DAYS OF WINE AND OYSTERS
MATUS, VICTORINO
Casual DAYS OF WINE AND OYSTERS Every year just before Thanksgiving, the Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington holds an “oyster riot”—an event featuring a live band, copious amounts of wine, and...
...The aftertaste was excellent—long and lingering...
...But other than that, I didn’t do too badly: The overall winner, a Saint Clair “Vicar’s Choice” Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand, was my sixth favorite...
...The competition involves 20 numbered glasses and all the Olympia oysters you can handle...
...But by then it was all a blur...
...One of the other three was a real judge: Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia...
...This year, I was one of those judges...
...But what if, drawing on my oenological ignorance, I said something stupid...
...VICTORINO MATUS...
...He would take a sip, close his eyes in deep concentration, then jot something down...
...In Judgment of Paris, George M. Taber describes the moment when winemaker Warren Winiarski tasted a year-old Nathan Fay Cabernet Sauvignon: “The wine had a complex, layered structure that provided a progression of fl avors as the wine moved across his taste buds...
...The second best was my fourth...
...At some point in the night the justice might have even told me who he thought was going to step down from the Supreme Court...
...The legendary gastronome Brillat-Savarin wrote that humans were capable of ingesting 144 oysters in a sitting...
...In a private room in the Old Ebbitt’s basement, sitting around a long table covered in linen (no, I was not tempted to taste it), we judges kept mostly to ourselves lest we infl uence each other...
...Then, one by one, the judges fi nalized their rankings and went back upstairs to a private reception...
...Lyn Farmer, a food and wine critic in Miami, told me not to sweat it: “Odds are, if you like it, they’ll like it...
...Eventually I ranked my top ten and joined the other judges to feast on shrimp, crabcakes, prime rib, and even more oysters...
...What happens if by glass 20 everything is a blur...
...In the end, said Farmer, “trust your palate...
...After everyone’s scores were tallied and combined, the results were made public: My personal favorite was ranked an abysmal 13th...
...But when I explained my plight to a few wine friends, they were nothing but encouraging...
...Drink water in between to get the taste of the last wine out of your mouth...
...It didn’t pass through his mouth smoothly like silk...
...Though thrilled to receive such an honor, I wondered if I was up to the task...
...Or even worse, suppose my favorite wines turned out to be of the box or screw-top variety...
...So with all that in mind, I judged...
...I don’t remember,” he replied...
...Exhaling loudly, the justice broke the silence in the room and said, “This is a really tough decision...
...Casual DAYS OF WINE AND OYSTERS Every year just before Thanksgiving, the Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington holds an “oyster riot”—an event featuring a live band, copious amounts of wine, and a limitless supply of oysters (at last year’s riot, 50,000 oysters were devoured in two days...
...Customers pay $115 a head and many dress up for the sold-out occasion...
...Pamela Busch, the proprietor and wine director of Cav Wine Bar and Kitchen in San Francisco, reminded me “that lighter wines that are tasted after bigger or more tannic wines will not show that well...
...Justice Scalia took his job seriously...
...Experts recommend a cold, crisp white with minerality and a clean finish—nothing too buttery or oaky...
...At the bar, I turned to Scalia and asked which wine he most enjoyed...
...The justice then sat with a few of us at a table where we talked about the election, food, hunting, and just about everything else...
...The restaurant’s head of marketing assured me the only requirement is a love for oysters and wine...
...It was more like linen, with an extremely fine-grained texture of intertwined tastes that could be savored and enjoyed slowly...
...Too many professionals are preoccupied with fi nding faults in wine instead of fi nding what’s enjoyable...
...The only sounds heard were the clinking of glasses, an occasional whisper, and wine being slurped—and sometimes spat into buckets...
...Also, try not to judge based just on what you like but what you think is a well-made wine...
...I’ve never even tasted linen...
...Needless to say, the right choice of wine to accompany the briny bivalves is crucial...
...Fair enough...
...My problem with wine is I always taste apples...
...And the overall least favorite was also toward the bottom of my list...
...He asked the highly attentive waiters to bring several more glasses of wines for further examination...
...I stopped at 45...
...So prior to each riot, the restaurant conducts a wine and oyster pairing competition, in which 14 judges select the 10 wines that pair best with the oysters...
...Ultimately, 7 of our 10 came from New Zealand...
...At one point I looked up and noticed there were just four of us left...
Vol. 14 • December 2008 • No. 11
