Author: Walter Thames

Most wine lovers remember the time when they really understood just how outstanding a great wine can be. Here’s mine. I was living a poor graduate student’s life in Chapel Hill, working in Durham for a stereo store. Our most expensive audio equipment was made by Macintosh, a venerable component manufacturer in New York that was famous for their quality and prices. A Macintosh sales rep visited and invited us all to a meal after work at the Angus Barn in Durham, a famous steak house still noted for its Chateaubriand and its wine list.

Understand that at the time, I was a casual wine drinker who thought Gallo’s Hearty Burgundy (about $4.50 the half gallon) was pretty good stuff.

Our host, who wouldn’t have poured Gallo for his worst enemy, ordered several bottles of a 1959 Chateau Lafite Rothschild. Knowing he was dealing with very young men with no palette or experience, he explained that we should smell the wine first, drink it carefully and let it remain in the mouth while we savored its multiple flavors, and then drink. We, of course, just threw it down.

I’ll never forget the experience. When the wine passed my throat, a great warmth spread out from my shoulders and down my chest, following the Lafite to my stomach. I could feel my heart enlarging, a great affection spreading out from me to my table mates, to the host, to the waiter and, indeed, to all mankind. I had no idea, no inkling that such nectar could exist and could taste that good, make me feel that fine. We drank more, and in fact, drank it till drunk since our host, on a generous expense account, kept ordering bottle after bottle.

I’ve had Lafite Rothschild a few times since and enjoyed it every time. But I understand that that first experience can never be repeated. Just remembered and treasured. 

Here’s an onion soup memory. I was in Washington, DC many years ago on a cold, windy, rainy February evening. I came in wet from the streets to a downtown hotel restaurant, hungry and chilled. I ordered French onion soup and did not expect much more than something hot and filling.

It was lovely. I didn’t know bread could be immersed and cooked in broth and still retain a crispy texture. I didn’t know broth could be so rich, so strong with beef character and depth. (It could, of course, because the saucier made it from roasted bones, browned vegetables and lots of slow cooking). The cheese on top was, properly, drizzling down the side, crusty on top and runny when pierced with my spoon. Yet it didn’t stick and come to the mouth in a large, single mass. It was wedded to the bread, imparting its complex, earthy taste and complementing the onions, the slow-cooked, caramelized, soothing onions.

I returned to the wet and cold of Washington a happier man, warmed from the inside, ready for whatever the city and the weather had in store. Good soup. Really good soup.

Like most cooks, I suppose, I have a good memory for meals. Today, I remember a salad. This was over 20 years ago on my first trip to Europe. My company, bless their generous hearts, sent me to a sales meeting outside Amsterdam. After a brief performance at the meeting, my wife and I drove down to Brussels and to la Grand-Place, the old square in the center  of town. It was February, cold, snowing lightly and the plaza was beautiful in the late afternoon. We drank a Trappist beer (maybe a Chimay) in a warm pub, explored a bit, found a cheap hotel and started looking for a restaurant. We found one on the Petite rue de Bouchers just off the Grand-Place.

I was primarily interested in a fish stew and the salad was incidental, or so I thought, to the main course. Only this one was special. It was an extremely fresh mix of very tiny leaves of greens topped with gorgeous white pink sliced figs and a sweet, delicious and complex blue cheese. The chef had prepared an amazingly light vinaigrette that did the subtle work of improving and setting off the sweet of the figs and cheese, lifting the flavors of the greens while never really existing as a separate taste. You didn’t taste it – you tasted the result. It was absolutely stunning.

The photo, by the way, is an approximation. I didn’t have my camera for the real salad.

The rest of the meal? I don’t remember. The fish stew, the wine, a dessert, I don’t know. But the salad. Perfection, a peak moment and a wonderful memory.