Opus One: the most luxurious glass of wine I ever ordered

Hideo Nomo in 1995

Exchanging polite tweets with Opus One's CEO about Friday's post, I remembered the only time I've ever splurged for a glass of Opus One.

This story will date me, but what the hell. It happened in 1995. Val Kilmer was Batman. Few people had cell phones, but hip kids carried pagers: you could call their pager number and they would call you back from the nearest pay phone. I had email already but often had to explain the concept to older people.

I was living in Japan, where Hideo Nomo was the biggest celebrity maybe ever. He was the first Japanese baseball player to become a star in the US and his exploits dominated the news every night.

I don't remember why I was in Las Vegas on July 11, 1995. Northwest Airlines (!) used to sell Japan residents a 4-city ticket that would allow us to traipse around the US for little more than a single roundtrip fare. I must have decided it was worth seeing Vegas since the airfare was free. Turns out I hated it because I'm not a gambler, the city is so artificial, and you can't walk outside anywhere during the day in Nevada in July.

I was in an air-conditioned casino looking at the sports book when I saw a proposition bet: "Strikeouts by H. Nomo."

Which sommeliers select Silver Oak and Opus One?

I like Vino Volo. Sometimes I get a decent glass of wine and a good sandwich at airports, like Newark, where there was previously no food worth eating.

Even for airports, Vino Volo's prices veer quickly from I-guess-that's-OK to are-you-kidding? Perhaps they're able to gouge the business traveler crowd, who can expense anything they consume in airports.

Still, after seeing this list of wines at Seattle Tacoma International Airport, I had to wonder: how did Silver Oak and Opus One get in the "Sommelier Series?"

Don't get me wrong, I respect both wineries (here's a Silver Oak feature, here's a surprising Opus One post.) But when I try to get sommelier quotes about them, what I keep hearing is that sommeliers actively try to talk customers into ordering something different. Lettie Teague wrote last year about how many restaurant people hate Silver Oak, even though they sell a lot of it.

So I gotta ask Vino Volo*, which sommeliers are in your Sommelier Series? Which sommeliers selected Silver Oak and Opus One?

Follow me on Twitter: @wblakegray and like The Gray Report on Facebook.

(* This is rhetorical, as I could have called and asked, but I didn't, I just wrote this in a motel room when I couldn't get back to sleep. Nonetheless Vino Volo should feel free to answer.)

Tasting the world's most expensive chocolate

The shocking thing about the world's most expensive chocolate bar is that, even at $260 for 5 ounces, the producer doesn't expect to make money.

Jerry Toth, co-founder of To'ak Chocolate, is a leftist do-gooder. It's weird for him to be peddling a $260 bar of chocolate, but maybe philosophically it's better that it almost certainly will not be profitable.

Yet per ounce, To'ak is more expensive than Harlan Estate or Screaming Eagle. 

I met Jerry at Dolores Park Cafe in my neighborhood in San Francisco. I'm spoiled: winemakers of wines much cheaper than Jerry's chocolate take me to expensive dinners all the time. Jerry didn't even spring for a coffee. But that was OK, I was there to taste and didn't want to screw up my palate.

Because I know what everybody reading this is thinking: How the fuck can a 5-ounce bar of chocolate be worth $260?

There are three ways to answer that.

I've been drinking a box wine for a month!

I often tell everyday wine drinkers they should drink more box wine. For the last few weeks, I put my mouth where ... well, I put some box wine in it. A lot of box wine.

There are a number of great things about box wine:

* It's actually in a plastic pouch inside the box that deflates as you take wine from it, so the wine isn't exposed to oxygen. An open box of wine in your fridge might stay good for a month.

* A 3-liter box contains the equivalent of 4 bottles of wine, and is much cheaper per ounce.

* Glass is heavy, so shipping a box of wine from France takes less fuel and is better for the environment.

Box wine hasn't caught on in this country because a lot of indifferent wine is sold in boxes, and people blame the medium for the message. New York Times political columnist Gail Collins once published a book that called wine in a box one of the Ten Worst Ideas of the Millennium, a list that also included foot binding and trench warfare. This is the problem for box wine: ignorant know-it-alls.

The heavy wooden box of Château Tassin Bordeaux blanc showed up at my door mysteriously, in a container with an unrelated bottle of red Bordeaux. I get a lot of unsolicited wine bottles but boxes are rare (confidential to trade: I don't want more!). This box, as you can see, is striking. I like Bordeaux white, it's one of the world's most underrated wine values. You wouldn't believe the backlog of untasted wine samples at my home. But even though we needed refrigerator space -- we were expecting a $400 hunk of meat any minute! (that's another story) -- I put this in there to test it.

My wife grumbled about space priorities so I tasted it that night, and then we shifted from tasting to drinking.

Update: Charles Smith dropped his lawsuit against my readers

In 2010 Washington winemaker Charles Smith sued some of my blog readers. There were some anonymous comments on my site that he didn't like, and he sued the people who wrote them.

I was not a party to the suit. I found out about it because Google got a subpoena for the IP addresses of the commenters, and Google, which has more money than God, asked me if I wanted to hire a lawyer to fight it.

Smith never told me why he filed the suit, but I found out about 3 weeks later, when a Utah wine lover named Jason Vance got an explanation from the winery saying, "We believe that the anonymous commenter is someone who had a mutual non-disparagement agreement with the winery and unfortunately something that should have been kept private was made public."

Because I wasn't in the suit, I didn't learn about the progress of it, and I always wondered. Last week I was in Seattle and I went to the courthouse to find out.

Wine people like vs. wine for oenophiles, Rombauer edition

I have a feature on Rombauer up right now on Wine Searcher, from my gig as the site's California Editor. I quite enjoyed reporting it, had a great time tasting with winemaker Richie Allen and KR Rombauer, and brought home a simply outstanding Rombauer Chardonnay to have with dinner.

I thought it was outstanding, but it wasn't something a modern Rombauer Chardonnay fan would recognize. It was a 1985 wine from French Vineyard made by Bob Levy, who now makes wine at Harlan Estate.

We talked about this wine in the article. KR Rombauer called it "very austere. A beautiful wine that 2 percent of our customers liked."

I'm in that 2%. I don't know what it tasted like 29 years ago, but terrific acidity still carried it. Look at that alcohol level: 12.9%. It wasn't fruit-driven: it was earthy and soulful and every sip seemed different. If I put it in a tasting with top Burgundies from 1985, it would have held its own.

KR Rombauer didn't like it. He mixed it with the 1986, which was oxidized yet fruitier, and I have to admit I also tried that blend and liked it, but that was because of the vibrant backbone of the '85.

I also brought home the entire lineup of current release Rombauer Chardonnays, to have with Dungeness crab. They sell 100,000 cases of very rich, super-ripe Chardonnay a year to people who love it, know what it tastes like, and buy it because that's exactly what they want.

I'm on the record as being a big fan of the current release of Rombauer Merlot, which was one of 11 I picked out from a blind tasting. Rombauer being synonymous with generosity, KR also sent me home with a '96 Rombauer Merlot, which I served to friends the day after Christmas, and it was stellar.

So here's the thing: does it matter what I thought of the current-release Rombauer Chardonnays?

Photos of a disappearing world: Fox Glacier, New Zealand

The furthest inland point on Fox Glacier in December 2009. It has retreated far back since then.

Fox Glacier on the south island of New Zealand can no longer be reached by a hiking trail. Global warming has caused the glacier to retreat, and if you want to see it now, you have to take a helicopter.

In 2009, my wife and I vacationed on the south island and visited Fox Glacier. We borrowed crampons for some difficult parts, but most of the day's walk we did in our regular winter clothes, bearing just a walking stick with a nail in one end.