In advance of those closest to me arranging for an intervention, I have decided to come clean, so to speak, with my problem.

The sentence leading off this post should not be a surprise to those of you know me. I have not hid my fondness for wine, and, in fact, have blogged about it occasionally here. The fact that I actually blog and have a job that almost defines nerdinesss seals the deal on that end.

(Let me add as further proof that when I found that my my spell checker thought that “nerdiness” wasn’t a word, I decided to look it up on the interweb. I eventually found myself at a web site that linked the following ad with the word in question. So all in all I suppose that if the web site is dynamically associating ad content with searches, I am, as a nerd, in good company.)

But let’s get back on track here. It turns out the perfect marriage of the two prominent traits of mine is an online database called Cellartracker. This web site now carries information on about 11.3 million bottles of wine, and has nearly 70,000 uers, of which I am one. This web site not only allows you to track wines in your cellar, but it also has over 750,000 reviews written by the users. I have been using this for nearly 4 years now, and have found it to be an amazing resource for keeping track of wines that I have in my cellar, wines that I have purchased on futures, as well as wines that I have consumed.

Because the information is stored as a database, you can generate all sorts of reports of varying degrees of interest. For example, you can find out from the consensus “drinking window” which of the wines in your cellar should be consumed before they go bad. You can find out how the price you paid for the wine compares to the average of other users of the site. While this particular feature can be used in a post hoc manner to inflate one’s sense of worth (so I’ve heard), it is particularly useful if you consult it before buying the wine.

But one of the failures of this database is that you actually have to be pretty religious about updating it. Well, technically, you really don’t have be that compulsive about it, unless of course you like wine and are a nerd, which we’ve previously established. Anyway, I tend to be reasonably attentive to managing my cellar, and definitely add wines to the database as I purchase them. What I’m not so good at is deleting the wines from the cellar after they’re removed.

So this weekend I decided to update my database. This entailed printing out the database—for fellow geeks, I will mention that Cellartracker provides a great Excel export feature—and then taking it downstairs and going through each bottle in my collection and comparing it to the list. For most people, this would be just as much fun as you would imagine. I, on the other hand, was completely taken with this task. This ended up as an ultimate fantasy weekend for the wine nerd. I won’t tell you how long it took to do this, but the fact that I now recognize that I have a problem should tell you everything.

When I completed the task, I then spent some time going through the different reports. Here are some random facts:

• I have 795 bottles in my collection, with 43 pending.
• In an odd coincidence, I have consumed 795 bottles in the 4 years that I’ve maintained the database. That means an average of one bottle every other day, which sounds about right.
• I bought 335 bottles for my extended family and friends, and gave 64 away.
• 679 of the bottles are from France, with over half being Rhone wines. I was surprised to find that I have almost as many bottles from Spain as from the USA (<20).

So that is just a small inkling of the terribly fascinating information that is available from this database. Not surprisingly, the overall cost for all the wine purchased and consumed can be accessed, and I suspect that this number might well be of greater interest to the reader. Because certain people with whom I share and house and bank account occasionally read this blog, let me say as previous generations of Rosen men have said in the past:

It’s only pennies a day, dear. Pennies a day.

One of the highlights of the trip to NYC, was when Dave and Sue (my wife’s brother and sister-in-law) accompanied us to WD-50, a restaurant we had heard about when Kate took Danny there for his latest birthday. We were determined to order the tasting menu, as the chef, Wylie Dufresne, who sometimes acts as a judge on Top Chef, is known to be an inventive fellow. When we arrived, we were told that all wines were 50% off for those ordering the tasting menu, so the deal was sealed.

I probably shouldn’t have, but I tried to remember to photograph each plate with my iPhone, mostly to jog my memory. I say I shouldn’t have, because 1) I sort of hate being “that guy” who insists on documenting everything, and 2) the iPhone doesn’t work that well in low light, and the pictures were going to turn out pretty crummy.

For most of you, I would recommend that you stop reading here. For those of you brave and/or bored enough to continue on, I will commence to list all the courses in the tasting menu, followed by my comments and a photo-like image of the plate. I had originally thought about annotating the images, but that seemed a little too extreme even for me.

1. Lobster legs, serrano ham, dried cherry, cucumber




This was a truly remarkable feat of engineering. The chef apparently is able to extract the entire leg from the lobster using some sort of suction device (the waiter mentioned something about a hyperbaric chamber, but I don’t see how that would work). The dried cherries were were then grated on the side. I’ve forgotten how the Serrano ham was prepared.


2. Everything bagel, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese

This was a truly strange offering. The smoked salmon threads were made, I think, from dehydrated smoked salmon. A very pure flavor. The cream cheese was a single thin slab that was frozen. The “bagel” was made of ice cream, and there were pickled baby pearl onions accompanying the whole thing. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but that’s the general idea. Very tasty mix of flavors and textures.


3. Scallops, tendon, endive, parsley, hazelnut oil

This is gifted man’s idea of “surf and turf,” and was by far everyone’s favorite dish of the night. The scallops were served seviche style, and were wrapped in a thin slice of beef tendon. I’ve never had tendon before, and it was….uh….tendonous. But really quite flavorful. All the flavors combined in a sublime way, and the only downside was that they didn’t serve this for dish 4, 5, 6….


4. Foie gras, passionfruit, chinese celery

As it turns out, I was the only one who liked this dish, It was basically a foie gras terrine, with a smooth center of passion fruit pudding/coulis in the middle. The mix of the two flavors for me was perfect. The chinese celery was, if I remember correctly, baked into a cake, and then dehydrated so that there was this quite crunchy, delectable accompaniment to the smooth as silk terrine and filling.


5. Eggs benedict

This was clearly the best mixture of inventive and yumminess—a completely deconstructed eggs benedict. The egg yolks were cooked for 20 minutes at 60 degrees in a cylinder. It had a smooth as silk consistency. The hollandaise sauce was deep-fried into little balls—apparently the hollandaise is put into liquid nitrogen to freeze it, breaded, and then fried, which turns the center creamy again. The prosciutto was fried, I think. This was a big time winner.


6. Crab tail, soybean noodles, cinnamon dashi

This was a ravioli dish filled with crab tails (from king crabs) and black edamame all sitting in a cinnamon dashi broth. I have seen dashi in use on The Iron Chef, but never had it in person. This was light, aromatic, and perfectly flavored.


7. Rabbit, wild rice polenta, cassis, kale black olive

This was a pretty big disappointment. The rabbit itself was ground up, I think, and put into a cylinder. There was a tasty black garlic sauce to accompany the wild rice polenta (which basically tasted like wild rice). The kale came to the party in a rectangle of pure kale flavor, while the cassis was served as what basically tasted like a really thin fruit roll up. All very interesting flavors (except for the rabbit), that didn’t really go together that well.


8. Squab, butternut noodles, cream soda, carob

The pigeon…excuse me….squab was delicious. It was a litte underone for my wife’s taste, but I liked it. There butternut squash noodles and a cream soda sauce, which all went together well. I have forgotten what the crunchy part at 10 o’clock on the plate was.


9. Ricotta, capers, frozen honey

This was a big hit for everyone, although I was sort of lukewarm to it. The honey was frozen, which was quite a treat even though I’ve never been a huge fan of honey. The mix of the three flavors together (there were capers in the mix as well as a caper foam) was extraordinarily good.


10. Jasmine custard, black tea, banana

This was my favorite desert. The banana came in the form of the cannel of ice cream in the center of the plate. There was a black tea caramel sauce (along with a small sprinkling of black tea powder. The jasmine custard next to the ice cream was aromatic and delicious, and the milk foam scattered around the plate was perfect.


11. Carmelized brioche, gala apple, sage, brown butter

A brown butter ice cream sat on a smoked pecan base. And when I say smoked, I mean really smoked. I love my smoke, but this actually turned out to be too much for a dish at the end of the evening. my wife pointed out that it might be better if followed by a single malt scotch, and I think I agree. The “bread pudding” brioche was OK, but nothing too spectacular.


12. Concord grape sorbet-black sesame

Just what it sounded like. I’m not a big fan of sesame in general, and I was pretty full at this point, so I just gave half of mine away.

All in all, an entertaining and enlightening evening. I doubt I would do this again, but I’m quite glad I got the chance to do it this time.

Separately […], a research team led by Tomas A. Prolla and Richard Weindruch, of the University of Wisconsin, reports in the journal PLoS One on Wednesday that resveratrol may be effective in mice and people in much lower doses than previously thought necessary. In earlier studies, like Dr. Auwerx’s of mice on treadmills, the animals were fed such large amounts of resveratrol that to gain equivalent dosages people would have to drink more than 100 bottles of red wine a day.

The Wisconsin scientists used a dose on mice equivalent to just 35 bottles a day. But red wine contains many other resveratrol-like compounds that may also be beneficial. Taking these into account, as well as mice’s higher metabolic rate, a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine “starts getting close” to the amount of resveratrol they found effective, Dr. Weindruch said.

The bottom line is that the amount of resveratrol in red wine is so tiny that even if this one ingredient is truly related to longevity, one couldn’t possible consume enough wine to gain any benefit along these lines.

The hoohah surrounding this report and others like it is that it can only mean bad things for all of us, but most importantly, me. Most people will not read the fine print and immediately run out and buy up red wine, which will of course result in price increases across the board. That is bad for me and for anyone who enjoys drinking wine because they enjoy drinking wine.

But what is even worse in my mind, is the underlying assumption that scientists are going to be able to isolate a single substance that, once ingested, will have the single desirable effect of lengthening one’s life. This represents but a small subset of the mindset that allows us to think that simple manipulations of our biology by exogenous compounds will cure what ails us. Anyone remember oat bran as a cure for cholesterol? Wilfred Brimley aside, there has never been a single study demonstrating that it has any effect. If you haven’t already, read anything by Michael Pollan to see what a really smart guy thinks about this. His advice “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” is right on point.

People rightly worry about what they put in their bodies. If you’re diabetic, for example, it would be wise to limit the amount of simple carbohydrates and sugars you eat. That said, our bodies are incredibly complex and it is simply folly to think that varying one aspect of our biology will have only one desired outcome—hence the term side effects. As for me, I may indeed choose to suck down 4-5 glasses of wine a night, but if I do so, it won’t be because I need to get a dose of resveratrol. It will be because I’ve turned into a wino.

I will admit to not being an expert on the topic, but during my college years I certainly downed enough of these to learn what I liked. In the dark ages—before the internet and The Food Network—regional foods mostly remained in their regions. Buffalo wings could be found in northern New York State, Tex-Mex cuisine was enjoyed mostly in the southwest, and cheese steaks were eaten in the Philadelphia area. With the advent of culinary homogenization, it is hard to go to any bar that doesn’t serve Buffalo wings and/or nachos. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it always brings up the notion of “authenticity.” Should chili be made with beans (Cincinnati) or only with meat (Texas)? What is the right type of sauce for the Buffalo wings?

This same search for the “real Philly cheese steak” has particularly annoyed me. I have seen too many reports extolling the virtues of Cheez Whiz® as the true choice for any authentic cheese steak. Cheez Whiz®? Really? I honestly didn’t know that that was an option when I first sampled cheese steaks, and always assumed that provolone was the topping of choice. I had seen some people use American cheese, but for me it was always the round italian that made it onto my plate.

I was therefore pleased to see the investigative report by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Entitled Cheez Whiz is overrated for cheesesteaks, staff writer Peter Mucha digs deep in the belly of the Philly cheese steak world and finds that few vendors prefer Cheez Whiz® on their steaks.

But pundits, pleez note: Whiz wasn’t first historically, and it’s no runaway favorite regionwide.

At John’s Roast Pork, which serves up taste-test winners on Snyder Avenue, the processed cheese sauce isn’t even served.

“I’m a cheese eater, sweetheart, and I love cheese, but Whiz is not cheese,” says owner Vonda Bucci, 75. “It’s a lot of grease and coloring.”

And this from Joey Vento, the owner of Geno’s:

“To be honest with you, I’ve never eaten Cheez Whiz, and I’m the owner,” he said. ” . . . We always recommend the provolone. . . . That’s the real cheese.”

The remainder of the article details the history of the cheese steak, and is a pretty entertaining read.

But the important point here is that, once again, I am right. The only remaining question is what would be the perfect wine to accompany Bifteck de fromage de Philadelphie?

• Chez Henri
• Excelsior
• KO Prime
• East Coast Grill
• Rialto
• Craigie Street Bistro
• dante
• Zygomates
• Taza Chocolate
• Sage
• Tremont647
• No. 9 Park

I wish I had taken notes, so I can credit individual restaurants, but between my age and the cocktails, I can’t precisely recall who made these highlighted dishes (in order of preference):

1. Garlic risotto with escargot and parsley (maybe No. 9 Park?)
2. Pulled pork tortillas (East Coast Grill)
3. Wild mushroom ravioli
4. Steak Tartare on homemade potato chips

But to be fair, there weren’t any bad dishes. And I’m proud to share with you that I am no longer a lardo virgin.

Like most people my age in the US, I was raised with a pretty limited exposure to the cuisines of different cultures. We did enjoy the occasional Chinese food (we’re Jewish after all), but Moo Gu Gai Pan was pretty much the most unusual dish on the menu. Italian food was pizza, spaghetti, and lasagna. My first experience with spicy food of any type was at a Mexican restaurant when I was 24. I didn’t have Thai food until I was 28, and my first sushi and Indian food were consumed 2 years later. You get the idea. Now not only do I partake in all types of ethnic cuisines, I prefer them to the the basic American fare I grew up on.

Desserts are another story entirely. I know that every country has an array of fine desserts, and I’ve tried them all—cannoli, napoleons, gulab jamen, lichee ice cream, etc.,—and I like them well enough. But when push comes to shove, I’ll take plain old American chocolate cake or strawberry shortcake any day. Why is that? At an objective level, this really doesn’t make sense. Most of these other desserts are arguably “finer” than those that I prefer. I am convinced that the reason is that I was imprinted on these desserts during a critical period in my gustatory development.

So how do I dare take this anecdotal observation, albeit from someone who is a keen observer of the human condition, and formulate a such an outlandish hypothesis? The truth is that I have confirmed this original observation with countless (at least three) other people. And the key to the hypothesis is recognizing that this imprinting is not generalizable to all foods, but only to desserts. While there are surely people whose diets have not wavered from their preferences in childhood, those people maintain their steady course (so to speak) with all aspects of the meal. I contend that you will not find many people who deviate from their preferred childhood desserts, but not do vary the rest of their diet. In other words, dessert is the hardest habit to break.

Now all that is needed is a grant to test the hypothesis. I don’t think I’ll have trouble recruiting subjects.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I like wine. I like wine a lot. Tonight, I opened a 2002 Domaine de la Combe “Au Renards,” which is a red wine from the Burgundy region of France that is made from the pinot noir grape. When I poured the wine, the color was nearly pink in hue and looked like watered down Kool Aid. On tasting, it was all sweet fruit and resembled nothing so much as soda pop. Very disappointing. So I opened up the 2003 Domain de la Combe “Au Renards,” which the more observant of you will notice is the same wine but a year younger. There was a huge difference between the wines, with the 2003 having a deeper, garnet color and a much more complex set of flavors that only got better as we finished the bottle a couple of hours later.

So far, this isn’t that unusual a story. It is true that 2003 is considered to be a better year than 2002 in Burgundy. In addition, there was the possibility that the 2002 was just past its prime. Finally, it could also be that that bottle was “corked” (i.e., spoiled). One of the sad truths is that many wines that are cellared—some say as many 5–10%—get corked. For what its worth, it hasn’t happened to me that much, but in fact that is what I thought had happened with the first bottle.

So here is where it gets strange. About 3 hours after pouring the wine from the first bottle, I came back to the scene of the crime and found that the color had completely changed. It now resembled the the deep garnet/ruby color that I had expected (and had seen in the 2003). More shocking was the fact that the wine was not only drinkable, but was close to outstanding. While it isn’t at all unusual for a wine to improve with more time in the glass as it gets exposed to air, this was the first time I had ever have a wine pull a Lazarus.

You gotta love a beverage that breathes life back into itself.

Here’s a quick and dirty list of red wines that I have had that are both affordable and exceptional. I’ll post some white wines later.

1.2005 Bodegas Olivares Monastrell Altos de la Hoya Jumilla This is a lovely bold wine from the Jumilla region of Spain, which has some of the oldest vines in Europe. There are lots of good bargains from this region of Spain. It has many of the characteristics of a Chateauneuf-du-Pape at a fraction of the cost
2. Henry’s Drive Pillar Box Red I’ve had a couple of these vintages and they are all just great. A very nice Australian blend of cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, and merlot. The Wine Advocate considers this one of the biggest wine bargains in world. I agree.
3. Thorn-Clarke Shiraz Terra Barossa This is an old favorite from Australia. Although I am mentioning only the Shiraz here, anything from this producer is a great bargain.
4. N.V. Fess Parker Lot 41 Frontier Red Yes, it is that Fess Parker. For those of you not old enough to remember, Fess Parker played Daniel Boone on TV in the 60s. He is now the owner of a very fine winery that produces a number of very nice wines. This one is reliably delicious.
5. 2005 Georges Dubœuf Juliénas I know what you’re thinking. Beaujolais? That insipid stuff that was marketed so successfully in the US in the 80s? The Julienas is not Beaujolais Nouveux, it is a Beaujolais Villages, which is a totally different animal altogether. This can give you a small sense of what a Burgundy wine might be, again at a fraction of the cost.

Another cool video that is hyponotic and just a little sad.

All this by saying that I had a couple of great meals this weekend with family. Ten Penh on Saturday was a revelation. There wasn’t a single dish among the 6 appetizers, 6 main courses, and 4 desserts that we wouldn’t order again. Restores my faith in fusion cuisine. Sunday found us back at Mark’s Duck House, where we ordered…wait for it…Peking duck. Oh, and Hunan crispy whole tilapia (right out of the tank), Chinese brocolli, and Singapore noodles. This is a well known place in Northern Virginia and worth the trip. Well, perhaps not from Boston.
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¹There is only one true dichotomy. There are those that dichotomize and those that don’t.