Wines that will sparkle
BY PATRICK COMISKEY >>> Last year for the holidays we asked sommeliers to share their holiday plans and the bubbles they’d pour for those occasions. The takeaway was an obvious one: Sommeliers drink way better than most mortals, but as the profession dic
Piero Selvaggio Valentino
Imagine that you’re Piero Selvaggio, for example. He’s been the proprietor of the Italian restaurant Valentino in Santa Monica for 45 years; he’s written one of the greatest Italian wine lists in California. He’s had a hand in influencing the Italian sparkling wine market here long before the demand for Proseccos, Lambruscos and Franciacortas became practically unslakable. Many of that country’s finest sparkling wine producers have become his friends.
“Many of the wines I pour for the holidays,” Selvaggio says, “they are the wines of my friends.”
Valentino is open on New Year’s Eve. Selvaggio will be pouring his friend Maurizio Zanella’s elegant Ca’ del Bosco Cuvée Prestige Franciacorta; he’ll be pouring the wines of Ferrari, from the Trentino winery owned by his friends the Lunelli family. He’ll pour wines from the first family of Sonoma sparkling wine, the Sterlings, owners of Iron Horse and longtime patrons of Valentino — the 2013 Russian Cuvée, the richest from their lineup, will flow freely that night.
On New Year’s Day, Selvaggio gathers his family for barbecue and pool time, and they drink magnums of Prosecco di Valdobbiadene, from his friend Antonio Bisol. “Prosecco is a wine you can drink all day,” says Selvaggio.
Danielle Francoise Fournier Here’s Looking at You
Danielle Francoise Fournier oversees the wine program at the Koreatown restaurant Here’s Looking at You, where she sells plenty of Champagne. By day she sells the wines of Michael Skurnik Imports, a collection anchored by the portfolio of Terry Theise, curator of one of the finest small-producer Champagnes in the country.
Fournier and her husband, actor Neil Colin, have a holiday tradition. One holiday a few years ago they were apart for separate family celebrations. While Colin’s family was eating lobster in Manhattan, Fournier’s family was eating pizza upstate. Somehow their tradition has evolved into a concatenation of the two, such that the holiday meal always involves both lobster and pizza, often together, though this year, Fournier’s mother-in-law is preparing Lobster l’Americaine, and pizzas showered with shaved truffles.
Fournier selects sparkling wines to cover this gamut: a non-vintage Cremant de Loire from Domaine de SaintJust, a sparkling Chenin Blanc (and a glass-pour at Here’s Looking at You). “This wine has an earthy quality that works nicely with food,” she says.
And she’ll bring two Champagnes,
the Bouchard Roses de Jeanne Blanc des Noirs, a single vineyard wine (the lieux-dit Val Vilaine) with remarkable tension and purity — and the Premier Cru Grand Cellier from Vilmart & Cie., a rich, oak-aged Champagne made by Laurent Champs. “It’s so opulent and refined,” says Fournier.
Henry Beylin Gjelina restaurants
Henry Beylin, the beverage director for the Gjelina family of restaurants in Venice, comes from Russian heritage, so ringing in the new year often involves more vodka than sparkling wine. He’s usually asked to bring cider for the occasion and prefers New York ciders, from Aaron Burr and Sundstrom in particular, because they still use apple varieties (Pippins, Spys, Roxbury Russets) that he feels are best suited for complex, bottle-finished ciders.
Since most of his family is preoccupied with spirits, Beylin says, “Bringing Champagne means bringing something I want to drink.” This year if he says it’ll be a Blanc des Blancs Extra Brut Cuvée Jean Fannière from Varnier Fannière, “with its very interesting note of cream and white chocolate,” he says. “It’s completely unique, serious, thought-provoking, delicious.”
The other wine, Champagne Doyard, “la Libertine,” is a doux or sweet Champagne made with considerable sweetness. “Doyard might be the only ones making Champagne like this, a style that hearkens back to the 18th century, when folks weren’t so afraid of sweetness in their wine,” says Beylin. “It’s deeply colored, spicy, earthy, yeasty and completely carries that duality of many great wines — enveloping the palate but doing it with grace and with light-of-touch. The sweetness isn’t really a focal point. it just carries all these aspects to the fore. Magic.”