When Abe Schoener was a Professor of Ancient Greek Philosophy at St. John’s College he may have spent many hours contemplating Plato’s views on belief and knowledge. Or wondering how Socrates managed to play 157 times for the Brazilian national soccer team. Now he spends more time occupied with Archimedes theory of displacement as he crushes grapes to make wine just east of California’s Napa Valley. The Scholium Project is one of the most idiosyncratic wineries in California. Owner Schoener and two employees uncompromisingly execute Schoener’s vision of how wine should be made. He believes that it should reflect a place: so every wine has the vineyard name on the label. It should reflect some notion of the soul of the place, the fruit, and the time it was made. So fermentation can run for months in some cases at low temperatures as though that can leach every scintilla of the goodness that the grapes can give.
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He cleans the winery and equipment only with water, and cold water at that, in the belief that impurities harbor in the more common cleaning agents. And he owns no vineyards, focusing on long-term relationships with growers and the crafting of wines. So important is place that none of his wines have the grape names on the front label, in apparent defiance of the now-global practice that California popularized, of varietal labeling. Instead, one of his wines is likely to have a proprietary name drawn from classical antiquity and the name of the vineyard. The AVA is just “California”.
Needless to say, men like Abe Schoener aren’t common in the wine business. I was one of the fortunate press contingent that got to taste a flight of his wines this week at Bailey’s Prime Plus. The fact this tasting took place is indicative of some changes (good ones) that are taking place there. First, Bailey’s sommelier Jennifer Jaco organized the event and plans to do more. She joined the restaurant just six weeks ago but has years of experience. She started her professional training as a student at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York (unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to ask her what grade, while at the CIA, she got in waterboarding). That nurtured her interest in wine and led to her eventually becoming sommelier at Gordon Ramsay at The London. She held that post for two years before a stint at Eleven Madison Park in New York City, perhaps best known as the “other” restaurant that earned The Grand Award this year, along with our own Pappas Bros. Steakhouse (give your liver a fit by downloading the wine list here. It is only 138 pages). She was part of that building process and has been given the green light to undertake a modest version of the same thing here. If it goes as planned, expect Bailey’s to have 750 unique wine selections and a ‘Best of Award of Excellence’ (kind of two-out-of-three stars and making it one of the top one percent in the country) for their depth and breadth in the medium-term future.
The other earthquake to happen at Bailey’s is the appointment of Grant Morgan as group Executive Chef. He is best known to Dallasites for his time at Dragonfly but worked before that at Le Cirque in the Bellagio Las Vegas (“interesting place le Cirque”, he says, “no food budget”). His mandate is to diversify the menu while maintaining the place as a destination for steak mavens.
In passing, you have to question the sanity of both these individuals – each arrived just before the start of restaurant week during which time the place was slammed. Morgan had only just got back from his honeymoon, although he has done six restaurant weeks before at Dragonfly.
We started with Blue Point Oysters served topped with a cucumber mignonette foam served with 2009 Naucratis ‘Lost Slough Vineyard’ Verdelho ($20). This wine knocked my socks off. A Portuguese variety grown in the Sacramento River Delta (where?) that makes a wine to rival the best examples in the world! Really. What comes across with brash presence is the massive intensity of the fruit in this wine. It is as though it had been simmered down like a stock, with nothing to detract from the purity. Being the first wine is the placement that makes you easiest to forget, but I will not forget this one, my favorite of the night. Morgan’s simple briny oyster preparation was a marvelous match. The acid in the wine lifted the oysters, combining with the umami within.
Schoener or Jaco had cleverly placed the 2009 Marcher Sur La Lune Reserve ‘Bokisch Ranches’ Verdehlo ($28) second in the flight. Clever, because it is made of the same grape as the Naucratis, but aged in oak. All the transformations one would expect come from the oak aging, including the straw color. I enjoyed it immensely but this was one of those rare cases where the unoaked version exceeded the oaked one. You could serve this wine with food, or just while walking on the moon. We drank it with a platter of Toro, Octopus, Hearts of Palm, Arugula and Blood Orange Vinaigrette. It is great to see Octopus on the menu at a fine dining restaurant. Morgan’s preparation of an al dente tentacle proved that, leg-for-leg, it is one of the best creatures in the sea.
Next was 2005 Babylon ‘Tenbrink Vineyard’ Petit Sirah ($60). There was astonishing depth of fruit from this wine that tasted younger than its six years. It could be kept for a long time I suspect. There was also a pleasant yeasty flavor to it. We also had (the unannounced) 2008 Gardens of Babylon, a blend of 2008 Babylon, Merlot, Cinsault and Syrah ($36). The first bottle had suffered and had a pronounced ethyl acetate nose to it but the second one was in good shape. Nose of bacon and dark fruit, also cinnamon and cedar. Red fruit flavors in the mouth and fairly rugged tannins. Not in the class of the 2005, but close.
These two were served with Lamb T-Bone and Squab Breast, Confit Creamer Potatoes, Lamb’s Lettuce and Spring Onion Ragu. A great match and especially the unusual potatoes that looked like peeled potatoes but just collapsed in the mouth as you ate them.
Finally, the cheese course, with cheeses supplied by Scardello especially for the tasting: a goat cheese, a semi-hard cheese and Veldhuizen Family Farm Bosque Blue (my favorite Texas cheese). These were served with 2008 Androkteinos ‘Hudson Vineyard’, Syrah ($75). A powerful Napa Syrah that will keep for a decade but is memorable now. Nose of bacon and flavors of earthy dark fruit. Only 95 cases produced.
All of these wines are on the wine list at Bailey’s Prime Plus and are recommended. It is hard to think of wineries like The Scholium Project. Maybe Sine Qua Non is closest. I recommended to Schoener that, if he is in town for a few days, he should pop by Inwood Estates Vineyards in The Design District and try their Palomino-Chardonnay blend. It is in the same idiom as Schoener’s whites.
Finally, look for a new menu at all four Bailey’s Prime Plus locations in the next two months – just as soon as the staff recover from restaurant week.
