Santorini

Santorini was the one that got away.

Santorini stuck out like a sore thumb in the crowd. She dressed like a bug in the amazon trying to indicate to predators that she was poisonous. Hair was always messy. But she spoke like someone who knew what was going on. She was just as bored as you at that bar. She handed you a drink she didn’t like (a Stinger), ordered a Tom Collins, and started asking you questions that she already knew the answer to. She was testing you. And for some reason that you still can’t fathom to this day you made the cut. So you became friends.

You didn’t think much of it at first, but after a while, you knew this was more than a casual acquaintance when your text conversations went till 4 in the morning. When you noticed your heart sinking as the phone beeped with a text from someone who wasn’t Santorini.

You went to that party at the thunderdome warehouse, where you puked in the garbage disposal in that gross kitchen (she held your hair for you, very nice of her since you smelled like a compost heap). She walked you back to her place. All you remember saying was “they had scary paintings” and sitting down on the floor. Next you woke up with a blanket on top of you and a pillow under your head. You sat up and your whole body hurt. You smelled lemons and pancakes for the first time together. She made those puffy german pancakes. Your mysterious new friend could cook.

Do you remember those motherfucking lemon pancakes? Of course you do. Because that was the exact moment that you fell madly in love with her.

Who was she? Where did she come from? As best you could tell she was like, half Samoan, half Israeli. At least half Israeli would explain how she had what one that FBI agent on the news dubbed “an expert-level understanding of Krav Maga.” You never got around to discussing things like where you both came from. The phone lit up with assignments:

“Let’s get wasted at the zoo and scream at the animals. I hate giraffes.”

“How many pickles do you think we can eat at once?”

“Let’s just settle this with a kite battle in the park. I think I have enough powdered glass left for two kites.”

“I think my purse is big enough to sneak this leftover chili into a movie theater. Want to join?”

Sometimes you would just blather on and on about the most inane things. Sometimes you would just get in the car together and drive in silence. For hours. After a while, it became clear that you were both hanging out with each other as a form of escapism. What is she trying to escape from? You caught yourself wondering on multiple occasions. Then it started coming together.

The first time you found a gun in her apartment she played it off. “Self defense.” It had a silencer. An extended magazine. A custom trigger. It was loaded with black talon rounds. They say the police reports catalogued over 30 controlled weapons in her apartment. Guns. Explosives. One of the lawyers even insinuated she had chemical weapons. All you ever got were the rumors.

The more questions you asked the more distant she became. It was awful. The spontaneous riot of fun you used to have was blunted by the knowledge that she had something to hide.

You remember her meeting you at the dandelion fountain with gelato. Of course she made it. Lemon gelato. She sprinkled sea salt on hers. You will remember that gelato for the rest of your life. She said she wasn’t sure how long she could be friends with you. You fought back tears and said, “This is the best gelato I’ve ever had in my life.”

“Kid, you’re telling me you found a silenced sub machinegun under this girl’s futon and you didn’t think that maybe something was up? Is your sense of self-preservation that fucked? Or are you keeping something from us?” 18 hours of interrogation. You were delirious. At one point they threw coffee on you. It stained the funny t-shirt she bought you.

You never got that moment. You never got to tell her how much she meant to you. Maybe it was because you were scared you’d drive her away. It was enough to be friends with her you said. You only got to say it once, under the wrong circumstances.

It all happened in an instant. They say traumatic moments get blurry easily. She was the most visibly upset you’d ever seen her. She was packing her bags. Going somewhere for good. You caught a glimpse of a passport. “You aren’t supposed to be here. I said if you came here I’d kill you.” She snarled. You started following her into the next room. She pulled a shotgun out from under the bed and slung it on top of a duffel bag, reiterating:

“I said I’d kill you.”

You heard car doors slam outside. The lights cut off. “Get on the ground.” In monotone. Something crashed through the outside gate door. You couldn’t see anything, but you heard the che-chack of the shotgun. “Are the cops coming for you?” Your voice was shaking.

“Not cops. Cops have sirens. Flashing lights. You have to get out of here. You can’t hold your own like this.”

“I want to stay. I love you and I want to stay. Give me a gun.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

Her hand reached out from the darkness and touched your face.

“If you love me, you’ll run. Out the back door. You have maybe 15 seconds before they close that exit off. Go. Please.”

The police found you passed out in a ditch 5 miles away. They sat you down for 18 hours and asked you if you knew who Santorini was. If you knew she worked with multiple terrorist organizations. If you knew what the pages and pages of code in her apartment went to. You didn’t know the answer to anything. That one detective almost punched you in the face when you said she made good pancakes. They said she was number 9 on “the list” for a while. That the reward for turning her in would have been astronomical. They wouldn’t tell you what happened to Santorini.

“He was probably just an insurance policy. Like a potential hostage or something.” They rationalized, laughing.

Nothing hurt as bad as the knowledge that she was gone. Sometimes you go back to the fountain. You learned how to make lemon gelato, though you never got it to be quite as good as her recipe. You were grateful you knew her. And you will spend the rest of your life wondering who she really was, if she was a villain or a hero. If she loved you back.

If you’d like to know what I’m talking about, go buy yourself a bottle of Domaine Sigalas Santorini. It’s made on the island of Santorini in Greece. Made from the Assyrtiko grape, Santorini is grown on volcanic soils. The vines are woven into baskets to protect the grapes from the powerful winds that blow through the vineyards.

It tastes like lemons, with a bitter finish.

Tokaji

 Currently the only dessert wine on our wine list at Oxheart is Tokaji. Recently, I was pouring a guest a glass of Tokaji, and they looked up at me and asked, “So you like Tokaji? How would you describe the taste?”

I paused for a very, very long time. And I think my actual answer was “Yes, I like it.” I ignored the second question, which I wanted to answer very badly.

Here is what I wanted to say, but didn’t have time to fully articulate:

What does Tokaji taste like? It tastes like a late harvest white wine and a tawny port got together. Perfectly ripened peaches and nectarines, caramel, burnt sugar, vanilla and honey. It’s nice.

Tokaji is complex. It is made primarily from the Furmint grape, in Hungary. It is made by masterminds who could be building spaceships or curing cancer. Instead they make something much more important: one of the best wines in the whole damn world. It is a perfectly executed and timed series of kicks to guide your subconscious mind through ten layers of dream worlds so that it might explode into full consciousness. It is the fourth unsolved panel of the Cryptos statue at the CIA headquarters in Langley. Tokaji is a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, deep-fried in suspense.

Tokaji is balanced. It is perfectly balanced on the edge of a razor. Not only is it unctuously sweet, but it has laserlike acid to level out all that delicious sugar. It is balanced like the madness and evil that drive the human condition are counterbalanced against the joy of a meaningful life with people you care about. Somewhere in the world an orphan is adopted into a loving family, while a mercenary wipes blood off a well-worn machete elsewhere. So too is Tokaji balanced.

Tokaji is intense. How intense? Imagine staring into the sun. You stare at it for hours. You’re blind. You’re sweating. And you can’t look away, because it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. Then the sun blows up. The entire solar system is engulfed in white-hot fire. Everything that you thought mattered: your car payments, your herb garden outside your apartment, your pet- they’re gone. Reduced to elemental carbon. You float through outer space for a billion years. Later, the atoms that made you form another planet, in a different solar system in a different galaxy. That hypothetical experience is almost as intense and profound as the flavor of Tokaji.

Tokaji is historically significant. Tokaji beat other sweet wines to the punch on the delicious possibilities created by Botyrtis. The vineyards were the first to ever be formally demarcated, round about 1700. Catherine the Great regularly employed military force to obtain and protect obscene amounts of it. The Czars got drunk as hell on it. Thomas Jefferson poured it up all throughout his career, and died penniless in the pursuit of more Tokaji, amongst other wines.

I like Tokaji a lot. How much do I like it? I will make you this promise: if for some ridiculous reason I am elected president of the United States, I will plunge America into the greatest depression it has ever seen and declare war on everyone in pursuit of more Tokaji. I will spend every red US cent that I have legal authority over to obtain every bottle in existence. I will invade Hungary. As the A-10 Warthogs scream overhead and the M1 Abrams tanks roll through the streets of Budapest, I will land Marine Force One in the center of Mézes Mály, the great first growth of Tokaji. I will be like, “Sorry, this belongs to America now.” I will draft every man, woman, and child into military service to achieve this insane and wasteful goal of seizing the vineyards of Tokaji. If elected, I will probably not remain president very long. I like to think Catherine and TJ would approve.

When I taste Tokaji, I feel like my mind is being torn apart by a truth that I am not ready to comprehend. Tokaji is the reason the world turns, and it is the reason I get up in the morning. It is an ancient battlesong that gives me the strength to fight another day when my body is broken and my resolve has been tested too thoroughly.

I would highly recommend you try it. It is one of the most fascinating beverages on the planet, and it is readily available by the glass at Oxheart.

Since this is the first time I have ever mentioned my current job in blog form, I should probably just go ahead and say that in case you are offended or weirded out, these opinions are exclusively mine.

What I've trained for

I have rewritten and deleted this overdue blog post about 4 times. I wanted to talk about the genesis of my decision to work with Justin and Karen at Oxheart in some epic sweeping fashion. But honestly, it doesn't matter.

How I got where I am is a way less exciting story than where I'm about to be.

In exactly ten days, I will leave Central Market. For a restaurant.

For the first time in my life, I get to write a wine list from scratch. I have been "taking over" wine lists and beverage programs my whole career. Now, the controls are entirely in my hands, and I'm more than a little bit intimidated.

I wish these prices weren't over 100 years old.

I've been packing up my apartment for the past few days, and I keep finding study materials. Practice tests. Flash cards. Tasting notes. Dictionary sized books. It has dawned on me that this is the moment I've been training for for the past six years. One could make the argument that for a while, I was so busy learning the rules of the game that I forgot how much fun it is to play.

The chance to start my own beverage program really isn't enough though. It needs an actual restaurant attached to it. The only way I could justify the kind of list I want is if I had a kitchen that was driven by people determined to blow minds. To show people something different and fundamentally delicious.

That's how I view Justin's food. Pairing beverages with it is like clinging to a bullet train for dear life. It moves so fast and changes so rapidly that it requires every ounce of my brainpower to keep up with it. It is the ultimate challenge for a sommelier, the kind that I would argue comes along only once in a lifetime.

Yes I have action movie references for everything.

Houston is the city that taught me everything I know about wine and service. I suppose I could have taken that experience to San Francisco or Chicago or New York and done ok. However, I am beaming with pride to say that I am helping open a restaurant in my hometown. I would rather fight for the future of Houston than join the already established culture of SF or NY. We are teeming with brilliant minds that are producing work that is already rivaling the more established restaurant cities. When a bunch of us get together for a pop-up it feels like my own personal rat pack.

This is how cool I felt during The Money Cat.

More than anything, everything has been so much goddamn fun. I cannot wipe the grin off my face.

Joining Oxheart is unquestionably the most weapons grade thing I have ever done, ever. Justin and Karen are an amazing team, and I am exhilarated to work with them. It will be the adventure of a lifetime. I cannot wait, and I hope to see all of you there.

#TEXSOM 2011

Getting to volunteer at TEXSOM, for some of us, is like a holiday we look forward to all year long. I often underestimate how completely awesome it is to be in a room of hundreds of people who are all focused on exactly the same thing I am. In the real world you have to watch out for going way too far into why you wish more people would drink Huet Vouvrays and putting your friends to sleep. At TEXSOM you're drinking Huet, talking about Huet, and geeking out in a way that you only get to do very rarely.

One of the wines I was most excited about.

If the wines of Huet made noise, they would go "BIEW BIEW BIEW"

In the case of Chateau Musar, we talked about it, we drank it, and we met Serge Hochar. Every year, as the quality of the program gets better and better, so too does the brutal transition to reality get harder. The only solution I find is to try and reorganize the world around me to look more like TEXSOM, even if it's only a little bit at a time.

I was responsible for #5 of each tasting. It ended with me getting to pour 1969 Musar Blanc, I still don't know what I did to deserve that. Photo by Alfonso Cervola.

The speakers are amazing, and when we have time to listen to them, we sit and do just that. But more than once we had to miss out on full lectures, because we were in the back, popping foils and pulling corks a dozen at a time. I suppose someone could call that a bummer, but one of my favorite parts of TEXSOM is sitting in the back with the wines before the lecture. My little wine-nerd heart still goes pitter-patter when I'm sitting in front of an open case of Comte George de Vogue, or when I'm oogling a 40 year old selection of Musar:

OHMYGODOHMYGOD

I like those little private moments we get with the wines. When I get to handle and pour this much good wine in one sitting, all I can speak is whispered expletives. I think that's kind of what The Chairman was talking about when he talked about having a personal conversation with the wines.

A really nice new feature was the hospitality suites. Because after you spend the whole day drinking earth shattering wine, you really need a drink.

Nothing helps settle your stomach like a gallon of Amaro.

I saw this, and wondered if perhaps there was a bathtub full of wine at a beer conference somewhere else in the world.

The one thing that I think can't be said enough about TEXSOM, is that everyone eligible to compete should be competing. I am so disheartened by people who say things like "I don't want to embarrass myself" or "its too hard". Trust me, nobody is "ready" for TEXSOM. I got my ass handed to me the one year I competed, and it was instrumental in motivating me to study for my advanced exam. That's basically what the TEXSOM competition is: a free practice session for the advanced exam. NOT ONLY is it free, but you are allowed to attend the lectures for free. Lectures where they pour George Comte de Vogue 1er Cru, Sparkling Huet, 1975 Musar Rouge, and other power ballads. Oh, and if you place, you get at least a 1000 dollar scholarship. How is there not a waiting list of competitors?

Don't be scared of defeat of embarrassment. Moving forward will inevitably subject you to both. I am proud of the folks that have the guts to subject themselves to so much scrutiny, both in competitions and in the regular court tests. My policy has always been sign up first, figure out how I'm going to pull it off later.

Big congrats to Bill, Nathan, and Houston's own David Keck. I shameless root for Houston every time.

Stepping off the soapbox now, and telling you to get your ass to TEXSOM 2012. I'll see you there!

Beer VS Wine VS Food

So another thing about me, I did debate for 6 years. 4 in high school and 2 in college. Few things escalate my blood pressure more than a bad debate. This is why I stopped watching the presidential debates- they're not actually discussing anything, they're just flailing around in defense of their point of view and their party. They refuse to work together for a greater purpose (dissecting complex issues), and instead just bicker.

The discussion of beer versus wine, in similar fashion, threatens to hospitalize me. I put this off as long as I could.

This is what you do to me.

The biggest thing the debate about beer vs wine lacks is a criterion. How are we deciding which one is better? I personally think we choose a lot of BAD criteria for this debate. For example:

#1. Aging Potential

Is aging potential a good indicator of quality? Often it is. But is wine better than beer because it can age longer? No. In the wine world, we're constantly explaining that an old wine is not inherently superior to a young wine. Similarly, an old wine is not inherently more valuable than a young beer. A question more important than "can beverage X age well?" is "Should I age it?" 

#2. Number of Ingredients / Complexity of Production

Beer (usually) has more ingredients than wine. Does more ingredients make beer superior to wine? Or is wine better for (usually) requiring fewer additives? We need to drop this one because a complex production process does not equal a complex or intense flavor profile. Bud Light is basically made in a laboratory by rocket scientists, and it tastes like yellow fizzy nothingness. Stanko Radikon's Ribolla Gialla is made pretty simplistically, and is profoundly complex.

Beer can also excel with simplicity: single hop beers anyone? If we were talking about watches, mechanical complexity would have more desirability, but we're not. Beer and wine both involve a lot of manipulation and ingredients, and neither of them are superior for it. If number of ingredients directly correlates with quality, then I'm off to brew a beer made with the entire contents of my fridge and pantry. Then, I'm going to make a blend of 50 different varietals into one sparkling, aromatized, oxidized, fortified, maderized wine.

#3. RANGE OF FLAVORS

Problem, Sommelier?

BEER AND WINE HAVE THE SAME EXACT NUMBER OF FLAVORS PEOPLE. THE. SAME. NUMBER. I'm not talking about acid or tannin or sugar or IBUs. I'm talking about FLAVORS. Flavors like apples, tar, pine, cinnamon, bacon, strawberries, cheese, soil, leather, grass, bread, smoke, nuts. I CHALLENGE YOU TO POINT OUT A FLAVOR THAT IS UNIQUE TO ONLY ONE SIDE. Actually, I might have one: petroleum / gasoline, is there a beer that can do that? But seriously, give me a flavor that you think is unique to your beloved beverage, and I will show you how the other side does it too. Per request, here are a few of them:
Common beer flavors and their wine analogs:

Bready malty flavor: found in the majority of sparkling wines as a by product of autolysis, and frequently in sherries and other oxidative wines.

Smokey flavor: Common in a lot of wines with heavy American oak treatment. The degree of toast in the barrel will also influence the intensity of this flavor.

And fuck it, lets do it for wine:

tart cherry flavor: commonly exhibited in varying degrees of ripeness in flemish red and brown ales, and obviously lambics that add cherries.

I can play this game all goddamn day. While beer and wine hit about every flavor note in the book, they do it in VERY different ways. And even though they can both do a flavor, one side usually does one way more often than the other. If you want to start arguing over which flavors are inherently better in alcohol, I will come to your house and beat you with a bat.

Beer and wine have the same range of flavors. STOP arguing about it, for the love of god.

I'm going to go take a break and punch a wall.

...

Ok we're back! So before I blacked out, we were talking about BAD criteria to evaluate beer and wine. Now is that point where I throw out the only good one I know of:

Food Pairing

How is it a fair fight? Beer and wine have profound impacts on food pairing that has nothing to do with matching flavors together. Both beverages have chemical features that help them work with food. They are:

Wine:

Tannin- Tannin is the astringent, mouth drying sensation you get from a red wine (and occasionally a white wine). This bitterness comes from the anthocyanins found in grape skins. This mitigates fat in red meat better than damn near anything.

Acid- Malic acid, mostly. Beer people are often good cooks, but when you explain how acid in wine works with food they refuse to understand. Its pretty simple. When you squeeze a lemon on those raw oysters, the acid in the juice cuts the oceany fatness of the oysters. When you sip Chablis with oysters, you are basically drinking that lemony acid element, not to mention mirroring the salty mineral character of the oysters.

Sugar- sugar in wine slays spicy and salty food. If you believe wine can't handle spicy food, you're not even trying to understand what you're talking about. Sweet and spicy/salty are combined so frequently in food that it shouldn't be a shocker that sweet wine works with them.

Carbonation- Beer, you do get credit for being almost always carbonated, but wine does it too. Not only does wine do carbonation, but it does it at 6 atmospheres of pressure. Thats enough power to blow fingers off and poke out eyes, AND help douse the flames of a green curry.

Yes this is all very shocking.

Beer:

Hop Bitterness- Beer's astringency comes from the addition of hops, rather than grape skins. It plays as prominent and as effective a role in soaking up fat as tannin in red wine. And hey, get this on record- I believe hops suppress capsicum in extremely spicy food better than just about anything.

Malt sugar- Sugar exists in beer, and makes it a powerful weapon in the war against food. The mashing process converts the starch in the grain to sugar, and you turn that sugar into awesome excellent ethanol. But, just like in wine, often some of that sugar is left over. In the case of high alcohol beers, there a crapload of it left over. This is what makes Barleywine and Roquefort as epic a pairing as port.

Acid- YES, OK? Beer CAN contain acid. Sours are called sours because they have acid in them. It works pretty much the same way with food that acid in wine does, although it is important to note that beers that contain a palpable amount of acid are driven by Lactic acid, which isn't quite as potent as Malic acid. But lets also be realistic and notice that the VAST majority of beers are not sours.

Carbonation- Carbonation goes a long way to deliver the flavor of said carbonated drink, and to mesh with any remaining food flavors in your mouf. Beer is carbonated, almost always. This is excellent.

There are other questions that deserve answers in the saga of beer versus wine, but Beer vs Wine vs Food is the big one. It is the Superbowl of alcohol and food pairing. And, *SPOILER ALERT* there's an extremely strong case to be made that there is no overall champion in this sports match. 

I'm done ragefacing. I've got a lot more to say, but its about time I got off the computer and got some "fresh air".

I don't even drink!

Failing the MS / Overdue shout-Out

One of the best meals I ever had in my life was the day I learned I had failed all 3 portions of the Master Sommelier exam.   

It's three weeks away from the MS, I've taken a lot of time off to study at the last minute. I know this isn't going to fill the grand-canyon sized void of knowledge and preparation I need to pass, but I'm going through the motions. Well I got sick. Real sick. I got my first sinus infection. I couldn't smell.

One third of the MS exam is a tasting of 6 wines in 25 minutes that requires 75% accuracy to pass. This is a herculean feat even for someone with a bloodhound nose- it is impossible to do if you cannot smel.

So for the first time in years, instead of letting a cold run its course, I went to the doctor. They gave me a bunch of fancy antihistamines and such, some of which were injections. Most importantly, they gave me 20 pills of Amoxicillin.

"You can't drink alcohol while you're taking this."

"What if I have to?"

"Nobody has to, sir."

"I'm studying for a wine test. And uh, then I'm taking the wine test. Part of the studying and testing involves drinking. Its the hardest wine test in the world."

"Oh I see."

"Well not drinking but tasting. I'll be spitting it out, is that ok? Also, I'm really nervous, and generally could use a drink."

"I would recommend not drinking until you absolutely have to. It will reduce the effectiveness of the Amoxcillin."

"Shit."

While I took the meds, I noticed the pain of my sinus infection going away, but I still couldn't smell. All my wine friends offered to organize about a dozen practice tastings for me. Every time I had to say, "Don't waste your wine, I'm nose-deaf."

The date neared. I was coming out of my freakish sickness, but I was tortured with stress. I feel asleep in piles of flash cards and guildsomm printouts. I wanted a drink so bad, but I couldn't risk my nose not working on the day of battle. The day I would be able to drink again would be the last day of the test, when they give the results.

I withdrew from everyone I new, and by the time I got to the Four Seasons in Dallas, I was numb. I bought a bottle of orange juice the day before my tasting portion. I cracked the seal and took a big sniff. Nothing. It tasted like nothing. I was fucked.

This is we waited, and freaked the hell out.

I was sitting in the bar of the Four Seasons, an hour before I was going in to the tasting portion. The price of a glass of the cheapest Pinot Grigio was more than I had in my pocket (I got paid the next day, but it was still pretty lame).

I called the cocktail waitress over and asked, "Hi! I know this is unorthodox, but could I have 4 dollars worth of Pinot Grigio? It's all I have till tomorrow."

She smiled and said "Don't worry about it, keep your money. Here's a few ounces."

Will never forget.

So I gave her my four bucks, and I'm staring at what must have been exactly two ounces of wine sitting on the table. Fear. Anger. Depression. This my last chance for my nose to get its shit together and work for me. The Court of Master Sommeliers does not give you a make-up date if you can't smell. You just take the tasting portion again. 800 dollars. I will remember everything that happened for the rest of my life.

I picked up the glass, shoved my nose in it, and inhaled. Lemons. Crumbled chalk. Lime zest. Unripe pineapple. Onion skin. Crushed aspirin. My head swam. I almost dropped the glass. This was the first time I had successfully received olfactory stimuli in almost a month. I'm pretty good at not crying during moments of intense emotion, but I very nearly lost it here. My sense of smell and taste came back to me about 30 minutes before I had to go taste. I'm not a religious person, but I'll go ahead and call it a miracle.

The waitress came back a few minutes later,

"How does it taste?"

"Fucking incredible. This wine tastes fucking incredible."

"Well, uh... I'm glad you like it so much."

I was ready to tear the fabric of space and time apart with my anger if I didn't get a chance to actually smell the vinous gauntlet that was going to be laid before me. And I got my chance. I failed fair and square. Can't talk about what I called them. But I will say this: the second before you begin, they say "Please enjoy the wines." It wasn't hard, they were delicious.

Failing the MS is hard on everything. Your mind, your body, your soul. I had realistically low expectations of myself for my first go at it, but it was still very hard. I was standing at the reception, watching everyone mingle and drink krug and console and congratulate, and I felt like my soul was rotting. I hadn't had real food, drink, or human interaction in what felt like months.  I had to do something. Fast. Between the stress of studying, the isolation of being incredibly sick, and finally hitting a roadblock in my wine studies, I was going insane.

Rewind 6 months. When I was first trained at Central Market Dallas in August 2010, my trainer was the then- beer and wine manager, Jennifer Uygur. She is a very strange, very organized, towering woman who invited me to dinner at her house the first Sunday of my training. There she revealed to me that she had put in her two weeks notice so that she could open a restaurant with her husband, David Uygur (he used to be the exec at Lola's). They were gonna call it Lucia, and it was going to be traditional Italian with in-house charcuterie and all that jazz. The dinner was epic, but I had to go back to Houston before I could see the restaurant open.

Fast forward 6 months. I'm sitting in the empty bathtub of my hotel in my suit. I text Jennifer something to the tune of "I just got beaten to death by the MS exam, any chance I can get a table tonight?"

I went by myself. When I walked into Lucia, Jennifer hugged me and asked,

"Do you need some wine?" I nodded.

"Do you want me to pick it out for you?" I nodded again.

"Do you want some Lambrusco while we figure it out?" I kept nodding.

My cell phone battery died right when I sat down, ending all of the consolatory texts I was getting. I sat at a marble counter facing the kitchen. When my server brought me a huge slab of fragrant bread, I realized I haven't sat down to a real meal in a restaurant in what felt like months. It was also the first time in almost a month that I could taste my food.

I remember the bread so distinctly, it had a thick crunchy exterior that smelled faintly of hazelnuts, and a soft chewy interior. This wasn't normal bread, this is what bread tastes like on the dinner table of Valhalla. I dream about that goddamn bread. They bake it in house.

I started off with the charcuterie plate. It had warm Lardo on crackers, two different kinds of salumi, little chunks of bread with liver pate on them. The moment the plate hit the table I also got a glass of the only non-Italian wine on the list: Moric Blaufrankisch. If you're not a wine nerd and aren't sure how hard you should freak out over Moric, know this: it's really fucking good. Its one of those wines where I hold it up to the light and say to myself, this is why I chose wine as my focus, no other beverage can taste like this. What does Moric actually taste like? It tastes like perfectly ripened red fruit. It tastes like the Grave Digger running over cars that are full of terrorists. It tastes like gravel and granite. It tastes like soldiers returning home safely from war and seeing their families. It is in perfect balance, like a universe ruled by justice and love. Yep.

This is what Moric fucking tastes like.

I had duck confit and Gnocchi for my primi. It was so simple and earthy and savory. The bitter cold outside made me appreciate how thoroughly hot each little pillowy bite of Gnocchi was. The last bite still had steam rising off of it. The Moric sliced through the duck fat like a knife. Like a Shun.

David took a brief moment from running the kitchen to stop by and ask me how everything tasted. I'm positive it sounded like crazed rambling, whatever I said. I hope he took from it that I was shell shocked by the food.

Secondi, I had a grilled duck breast. Because who gives a shit, really? There were a lot of really amazing looking dishes, but I wanted more duck, and so that's what I ordered. It was medium rare and it was intoxicatingly gamey and rich. There was also an accompaniment that I don't remember precisely- but it had mushrooms and foie gras and it tasted like hopes and dreams. I'm feeling woozy and whip my head to the right and can see a bottle of Moric that is mostly empty. It's 9:30 and I still see Jennifer darting all over the restaurant, leading the charge. My server asks me, "You doing ok?" It sounds far away. "Do you need more wine?" I nod. She dumps the rest of the Moric in my glass. I pick up the glass, and feel the how light the glass is, and an awesome wave of calm washes over me. I must reiterate: Moric and the duck worked so well, I might have almost perished with delight.

I couldn't decide between the desserts, so I got two of them. One was a chocolate panna cotta with orange, and I had cannoli. I had french press coffee. And I was finishing the Moric. Let's be real friends, I was kinda drunk. And it felt GREAT. I had forgotten the sensation of just tying on a good buzz and enjoying life. My wine, coffee, and dessert intermingled on my palate like a mosh pit. Pistachios kicking chocolate and orange in the teeth, who shoves french press coffee into Moric, who headbutts the cannoli.

I was so busy looking at the jars full of preserves everywhere on the walls of the restaurant that I didn't notice the check hit the counter. The tab was really reasonable. I paid and started to search for Jenn.

When I had dinner at her house 6 months ago, I asked her if I could have a jar of her and David's home-made Mostarda. They had, pear, cherry, and I think orange mostarda. I wanted pear, but I forgot to grab it. She tried to grab me some before I left but we never got around to it.

I found her, and she asked me how everything was. I can't remember what I said but I know I was babbling. I did by best to tell her it was one of the greatest meals of my life, but I know I fell short. I asked her,

"Hey can I buy a jar of Mostarda from you?"

She paused, "Well its not really for sale... but I guess I did offer you one a while ago."

She came back with two jars. "Cherry or fig, you have to pick only one. Just take it." I picked cherry.

"Are you sure I can't pay you for this?"

"Nah, just make sure to tell people if you enjoyed the food."

Enter this blog post. Jennifer and David Uygur are directly responsible for rehabilitating me from the sanity-destroying events leading up to and during the Master Sommelier exam last year in Dallas. They reminded me why I get up in the morning, why I study what I study, and work where I work. They are wonderful people, and their charming restaurant is actually a war machine of authentic Italian cuisine and amazing wine service. I will remember my meal there for the the rest of my life.

David and Jennifer. Photo from D Magazine.

Lucia is located on 408 West Eighth Street, Suite 101, Dallas TX 75208.
The phone number is 214-948-4998 

Go to the bank, take all of your money out, and give all of it to Lucia. I was delighted to hear that due to their huge popularity, reservations are very hard to get a hold of. Call early.

Next time I'm preparing for the MS, I will remember to stop and relax a bit. I hope I get to take the exam in Dallas again, so I can go eat the bread at Lucia until I'm unconscious.

Put your money where your mouth is

Ok, I've loosely committed to waxing poetic about the tension between beer and wine nerds on this bleg. While I let my exact position on this feud marinate, can I ask you a favor, Houston (and rest of America)?

Please do more Beer vs Wine dinners. Please.

I think both sides are too worried about their own nonsense to bother giving the other side an audience. But I'm telling you, this can be the most fascinating exercise.

I'd be a rich man if I had some denomination of currency for every time I heard someone talk shit about how beer or wine doesn't work with food.

"Wine is too sour to go with food."

"Beer is just pairing flavors, it doesn't have tannin and acid like wine."

"Wine can't handle spicy or salty food like beer can."

"Beer isn't complex enough to make truly epic pairings."

I hear this garbage all day long. I hear it from novices and experts. I hear it from restaurants, from retailers, and from distributors. Everyone has an opinion, but no one cares to defend it. I implore you, opinioned beverage geeks:

Put your money where your mouth is, and throw down. Quit talking about it, and start trying to prove it.

Your bickering is PROFOUNDLY unproductive in terms of making Houston a better city to drink in. I know working together is often too much to ask, so the next best thing could very well be conflict: with Houston's palate as your theater of war.

I'm available to help, but I'm just asking for ANYONE to start something. The only time I've ever heard of this happening is The Petrol Station vs Central Market. I think that was a good start, but we can go further. We can think bigger. Please. Put up or Shut up.


Beer vs Wine: Whoever wins, you walk away with a buzz.