22nd April 2009
In the opulent surroundings of Beijing’s China Club, Links China welcomed Michael Silacci, winemaker at Opus One, and Roger Asleson, Opus One’s Director of Public Relations, to host a lunch and tasting with a small group of local media and wine professionals.
The prestige of Opus One requires little introduction. But it is not often that wine lovers have the opportunity to separate the myth-making side of this famous venture from the actual quality of the wines.
We tasted a single bottle of 1992 Opus a few years ago (click here for full tasting note) which was very impressive indeed.
On the evidence of this tasting – where several bottles of different vintages were opened and some wines were also served from magnum – Opus One fully deserves the accolades and iconic status it has attained.
Here’s what we tasted (click on links for full tasting notes) with the menu to follow, plus some further notes on Silacci’s and Asleson’s personal insights:
These were served with the following menu, a mixture of Sichuan, Shanghai-ese and southern Chinese dishes:
Cold dishes:
Shredded cucumber, jellyfish and wood fungus
Crystal pork elbow
Bang bang ji (chicken in chilli sesame sauce with hua jiao - see below)
Marinated kao fu (gluten)
Followed by:
Crystal prawns
Fried fillet of grouper in black bean sauce
Braised bamboo pith roll with julienned vegetables
Tea-smoked duck
Fried crispy noodles with shredded beef and mushroom
Sweetened almond cream
Some of the thinking behind this menu probably came from an understandable concern that the Sichuan dishes for which The China Club is well-known would be too robust for the wines, especially, with that cuisine’s use of hua jiao (translated as ‘Sichuan peppercorns’, these numbing and fragrant pods actually come from the prickly ash tree).
But some of the dishes – especially the crystal prawns – were too light and had the wrong flavour profile and textures for the likes of Opus One (or any Cabernet-blend).
That said, as Roger Asleson pointed out, there were two very good food-and-wine matching combinations. One real hit was the tea-smoked duck, a Sichuan classic, with the 2005 Opus: where the 05’s bright fruit and pronounced tannic structure stood up very well to what is a strongly flavoured, relatively rich dish.
Another excellent match with the older vintages of Opus, especially the 1986, was the noodles with mushroom and shredded beef. China has an abundance of amazing mushrooms which may well suit older red wines in various styles or aromatic red grapes such as Pinot Noir or Nebbiolo.
In between courses, Michael Silacci explained how on his first vintage as winemaker (back in 2001) he insisted on harvesting at night – not initially a popular move, but now standard practice at Opus.
This not only ensures harvesting grapes at cool temperatures – where unwanted initial fermentation is unlikely to occur – but is designed to capture an optimal balance between water, sugar concentration and acidity (as the grapes expand again following their diurnal contraction under the sun).
Roger Asleson, meanwhile, spoke not only about the collaboration between Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild that made Opus One possible, but about the staying power of this wine during the global economic slowdown.
Various markets in Asia are holding strong – Japan especially – with the prospects for Hong Kong and mainland China still looking good. No less a wine could continue to command such a following.
All of the wines were characterized by finesse, impressive structure and obvious ageing capability. They are a far cry from the Napa Cabernets that elevate extraction over elegance (our recent trip to Napa in February was an education in how many different styles of Cabernet blends exist in the region).
Our thanks to Opus One and the Links China team for this fantastic tasting and lunch.
Watch this space for further posts on Napa wines.
Previous posts on Napa (and Sonoma) include visits at:
For a full summary of our recent Californian tastings, please click here.
2005 Grosset ‘Gaia’, Clare Valley, Australia (707RMB)
