originally posted by Thor:
I would love to see some other folks repost notes.
OK.
I wandered around the labyrinth streets of Astor Place, looking for 5th Street. My handy little laminated map of Manhattan said it was nearby, and I figured that I could see the park from 5th. Yet my mind was cloudedby one of the most ridiculously-designed *$ franchises I'd ever seen, and the bad vibes emanating from somewhere above. A form of spider-sense, maybe. But I could smell record executives, and it made me nervous. Anyway, several wrong turns later I found 5th, and headed for the park.
Washington Square Park, that is. The time was 6 p.m. I was early.
A kind gentleman in a stocking cap inquired as to my market position on pharmaceutical commodities. I politely declined. He persisted. Looking to my right, I saw an occupied police cruiser. Turning the tables, I inquired as to the legitimacy of the gentleman's purported venture. He shrugged. "Oh dear," I fretted. "I hope I haven't caused him to lose face with his chums." Anyway, I was fifteen minutes
less late than I had been, and there was the matter of the name-changing street to deal with.
As a Boston resident, I should have been prepared for this. In Boston, the names of streets change all the time. One block is Summer St., the next Winter St. (never mind that Winter is one-way, and Summer is one-way the opposite direction,
and closed to traffic). Etc. Nevertheless, the sinister way in which MacDougal changed to NorWestBellAtlanticMobile Avenue as it bordered the park added to my unease. But undaunted and still unlate, I ventured forth.
Thinking that a door numbered 131 followed by a door numbered 133 meant I was headed in the wrong direction, I turned around. Of course, the numbers on the resumption of MacDougal were in the 150s. Clearly, I was hallucinating. This was, I discovered later, to be a major theme of the offline scheduled at NYC's Minetta Tavern, at 7 p.m.; a scant 30 minutes from the time I reversed direction. Time was running out.
Accustomed to being late for such events, however, I took the time to wander around the Village. I passed up numerous opportunities to have various parts of my body aerated, and instead knelt down in obeisance at the temple of American jazz, the Blue Note. But, the clock continued to tick, and it was now time. I turned the corner, and there it wasgleaming in psychedelic black and off-black: Minetta Tavern. I noticed a disheveled local insisting that the valet treat his tricycle with care.
Upon entering, I was struck by how the overhead lights seemed to swing to and fro, a remarkable achievement considering how they were encased within the ceiling itself. Ravi Shankar accelerated the pace of his
raga. A tuxedo-suited host wearing tiny round sunglasses accepted my suit jacket, and offered me beads and a daisy. He then showed me to the back, through a jasmine-scented hall of Indian
saris acting as curtains, and lit from above by pulsating purple lights.
Disappointingly, the room in which we emerged was completely empty, except for some floating teeth. As I stared, a face coalesced around the teeth, and then a body. I chuckled with relief; this wasn't Wonderland, it was just Chris Coad, resplendent in a nehru jacket and a sarong. He hadn't noticed me, engrossed as he was in an out-of-body experience triggered by memorizing a list of 1951's
New York Times bestseller list. Chris' upcoming appearance on the famous TV game show
Press Your Luck had him in full cram mode, and I had thus far politely ignored the practiced shouts of "No Whammies! STOP!!" he engaged in at home.
I sat, then stood, then sat again. I inquired as to the whereabouts of the restroom, and was informed to look for it in the spare room. But the only door I found there was the one affixed to a rather large clothes closetwhich, figuring I had nothing to lose, I opened. The distant sound of a flushing toilet convinced me, and I stepped into the wardrobe closet, pushed past some rather musty coats, and found myself in a sort of wintry outdoor lavatory. A street lamp glowed above me. I shrugged, and proceeded to go about my businessundisturbed, except for a brief interruption by a goat-headed, human-bodied creature trudging sullenly through the snow and muttering about enzymes.
When I returned, a man with a period (something you don't see every day) had joined Chris, who was now memorizing the military hierarchy of the Huns. What immediately struck me about Period Man was not his vivid red beard, but the two
enormous phalluses he bore. "How odd," I thought. However, it turned out that his giant priapic appendages were actually magnums. Relief washed over with me, for who could compete with such largesse?
Others filtered in (except Domaine d'Andezon, which remained unfiltered and as a result had to be thrown out). Bob Ross entered, complaining that some idiot with a tricycle had scratched his Bentley. The man they call "Irrepressible," bearing a case of Bourgueil and Beaujolais. NJJoe, still day-trading on the British Colombian market. And others. It soon became clear that the New York WLDGers had two things in common: nothing, and wives far more vivacious than they really deserved (some of the wives even had class). The latter was something with which I could relate, and so I sat, satisfied that all was proceeding normally. I couldn't have been more wrong.
The arrival of the other two traveling guests, Rob Adler (resplendent with San Francisco jokes aplenty, along with several packages he claimed were "from the
real Haight") and Mike Dashe (who seemed confused at the number of people at the table named Peter Finklestein, Peter Steinfesser, and Peter Picklepepper, but as an easygoing California-type affably chose to ignore it), meant that a start could be made. And so, in similar fashion to Boston offlines (where the whites are completed before menus are issued), we began.
Phallus number one (and more than enough phallus for anyone, though the myth that "bigger is always better" remains somewhat of a phallusy) was the
1989 Trimbach Riesling Cuve Frdric mile (in magnum). Closed at first, but opening nicely by 7pm the following Thursday, this was pretty classic Fred (said the guy with the red head). Salty, almost impenetrable limestone, thick minerals, then softening with time. The tight finish remained constant, though; so unyielding was this wine that it was almost Hune-like. Irrepressible asked what fruit he was tasting, which catalyzed a vibrant conversation about the difference between rocks and plums, and the wonder of people who actually chew on rocks.
A
1995 Mann Gewurztraminer Steingrubler was also cast in the same austere mold, with typical lychee and spiced apple flavors giving way to an extremely dry chalkiness on the finish. Minerals abounded, though Irrepressible was loathe to mention them again. This was followed by a true rarity, the
1955 Dornfesser Chasselas Neiderschwihrler "Cuve Bon Choucroute", which proves the ridiculousness of the old adage "chasselas doesn't age 45 years, you nincompoop!" Triumphant and even a bit youthfully woolly, this was a wine for the ages, though there seemed to be vanishingly little of it.
"If you don't like this, then you don't like German riesling," opined the periodic one. Who was I to argue?
AP# 2 583 154 08 99 was redolent of spring blossoms and lime, turning to green apple and violets as the mild sweetness slipped about the tongue. Minerals, yes, and drying acidity that was perhaps a bit bitter at this point. Needs time.
Noted wine importer and porn star Melissa Dressenger then started touting the merits of his newest acquisition, and his first California property. He insisted on some sort of lengthy preface about "irrigational dry-humping" or "I thought this was Rat's Leap" or something, but soon realized no one was listening, and simply passed the wine. And what a wine:
1998 Frog's Leap Sauvignon Blanc Napa is perhaps the most splendid jewel in the Louis/Massengil portfolio. "Like Newark during a thaw," I wrote in my notes, "but thank God there's plenty of acidity." Growing agitated at the growing enthusiasm for his new property, he quickly gathered the remnants of the wine and guzzled it straight from the bottle.
There was much dismay at this display of bad manners (though Irrepressible wants to have a future offline based around that theme: the NYC Chug'n'Glug Airborne Animals Offline), and so we moved on to a much less Jerseyesque wine:
1998 Hubert Laferrere Mcon-Chardonnay. I didn't know what kind of grape "Mcon" was, but bookworm Chris Coad explained that it's actually a region in France. "Well," I thought, "how silly. Who would actually name a chardonnay after a region? Why, next you'll be telling me that there's no fermented emperor in Corton-Charlemagne. How can you expect to get 96 points from noted chardonnay expert James Laube if you insist on devaluing the legendary 'chardonnay' name?" Nevertheless, this was an interesting wine. Mineral, shy at first, some botrytisy sticky pear and peach flavors, but with an odd finish of canned peas. Lacking someone to properly explain the wine to us, we turned to Drizzler, who at this point was speaking entirely in abbreviations. "AXR1, UCD1, B-52, OU812, M.A.S.H." he replied. Well, OK, but I'm not sure I agree.
TXJoe produced a wine he'd just picked up at the corner packie,
1998 Fritz Hirtzbirger Singerriedel-Riesling Smaragd. Why New Yorkers insist on such dreck when Gallo and KJ are more than willing to supply them with excellent supermarket brands, I can't imagine. Begrudgingly, I tasted the wine: fat banana nose (incidentally, one of my favorite bands from the sixties), grapefruit and bracing acidity, raw peanuts and exceedingly long. And some botrytis, maybe, perhaps? Anyway, killer juice, made better by the extreme distaste shown for it by Irrepressible, surely a key indicator of Austrian greatness if there ever was one. We voted this the "R" wine of the night, though noting that while this was truly an 8-"R" wine, Michael Pronay could undoubtedly come up with the all-time "R" champion while making his next spelling-correction pass through the WLDG. Also, who knew that old Georg was so loved in his own country that they named a grape after him?
At this point (or one very near iteverything is hazy in retrospect) the menus arrived. Printed with ultraviolet ink on black velvet backgrounds, too. We all switched on our "black lights" to select the veal chop of our choice. Ravi's frenetic thumping and wailing was replaced by a strange music that could only be described as a jam session between Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the Chocolate Watch Band, with Carmine Appice on cowbell. As the mirrorball descended and twinkling multicolored lights interfered with our menu-studying (Chris was too engrossed in
1996 Standard Oil Production Figures to pay much attention, mumbling that he'd just have "whatever veal chop sounds good"), a sweet haze filled the room.
We were suddenly and inexplicably ravenously hungry, and requested that the restaurant simply line up the veal calves at our table. And bring extra forks, please. Yet it seemed no amount of young pre-beef could sate our appetites. So we returned to the wine.
1971 Huet Vouvray "Le Haut Lieu" Demi-Sec would have won the Thunderbird Prize, if anyone could have borne to mention it and Thunderbird in the same sentence. A truly spectacular wine (of the rare demi-sec variety, which - we have been assured by wine importers with 355 years in the business - is not actually made anywhere in the world, which makes this non-existent wine all the more special). "Awesome" I wrote in my Palm, blubbering Rovanically over the sheer love emanating from this beverage. Quinine, lotion, a perfect balance of sweetness and acidity, large-scaled but still youthfulthe Methuselah of wines, man, and a way cool and trippin' white. Dude.
They brought our beef early, though it appeared to be a wine. Strange, but a mellow California mood was settling over us, and we set to with knife and fork. After some spillage, we found the technique, and were able to consume most of the
1998 Puzelat "Clos du Tue-Buf" Cheverny "La Callire". Gritty, strawberry and raspberry, dirty cranberriesman, this beef is a bummer. The dirt softens in the mouth, with some musty tobacco flavors, and a vegetarian finish. Or maybe it's just corked. Bad spot, man, to be after the wowzer Huet.
And hey dude, here's a straggler:
1989 Mittnacht-Klack Riesling Muhlforst "Selction des Grains Nobles". Low residual sugar (though man, we could really use some sugar right nowlike, you got any, man?), with more mustiness. Man, I hate it when Mom doesn't clean this attic. It's like
buzzkiller moldy up here. But hey, peace. Anyway, closed nose, lightly sweet, pear and apple, a bit flowery. Light, and apparently not for the long haul. Speaking of which, who's got the U-Haul, man? My VW Bus is like
wasted, and I want to spread some love on my way up to Canada, yknow?
The mood at the table started to shift upon the arrival of three things: food, the
1997 Brown Zinfandel Napa, and a herd of dancing pink
BLINK tags. The haze was clearing, and the sugar we had been clamoring for a few minutes (or was it hours?) ago suddenly appeared in handy tablet form. Well, all right! And maybe it was that delicious sugar that ruined the taste of the wine, which was black peppery and lightly spicy, brambly and almost OK, but possessed of a really nasty residual sugar that made it taste like that nasty black cherry soda pop you get at Wal-Mart. Gasping for a better zinany better zinwe seized on the nearest Ridge bottle, hoping to sate our frenzy. Unfortunately, it wasnt zin at all. Instead, we were faced with the 1996 Ridge Syrah Lytton Estate, which was like heavily-peppered meat grilled over flowers, but with much vanillin oakiness on the finish. Tasty black cherries are hanging out (like K*Mart black cherry soda pop, I guess), and maybe this will come around in a few years.
I noticed something a little odd with my soup, which appeared to be bubbling. Borne on each of the little bubbles was a small Disney character singing the song he/she/it was associated with. I looked up to express my surprise to Mike Dashe, but he had started flashing. No, I dont mean he was taking off his clothes (though Oleg would do that, later), but he was actually blinking in and out of existence. A small gnat flew by in slow-motion, and I counted 35,892 beats of its wings while Matt Lewis/Drudgener opined about clonal selection in Greenland. But my attention was diverted as his flapping tongue detached itself from his body, drifted downward towards a pair of wines, and attached itself to the labels. And thus, the wines became:
1997 Ducellier "Le Chemins de Bassac" Vin de Pays Ctes de Thongue "Cap de lHomme" (blueberry, licorice, thin and short, uninteresting) and
1997 Ducellier "Le Chemins de Bassac" Vin de Pays Ctes de Thongue "Pierre Elie" (meaty, weightier, big and nutty, most definitely worthy of further study).
Somewhat unnerved at the loss of his tongue, which made it hard to continue his lecture on pit management in Bugey, Dressnelstein pulled his chair back from the table and attempted to conduct his own offline. For a time, chaos reigned, and the pile of bottles in Jossners Confederacy of Tongueless Minetta Winos quickly grew to unmanageable numbers (the gnat helped me countthere were well over 350 bottles), while Robs attempt to regain control of the proceedings by reciting hundreds of limericks failed.
But Joxers breakaway republic came to an abrupt and violent end when Montgomery Scott swooped the shuttlecraft Risa through the room (narrowly missing the mirrorball), snagged Louis LXII/Dressner MCMLXVI in a tractor beam, and recalibrated the boson field modulator while boosting the containment field. The maneuver was successful, but it had the unintended effect of shrinking all the bottles on the table by 50%. While Engineers Scott and LaForge attempted to redirect the tetrion emissions and restore our vinous bounty to its rightful size, we enjoyed a
1997 Viader Cabernet Sauvignon/Franc Napa (half-bottle).
OK, maybe "enjoyed" is misleading. This is a dessert wine, meaning that it actually
tastes like dessert. Buttered chocolate, and more chocolate, but no fruit anywhere. Best enjoyed while sitting in an oak chair at an oak desk, in the middle of an oak forest, saying "OK" to Okies in Oklahoma while reading a biography of Annie Oakley and her Okinawan tour.
The Treknobabble ended just as all the oxygen and hydrogen in the air separated with a loud
poof, drenching those of us not prepared with our finely-knit samurai armor. While others dried themselves off with towels fresh of the Neptune shuttle, we tried to recover from the woody assault of the Viader with a full-size bottle of
1997 Domaine des Penses Sauvages Corbires. Alas, it was not to be. Big and chewy, full of black and bell peppers, rustic and nice, but the victim of a mild corkiness. That this wine was still enjoyable despite the Curse of the Yaniger (a legend Rob promised to tell us as soon as he finished assembling his four-dimensional head) surely means something, though Im not sure what.
Main courses then arrived: a long procession of white-gloved (and two-headed) waiters bearing an infinite number of veal chops on platters made of some sort of superconductive plasma. Or maybe those were the sides. Thickly-accented babble filled the air, though discriminating between that of the waiters and that of wine importers and fun guys Abe & Louis Dooley was somewhat difficult. Thankfully, the hallucinatory atmosphere began to submit to reality. Noses returned to their proper faces, the camels stopped their poker game, and Andrew forgot the rest of the words to "Stairway to Heaven." The was a brief silence, and then a persistent yet annoying sniffing and snuffling started around the room. Bob Ross developed a sudden urge to return to his BMW and fondle the car phone. WVJoe called his broker. The TV in the corner came to life, and pictured Michael Douglas (with well-greased hair) lecturing Charlie Sheen about something. A fat, bloated man in a white tux with the word "disco" emblazoned on his chest staggered into the room, gasped his last breath, and died. We shrugged, suddenly nervous about the rapid passage of time and our own portfolios, and ordered up some more wine. Punctuation Man whipped out the second of his phalli. Hey, careful with that thing!
1964 Beychevelle Saint-Julien (magnum). Hey, is it hot in here? Why is everyone sweating? I feel the need to take off my skinny tie. This is, despite some pre-tasting negativity from The One Who Ends His Sentence At The Beginning, is absolutely delicious. Fairly big, still, with graphite and some fennel sausage on the nose. OK, this is enticing, but perhaps it is very slightly chunky after all. More graphite on the palate, fruitiness, tobaccoa very nice wine, and given that this bottle apparently saw mediocre storage, theres no hurry for those of you with giant priapuses. Uh, I mean magnums.
All of this talk of phalli made the men in the room realize that they were suddenly unable to perform. Literally, they could not get their forks from the plate to their mouths. More sniffling, and Chris developed an uncontrollable nasal itching. Irrepressible actually started to bleed. Quick, more wine!
The
1988 Vietti Barolo Brunate rode to the rescue on a giant horse (look at the
nose on that thing! If only), with classic tar and rose characteristics bridled with ash and some gritty tannin. Long, long finish. A star in the making, but perhaps a little difficult tonight. As were the next two wines, finally released from bondage by the now steady-state Mike Dashe. Claiming bottle shock would affect the two newly-bottled and shipped wines, he nevertheless passed his babies around the room, all the while nervously fingering the three spoons he had requested from the waitstaff. And it was true that the
1998 Dashe Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley was rather dense and thick, tasting mostly of blueberry and oak. But its big brother, the
1998 Dashe Zinfandel "Todd Brother Ranch" Alexander Valley, was brawny enough to push through its fresh-oak cocoon and emerge as an explosion of black fruit with some ageworthy tannin. Theres still plenty of oak there, but even one day later (at another tasting, if anyone could actually believe that there would
be another tasting after this one) both wines were showing better.
Jen started to shake and quiver, and sprinted to the jukebox, dumping in a bag of quarters and selecting the entire Huey Lewis & the News discography. Thus fortified with the peppy melody of "I Want A New Drug," we proceeded to dance jerkily (and as far from each other as possible) around the room, on top of the table, and in the restroom (in which it seemed that the stalls were permanently occupied by people with bad colds). Despite loud protests from the corner (where he was once again trying to start his own offline) that Huey Lewis was his original business partner, we ignored Mr. Big Shot Wine Importer and moved on to complete my wine jerky mini-vertical with the
1996 Gourt de Mautens Ctes-du-Rhne-Villages Rasteau. Hmmmnot as tasty as the 97. It turns out that the wine was corked, but it was still more enjoyable than the 98.
As everyone seems to recover from their nasal congestion and is overcome with a baggy-eyed drowsiness, we attack the last red:
1982 Muga Rioja "Prado Enea Gran Reserva", which is little more than oak-smoked bacon burnt at the edges.
The ever flexible Minetta delivered our dessert cart, which seems oddly decorated with what used to be referred to in polite society as "marital aids." Puzzled, we select our sweeties for the evening, while the Huey Lewis marathon gives way to an odd juxtaposition of Princes "Darling Nikki" and trance music. Have we stumbled into a rave? Regardless, we have dessert wines to taste, and we lick our lips and giggle as we dive into the first.
1989 Huet Vouvray "Cuve Constance" is super-concentrated, with gobs of unctuous layers of hedonistic lip-smacking juice so good I poured the entire wine down my well-satisfied gullet and let out a loud burp worthy of the Order of Merit. Others, though, thought the wine to be highly concentrated but backed with strong acidity, honeyed, and possessing an exquisite finish. Personally, I didnt think those unimaginative sorts used enough adjectives.
I felt a hand stroking my back, but when I inquired as to its origin no one seemed to know what I was talking about. With Bob Ross on one side of me and the first half of the Periodic Table on the other, I couldnt imagine what might be happening. I noticed, though, that Rob and Ilene had disappeared. Pressing on, we uncorked a
1975 Oremus Tokaji Asz 5 Puttonyos, a wine that lacked only Michael Pronays instructive spelling lessons to achieve completeness. If corn could fall victim to botrytis, this is what it would taste like, though bracing acidity and a long, piercing nectarine flavor emerges from the
maz of flavors. This wine completely dominated the one that followed, the
1994 Ostertag Gewurztraminer Fronholz "Vendange Tardive", which promised all sorts of fat smoky cashew, bacon, and peachy citrusness, but completely fell apart from the midpalate on. Perhaps it needed to spend another 15 years in
barrique to achieve real Alsatian typicity, but tonight it was mostly just disappointing.
Rob and Ilene returned, sharing some private joke, but now Irrepressible and Josephine Druschetti had escaped to places unknown. Jen had affixed some sort of collar to Andrew. Even Chris and FLJoe were eyeing each other. Clearly, we needed more wine, though it was hard to hear that request over the throbbing yet mesmerizing erotic meanderings coming from the speakers. Just then, a wandering refugee who claimed he had escaped from some Burgundian bacchanal offered us his wine. Initially, we refused, thinking this straggler to be some sort of odd oenological bum, but we soon felt sympathy for his sad tale of woe. It seemed he had been dragging this bottle from tasting to tasting for the last 21 years, but had been caught in some sort of existentialist wine hell in which tastings always ended just before he could open his prized wine. And thus, we uncorked a
1979 Parc "Domaine du Mas Blanc" Banyuls "Cuve de la Saint Martin", full of bitter chocolate, thyme, raisin, and vanilla. In near-perfect balance slightly marred only by a brief encounter with a bit of alcoholic heat, this was a wine worth waiting for. Our visitor thanked us, and tried to leave, but he found
No Exit.
As the heat in the room increased, and Andrew attempted to sip wine through the small hole in his leather mask, we noted the return of Irrepressible and Droolis Lessner. The former had donned a frilly lace thong and red leather boots, while the latter was resplendent in a lovely Versace dress open to the navel and Prada shoes. Perhaps there was even a little mascara in use, though we were too polite to comment. Instead, we opened what appeared to be the last wine, and an unfortunately unmendable victim of our earlier experiments with the space-time continuum. The
1997 Quinta do Noval Vintage Porto (half-bottle) was too young and simple to follow the Banyuls, though its thick and velvety structure was certainly enticing.
Fortified (sorry) for our journey home, we quickly escaped from the ever-weirder Minetta Tavern only to be knocked on our backs by the arrival of Ms. Lisa Allen, late but determined to consume her share of the vinous bounty. Much sidewalk merrymaking ensued as Lisa power-sniffed her way through the lineup, at which point she re-emerged to query us about the discarded underthings on Irrepressibles chair. We claimed ignorance, and stayed to watch Abe Vigoda shakily pedal off on his tricycle. Feeling satisfied at yet another successful outing, Chris, Lisa, Oleg, and myself boarded a taxi headed for the World Trade Center, pausing only to wonder at the struggling man being dragged from Minetta by federal DEA agents.
And thus, we came to a sad end. For our cabbie made the ill-advised choice to race the wrong way up a one-way street. As we perished in a fiery conflagration, we heard the lecturing voice of Nancy Reagan, reminding us once again to "Just Say No." If only we had paid more attention to those ABC After-School Specials
