by Richard Foss
One of the allures of wine dinners is that attendees experience a meal exactly as the chef and winemaker believe it should be. Those experts collaborate to show off the quality of their own and each other’s products and ideas. The result is a thoughtful culinary experience in which each course flows from one to the other, a sequence that can be similar to a theatrical performance. Commentary along the way can range from storytelling to practical hints about cooking, drinking, and the thought processes of the people doing the pairing, depending on the personalities of the creators.
While all wine dinners have some elements in common, the details can vary widely. Some chefs stay fairly close to their regular menu offerings, while others create ambitious one-off items, and some winemakers bring rare and unusual wines while others stick with items that are widely available. I attended four events at restaurants with widely different styles and price points, and interviewed some people along the way.
The classic experience: Pacific Standard Prime, Redondo Beach
Pacific Standard Prime hosts wine dinners in a classic format: a course is served, the winemaker and restaurateur talk about what is being served and the logic behind the pairings with each course. Tom Gamble of Napa’s Gamble Family Vineyard is an easygoing speaker at the dinner featuring his wines. He conveys the attitude of a farmer who specializes in making the best of the grapes he grows rather than maintaining a haughty distance.
“Wine dinners used to be more formal, nothing against them, it just wasn’t my style. That crowd was harder to get to know, so I had to get personable, put down the microphone, and learn how to circulate and break down barriers. Releasing my inner ham, as my wife has said.”
Gamble’s wines were paired with food by chef Christine Brown. The first course was a major curveball: a slice of intensely flavored duck breast paired with Sauvignon Blanc. Wines made with this grape are usually served young with seafood or with light, spicy dishes. But this worked because Gamble ages this bottling in oak barrels to get an uncharacteristic boldness of flavor without sacrificing the overtones of peach and apricot. It’s like no Sauvignon Blanc anyone present had experienced, and there are exclamations around the packed restaurant as diners grapple with the unlikely success.
I asked Tom whether most diners come with an analytical attitude, taking notes on each course so they could replicate them at home, or whether they were living in the moment.
“Note taking is usually minimal. I sum it up as good food, good wine enjoyed over several hours with good friends and conversation. The mixture of all of those makes for a very enjoyable experience. They’re going to remember that more than they will the detail of the wines. But if somebody wants to pull me aside and talk about the technicalities of the wine, we can geek out to our heart’s content.”
After his commentary Tom does circulate from table to table, and some people do ask highly technical details. For every person who does, there are eight or nine who are just living in the moment, enjoying a menu that plays to the strengths of this kitchen: expertise in red meats and appropriate sauces along with creative use of farmer’s market vegetables. Chef Christine, who is notoriously shy, does come out to talk a bit about her process pairing the wines, but seems happy to leave most of the talking to others. As the evening draws to a close, Gamble is still happily hanging out in the bar, talking about wine with enthusiasts who hang on every word.
The intimate experience: The Rex Steakhouse, Redondo Beach
The Rex is a few blocks away from PSP, but the styles of their dinners could hardly be more different. Rather than filling the restaurant, 14 people sit around a massive burlwood table in a room with glass walls to the south that give a view of Riviera Village and Palos Verdes.
At the dinner featuring Fess Parker wines, there is a distinct difference in style between winery representative Jeff Klein and the restaurant’s chef Walter Nunez. Klein is a natural educator, effortlessly segueing between a discourse on the choices a winemaker makes at each stage of the process, an explanation of the ecology of the Central Coast, and how the microclimates affect the grapes. This may seem like a daunting volume of information, but he made it interesting enough to be comprehensible.
By contrast, Nunez seems to work largely from intuition, and humbly gives credit to the winemaker for creating the things that inspire his thought processes.
“I’d say the wine does most of the work. If you start with a good product, you don’t have to do much that’s fancy – find a flavor in your natural ingredients that pairs with the character of the wine, and just let it happen. Everything we do here is over woodfire, so I build from that and try to stay within the boundaries that each wine sets. Most of the time I just make things that I know I’ll enjoy because the wine reminds me of those flavors.”
The three dishes are relatively simple classics: clams casino, a New York strip with peppercorn sauce, and a New Orleans chocolate bread pudding that is marvelous with a Petite Sirah. A fourth stands out as modern, the grilled octopus over carrot puree with toasted almonds and a salsa verde. It’s a beautiful presentation and exactly the right pairing with a Pinot Noir, and a sign that the chef knows when to push the boundaries just a bit.
The luxury experience: Mar’Sel at Terranea, Rancho Palos Verdes
Boundaries aren’t even a thing at Mar’Sel at Terranea, which presents an over-the-top evening at a dinner with Daou Vineyards. Things begin at sunset with passed hors d’oeuvres and Champagne on a terrace with a view of Catalina, after which guests take seats at softly lit tables. Winemaker Jose Santos explains his processes in sufficient detail to lose the less sophisticated oenophiles in the crowd, but intersperses his technical discourse with enough stories to keep everyone involved. The tale of the Daou brothers, who fled the Lebanese civil war in 1975 to become winemakers in Bordeaux, and then searched all over California to find a place with the same soil and climate, was inspiring. Santos told it as though he was there for every moment.
Still, the focus on the evening is on the gustatory experience. Michelin star Mar’Sel chef Fabio Ugoletti has come up with some astonishing pairings. Things begin with a cauliflower and white chocolate soup with orange segments, caviar, and chive oil, and who in their wildest dreams came up with a combination like that? Not only is it remarkable on its own, it pairs superbly with a Santa Barbara County Chardonnay. There are five courses served over three hours, each remarkable for their daring and success. At the end of the evening guests are welcomed to purchase Daou’s rare library wines that can run upwards of $400 a bottle. That’s not quite within my price range, but I gazed wistfully at the list and took it home in case my circumstances change.
The democratized experience: Fishbar, Manhattan Beach
A wine dinner at Terranea will run about $350 per person, while the experience at Fishbar is around a third of that amount. You might guess that things would be more informal, and you’d be right. Fishbar is the only place I know that presents wine dinners in an environment with TV’s tuned to sports and funny videos. (At least they are supposed to be funny. They mostly look cruel.) The sound is off, thankfully, but the buzz of the place and the architecture of tables at various heights would make a conventional wine dinner difficult. That’s fine because that’s not what they do here. There are multiple seatings, and the winery representatives move from table to table to explain the wines and answer questions. Casleah Herwaldt of Regal Wine Company had an interesting assessment of how this style compares with others.
“Going from table to table is nice, because everyone moves at their own pace for each course. Sometimes when you have a large group dinner, it can feel either rushed or too slow. I do like the large group ones, because then it’s more like a presentation and everybody’s enjoying it together. There’s a shared experience, everyone quiet and digesting the information and then discussing it at their tables.”
There are three representatives at the dinner, so everyone gets some face time with experts, who this evening are explaining wines from Matanzas Creek in Sonoma County. There are four courses, and seafood is on the menu, as might be expected at Fishbar. But there is a surprise as complete as the one at PSP Steak: a crostini of Humboldt Fog cheese paired with a sparkling brut rose. Along with the toasted bread and cheese there is a layer of arugula and pear chutney with a honey drizzle. The pear and honey floral notes and earthy, funky cheese meld perfectly with the pink wine. It’s an out of the box pairing if ever there was one, and it works.
Asked about her process for setting the menu, Executive Chef Jessica Jordan says, “I hadn’t done a sparkling rose at a wine dinner yet, so I was super excited to do that as the first course. I looked at what else was in their portfolio, and figured out what would work sequentially. Once I picked the wines, I took them home, sat with them, drank them, and thought about what I would like to eat with them. I conceptualize the menu after the wine.”
In this case, the courses after the crostini were a spinach and smoked salmon salad with goat cheese, pickled onion, and pistachio paired with a Sauvignon Blanc; scallops over whipped potatoes with asparagus and dill; and a molten chocolate cake with blackberry compote paired with a Merlot. Except for the salad, nothing like these items are on Fishbar’s regular menu, and I had to ask why it’s worth it to put so much effort into something served once at a modestly priced event.
“Sometimes things that are successful at the wine dinner will turn into a seasonal special, which will then end up as a feature on our regular menu. It’s like R&D. I get feedback, servers get feedback, customers say, ‘Oh my gosh, we love this one,’ and we pay attention.”
As with other establishments, these dinners are important for more than just what happens the night that dinner is served. There are fans of various wineries who probably would never find this restaurant if a wine dinner wasn’t hosted there. By the same token, each winery knows their products are now in the glasses of restaurant regulars who appreciate wine in general, but might not be familiar with their wines. It’s a win for all concerned, especially the people at those tables who appreciate the artistry of the pairings and have their minds open to new possibilities.
There are many other worthy choices in the South Bay that host wine dinners. Among these are Radici in Hermosa, Primo Italia in Torrance, Fleming’s and Fogo de Chao in El Segundo, and Baleen and The Chart House in Redondo. Each brings their own ideas and character to the quest for the perfect pairing. ER
