Monday, April 23, 2007

Sip by sip, the evening was a success

Webster House wine dinner fun even for novice palates

For the past five years, Chris Liazos, owner of the Webster House Restaurant; Jimmy Vasiliadis, of O’Hara’s Wine & Liquors; Julian Schultz, a local wine writer; and Dr. Bob Ouelette, a retired anesthesiologist and wine connoisseur, have been collaborators on a monthly wine dinner at Webster House.

It is a pretty serious affair. There is always a theme and there is always a pre-dinner or advanced courtship date on which the right wine is matched with the right food.

One such collaboration led to Thursday’s “California Springtime Dinner with Sonoma Wines,” a five-course meal that included Greek kisses (dried plums with honey and pepper on toasted baguettes sprinkled with blue cheese); seared scallops on salad greens with orange segments and toasted almonds topped with balsamic vinaigrette for the appetizer; and baked halibut with cilantro-nut sauce, stir-fry chicken, or pepper-crusted beef tenderloin for the entrées.

Now, Chris is a good guy. Everybody knows that. If there is another businessman in the city who has done more for his community and in particular for the kids who go school and live in the neighborhood where his business is located, I have yet to meet that person.

Still, I have to confess that when he baited me, hooked me, then landed me in the middle of his California wine dinners, I was a little nervous.

After all, I knew nothing about wines.

I should not have been alarmed. Wine dinners have to be among the greatest social, under-the-radar parties ever.

How do you, for example, beat arriving at a dinner and being welcomed with two glasses of wine, even before introductions are made? I mean, count me in next time.

To begin with, wine drinkers are a tightly knit social group. I say this, because along with the guests, the dinner was attended by the distributor, the salesman, and the retailer of the wines served. All the wines came from the Kenwood Vineyard.

Prior to that night, I had known Mr. Vasiliadis as the man behind the counter whenever I stopped in at O’Hara’s on West Boylston Street for my Guinness. At the dinner, I learned that he carries 2,000 brands of wine, and that most are tasted by him before they are bought.

I was seated next to Dr. Ouellette, who has been teaching, buying and collecting wines, and conducting wine tastings, for decades.

He runs a Web page, winetaster29.com, that focuses on the goings-on of two wine groups with which he is a affiliated — the Worcester Tasters and the Compagnons des Bons Vins, a husband and wife group.

“Taste, taste, taste,” the good doctor replied, when I inquired as to the method he used to developed his sensitive palate.

So I tasted the sauvignon blanc, the pinot noir rosé, the chardonnay, the zinfandel, the pinot noir, the merlot and the cabernet sauvignon. I tasted them before and after sampling the dish with which they came.

If you can match the above wines with the aforementioned meals, you should call Webster House to inquire about the upcoming Australian Wine dinner. If you can’t, you could stand a little broadening of your palate, so come. “Well?” Dr. Ouellette asked, after I had played cat and mouse with my wines.

I threw out “mild and sharp” a lot. And when given a multiple-choice question, such as “can you taste the cherry or the raspberry?” I would guess one of the two flavors and Dr. Ouellette would nod encouragingly and say, “You see that’s not so hard, is it?”

He made me feel good, but I know this was a man who, after an evening of tasting Italian wines, had summarized the occasion in this fashion:

“All the wines presented a beautiful dark ruby color, aromas ranging from hints of spice, tobacco, leather, to warm suggestions of coffee and sweet underlying of vanilla.”

I may never get to that level, but that’s all right with me. I found the wine buzz to be very familiar.