It's no secret that I have a passion for wine. This is the story of how it all started.
It was the summer of 1993 and on a ferry between Kiel, Germany, and Gothenburg, Sweden. This was at the time when the exchange rate between the Swedish Krona an the Deutsche Mark made shopping trips to Germany very popular. My parents had found a last-minute deal on the overnight Gothenburg-Kiel ferry, and we booked roundtrip tickets (with a cabin) on two consecutive nights so we'd have a day of shopping in Germany.
At the same time, my aunt, uncle and cousins (the Klingbergs) were already vacationing in Germany and were due to come back on our return ferry. We picked the dates to coincide, hoping we'd find each other (remember, this was before cell phones) and surprise them. It worked out even better than we'd hoped for; only a few hours after we'd arrived in Kiel we ran into each other in the shopping district!
This was before Sweden joined the EU, so there was still duty free shopping on the ferry, and since the Swedish taxes on alcohol were so high this was one of the highlights of the trip. Up until this point I'd always been fascinated by the world of wine but I didn't know much about it. My dad, who has also always had a wine interest but never the budget to buy fine wines, knew enough to recognize Mouton Rothschild as one of the five first-growth Bordeaux.
Well, as you may have guessed by now, there was a bin of 1989 Mouton in the duty free store . I'd heard from my friend Anders Carlsson who had spent 1989-90 in France, that 1989 was supposed to be a great year in Bordeaux, so I was intrigued.
The bottles were 500 Swedish Crowns - a lot of money when you haven't even started college yet! The shelf-talker recommended opening the wine after 1997. Well, I was about to start college that fall and scheduled to graduate in 1997 so I told myself I'd buy it and save it for graduation.
There was only one small problem, though. The import limit on duty-free wine was two bottles per adult, and we'd already filled our quota. So, when we arrived in Gothenburg, we went through the Red lane to declare our extra bottle and pay the import tax. The customs officer just laughed at us and said "One bottle! Between all of you? Move on!" I guess he had bigger fish to fry.
So, I put the wine in storage with my parents and went off to college. Well, a few years later I read another tasting note where they recommended waiting longer before opening it. So, college graduation came and went. For the next ten years I've been thinking about my wine and what the right occasion would be to open such a special bottle.
When I moved to Arizona in 2004 I started getting serious about wine: I bought a wine fridge and began building my collection. Having one really great bottle hardly constituted a collection! Since then, through the wonderful world of wine, I've found a group of good friends and we've formed a tasting group that gets together 1-2 times each month. Over the last couple of years I've slowly come to realize that these are the people with whom I should share my Mouton.
Jeff Nowak, Debra and Mark Gettleman, Melanie and Kevin Stoddard (and our server)
This past Saturday the six of us - and the other five's spouses - got together at Jeff Nowak's house for a Christmas/Hanukkah gala. Jeff's wife Jane had put together a phenomenal menu (see below) and everyone was stepping up with their wine contributions. So, I decided to bring a 1996 Dom Pérignon and my precious 1989 Mouton.
Lisa and Josh Ivey, Shelly and Scott Scherger, and Jane Wagner (Jeff's wife)
I opened the Mouton at home a couple of hours in front of the dinner to check that it was in good condition and to pour the wine into a decanter. (Most red wines improve with some air.) I was quite nervous when I opened it up - it would be a terrible disappointment if the wine was corked or damaged in some way - but I was quickly reassured by an onslaught of fresh aromas. I poured a splash into a Riedel stem and sat and smelled it for a good five minutes before I even thought of tasting it. Well, this bottle was open for business and did not need any decanting, so I quickly re-enclosed it trying to capture the magic I had unleashed.
Me and my Mouton
I can't do the evening justice other than saying that we had a fabulous time, and sharing the menu and a list of some of the wines we had.
The food:
- herbed cheese crostini
- seared ahi tuna with thai mango jicama salad on toasted baguette
- brie in croute with raspberries
- mushroom leek soup
- chili seared salmon tower with layers of mashed potatoes, sauteed eggplant, mixed greens mango and tomato salsa with plum vinaigrette
- spiced molten chocolate cake and ginger ice cream
The salmon tower
The wines (my favorites):
- 1996 Dom Pérignon (champagne)
- 2004 Fevre Grand Cru Chablis 'Les Preuses' (white Burgundy)
- 1984 Vieux Telegraphe Chateauneuf du Pape (red Rhone-blend)
- 1985 Leoville Barton (red Bordeaux)
- 1989 Mouton Rothschild (red Bordeaux)
- 2000 Lynch Bages (red Bordeaux)
- 2003 Lafite Rothschild (red Bordeaux)
All but Kevin thought the Mouton was the Wine of the Night. (He preferred the Lynch Bages.) The last two wines were also very good - espcially the Lafite - but much too young to fully appreciate at this point. When realizing that, Jeff exclaimed (in classic Jeff form): "I swear to God! This is the last time I open a 100-point Lafite for you turds!" (About a year ago we got together for poker night and Jeff went out of the tournament early and got bored and went to his wine locker and brought out a 1996 Lafite.)
Mark and Kevin expressing their love for the Lafite
Waiting 15 years before opening the Mouton was not easy, but it was well worth the wait and I couldn't think of a better group of friends to open it with. Not only are they wine geeks like me but we also have great fun together.
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