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Posted by on Jun 17, 2014 in Blog, Personal, Wine Reviews, World Series of Poker | 3 comments

Drinking Brown Wine from a $5,000 Bottle

 

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Anonymous Eccentric is such a wine tease.

Yesterday afternoon, she called me and announced a rather ostentatious master plan to crack open a classic bottle of vintage 1982 Chateau Margaux, one of the world’s premium Grand Cru’s.  One bottle retails for something in the neighborhood of $5,000,  According to my bad math that comes down to $150 a guzzle.

 

Only the V-VIPs were invited to join this festive occasion organized for no apparent purpose whatsoever other than celebrating self-indulgence and pompous grandiosity.  Naturally, I made the haughty invite list, along with a few uber high-level casino executives, their names unmentionable until their deaths or someone offers me a six-figure book advance.

Now you have to understand the modus operandi of Anonymous Eccentric.  She owns her own airplane but doesn’t fly it.  She plays the Cascata golf course, otherwise known as the outdoor headquarters of the Nevada Republican Party, and thinks nothing at all of tipping some high-school-aged bag boy in hundred dollar bills after a sun-baked round of chasing balls up the side of a mountain.  Once, she even wanted to buy a $35,000 mattress (that’s no typo) which was the advertised “on-sale” price at Nordstrom’s.  That’s when I posted what was meant to be a rhetorical question — “what idiot would pay $35,000 for a mattress?”

Answer:  Anonymous Eccentric.

I’ve never cocktail partied around with the Andy Warhol-Dominik Dunne-George Plimpton crowd, but she’s the closest thing we got to Park Avenue-style snobbery living here in Las Vegas.  I write this with the dearest affections, Anonymous Eccentric.  Coming soon shall be the time when I’ll soliciting donations again.  One must talk nice now for such future occasions.

So, as I was getting ready to drive over to Caesars Palace for this extraordinary opportunity to share in the crass consumption, my cell phone rang.  Anonymous Eccentric had arranged for a private sommelier to decanter the rare wine a full two hours in advance, into a crystal fluted vase.  By the way, it’s vAAAs.  Not vAYEse.  Some people have no fucking class.

However, there was a serious problem.

The wine was colored brown.  As in oil change brown.  Penzoil.

“It looks like our wine tasting is canceled,” advised Anonymous Eccentric by phone.  “We’re going to have to throw it out.”

“Whooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!  Wait!  Hold on!  Don’t you dare throw it out!

No one’s going to pour a $5,000 bottle of wine down some drain of dishwater.  Not on my watch.  No way.  I told Anonymous Eccentric to hold the vAAAse, and I’d be over there in ten minutes to grab the runt kitten borne of toasted oak.

It was rush hour, but I still make it in six.  Only ran one red light and nudged two pedestrians.

Upon my arrival, I was ushered into a small backroom where many of the very best wines in Las Vegas were stored away for whatever the next celebration or expense account warranted ordering.  A lovely lady named Patty Beck (affixed with “DWS AIWS” to the end of her name, which I take it means something really important) introduced herself to me.  She’s the house sommelier.  I wondered what merited such deference?  Had she confused me with Robert Parker?  Yeah, I can see that.  I’d intended to come to the tasting, belt down two sips of wine worth about $300, and then head back to the Rio, sapping the poor sod footing the hefty bill (thanks to Anonymous Eccentric), but far richer for the luxury of having imbibed in one of the trade’s grandest tastings.  Like Beluga caviar — it matters not if you like caviar or not.  You try it once you hear the price.  End of discussion.

I discovered that Madam Beck wasn’t merely a steward of fine wine, she was a tour guide-ess of passions.  And that passion was for wine and food.  That’s about when Anonymous Eccentric came in and stepped forward with her $5,00o sludge which was placed upon the wooden counter within the small private alcove that the masses weren’t allowed to see.  The room even had shades and they were drawn shut to keep out the riff-raff.  With Anonymous Eccentric was life’s partner Dean, and two of her closest friends.  I thought I heard her say the friends were from Utah, but that couldn’t have been right.

Anyway, the decantered wine was displayed for all to see:

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And that’s when I wondered — what happens when an expensive bottle of wine goes bad?

Who gets the musical chair whisked away?

Who ends up eating the chicken shit sandwich?

Well, I wasn’t about to get too nosy about any of this.  That would be one helluva question asked only by a schnook.

So, of course, I asked it.  Apparently, the house loses the chair and is left standing to eat the shit sandwich.  Is there insurance on that sort of thing?  All I knew was — I still wanted to drink from that $5,000 oil pan.  A bottle of wine worth more than most people’s car can’t really be THAT bad, can it?  How awful can a corked wine be?  Isn’t this experience sort of like test driving a Ferrari with a blown cylinder?  Or a ripped car seat?  Hell, strap me in, fire up the engine, and let’s roll.

Let the pouring begin!

Madam Beck poured me vigorous taste into a stemmed glass nest.  Most of the sediment had finally settled by then, so the wine actually tasted acceptable.  Think of a milky Rhone.  Barnyard flavors.  Musty mildew perhaps.  However, when your frame of reference is a $55 bottle of Stags Leap, I thought the stuff tasted pretty darn good.

The others didn’t agree.  Snobs.  They snubbed the wine, leaving the posh pedigree as a homeless orphan.  Nowhere to go, nowhere to turn, no one to love it.  Well, Daddy Dalla was all too pleased to adopt the lavender leper as his own.

Before I snatched the decanter away about to run off with the liquid plunder for my own selfish pleasure, Madam Beck first offered us a consolation wine tasting.  Since we’d all been terribly inconvenienced by the rather embarrassing episode, the sommelier popped the cork on a lovely bottle of Petrus, perfectly ripe and zesty for the occasion.  With that, Petrus indeed became my most expensive “appetizer wine” ever.  It was roll-your-eyes-into-the-back-of-your-head delicious.  Some advice:  The sommelier should have just done a quick “look over there,” and then transferred the Petrus into the Chateau Margaux decanter.  I doubt we would have noticed the difference.  Add a little brown food coloring and I think there’s a ripe black market ready for exploitation.

With work duty now calling, I dashed out of Caesars Palace with a decanter brimming with the spoiled Chateau Margaux.  This near home run foul ball caught on the warning track wine had to be enjoyed with good friends.  What was I going to do — drink it alone?  Well, if was pristine — maybe.

And so, I came upon a few members of the 52-card estate — a.k.a. the poker media — who shall go nameless for fear their editors are now reading.  The plastic cups were lined up like at a family picnic pouring a screwcap bottle of warm Yellow Tail.  Only this was contaminated liquid gold.  An otherwise pristine diamond with inclusion the size of a lump of coal.  A fantasy has gone bad.  A moment of clarity turned murky brown.  Like me, most of the 52-card estate were eager to experience what otherwise might not happen within a lifetime.

Reviews varied.  Some said the wine was awful and tossed it away immediately.  Others savored the wine, imagining what could have been.  A few loved it.  Some pretended.  At least one lied, ah because that’s what media do  Still others let the wine sit and age ungracefully until it finally was brushed into a garbage can some hours later by the night cleaning crew.  With that, a wine tasting with much promise ended with the echos of cards and chips dancing down the hallway.

This all thanks to Anonymous Eccentric for allowing me into her domain with the best of intentions.  Like a life partially lived and just as with open wine, things don’t always turn out the way we plan it or taste the way we want.  However, in the end, it’s what you make of it, and how you react to those flavors amidst the tannin.  It’s all about the way we respond to what’s inside every bottle and who we chose to share in the experience of tasting life that makes everything worthwhile.

Red wine or brown wine, it’s the tasting that matters.

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Special thanks again to Anonymous Eccentric, Dean, and Patty Beck, the sommelier at Old Homestead (Caesars Palace).

3 Comments

  1. Re: Black Market opportunity – Counterfeiting is a significant risk in the high end wine market.

  2. What did they do with the empty bottle???

  3. Petrus? Nolan, I thought merlot was a forbidden fruit?

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