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IN THIS ISSUE
 
NASSAU NOW
BY Dotty Griffith

NEW YORK CORNER
STREETBIRD ROTISSERIE
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
PINE RIDGE BRINGS ITS WINES TO NYC
By Mort Hochstein


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NASSAU NOW

BY Dotty Griffith

        If you’re a fan of Black Sails, you know it’s in reruns until season three starts early next year. The Starz network historical drama about real pirates of the Caribbean, set in Nassau as a prequel to Treasure Island, has me hooked. So does the real Nassau of today. Though the swashbuckling days are long gone, the beauty of the island with its crystalline beaches, the bluest of water and an intoxicating mix of native, historic and contemporary influences gives Nassau its charm and vibrancy.
       The food is just as intriguing--a mix of today and long ago, upscale and street scene, indigenous and colonial.  Influences include Spanish, West African and British culinary traditions. Dine at casual beachfront cafés, celebrity chef restaurants, fast-food spots, seaside bars and grills as well as world-renowned resorts.
       Hilly Nassau is the capital and largest city of the Bahamas. It lies on the island of New Providence, with neighboring Paradise Island accessible via Nassau Harbor bridges. It retains many of its characteristic pastel-colored British colonial buildings, including pink-hued Government House. Restaurants and accommodations run a wide gamut, from luxe resorts to historic properties.  So, too, do the food options.
     At a resort like Sandals Royal Bahamian, guests may dine in flip flops at casual venues or in resort evening attire at Gordon’s on the Pier, where your table overlooks the water (right). Available to guests in butler suites (or for $140 surcharge), Gordon’s is one of the most romantic and beach breezy experiences at this resort.  Rillettes of smoked salmon, mahi mahi and trout served with garlic crostini teased the appetite before we dined in the Crystal Room on braised lamb shank and herb-crusted rack of lamb. We took dessert, molten chocolate cake with Bailey’s vanilla ice cream, at the fire pit under vibrant stars in the Caribbean sky.
       A can’t-miss feature of a trip to Nassau is the Tru Bahamian Food Tour, a three-hour guided tasting and cultural walking excursion in historic downtown Nassau.  You’ll experience classic Bahamian cuisine at local spots like Bahamian Cookin’.  Don’t miss the conch chowder and conch fritters. At Van Breugel’s Bistro and Bar, European-inspired and created by third-generation chef Freddy Van Breugel, the cuisine is nonetheless Caribbean with coconut curry conch chowder, yet with very European offerings like Wiener schnitzel as well.
     Even if you don’t go on the walking culinary tour, stop by Graycliff Chocolatier  at the historic Graycliff Hotel, which dates to 1740, when it was a private residence. It was converted to a hotel in 1973. In the chocolate factory delicious and delicate chocolates are made and decorated under the direction of expert chocolatier Erika Dupree Davis. Don’t miss the white passion fruit bonbons. Many of the confections are made with various spirits, including beer, rum, wine and port. Interactive tours are available.
       In addition to chocolate, the Graycliff restaurant (left) is justifiably known for its wine cellar, being on the Wine Spectator Grand Award list since 1988. The wine cellar has an inventory of 250,000 bottles from more than 400 vintners in 15 countries. The inventory ranges from such wines as an 1865 Château Lafite to the oldest and one of the most expensive bottles in the world, a 1727 Rudesheimer Apostelwein from Bremen Ratskeller in the "Rheinghau" Region, priced at $200,000. Of course, there’s a large selection of today's popular vintages that complement the Bahamian-influenced Continental cuisine served in the restaurant.
     Atlantis is one of Nassau’s premier resorts, with a full range of activities, including a water park for families, Aquaventure, and the privileged access adult-only pool area, Cain at the Cove. It includes private cabanas, daybeds, a café and an outdoor gaming pavilion. If there’s ever a place to let down your hair and sip a rum-based beach cocktail or two, this is it. After all, you’re in the land of “yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum."
      The restaurant lineup at Atlantis boasts some big names, including Olives by chef Todd English.  Our meal at Olives focused on the enticing raw bar with spiny lobster, oysters and clams. Do not miss the conch ceviche.  The seafood menu is extensive. Grilled tuna, native grouper or Florida snapper will satisfy your briny longings. Of course, steak lovers will also find big plates like the Tomahawk Ribeye for 2.
     The One & Only Ocean Club is, relatively, as small and quiet as the two aforementioned resorts are big and high energy. Internationally known chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten designed the menu at Dune (right), an open-air dining room on the beach known for its French-Asian cuisine infused with local herbs and Bahamian influences. I enjoyed only  breakfast at Dune, but the dinner menu features dishes as enticing as crunchy soft shell crab with sugar snap rémoulade.
     No visit to Nassau is complete without a trip to a rum distillery. John Watling’s Distillery  (below) is an easy walk from the cruise ship port. Housed in the historic Buena Vista Estate, founded in 1789, the distillery offers tastes of its white, pale and amber small-batch rums. Watling’s daiquiris are masterful.

     West of downtown, the Fish Fry at Arawak Cay is the Bahamian version of a food truck park. Rather than food trailers or vans, however, Fish Fry is an assemblage of local restaurants and bars serving very fresh, very authentic Bahamian fare out of pastel-colored shacks along the waterfront. Many with outdoor patios, these local eateries beckon with the aroma of fried shrimp, conch fritters (right) and grilled lobster tails. You’ll want to join in the fun while sipping a local Kalik beer or experiencing a Sky Juice cocktail, a mix of gin, coconut water and sweetened condensed milk. I didn’t experience Sky Juice till near the end of my Nassau stay. Probably a good thing but still a source of lingering regret.      
   Whether you’re in Nassau for quiet fun in the sun, pampering at myriad spas, water adventures and sports, or sightseeing and history, the dining and food options are a big part of the experience.  If, like me, you’re a Black Sails follower, you’ll get a better understanding of the Old World fascination and avarice that made the islands of the Caribbean a colonial grail.

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    The servers, one in a brown suit, three others in gray, wafted around noiselessly, plates appearing on the table almost unobserved.  It was, after all, Per Se, one of New York’s most prestigious, most expensive dining temples. The  people at Pine Ridge Vineyards chose it for a tasting of their wines because even the most jaded members of the wine media would find it hard to say no to an evening at Per Se.
    So it was that a dozen journalists assembled on a warm summer evening under the tutelage of   Michael Beaulac, winemaker and general manager for Pine Ridge, one of the fortunate few on the hallowed slopes of the Stags Leap district  in Napa.
   Pine Ridge originated in 1978 under the far-sighted Gary Andrus at a time when few recognized the bounty to be harvested at Stags Leap.  He saw a steeply terraced hillside where he might be able to produce wines comparable with the greats of Bordeaux and went on to realize that goal over the next 15 years. Andrus also had another goal, to produce great Pinot Noir,  and for that  he had to go farther north. He left California in 1993 for Oregon, where he would  create award-winning wines at Archery Summit.  Andrus, now deceased, sold his interests in California and Oregon in 2001. 
    Michael Beaulac, not academically  schooled in viticulture,  learned his craft  the hard way,  swabbing tanks,  loading barrels and hefting hoses as a cellar rat at Murphy-Goode Vineyards in Napa.  He had been a wine buyer for a supper club in Portland, Maine, where Tim Murphy of Murphy-Goode, impressed by the young steward’s palate, jokingly offered him a job. A year after that chance remark, Beaulac began his wine career, doing scut work in Napa.
     “I'd been a history major in college and knew nothing,” he said. “I needed to learn how to hook up a hose and clean a tank. I didn’t know there was a difference in how you made white wine from how you made red wine. Each day I came in thinking I would be fired." 
     The experience at Murphy-Goode led up the ladder to advanced positions and executive postings at Markham Vineyards and St. Supery and in 2009 to Pine  Ridge.
     “For me,” he said, “a lot of winemaking is intuitive, and at this time I can taste a berry and anticipate where that grape will be during fermentation. But a lot is chemistry and I’ve always been really lucky to have great enologists and assistant winemakers who can identify issues. Now I can review the analysis and see what I need to see, but for a long time I didn’t understand the stuff.”
      We tasted Beaulac’s first vintage, the 2009 Stags Leap Cabernet Sauvignon, a rich mouth-filling wine with supple black fruit flavors, absolutely luxurious and with many good years ahead. It is still available at suggested retail price  of $125. It’s a keeper, easily good for another ten years.
      We had started with the wine that keeps the wheels spinning  at Pine Ridge, the Chenin Blanc-Viognier, with 20% Chenin adding sparkle to the Viognier’s peach and jasmine scents and providing a more enticing palate taste.  The grapes come from  the Sacramento River Delta and make up the only non-estate wine in the portfolio.  It is the darling of Pine Ridge, selling 145,000 cases annually, retailing at about $15 a bottle.
   The blend was the value wine at the tasting and was followed by the much more upscale Le Petit Clos 2013 Chardonnay ($75).  The Chardonnay comes from a small block, a shade under two acres, on a hillside near the winery.  Grapes are hand harvested at night in early September for optimum ripeness.  
      Le Petit Clos is a lemony, creamy wine with slight minerality and a bit more oak than I would prefer and an almost alarming, but well masked, 14.9% alcohol level. It harmonized beautifully with my favorite plate of the evening, two poached oysters in a thick sabayon-style sauce, topped by a generous smattering of domestic caviar.
      The rich purple 2009 Cabernet ($125) was mated with Atlantic striped bass dressed with smoked bacon, summer pole beans, and a Dijonnaise sauce--delectable, albeit a bit precious. Plates were whisked away and the meat course  appeared, a small serving of Prime beef with caramelized onions and a few dabs of mustard and molasses.  It set the stage for the second red wine, the 2012 Stags Leap Cab  ($125), which at this tender age lacks the finesse of the 2009, hardly as smooth and silken and needing more time.
       It was followed by the Pine Ridge 2012 Napa label ($54), from a number of the winery’s own estates in the Napa Valley, Oakville, and Rutherford districts.  It’s somewhat lighter in color and texture than the Stags Leap bottlings, but definitely a match for hearty dishes such as steak, lamb or even, as Beaulac suggested, a cheeseburger. There’s a bit of cinnamon on the palate, a flavor I did not find in the  Stags Leap reds. Here, the wine showed well with a Bleu D’Auvergne cheese plate that included tiny bits of potato crusted leek, Bing cherries, sorrel and a black winter truffle puree.  
      In an odd but comfortable pairing, Beaulac saved Fortis 2012,  the company’s heavyweight red, for the dessert stage. It accompanied the fancifully named  Manjari Chocolate Marquise, a combo of burnt honey ice cream and butterscotch plated with candied orange peel and a Darjeeling tea biscuit. Fortis ($175) originated in 2003 to show off grapes from the finest blocks of the Pine Ridge estate vineyards in Napa.
       Fortis is by design a big wine, an elegant Bordeaux blend, 14.5% alcohol, primarily Cabernet Sauvignon with 11% Petit Verdot and 5% Malbec. The grapes vary with each vintage. In 2012, the fruit came primarily from Stags Leap, Oakville and Howell Mountain, with a smaller amount from Rutherford. Although it is a far different blend, the Fortis, only slightly more complex, was very much like the 2009 Stags Leap, plush and dark with black fruit flavors. I preferred the 2009 Stags Leap but it would have been interesting to try Fortis with its true mate, good red beef.  Again, a few more years of maturity would change the wine favorably.
     The flagship reds are all limited production wines, often hard to find. The winery produces about 1,100 cases of the Stags Leap label each year, a little more than 1,000 cases of Fortis and 12,000 cases of the Napa blend.

 

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