MAD sommelier’s crazy road to Houston
As a toddler, after he was given his first tiny taste of bubbles, his toy box was full of the wire cages that hold sparkling wine corks in place. A few years later, on a school outing to a winery, he stole a first kiss from a pretty classmate who had captured his fancy.
At 14, after a fascinating visit to another cellar, he asked the vintner for a job. The guy laughed and told to come back when he turned 16. He did — and was hired on the spot.
By the time he was 19, he was playing with food-and-wine pairings, orchestrating several so deftly for a gastronomical society that a chef, who was already a rising star in Catalan’s vibrant culinary scene — and was destined to open one of Houston’s most acclaimed restaurants — spent the next six years trying to recruit him to be his sommelier.
If ever a person was destined to build a career around wine, it was Marc Sucarrats. And, in the end, the aforementioned chef, BCN Taste & Tradition’s Luis Roger, finally reeled him in. Sucarrats officially took charge of the wine program at BCN’s new sister restaurant, MAD, on July 20. This despite the fact that he’d never set foot in the United States until he landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Valentine’s Day to see what Roger and his team were cooking up in River Oaks District.
“It’s a crazy story,” Sucarrats concedes.
Roger, for his part, calls it “a miracle” the way things worked out. Why? Because a year or so ago, he thought his man had gotten away for good. Sucarrats had taken a job with a distributor in Barcelona and changed phone numbers, so Roger’s calls were going unanswered. But Roger happened to be back in Barcelona for a visit and, amazingly, they bumped into each other in a café.
“That, I think, was karma,” Sucarrats said.
So is the fact that one of the MAD wines — the 2009 Viña Ardanza Rioja listed here — was what he drank “with my mates” to celebrate landing that winery gig as a teenager.
Sucarrats admits his head is still spinning from this new lifechanging adventure, but his early impressions of Houston have been all positive “because of the people” he has met. MAD’s customers, in turn, are going to be impressed with the 27-year-old Catalonian’s expertise, and his exuberance. He believes his mission going forward will be equal parts sales and education. He realizes many of the labels on the restaurant’s list won’t be familiar to casual imbibers, but their being stylistically organized should help. The reds, for example, are broken down thusly: “fresh and lively,” “deep and silky,” “deep and velvety” and “powerful and supple.”
Serious oenophiles will be impressed by the diversity and drinkability of the eclectic options. Older vintages abound, far more the exception than the norm for most new restaurants.
2014 EQUIPO NAVAZOS COLET-NAVAZOS EXTRA BRUT CLASSIC PENEDÈS
Sergi Colet is one of three producers in Penedés who have gone against the Cava grain, wanting to dissociate themselves from the cheap, generic stuff, most of which comes from giant producers like Freixenet and Cordorníu, whose fruit sources are all over the map, including seven regions outside of Catalonia. The base wine in Colet’s organic sparkler is 100 percent xarello. After secondary fermentation in the bottle, sherry from Equipo Navazos — a blend of amontillado and palo cortado — is added. Thirty months of aging delivers a refreshing, bone-dry wine that offers a trace of oxidation, thanks to the sherry component.
Price: $90 for a bottle
2009 LA RIOJA ALTA VIÑA ARDANZA RESERVA RIOJA
A blend of hand-harvested Rioja Alta tempranillo (80 percent) from 30-year-old vines and Rioja Oriental garnacha grown in Ardanza’s estate vineyards, the wine is vinified separately in stainless steel before being aged in old American oak (the tempranillo for 36 months, the garnacha for 30). It’s a fresh yet also silky, elegant and nicely structured wine that pairs well with almost everything from red meats to seasoned fish stews, perfect for sampling a variety of tapas. Critic James Suckling awarded it a score of 96, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate a 93.
Price: $100 for a bottle