A Hedonist in the Cellar_ Adventures in Wine - Jay McInerney [58]
More so than any other first growth, Haut-Brion maintains its unique character from vintage to vintage—look for unheralded vintages like ′81, ′83, ′91, and ′94 on wine lists or at auctions. I have yet to be disappointed by a bottle of Haut-Brion. Unlike its northerly peers, it can be delicious in its youth, and yet it improves for decades, becoming—like a person of strong character, like Joan Dillon or Jean Delmas, I suspect—more idiosyncratic with the passing years, more unmistakably itself. More perticular, as Pepys would say.
THE MASERATI OF CHAMPAGNE
Before I’d ever tasted Salon, I was entranced by the name, evocative as it is of the intersection of the social life with the life of the mind—of George Sand entertaining Flaubert and Turgenev, or Gertrude Stein hosting Picasso and Hemingway. The literal fact is that Salon is named for its creator, Eugène-Aimé Salon, who established this tiny Champagne domaine in 1921 after making his fortune as a furrier.
Salon might plausibly claim to be the first cult wine of the twentieth century; it was the house Champagne at Maxim’s in the 1920s and ′30s and has always been made in such small quantities as to make Cristal seem mass-market by comparison. If you’ve even heard of it, you probably qualify as a wine wonk.
Honestly, until recently I don’t think I’d tasted Salon more than three or four times, although I was never less than mesmerized when I did. Certainly, the rarity (and expense) enhances its mystique, but in my experience, the moment you taste it the question of whether any bottle of Champagne could be worth two hundred bucks will probably cease to be an issue. My first glass of Salon (the 1982, in 1996) reminded me in many ways of my first white truffle, and in fact this pairing is one of the great food-and-wine matches. Risotto, white truffle, Salon. Oh. My. God.
Salon’s singularity is the result of several factors. It was the world’s first Blanc de Blancs Champagne made entirely from Chardonnay grapes from the midslopes of vineyards in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, the preeminent village for Chardonnay in the region (and also the home of Krug’s Clos du Mesnil). Unlike Krug, the other cult Champagne, it never comes near a barrel, old or new. It is made only in the greatest years. (All the luxury cuvées make this claim, even as they declare vintages in less than stellar years, like ′92.) It’s generally released some ten years after the vintage (the current vintage is 1996) and in the opinion of connoisseurs is at its best some ten to twenty years after that.
“If Dom Pérignon is the Mercedes of Champagne,” says Didier Depond, the effervescent director of Salon, “then Salon is the Ferrari or the Maserati.” Most of us may never get the chance to drive either one, but Salon is a relatively accessible luxury and one that needn’t be framed by pomp and ceremony, a point that Depond probably wanted to emphasize when he invited me to share a couple of bottles with him at J’Go in Paris—a hip, noisy bistro in the Ninth Arrondissement. I was kind of expecting to drink this august nectar at Ducasse or L’Ambroisie, and Depond is a regular at both these places, but he’s also a bullfighting aficionado with a pretentiousness deficit. There’s something really invigorating about a great luxury Champagne in an informal setting.
The ′95 Salon that we started with was something to savor in itself, full-bodied and incredibly silky in texture, with a mousse of tiny bubbles; but given its stiletto acidity it proved to be a pretty amazing accompanist to a succession of tapas.
Even more intriguing was the 1988, the aromas of which reminded me—nutty as it sounds—of walking through the New England woods in October with a fresh loaf of sourdough bread under my arm. It was incredibly lush in the mouth, younger and fresher than you’d expect from the nose. Depond said we’d be drinking it with the toro course, and I thought tuna belly and Champagne were a very sensible