Unnecessary Tasting

Wine reps can be guides or roadblocks in navigating vino maze By [Josh Perilo] Putting together a list of wines for a restaurant sounds easy enough, right? Pick some vino you like, double the cost, sell a couple by the glass, and call it a day. If only if were so simple. Beyond the basic idea that you want everything on the list to â??not suck, there are a myriad of other considerations. What kind of restaurant is it? What wines go with that cuisine? What kind of clientele are you serving? What do they like and how much money are they willing to spend? Not only are you trying to hit the bull"s-eye with a wine that will blow your crowd away, you also can"t serve the stuff from the neighborhood liquor store. If you do, be ready for a chorus of â??I can get this around the corner for $10 less! On top of all of this, there is the business side. And with it come the sales reps from the various distributors. Most of them are helpful guides through their voluminous and confusing catalogs. But sometimes, they can make things more complicated. My sales rep, Lorenzo (not his real name), for the gigantic distributor Complicated Liquors (not their real name), is from the latter category. I asked him recently to bring in a selection of modestly priced American Merlots for me to taste. â??Thank you for having me in today, Josh! Lorenzo chirped as he unpacked his insulated rolling case. He placed the wines in front of me gingerly. None of them American. None of them Merlot. â??Where are our Merlots? I asked. â??I could only get some of the wines I wanted to taste for today, he sighed. â??The Merlot, I will bring on Monday. â??Right, I said. â??But I only asked to taste Merlot. â??Did you? he queried, his voice rising accusatorily. â??Perhaps you can try these anyway? This is a common trick that many amateur wine reps pull. While there"s nothing wrong with a rep bringing along a wine that they"re personally trying to push, pulling the old bait-and-switch is downright disgraceful. I promised myself that, even though his actions enraged me, I would judge the wines fairly. So, I present to you the results of what I will refer to as my â??Unnecessary Tasting. The first wine he poured was the Chilean Veramonte Casablanca Sauvignon Blanc 2009 ($9.95 @ Sherry-Lehman, 505 Park Ave. at East 59th Street, 212-838-7500). It mimicked a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but ended far too green and flinty on the palate for my taste. The Val de l"Ours Chardonnay 2009 ($8.99 @ Sherry-Lehman), from the south of France, was about as generic-tasting a French Chardonnay as I"ve had in a very long time. A tiny bit of citrus pith and limestone made this wine a bad carbon copy of a cheap Chablis. Once he began pouring red, however, the wines became much more interesting. The Fattoria dei Barbi Rosso di Montalcino 2008 ($22.99 @ America"s Wine Shop, 398 Third Ave. betw. 28th and 29th streets, 800-865-0982) was mild but focused with a little mushroomy funk on the nose. There was serious tannin up front, more mushroom and earth in the middle, and a cherry and black pepper finish. The Colognole Chianti Rufina 2006 ($18 @ Yorkshire Wines and Spirits, 1646 First Ave. at East 85th Street, 212-717-5100) was the most impressive wine of the afternoon. Scents of sweet orange peel and cinnamon wafted out of the glass. I still hadn"t tasted anything even close to what I was looking for. I thanked him for his time and sent him on his way. When Monday morning rolled around, sure enough, a bottle of Merlot was waiting for me. In the interest of column space, I"ll limit my evaluation of the wine to its positive attributes: Thanks, Lorenzo. _ josh@pennilessepicure.com