DINNER WITH DOM

By Rod Smith

Photography by Michael Haskins

We sat cross-legged on tatami mats covered with red felt in the stillness of an ancient Zen temple in Kyoto. Each of us had a red lacquered wooden tray before us on which a seemingly endless procession of red lacquered plates, bowls, and boxes appeared, each containing an exquisite morsel. The feast started with the faint aroma of miso from under a red lacquered lid. It progressed through a range of unique Japanese vegetables, broths, and fragrant mushrooms combined with an astonishing array of tofu preparations.

And after each bite, a sip. Of sake? Plum wine? No, the odyssey of aromas, flavors, and textures was accompanied by a single French wine: Cuvée Dom Pérignon 1993.

It was November, and the red lacquer echoed the color of maple trees on the grounds of the great temple complex called Daitoku-ji. Having come to Kyoto to view the spectacular display of autumn leaves, I’d been invited to share an extraordinary meal with Richard Geoffroy, the director of winemaking at Moët & Chandon and the winemaster responsible for Cuvée Dom Pérignon.

We were in Jukôin, a small sub-temple of Daitoku-ji. Jukôin is where the legendary monk Sen no Rikyu developed the classical Zen tea ceremony in the late 16th century. Our host was the current abbot, Kodo Onozawa. It was an appropriate place to experience the cuisine of Zen along with a wine developed by another monk, Dom Pierre Pérignon, the 17th century abbot of a Benedictine monastery on the other side of the world. Here was food and wine inspired by spirituality that found common ground in the senses.

Shojin ryori is Japan’s vegetarian Buddhist temple cookery. It has been continually refined since its introduction from China 1,500 years ago. Changing with the seasons, it features small portions of up-to-the-moment ingredients cooked in five basic ways, concentrating on five colors (green, red, yellow, white, and black-purple) and five tastes (bitter, sour, sweet, hot, and salty). Its basic virtues are freshness, ethereal lightness, clarity, and precise definition of flavors, all a result of care that is … well, I was going to say Zen-like — but, in fact, the preparation of this food is the Zen practice itself.

Each of those points found a sympathetic echo in the permutations of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that make up the spectrum of aromas, flavors, and textures in the effervescent illusion called Cuvée Dom Pérignon. The haunting flavor of the fragrant broth called dobinmushi with a morsel of grilled matsutake, a rare mushroom from the red pine hills above Kyoto, found an echo of autumn in subtle Pinot Noir fruit that shone on the palate like red starlight. The earthy flavor of fu (fried wheat gluten) bloomed into the elusive white flower notes of the Chardonnay. The wine’s underlying creaminess set off the briny tang of konbu (seaweed), and its minerality cut the creamy tofu like a knife of fruit-flavored stone. And there was an endless interplay of affinities between the wine’s yeastiness and the fermented nuances of miso, shoyu, and tamari.

TALE OF TWO CULTURES
It was a sensory tale of two cultures. Just as Shojin ryori is the very essence of Zen mind, Champagne is purely French. The wine Voltaire called "the brilliant image of France" is just that: a sparkling reflection of French character and style, presenting at once the flamboyant pageantry and the subtle inner workings of a collective mind whose complexities, like those of Japan, have beguiled the world for 15 centuries.

The present form of Champagne was developed by the monk Dom Pierre Pérignon at the Abbey of Hautvillers, on a wooded hill overlooking the Marne. The abbey is now owned by Moët & Chandon, Champagne’s largest producer, which has made its prestige cuvée (introduced in 1936) a living monument to the great man.

Cuvée Dom Pérignon is perhaps the most delicate and ethereal of all Champagnes. Its transparency on the palate is extraordinary. And yet it also is remarkably expressive, with a degree of definition and complexity that belies its seemingly slight substance. I think of it as a kind of sensory hologram, a three-dimensional image made of olfactory impressions. That image evolves as the wine ages. There are three distinct ages of Dom Pérignon. The first is apparent when the wine is released after seven years in the deep chalk cellars beneath Épernay. This is the Dom Pérignon most of us know: fresh and bright, impossibly sleek and balanced, with flavors of fresh bread, spices, and citrus. At 12 to 15 years, the aromas and flavors deepen into maturity, evoking richer treats like hazelnut cookies and spice cake.

After that, a new dimension opens, a kind of fantasy world in which the most delicate, exotic impressions the wine has to offer come forth: incense, dried roses, cardamom, sweet tobacco — things that worked as complex notes during the wine’s early years and are now liberated by a slow but inexorable molecular refinement. A fully mature Dom Pérignon, such as the ’59 or ’73, recall Ariel’s lines in The Tempest: "Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange."

Although comparing different vintages of the same bottling is the perennial pursuit of wine lovers, vintage is not the whole point of Dom Pérignon. Every vintage is different, of course, and the cuvée is only created in the best years. Yet vintage character is always subordinate to the overarching Dom Pérignon character. In a good vintage, the entire Champagne vineyard expresses certain timeless qualities of elegance, crystalline clarity, intricately detailed aromas and flavors, and sublime balance — on which a particular growing season confers nuances the way a shifting light reveals the distinct facets of a gemstone.

The precise little Zen morsels of Shojin ryori provided that light in Kyoto. And it was a revelation — but not a surprise. Looking back through tasting notes from other memorable meals over the years, I find a remarkable number of stars and exclamation points alongside descriptions of Dom Pérignon with all kinds of dishes.

A CHARMING COMPANION
On one hand, Champagne is one of the easiest wines to pair with food because it’s so gracious and charming it seems to work with everything. But pay attention to affinities and it’s tricky. The workings of the cuvée are so delicate, and each vintage so specific, that precision means all. The chef who understands that can work wonders. That point was made forcefully by the pairing of the incredible ’59 Dom Pérignon with an olive oil ice cream prepared by Chef Bernard Dance at Chateau de Saran in Épernay. As Richard Geoffroy pointed out, "It’s about the play of viscosities."

The ’59 Dom Pérignon shone in the glass (a Riedel flute specially designed to show off the aromas and textures of Dom Pérignon) like a polished gold nugget. The nose showed vanilla and white nuts (especially almonds). There was some vanilla on the palate, too. In the mouth, the wine was vibrant and perfectly balanced, clear and long with a creamy texture so fine it was almost imperceptible. Such a developed vanilla character is unusual in Champagne. "We think it comes from the yeast," Geoffroy remarked. The vanilla was a key in the ’59’s flawless matching with Chef Dance’s olive oil ice cream. It complemented the dark, mysterious olive flavor, while the underlying creaminess paralleled and supported the ice cream’s richness. The aftertaste was kaleidoscopic with tantalizing hints of toasted almonds, honey, and chocolate. I’ve never tasted anything like it.

The interplay of the Dom Pérignon ’93 with shiso (a kind of Japanese mint) at Jukôin reminded me of a striking flavor combination from a trip through Provence last year. In the fading heat of a June twilight on the terrace of the Abbaye de Sainte Croix, I had a glass of chilled Dom Pérignon ’90 and a lobster salad with purple basil and a tarragon vinaigrette. The ’90 is one of the best Dom Pérignons ever, and even at 10 years was fresh as morning dew. At the same time, it had rounded a curve to open a new dimension of complexity. Those newly mature flavors made a heady mélange of the lobster, basil, and tarragon, while the cuvée’s innate freshness and minerality set off the high-toned savor of the sea.

At the Michelin two-star Le Clos de la Violette in Aix-en-Provence, Chef Jean-Marc Banzo made an inspired match between Dom Pérignon ’85 and a chicken-garlic confit. The ’85 (which had aged with its lees until late disgorgement in 1999) is a heroic Champagne with grand acidity lending freshness to impressions of forest floor with little strawberries growing here and there, a touch of plums, some butterscotch, and the beginning of toasted nut flavors.

Who would instinctively match garlic with a wine like that? And yet Banzo’s instincts, like Dance’s, were right on the mark. The plump, sweet garlic flavor served as a foil for the wine’s ripe acidity, and carried all before it into a new realm of sensation. Almost as an afterthought, the accompanying fresh peas with truffles revealed the Champagne’s marvelous earthiness and candied-fruit nuances.

There was another revelation at a spring luncheon in Grasse, near Cannes. Grasse is the perfume capital of France, so it’s natural that a brilliant chef such as Jacques Chibois would incorporate fragrant flowers and herbs in his cuisine at the two-star La Bastide Saint-Antoine.

LIKE A DREAM
Dom Pérignon ’73 (also recently disgorged) is an elegant, fine-boned Champagne. The nose of dry toast with a hint of fruit jam leads to deep, radiant flavors with tantalizing hints of truffle and dried roses. Chibois matched it perfectly with a perfumed melon soup. Each pale chiffon spoonful ascended through carefully ordered flavor bursts to a climax of lavender that found a corresponding note deep in the wine. He followed that with something deceptively simple: a perfect piece of monkfish rolled in confetti of citron and rose petals. The amazing ’73 had both the delicacy and breadth to marry the full range of flavors into a lingering dream.

I find Rosé Champagnes especially dreamy for the combination of transparency on the palate and relatively bold fruit. Dom Pérignon Rosé is not just a "pink Champagne," a standard cuvée colored with a little extra Pinot Noir. It’s a separate wine, made from scratch with a different ensemble of components. It has the power of ripe Grand Cru Pinot Noir and the crystalline clarity of a subordinate Chardonnay component.

The Dom Pérignon Rosé ’86 frames wonderfully creamy red fruit with real elegance and finesse and a fine effervescence that seems to whisk the whole impression through the senses like a fleeting smile. At the two-star Les Baux restaurant Oustau de Baumanière it was perfectly paired by Chef Jean-Andre Charial with a truffled duck. The dense, rather sweet aromas and flavors, as well as the oily textures, would have defeated a lighter wine. But the wire-fine acidity and pure red fruit of the ’86 Rosé pierced it like a laser and made every bite shine.

Of course, more than once amid feasts like that I’ve wondered, what did Dom Pérignon eat with his wine? Bread, no doubt, a little meat, and perhaps some olive oil dropped off by a wandering Benedictine brother from the southern Rhône valley. Simple, honest fare — and that must have been pretty good with Champagne, too.

Rod Smith is wine columnist for the Los Angeles Times and recipient of the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for magazine writing on spirits, wine, and beer.