There is ordinary time, which flies by unnoticed as you scarf checkout-lane candy bars and drink whatever was on sale. Then—there are moments. You indulge in a small luxury, a tiny bit of perfection that reaches ancient depths of your brain—places where the senses swirl together and memory and desire fold into one another. You taste the smoky flame of a single-malt Scotch from Islay, smell the bitter chocolate malt of a creamy dark stout, catch your breath at the luminous purity of a ghost orchid. The world slows down, and suddenly you understand how such a fragile, temporary pleasure can become a magnificent obsession. The true obsession begins, though, with knowledge and passion. The intimate knowledge of the expert, who can determine excellence with decimal-point precision, and the ceaseless craving of the connoisseur, who can distinguish every nuance. Here, they show you where to find 10 of life’s finest, most fleeting indulgences.
Photographs by Matthew O’Shea. Assistant James McKenzie. Makeup and hair styling by Suzy Bacino. Model Jeanna from Talent Plus/Centro. Diane von Furstenberg dress from Neiman Marcus. Orchid from the Missouri Botanical Garden
Red, White and Frou-Frou
By Matthew Halverson
Alvin Wolff has thousands of bottles of wine in his 600-square-foot wine cellar—he won’t say exactly how many because, well, they’re kinda valuable—but he doesn’t hesitate for a second when asked which one he’d pour for his last meal on earth: a 1962 La Tâche, from France’s Burgundy region. “Period. End of story. No argument,” he adds, in case his initial response wasn’t
resolute enough.
The Clayton lawyer isn’t one for a lot of effete swirling, sniffing and swishing (“I either like it or I don’t—I don’t get into glowing accolades, comparing the smell to ‘volcanic mist’ or something”), but get him talking about why he loves wine, and the subject alone is intoxicating enough to loosen his lips. He can tell you the three primary and two minor grapes used in wines from the Bordeaux region: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. And when he starts dropping adjectives such as “silky” and “smoky” and “spicy,” well, you know the once-restrained connoisseur is about to open up. “It has to have good, pleasant flavors when it touches the tip of your tongue,” he explains, “then, when the wine is in your mouth, you should get really deep, rich flavors—and then, when you swallow, it should have a finish where the taste lingers in your mouth 30, 45 seconds, a minute.”
When he received his first bottle of “real” wine as a wedding gift, he knew nothing about bouquets or tannins—wine was strictly a Passover formality for his family—making it all the more intriguing when he was told to let it age for five years before opening it. That was a long time to wait, so when the old 905 liquor stores went out of business, he bought what he could of their quality Bordeaux and Cabernets. Once he popped the first cork, the intoxication went beyond the buzz of fermentation—he got drunk on the nuances of the finer vintages.
He learned the subtleties of color (“Red wines don’t have to be dark to be good—many Pinots are very light but still elegant, delicate and delicious to drink”) and how to use his nose to detect quality (a trace of cork or wet cardboard hints at impurities caused by a dirty barrel). He learned that opening a bottle of white wine two hours before serving (maybe not quite so long for older, more delicate wines) would give it time to breathe and develop, and eventually he found himself so intoxicated by this new world that he ended up reading anything he could get his hands on ... including a book recounting an aphid invasion that nearly destroyed France’s vineyards in the late 1800s.
Most important, though, he learned to trust his own judgment. It’s easy for a budding oenophile to be swayed by the praise—or scorn—critics will heap on the latest vintages, but Wolff is inclined to consult his palate first. “I’ve had bottles that Robert Parker [publisher of The Wine Advocate and known as one of the world’s great authorities on wine] gave 75 points, and they were very, very good,” he says. “If he gives something less than 90 points, he’s doing you a favor—rather than spending $100 for it, you could probably get it for $20.”
Of course, that’s not to say Wolff won’t drop some serious coin on a case. “The pricing has gotten nuts lately,” he admits. “The 2005 Lafite Rothschild has just been released as a future for $600 or $700 a bottle, and even some of the lesser vintages you can pay anywhere from $150 to $800 a bottle, depending on the quality and scarcity of it.”
But once it’s matured, in a couple of decades—and that bottle he bought for $600 is going for somewhere around four times that much—it’s all worth it. “It’s something to look forward to,” he says. “In 25 years I may not be able to ski and I may not be able to play in squash tournaments, but I’ll be able to enjoy that fine bottle of wine with my wife.”
Five of His Favorites
Huia: “This would be for everyday drinking. It’s about $16 a bottle. I’m always looking for value on a wine that’s just delicious. It’s just great with anything light, like salads or chicken.”
Larkmead: “This is a great California Cab, and I don’t think a lot of people have heard of it. André Tchelistcheff, who was the guru of California winemaking in the 1960s, named Larkmead one of the four top wineries.”
La Tâche: “For Burgundy on your birthday, there’s nothing like La Tache. It’s what heaven must be like. It’s got the best nose, it has tremendous middle fruit, it finishes great.”
Château Palmer: “Bordeaux should be the backbone of any cellar, and this is one of the best. One of my favorite mature vintages is 1979. It’s a very seductive wine. It smells great, it’s soft, it’s luscious. You have an explosion of flavors on your tongue.”
Tokaij or Chateau d’Yquem: “Nothing beats these for dessert wines. The grapes they’re made with have a fungus on them (referred to as noble rot) that gives the wine a tremendous sweetness and makes it more attractive to all the senses.”
Flower Girl
By Stefene Russell
We’ll start with the ironic plot twist, a detail straight out of a Guy de Maupassant short story: Margie Thomas, a woman who boasts “a closet full of fragrances,” was once horribly allergic to perfume. But six years ago, on a fluke, she found herself working in promotions for Liz Claiborne’s fragrance division. “You would think I’d say, ‘You know, I’m just not right for this job,’” she laughs, “but I stuck with it and developed an immunity to it. I think that’s evidence of how much I enjoy it.”
While taking her fragrance certification test, Thomas became smitten with the sheer tradition of it all: Centuries before Liz Taylor played Cleopatra (or hawked White Diamonds perfume) the queen of Egypt was anointing herself with laudanum and myrrh. “It was something that the Wise Men presented to the Christ child. It’s been important all through history,” she says, “but they were just oils; nobody really put it all together.”
Modern perfumes, she explains, are more complex, organized into what’s called top, heat and base notes. Top notes are what you smell immediately after puffing the atomizer. Middle and base notes can linger all day, melting into each other and creating different scents as the perfume evaporates. Body chemistry and skin temperature further change the smell. “So it’s a very individual type of accessory,” Thomas says. And just because it’s invisible to the eye doesn’t mean it can’t be unbecoming on the wrong person—wallflowers who spray on something big and splashy, prepare to be profoundly uncomfortable.
Thomas, who’s now the fragrance specialist for Sephora’s West County store, has worn everything the shop carries. She’s not a fan of intensely fruity or “coconutty” fragrances (“I feel like I’m wearing a drink”) or what she calls “fragrances that walk into the room before I do.
“I am a really outgoing, really social person,” she explains, “so I want something softer.” She approaches scent the way most women decide which shoes to wear: If she’s about to run errands, she spritzes on “something like Vera Wang, which is a white floral. It was the bride’s fragrance, so it’s very fresh and clean and white.” At home, after a de-stressing bath, she applies “Kenzo Flower, because it’s soft and powdery. I love putting on a little fragrance before I go to bed, something soft and nice.” Then there are the signature fragrances: “When your friends smell it, they say, ‘Oh, that makes me think of you.’”
Thomas’ signature fragrances? “Spicy florals.” She is a gardener and has a soft spot for flowers, especially jasmine and lilacs. (However, she says she “doesn’t do so well” growing actual rosebushes and so doesn’t often wear rose perfume.) Though florals suit Thomas’ personality, her signature scent has changed over the years. She used to wear Liz Claiborne Mambo, a rich concoction of ylang-ylang, sandalwood, pink ginger and vanilla; these days she’s a huge fan of DKNY Be Delicious, a crisp scent with apple in its middle notes.
“A lot of times, you will stay with a family,” Thomas says, “like the Gucci fragrances, which I like a lot. Rush is a really old fragrance. I personally like the original Gucci; it gives you that sweetness—with the vanilla—and it just makes me feel pretty when I wear it. That’s what you want in a fragrance, and when I’m helping a client that’s what I’ll ask them: How do you want to feel when you wear it?”
Thomas’ Favorite Fragrances
Chanel No. 5: “I’ve been wearing this since the age of 16,” Thomas says, “and I still wear it. It’s a very warm floral, more of an oriental.” Urban legend has it that Madame Coco’s perfumer, Ernest Beaux, created six scents, and she chose the fifth. First bottled in 1921, it was the first perfume to incorporate large amounts of aldehydes, organic compounds that amplify the fragrance’s notes. Synonymous with class, pearls and Marilyn Monroe.
Givenchy L’Interdit: Created for Audrey Hepburn in 1957 (apparently to go with the giant lunettes and lampshade chapeaux the designer also made for her). The original formulation was discontinued and then reintroduced in 2002. Like Chanel No. 5, L’Interdit contains aldehydes, which turns up the volume on some of its shyer notes, including orange blossom and violet. “It’s just a great fragrance,” Thomas says.
DKNY’s Be Delicious: “I’m out of it right now—and I miss it. It’s just so fresh.” Thomas likes its citrusy top notes of grapefruit, cucumber and magnolia, which settle down into “a bunch of beautiful florals in the middle” such as tuberose, white muguet, rose and violet. “You can wear it both day and night,” she says. “It’s fresh enough for day, but the florals make it romantic enough for nighttime.”
Bulgari Voile de Jasmin: “I love jasmine,” Thomas says, and she counts this white floral as one of her favorite jasmine perfumes. It’s made with jasmine sambac, or Arabian jasmine, along with bergamot, rosewood, ylang-ylang, mimosa and rose. Romantic, feminine and definitely not a fragrance that enters the room before you do.
Gucci Eau de Parfum: “One of my favorites. It’s just a very beautiful fragrance. I love this, because it’s so warm ... the citrus, orange and vanilla make it very different. You’ll find a lot of vanilla in the fragrances I wear.” Deeper and more mysterious than white florals such as Vera Wang, this fragrance contains vanilla absolute and cumin that spice up the sweetness of heliotrope and orange blossom.
Cocoa Buff
By Matthew Halverson
Angela Raines sounds pretty relaxed right now. In fact, she’s downright placid. You wouldn’t really say that she’s high—not in the patchouli-scented sense of the word, anyway—and it’s not that she’s in that stereotypical blissed-out, post-fix coma, but she is floating a little. She’s had a taste of her drug of choice—that would be chocolate, in its darkest and least Hershey-like of forms—which is harmless, but the way she consumed it is about as close to mainlining as you can get with a nonpsychotropic substance: “I’ve started buying cacao ‘nibs.’” In other words, she’s eating the pure, unadulterated raw product—kind of like a crackhead snorting a coca leaf. “It’s not sweet at all,” Raines explains. “I just want the M-F-in’ chocolate.”
Raines wasn’t always like this. There was a time in her younger days when you might have found her with garden-variety milk chocolate smeared on her hands and face, but those days are long gone. She eats chocolate so dark you might mistake it for a bar of pressed carbon, and, frankly, if you want a “true chocolate experience,” she says, you will, too. “You have to go for the chocolate that’s low in sugar and has a high percentage of chocolate, like 70 percent,” she explains. “Don’t get the frou-frou nuts and crap in it, though. Just get the plain bar chocolate.” Of course, 70 percent is just for beginners; Raines goes as high as 85 percent: “the stuff that’s just used for baking purposes.” Lindt and Ghirardelli will do just fine, she says.
Even Valrhona, a French variety considered by many the best in the world, doesn’t cut it for Raines—still too sweet. “That’s not what I’m looking for—it’s the depth and the heat and the smoothness that I’m after,” she says. In fact, it’s the source of an international cocoa rift of sorts between Raines and her mother: The younger Raines says that for all their self-proclaimed supremacy on the subject—and despite her mother’s undying love for the stuff—the French and their confections can’t hold a flaming truffle to the chocolates of Belgium or Switzerland. “It’s a constant fight,” she says, although she admits to the hair-splitting, to-each-her-own nature of the argument. “It’s kind of like how she thinks Mozart is fantastic and I insist on Beethoven.”
For the truly adventurous—among whom you can safely count Raines, particularly when it comes to matters of taste—it may be time to do as the Mayans did: experiment with savory options for a new chocolate experience. She actually started a while ago, putting cayenne pepper in hot chocolate—a little trick her grandma picked up from the movie Chocolat—but she’s getting ready to move beyond that to strictly nontraditional (for America, anyway) presentations. “I don’t know exactly how I’m going to do it,” Raines says, “but a chicken dish with chocolate as a seasoning ...”
Given the fact that she’s a young woman of limited means, extravagance isn’t always possible, but she’s also quick to point out that money is no object in certain situations. “If someone were to say, ‘You are going to put this in your mouth and it’s going to be the most orgasmically chocolate experience you’ve ever had,’ how can you put a price on that?”
And there it is—she’s opened the door. With all of her passionate opinions about chocolate, her borderline-erotic descriptions of its texture and heat, is it safe to say that she ranks chocolate above sex? “Given the choice between great chocolate and great sex, I would go for great sex,” she says, “but given the choice between great chocolate and mediocre sex, I would totally go for the chocolate.”
Raines’ Picks for Death by Chocolate
Hank’s Ibarra Mexican Chocolate Cheesecake: “It’s superdark chocolate, so it satisfies the chocolate craving, but it has other accoutrements, like cinnamon and ground almonds. It puts chocolate in a slightly new light—and it’s Hank’s cheesecake, so come on.”
Chocolate truffles made by Matthew Rice, the pastry chef at Niche: “Good chocolate truffles are hard to come by around here, but I had one of Matt’s, and it was phenomenal. It’s not on the menu, but at Veruca [the restaurant’s late-night Friday dessert bar] he’ll do a three-course chef’s tasting of desserts, and sometimes they’re one of the choices.”
Plain 70 percent chocolate bar from Lindt: “I like Lindt because, unlike French chocolate, there seems to be more depth to it; I like the depth-to-sweetness ratio more. It’s not supersweet. For something that’s accessible and that you can get at the grocery store, it’s consistently smooth and delicious.”
Wild Oats’ Ecuadorian chocolate-covered cacao nibs: “These are really cool because you get the benefit of the most intense, pure chocolate experience from the beans themselves, but the little bit of sweet chocolate on the outside makes it more accessible. It’s kind of a double whammy.”
Nutella: “For the sheer fun factor. If you want ‘playing hooky from work and watching a movie and being fat and fabulous’ fun, just get a jar—but don’t use a spoon.”
Scotched
By Jeannette Batz Cooperman
William Meyers was in college, headed toward law school, when a friend’s father informed him, “If you’re going to be a lawyer, you have to drink scotch”—and solemnly handed him a bottle. His fraternity’s free kegs every weekend held more appeal, but years later he went to a scotch tasting and remembered his vocation. With the first sip, a world opened up. Each single-malt scotch had its own distinct taste, carrying clues to its distillery and even to the cask it was aged in. He swirled peat smoke on his tongue, caught hints of seaweed and raisins, felt leather, toffee and tobacco slide past his tongue …
When Meyers started listening to merchant bottlers, scotch got even more interesting. They explained how they bought or traded unique casks and did single-cask bottlings, limited-edition scotches numbered by the bottle.
That scotch was cask strength, not diluted to 42 percent alcohol as it is at big distilleries. Nor was it fastidiously chill-filtered to remove the cloudiness caused by congealed lipids. “By filtering, you lose some of the flavor, the oiliness that coats your mouth,” Meyers says, “although for neophytes I don’t recommend cask strength, because the alcohol content will be so high, it’ll blow them away, both on the nose and on the palate.
“Lighter scotches have floral notes, like violets or grass, but on Islay, an island off the coast of Scotland, you get peat smoke and iodine,” he continues. “Some people describe the taste as chewing on old Band-Aids. In Omaha, I was at a scotch tasting, and one bottle had a definite pine scent. A bottling we were drinking in Chicago last spring had the cedary taste of pencil shavings.”
Most scotch is aged in bourbon casks, but some is finished in sherry or rum casks, and its sweetness approaches (although never reaches) that of bourbon. “With bourbon, what matters is the recipe, the mash bill. A bourbon might be 51 percent corn, 30 percent rye, 19 percent wheat. Single-malt scotch is all malted barley.”
As founder and president of the St. Louis Scotch Club, Meyers tracks local tastings (e-mail scotchguy@earthlink.net). “I got tired of flying to Chicago,” he explains. “There are knowledgeable people at The Wine Merchant, The Wine & Cheese Place and Lukas Liquors, but they have to know they have an audience before they’ll bring in ambassadors from different distilleries.”
There are fine scotch selections at the Scottish Arms, Brennan’s and, yes, Growlers Pub, he adds. You can also buy collectors’ scotches. “I tasted a $7,000 bottle of Macallan—not worth it,” says Meyers. Something he did love? “A 35-year-old Bowmore, an Islay whiskey aged in a sherry cask, one of 282 bottles. It tasted of heavily mildewed socks soaked in sherry with peat moss on top.” Realizing that he hasn’t quite conveyed the appeal, he reaches for Malt Advocate’s 94 rating: “lush, thick fruit and chewy toffee soothe the assertive notes of earthy peat and leafy bonfire. Underlying smoked nuts, brine, kalamata olive and tobacco ...”
Meyers owns perhaps 1,000 bottles of scotch and swears he’s opened one of every kind. “People buy rare bottles, just snatch ’em up as investments, and they gather dust,” he says disgustedly. “Scotch should be shared and enjoyed.”
Scotches Worth Sipping
For about $50 a bottle:
“The Macallan cask-strength, from the Speyside region of the Scottish Highlands, matured in oak sherry casks from Spain. Pale gold and smooth, with hints of toffee, vanilla, raisins and spices, it’s Macallan’s flagship in the U.K. I liked it so much, I bought four cases.”
Also reasonable? The 10-year-old Laphroaig, from one of the distilleries on Islay in the Western Isles: “It’s got a strong, peaty smoky flavor.”
For about $350 a bottle:
“Ledaig 1972, a cask-strength distillery bottling from the historic year the Ledaig distillery reopened. It’s got
some peat, and it’s finished in Oloroso sherry casks—a very dry sherry, which makes the scotch unique. Just a wonderful bottling.”
And if money is no object?
“The Bowmore 1970 from Signatory Vintage, smoky and salty, slightly perfumed, from Bowmore on the shores of Loch Indaal. It’s been called ‘enigmatic.’”
Or the Macallan 1949, from the distillery’s ‘fine and rare’ vintage line, aged in hogshead casks on Speyside for 50 years. A citrus and peaty nose and hints of wood and spice on the palate.”
Stolen Beauty
By Jeannette Batz Cooperman
Bill Mayhan had seen plenty of what he now calls “Wal-Mart orchids.” But on a trip to South Carolina, he was invited into a greenhouse that was a steamy tangle of exotic orchids. “Oh my God, I’d never seen flowers like this before,” he says. “The colors, the shapes—one, a Phragmipedium, had back petals that fell about 2 feet, like a big Fu Manchu mustache that twirled as it went down.
“I was hooked.”
He started collecting, and he made one mistake after another. “I’d fall in love with one because it was so beautiful, and then I’d get it and read more and find out it could only grow in the upper Andes, where the temperature never rose above 60 degrees and the humidity was always 80 percent,” he says ruefully. “You get seduced by this gorgeous picture ... like life, I guess.”
He learned never to suffocate an orchid in potting soil—orchids are epiphytes; they grow on tree bark and crave air. He bought his very own Phragmipedium in a 3-inch pot (it would have cost hundreds of dollars if he’d bought a larger one) and nursed it up to a 10-inch pot. “It took me 10 years to get the damn thing to bloom,” he says. “When it did, I threw a party.”
Soon 200 orchids filled his apartment—in the shower, in the kitchen, hanging in baskets from a rod in his bedroom. “There’s one where the spike descends, and from it a cartwheel of a blossom, each petal long and striped with red, and a hinged tongue in the center that bobs up and down when the wind hits it, and a hairy little cap on the top,” he says blissfully. “It’s such an intricate design. They all do these bizarre things to get little moths to come and mate with them.”
Some orchids’ blooms last for months; with others, you wait a year for a moment of beauty. “I have a Bulbophyllum medusae,” Mayhan says, “a puffball blossom of about 1,000 thin white hairs. It lasts about three days in its prime.”
Mayhan teaches literature at the University of Missouri–St. Louis; he specializes in the Victorians, who, as it turns out, “were absolutely nuts about orchids.” For Mayhan, part of the pleasure is aesthetic: “It’s an almost impossible beauty.” The other draw is the absurdity of exotic creatures from Thailand or Belize growing in his living room. “They found a new orchid just north of Moyobamba, Peru,” he says in a rush. “When they went back to the mossy slope where it grew, people had raided all the orchids. You would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for such an orchid.”
Mayhan saw the film The Orchid Thief, of course. “It was all about passion, more than about orchids themselves,” he muses. “The orchid was the metaphor for obsession.”
Pick of the Orchids
Phragmipedium kovachii: The Peruvian discovery every orchid lover in the world covets right now.
Phragmipedium caudatum: The creamy, green-striped slipper orchid with the spiraling, reddish Fu Manchu petals that can hang down a foot and a half. It grows on wet, mossy hillsides.
Dracula vampira: People want it just for the name. Dracula, literally “little dragon,” inspired by the two long tails on each sepal—and vampire, because this particular dracula orchid is black and spooky looking. Found in Ecuador, it lives in the cold shadows.
Masdevallia coccinea: Another cool grower with masses of large magenta, fuchsia, yellow or white flowers on long stems, found covering the upland slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Chita.
Dendrobium spectabile: Spectacular. The flowers on this baby are weirdly twisted and turned, each distinct. It blooms in clusters of up to 20 in the steamy forests of New Guinea, Bougainville or the Solomons.
Coffee with Dr. Loewenstein
By Aaron Belz
Joe Loewenstein makes a living as a professor of English at Washington University, but the way to get him really hot is to ask him about coffee. He tries hard to project a semblance of normalcy, insisting that he’s “not really very devoted, at least not by the standards of the true coffee enthusiasts.” But Loewenstein roasts his own beans—in fact, he owns two roasters, both of which accompany him on sabbatical. He also owns a grinder “the size of a blender but heavier,” noting that it is “the most important tool for making espresso.” As proof that he’s not overly devoted, he says: “I’ll occasionally drink a shot that’s taken under 15 seconds or over 40 seconds to yield 2 ounces.” And he is quick to point out that he doesn’t even use a thermocouple to check the temperatures of his shots or a thermometer to help him when he steams milk.
As far as beans are concerned, Loewenstein is understandably picky, having about as refined a palate as anyone in St. Louis. “When I make my morning coffee tomorrow,” he explains, “I may want the ‘wineyness’ in the Colombian I have or the leathery quality of this Ugandan, which has a touch of earthy, mossy, syrupy something that seems kind of Indonesian in character. My palate may reach out to one of these things, and I may be able to coax it from the machine.” For green beans he recommends Sweet Maria’s, a California-based distributor (www.sweetmarias.com); for commercially roasted beans, he turns to Counter Culture Coffee in North Carolina (www.counterculturecoffee.com).
“You’d call this obsession?” he asks, increasingly defensive. “Is it obsession when a man opens his door in the morning, looks for the paper and finds it? You need some equipment to make espresso; you need a door if you’re going to go out and get the paper.”
Loewenstein’s Favorite Roasters
Joe Loewenstein won’t recommend varietals: “People owe it to themselves to discover if they’re Indonesian worshippers or devotees of Ethiopian, Rwandan or Central American coffees. Moreover, the Ugandan Bugisu of 2005 just isn’t anywhere near the dense, molasses-chocolate-moss thing it was in 2003. If I tell people that they need to try Guatemalan Huehuetenango and they get coffee from this year’s wrong finca, they might well be disappointed.”
Riley’s Coffee and Fudge (618-307-3419, 1900 Lebanon, Belleville, Ill., www.rileys-coffee.com): “The owner, Barry Jarrett, will ship, and he has an international reputation. If I ever find a restaurant in town that brews his coffee—and whose staff he’s trained—I’ll know that coffee culture in St. Louis has taken off.”
Northwest Coffee Roasting Company (three cafes, 314-371-4600, www.northwestcoffee.com): “The roasting operation at 4251 Laclede is superb.”
Kaldi’s Coffee Roasting Company (four cafes, 314-727-9991, www.kaldiscoffee.com)
Intelligentsia Coffee (www.intelligentsiacoffee.com): “They’re based in Chicago, and their Black Cat blend is superb for espresso.”
The Aficionado
By Anna Ross
Dan Krekeler smoked his first cigar “too long and too many cigars ago to remember,” but after 10 or so years of lighting up and taste-testing the sizable supply of cigars on the market, he’s figured out what he enjoys most when he’s capping off the end of a busy day or savoring a stogie at the 19th hole. In summer, you’ll find him “on the patio with a nice glass of red wine or an icy margarita” and a fine cigar; in winter, he stops in at the Ritz-Carlton lobby or lights up at one of the cigar-friendly establishments around town. When it’s time to refill his cedarwood humidor, he checks out what’s new on the market and restocks his favorites at The Cigar Box or Jon’s Pipe Shop.
Size and overall taste are Krekeler’s measuring rods for a good cigar. For a comfortable size, he reaches for the Robusto, a thick, short cigar measuring just over 5 inches long, with a ring gauge of 50. (The ring gauge is a measure of the width or thickness of the cigar, with 1/64 inch as its base; the Churchill, at 7 inches, may be longer than a Robusto, but its ring gauge is narrower, at 47.) The question of taste he approaches as solemnly as a sommelier: “I like a cigar with a clean finish; oaky, woody and with a hint of chocolate.” What about flavored cigars? He winces. “To me, they’re like special flavored coffee. After a while, you just get kind of tired of the taste.”
Lighting up with his cigar torch and taking a long draw may feel like the perfect finish to a hectic day, but sometimes Krekeler cuts a corner timewise, extinguishing a cigar he’s just fired up. It’s a mistake that leads to his biggest pet peeve, “not giving myself enough time to smoke the cigar through and having to relight it. If I find myself having to go somewhere in 10 minutes, I don’t want to have to put it out and relight it. Within an hour or so, that might be OK, but keeping it overnight is a definite no, because the cigar will have an ashy taste.”
Krekeler regularly reminds inexperienced smokers, “You don’t want to ash your cigar.” Translation: “Let the cigar burn on its own. A well-rolled cigar will hold its ash—set it down with an inch or more of ash, and it can hold the flame.” Called a “clean burn,” the ash is “straight-tipped and not crumbly, an indication of the quality of production rather than a reflection of the quality of the cigar.”
Does price matter? Not as much as you’d think, he says, once you’ve climbed away from the cheap flavored cigars at the bottom of the barrel. “A $5 or $10 cigar is a decent cigar and the normal range for me,” Krekeler says.
Krekeler’s Choices
Rocky Patel Premium Cigars: A boutique brand that makes a good old-fashioned cigar, strong and bold with a lot of depth and flavor. For cigar-lovers, not novices.
Pádron Aniversario Series: Cuban cigars the way they were before Castro. Well-made, bold, with a square shape. Also probably too strong for a novice.
Arturo Fuente Gran Reserva: The “Short Story,” part of the “Hemingway” series, is tiny enough to enjoy in 20 or 30 minutes, if you don’t have time to smoke a huge fat cigar, and it’s medium to mild.
Bolivar Robusto: Named for Simon Bolivar, and worth exploring. It’s strong and spicy, but never overpowering; fine for beginners.
La Gloria Cubana: Very inexpensive—usually about $5 a cigar—but mild, flavorful and well-made; a good cigar for the money.
Bubble Boy
By Shera Dalin
Simon Lehrer gets downright bubbly when it comes to Champagne. Really good Champagne, that is—the kind that’s available once every three years and sells for $1,000 or more a bottle. His tastes run to the exquisite: that rare bottle of French Krug Clos du Mesnil, available only three times a decade in select locations, and, on the more affordable end, a nice $85 Billecart-Salmon non-vintage rosé. When he’s relaxing over brunch with friends, it’s Duval-Leroy Blanc de Blanc.
“I don’t mind pouring it for mimosas or Kir Royales,” he says. After all, it’s only $40 a bottle.”
Because it’s no fun to drink alone, Lehrer has turned his fiancée, Annie Denny, into a sparkling-wine fan. They often cook at home, sharing a bottle over fried calamari or grilled whitefish—or with popcorn while watching a movie.
“The salt content in the popcorn gives you a burst of bubbles,” he explains.
Fine sparkling wine (not the same beverage as Champagne, which comes only from France) must be consumed from fine sparkling glassware, Lehrer insists. He has a collection of 18 Riedel glasses designed solely for sparkling wine, ranging from $8 to $20 a stem. He doesn’t bother with the $50-per-stem versions, which are virtually guaranteed to break because of their delicacy, he says.
So how did this passion for a fine pour arise? About five years ago, Lehrer began working as the cheesemonger at The Wine Merchant in Clayton. Like so many retail workers, Lehrer had to participate in company meetings to learn more about the product. Unlike so many retail workers, he had a job that entailed drinking excellent wines.
As Lehrer learned, he developed a taste for the sparkling varieties, particularly for Champagne. And the employee discount didn’t hurt.
“The first thing you notice about true Champagne versus sparkling wines is, there are more bubbles,” he says. “There is a definite difference.”
Lehrer’s enjoyment and knowledge of wine grew steadily, to the point that he took a second job as the bar manager at Pomme Café & Wine Bar in Clayton.
At home, surrounded by images of vintage French Champagne advertisements, Lehrer keeps only about three bottles of bubbly on hand at a time. When your life is awash with wine, it’s not necessary to keep cases around the house.
Lehrer’s Best Bubbly
Clos du Mesnil from Krug: “It’s 100 percent Chardonnay, and that’s like drinking a very dry apple cider—the best apple cider you’ve ever had. It’s so special and so delicate that it needs to be drunk by itself.”
Jacques Selosse Rosé: “There are lots of nuances, lots of earthy tones, which is very uncharacteristic. It’s a great food wine because it’s complex. Unfortunately, they don’t import to the U.S. anymore.”
Billecart-Salmon Rosé: “Their rosé is very fruity and rich and robust. But it doesn’t show any of those earthy tones. It’s by far my top choice when I’m out. And luckily, it’s very easy to find at most good restaurants.”
1996 Dom Pérignon: “This is for celebratory occasions—it’s good, and it’s also recognizable. The flavors alone speak, but the name helps people ‘get it.’ And this vintage is the best champagne I’ve ever tasted from their house.”
Egging Him On
By Katie Pelech
“It should smell like the ocean.”
Jeremy Driver, chef de cuisine at The Grill in the Ritz-Carlton, is discussing fish eggs in the wistful terms typically reserved for rare memories of true bliss—memories from the good old days when men were men, women were women and no one dared put caviar in the freezer, much less in a can on the shelf.
“It should be chilled, served on ice. The freshness,” he says, waxing enthusiastic, “you can taste it in the eggs as they pop on your tongue.”
For Driver, caviar is far more than gustatory pleasure. It is a food that comes with context, a food so firmly entrenched in our culture that a mere mention conjures up images of luxury: “When I imagine people eating caviar, I think formalwear, crystal chandeliers, orchestra music and people in a ballroom, dancing.”
He first tasted caviar, which he’d always dismissed as a posh novelty treat, at the New England Culinary Institute. But once he’d sampled the main types—osetra, sevruga and beluga—and heard their culinary history, he was hooked.
Caviar lore centers on the sought-after beluga roe, characterized by its clean, nutty flavor and large, ripe eggs, which range from silvery white to dark gray. It’s harvested exclusively from the white beluga sturgeon, a native of the Caspian Sea whose dwindling numbers recently prompted a ban on beluga-caviar imports. Beluga roe is graded from 0 to 000, with the latter reserved for the most highly sought-after eggs. The grades—and, in turn, the price—are determined by color rather than taste, with the lightest caviar selling for $50 to $200 an ounce. Driver admits that he’d be willing to shell out that kind of cash for an outstanding product, but he doubts it would ever be necessary; those prices, he says, exist more to maintain image than to denote quality.
Driver prefers osetra, serving it with blinis, toast points and boiled eggs. “I break the whites away from the yolks, grate both and serve with chopped chives or parsley, crème fraîche or sour cream, red onions and capers. It’s a social thing, hanging out, making your own canapés, drinking vodka or sipping Champagne.”
With the beluga ban, American strains of caviar, whose definition has been broadened to include the roe of the hackleback, paddlefish and salmon, have risen in popularity. While purists might snub these “fake” caviars, he’s excited by their potential. But will canned caviar that sits next to sardines in your grocery store sully the reputation of the oceanic ambrosia? Driver is flabbergasted by the suggestion.
“It’ll never die in Russia or Iran,” he says. “It’s like lobsters in Maine!” Besides, he adds, “People get the best because they want to be the best—and that will never go away.”
The Crème de la Crème
While there are plenty of reputable caviar sellers out there, for Driver’s money it’s Marky’s, Catsmo or Browne Trading Co. And here are his must-haves for the ultimate tasting.
Osetra Gold: “Crisper in flavor, not too salty ... it’s just the best.”
Beluga 000: “A little bit milder, more buttery in flavor.”
Sevruga: “A little bit smoother in taste. I use them for garnishing.”
Paddlefish: “Not a true sturgeon, but the roe is comparable in size, color and taste to sevruga, and a bit less expensive.”
Hackleback: “It’s a little sweeter and has nutlike properties.”
The Pursuit of Hoppiness
By Chris King
Beer has been very, very good to Paul Jensen. Without accumulating even the slightest incipient curve of a beer belly, he has sold, drunk and tasted beer all of his adult life, all over the world. Now he also collects and cellars fine beers and is a partner in a microbrewery, the River Road Cider House, getting under way in Grafton, which has every beer geek in the bi-state area on the edge of his barstool.
Jensen, who is 42 and lives in St. Louis Hills, has worked in business-to-business sales for a beer distributor, but his beer obsession was nurtured as one of the founding bartenders at Schlafly’s flagship downtown location, the Tap Room. At his bartop he met the beer gypsies, such as Mark Naski, with whom he has traveled to Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Luxembourg and all over North America, all in search of the best local pint of beer.
As he became obsessed with beer, Jensen found himself surprised by its complexities. “Even a lighter style, like a pilsner,” he says, “the farther north you go in Germany, the hoppier it gets, while the farther south you go, it gets maltier, sweeter. Even in seemingly pedestrian styles of beer, there are all these things going on.”
He realized surprising facts—for example, that there are different kinds of bitterness. “In American Pale Ale,” he says, “you use hops with a lot of acid from the Pacific Northwest—the bitterness is reminiscent of grapefruit—but if you brew with certain German hops, like hallertau, the bitterness is more flowery, not as acidic.”
Jensen also learned that carefully made beers can improve, rather than skunk, with age. Given that craft beers are typically bolder and heavier than mass-market fare, he was surprised to find, after tasting it all, that his favorite style is actually a lighter style, Kölsch—a beer born in Cologne, where he feels comfortably at home.
He finds one aspect of the gourmet-beer experience—food/beer pairings—a bit overrated. (“People say, ‘What should I have with this?’” I say, ‘Have what you like.’”) True beerhounds, he says, pair beers with seasons: a golden Maibock in the spring, a wheat beer (perhaps brewed with fruit juice) in the summer, marzen in the fall. Winter is the domain of big, bold, high-alcohol, bone-warming ales.
“I love scallops sautéed in a wit [wheat] beer, which has a nice herbal quality that complements the fish,” Jensen adds. “In the winter, take your grandma’s beef-stew recipe and throw in some Newcastle Brown. If a recipe calls for water, substitute beer—then drink that beer with your meal.”
One thing he has never done is let beer become work. “Some people can’t have a drink to enjoy themselves,” he says. “They think every drink has to be a critique session. They can’t sit down and enjoy the moment.” He pauses to enjoy the moment. “I’ve got this crazy, diverse group of friends that I know only through this stuff. You couldn’t imagine the cast of characters. You couldn’t make it up.”
The biggest misconception about beer? That lagers are light, ales dark. “You can have a pale straw-colored ale or a jet-black lager,” says Anheuser-Busch brewmaster Nathaniel Davis. “What differentiates them is the yeast strain. Ale strains prefer a warmer, more rapid fermentation, which drives fruity and robust notes. Lagers prefer lower temperatures; lagern, German for “to store,” refers to a secondary fermentation where the yeast is allowed to mellow and round out the beer, so you get a crispness in the finish.” Try drinking lager in a Champagne flute, Davis suggests: The tall, thin glass will accentuate citrus and spicy, aromatic hoppiness, and when you tilt it far back to drink, the beer will hit your tongue at the front, where the carbonation will explode and then wash very quickly across your palate. For an ale, use a glass that opens up at the base; that will accentuate malty and ripe fruit notes, caramel, coffee and nuttiness. “Tilt the glass so the beer leaves a film, then inhale the aroma as the film evaporates.” Whatever you do, don’t drink from the bottle. Pour straight down the middle of the glass and let the carbonation explode in a solid head of foam, noting whether it’s white or pale tan, tight and lacy or bubbly. “You drink first with your eyes,” Davis murmurs.
Jensen’s Suggestions for Four Interesting Pints
Kölsch: “It’s a very difficult beer to make because it has a dry, white-wine, mineral quality to it. Young guys start out wanting big, bold beers that knock you over. As you spend time in Germany, though, you realize that light beer can have great taste.”
Hefeweizen: “It has a clove-banana character. When I first tasted that, it was so unlike anything else I’ve ever had. It’s a very unique thing in the beer world.”
Saison: “They would make this stuff and let it age over the summer and have it in the fall season. It’s very complex, with a nice tart quality to it. It’s something I think about quite a bit.”
Guerze: “It’s very sour and acidic—in a pleasant way. It’s aged in white-oak casks, and it takes a number of years for this stuff to get to the market. You can cellar it like a wine.”
