 |
| Page uncorks The Stash at the Santa Fe. |
By David Robledo
Like musicians who open doors of perception, Bryan Page, a winemaker from Orange County, California, will usher you to the other side using fermented grapes. He smashes them by hand with his brother Chris to produce limited edition wines spanning Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay under Page Wine Cellars and Le Nu labels. Bryan’s solo-project, the Revolver Wine Company, offers edgier, brasher wines. All Page wineries are part of a broader garage movement of Napa Valley vintners who handcraft wine in small warehouses, often to the sounds of exceptional Rock & Roll.
Page has deep roots in the world of cuisine. His track to hand-crafting wine includes working as server and sommelier in noted California restaurants. But it was during a food and wine tour through France’s Bordeaux, where the renegade Garagiste movement was born, that Bryan first imagined making wine as a trade, applying the insights he’d gleaned throughout a decade or so working Napa Valley’s food and wine scene. He no doubt hoped to apply the Garagiste’s penchant for technical excellence, a balls-out work ethic, and avant-garde sensibilities toward fermenting Napa Valley grapes. The first barrel casked in 1997 yielded 36 cases of Page Proprietary Red, a highly-sought commodity.
WINE REVOLUTION
Bryan named his Revolver Wine Company after The Beatles’ Revolver album, that renegade work whose title suggests the pscyho-spiritual changing of perception that the beat generation yearned for. Born in 1966, the year of Revolvers’ release, Bryan might be a wine-crafting Dionysian love child of the album’s spirit. You may literally transcend upon first sampling his wine, and more than likely you will become a devotee. Revolver also suggests an old-fashioned six shooter, a fitting image to connect with a winemaker whose tasting room is in a ghost town and who ends days of hard work popping open Maker’s Mark.
Nods to music history saturate Bryan’s solo project. He respects Johnny Cash by using jet-black wine labels. Titles with Rock & Roll attitude convey a condemned chic of deserts and criminals on the run. The Fury, for example, is an appropriately-named Cab-Franc, a style usually associated with elegance and dedication to historical wine-making methods. Bryan uncorks a wild spirit in The Fury, unleashing his style against Cab-Franc’s usually medium-to-delicate grain. He does the same with Perdition, a Petit Syrah that recklessly drives to flavors that few would imagine possible for the delicate grape.
In a black country-western shirt with white-hot stitching, Page led a wine dinner for an unsuspecting 40 people at McAllen’s Santa Fe Steakhouse on Cinco de Mayo last year, a fitting date to present wines that embody the revolutionary Garagiste approach. Among wine lovers wearing family pearls or three-piece suits, Page’s just-off-the-plane blues-bar attire conveyed the rebellious spirit and unpretentious elegance of his wines. And in an inspired nod to Rock & Roll history, Page took the Jesus Christ pose late that evening, spreading his arms wide against a backdrop of artisan crosses that decorate the Santa Fe’s dining room. As if reaching for Chris Cornell at a Soundgarden concert, fans reached for Bryan in this South Texas setting of fine crystal and linen. Page had just introduced a 2005 bottle of The Stash, a Cabernet Sauvignon you think might first knock you over. When its more subtle flavors settle and you’re hopefully left standing, you know something much like Rock & Roll has just occurred.
That legendary night, when Page took the Jesus Christ pose in the Texas Valley, a Catholic stronghold where the devout spot figures of Christ in tortillas, the Santa Fe paired Proprietary Red with a creamy roasted-duck soup with duck-skin cracklings. The wine’s cherry notes played to the duck’s propensity for fruit pairings, and the rich cream sauce held oak-aged spice long on the palate. That and other pairings impressed Page enough to draft a letter to the Santa Fe, complimenting an intricate menu.
“Each course worked wonderfully with the wines my brother Chris and I produce,” Page wrote. “The presentation of each course reflected creativity and refined coordination.... I cannot emphasize enough how impressed I was.... “
Similarly talented pairings are typical of the Santa Fe’s wine dinners, monthly events that bring selected vintners or styles from wine regions to their 10th Street dining room.
Getting to the point that food and wine make such complimentary statements is a demanding process. Co-owner Sony Rego and chefs Jennifer Guerra, Juan Guerrero and Zenon Ollis brainstorm before creating dishes whose revision often spans days.
Featuring Bryan Page, a cutting-edge wine maker by any definition, shows that the Santa Fe can harness talent as it arrives on an international, culinary scene. For the Santa Fe to execute wine dinners in step with such emerging names requires technical and instinctive skill that is itself much like Rock & Roll, in a windswept Texas Valley that could be a stop on Page’s enticing train ride to flavor ... somewhere near The Fury, not far from Purgatory, and all too close to Perdition itself. END
To attend this year's Bryan Page wine dinner at the Santa Fe Steakhouse, call 956.630.2331. It will be held Friday May 6, 2011 at McAllen's Santa Fe Steakhouse
No comments:
Post a Comment