A grand dinner on the beach in Laguna
We had a great time down at my recent Jackson Family Wines dinner at the Driftwood Kitchen, a grand restaurant right on the beach in Laguna Beach.
Laguna Beach, if you haven’t been there, is one of those rich beach towns in Orange County where every view is a picture postcard. It’s California’s Riviera, Monte Carlo without the gambling. I must say that Chef Rainer Schwarz prepared an outstanding dinner: pan-seared John Dory with potato gnocchi in lobster sauce with caremlized fennel; duck breast with butternut squash galette, goat cheese salad and roasted candied beets in a huckleberry vinaigrette; and a pair of proteins, filet mignon and short ribs, swimming in a potato coulis with brussel sprout chips, almonds and an Umbrian truffle sauce.
Sound good? It was. We paired each course with two JFW wines:
Course 1: Matanzas Creek Bennett Valley Sauvignon Blanc and Stonestreet Knights Valley Sauvignon Blanc
Course 2: La Crema Willamette Valley Pinot Noir and La Crema Russian River Valley Pinot Noir
Course 3: Freemark Abbey Knights Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and La Jota Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon.
Yes, the pairings were as good as they sound. Different people had their favorites as to which wine paired best with each course, and so did I; but it’s really senseless to make these sorts of things into contests.
As the resident wine guy, my job was to say interesting things and, hopefully, keep people’s attention. Hosting these sorts of meals is lots of fun, but there are risks. As the evening goes on, and people drink more wine, it’s harder to keep their attention. You don’t want to force them to listen to you: they’ve paid their good money and are entitled to laugh it up with the others at their tables. (We had two big tables and two smaller tables, total of 26 guests in all.) As a result, the experienced dinner speaker has his bag of tricks to resort to.
I don’t overly-rehearse for these events. I’ve seen other hosts who have delivered the same spiel a thousand times, and you can tell: it’s not fresh or spontaneous. I’m a big believer in spontaneity. Life is spontaneous. You can have your talking points, and your written notes to refer to, but you have to go where the energy takes you. In this case, I wanted to talk about the wines and the wineries and the appellations, but I also wanted to gauge our guests’ knowledge of Jackson Family Wines, and their overall wine knowledge. You don’t want to talk up or down to people. You want to talk to them where they are—and since 26 people are in 26 different places, you have to keep your fingers crossed that you’re appealing to the majority of them, if not all of them. Believe me, it keeps you on your toes.
Things went very well. I can always tell from the feel of the guests; and the feel was happy and upbeat. Afterwards, 6 or 7 people came up to shake my hand and tell me how much they enjoyed the evening. That’s a great sign, when a quarter of your guests deliberately seek you out to say “Thank you.”
I will admit that, at the very end, things got pretty boisterous; and while I still had lots to say, I had to realize that my part—the formal part, anyway–of the night was over. At that point, people just wanted to enjoy themselves, not listen to a spiel about cepages and terroir. So I concluded, but it’s always nice, afterwards, to make the rounds of the tables, introduce yourself to folks you haven’t met, and continue the conversation more informally and intimately. And it doesn’t have to be about wine! When people are relaxed and comfortable at the end of a great meal, they know what they want to talk about. It might be their families, or something about work, or sports, or, well, romance. It’s called “hanging out” and it’s all part of the job.
And it’s a part I love. I get nervous before these things start, although maybe “nervous” is the wrong word. I conserve my energy. I center myself to be prepared for anything. I go internal. I imagine that Broadway actors go through the same thing. But once I’m out there, on my feet, wham! The ham in me loves it.
By the way, someone at the restaurant had the great idea of starting the night by putting KJ’s Grand Reserve Rosé, which we drank with passed-around appetizers, into a black glass. You couldn’t see the wine, so you didn’t even know what color it was. The idea was for me to explain to the guests how hard it can be to assess a wine when you don’t know anything about it, even the color. Of all our guests, I’d say about three-quarters thought it was white. A few thought it was red. But only one nailed it: when I asked him the color, whether he thought it was red or white, he said, “Could it be inbetween?” Good palate! I don’t know if I could have done that.
Have a lovely weekend. Back Monday.
