 1986 Château Cheval Blanc. This was a gorgeously seductive wine from one of the very great châteaux of Bordeaux, and Kevin’s bottle was a brilliant example of the château’s work. Even after six other stand-out mystery wines, we were all blown away.

Leaving me to stand up and say, ‘Well, Kevin, my old friend and partner, as usual, you are a very tough act to follow. But I’ll do my best.’

I had opened and checked my bottle earlier, then replaced the cork to be able to carry it without spilling. Now, on pulling the cork again, I hid it in my pocket immediately, so that nobody could inspect it. I poured the light amber liquid into the eight glasses.

Everybody took a glass and I almost laughed as I watched their faces. The diners peered at the wine, sniffed it, took another look at the glass. A couple were treating their glasses as though they might be combustible, a sense of something dangerous in their hands. I watched as their brains scrambled to process what they were smelling and tasting. All, except possibly for Jane, the only debutante, had registered this was not the usual Options Dinner wine.

I sniffed and tasted as well, just as curious as the diners who had no idea what it was.

‘Northern or Southern Hemisphere?’ I asked.

Northern, everybody agreed. This was not a wine from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa or South America.

I nodded. ‘Correct.’ And then I paused. ‘Pre- or post–World War Two?’

That stopped them, as I knew it would. It is, of course, an absurdly wide time margin, and when would any of us see a wine anywhere near World War Two or possibly before?

The only person not looking astonished was Kevin. I had checked with him the day before whether he was okay with me pulling this stunt. He’d been all for it, and now sat quietly, enjoying the show.

The wine was narrowed down to 1945, and that meant I had everybody’s attention because of course all of these people, some of my closest friends and colleagues in wine, knew where it must be from. They were all aware of the crazy Georgian adventure Kevin and I had tried to pull off a couple of years earlier.

‘Oh, forget the five questions, John,’ said Ian Hunt. ‘For Christ’s sake, just tell us about it!’

‘Fair enough,’ I laughed. ‘It’s a 1945 Crimean Muscat and, yes, it’s one of the bottles that Kevin and I managed to carry out of Tbilisi and back to Australia. Records have it that Tsar Nicholas the Second founded the Massandra Winery in Crimea, just out of Yalta, in the year he was crowned, 1894. This Muscat is one of the winery’s more famous drops, known as Red Stone White Muscat because it’s grown in the vineyards surrounding an enormous limestone monolith known as Red Stone Rock.

‘The fact it’s a 1945 makes it interesting from the point of view that it is younger than when Stalin must have stashed the rest of the wines we saw in Tbilisi. That also makes it less valuable in a way, at least to me and my sense of romance about all those wines that saw so much history, because it would not have come from St Petersburg, like the others, but must have been bought after the war was over.’

‘Do you think it still would have been one of Stalin’s personal wines, John?’ someone asked.

‘Well, I don’t think it can be, being a 1945, which is why I think out of the wines we have left between Kevin and I, it makes a nice candidate to pull the cork and actually share it with some friends,’ I said.

We all toasted Tbilisi, and wine, and great dinners, and friends. The Muscat was fascinating for its origin and was an ideal accompaniment to have with our dessert.

Once the wines were finally finished, we all stood from the table and formed conversational huddles. Jane headed for the bathroom, meaning I found myself alone with Kevin for the first time that night.

‘It goes without saying,’ he said. ‘Jane is wonderful.’

‘Yeah, she really is.’

‘Try not to screw that up,’ he told me.

‘Okay,’ I nodded. ‘Thanks for the sage-ish advice. I’ll take that on board. What did you think of the Muscat? I thought it was surprisingly drinkable.’

‘Yeah, those Crimean wine makers really know their stuff,’ he nodded. ‘I should keep an eye on that market. Even if Georgia was a bust, as the politics move around in Crimea and other ex-Russian states, other bottles might appear.’

‘Well, funny you should mention that,’ I said, keeping my voice low. ‘Guess who I’ve been in touch with?’

Kevin stepped back slightly to look deeply into my face.

‘Harry?’ he finally said. ‘He got back in touch to tell you he’s no longer partners with Neville, is very, very sorry and now has a lead on a hidden cellar in Antarctica that used to belong to Robert Falcon Scott.’

‘Close.’ I said. ‘Actually, surprisingly close. Yet far away.’

‘Hit me,’ Kevin said.

‘I’ve been trading messages with our mate George.’

‘Giorgi Aramhishvili?’

‘The very same.’

Kevin guffawed loudly, a big barking laugh that had others swinging their heads in our direction. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I cannot wait to hear this but it’s a discussion for daylight hours. Why don’t I drop by the shop?’

Winding back home to my place in a taxi, late in the night, Jane said to me, ‘I still can’t quite believe you just uncorked one of the dozen bottles you managed to get out of Georgia.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘You went through so much and had to give up those really valuable bottles, the Yquems and so forth, to Neville and that other guy.’

‘Harry,’ I smiled. ‘He only has a giant Daimler. I thought he needed a good bottle to get by in this world.’

‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘you were only left with a handful of precious bottles for all that endeavour, and then you just drink one of them with some mates! I can’t believe Kevin agreed to it beforehand.’

‘He gets it,’ I shrugged.

‘Gets what?’ she asked. ‘Seriously, I’m curious.’

I watched the dark streets of Sydney glide by as I thought about my answer. Hyde Park and the shrine.

‘Jane, I guess from my point of view, it’s just a bottle of wine. The fact it has that crazy history of how we got hold of it is fun, but I don’t want it sitting in my cellar for the next thirty years. Or, sure, I could sell it for – actually, I don’t know how much – and that would obviously be the smart thing to do, the financially responsible thing to do, but where’s the fun in that? I’d much rather see what the wine tastes like and have some of my friends, who know enough to really and truly appreciate what they’re tasting, enjoy it as well. Did you see their faces? It was a lovely moment. Didn’t it make for a great finale to the evening?’

‘Well, yes, absolutely. It was a fantastic wine to finish with, in every sense of the word.’

I smiled at her. ‘Then there you go. The way I see it, wine is either an investment or to be enjoyed. This one, out of all the wines we brought home, was one to just enjoy. So, we did. Now it’s gone but we have the memory and I suspect everyone there will never forget it. I’m very glad you were there.’

Jane snuggled back into my shoulder and put her hand across my chest. It felt good. ‘You can be a bit strange but certainly very generous,’ she muttered.

‘Merci,’ I said.

‘Just don’t pull a stunt like that with an 1870 bottle of Yquem, okay?’ she said.

I laughed. ‘I can’t promise but I think that would be unlikely.’