It's a match for meat
There was a time -- although we'd prefer not to admit or even recall it -- when an expensive restaurant steak routinely came with a cocktail. And we don't mean as a starter or aperitif. Oh no, no, no. That martini or manhattan pulled duty alongside the Porterhouses and sour cream-coifed baked potato right through the meal. That no one had to call on his high school French to order a Tom Collins was considered a plus.
We've moved on. These days the high-end steakhouse experience is mediated by wine and lots of it, cataloged in leather-bound volumes of impressive heft and served up in precariously outsized stemware. And we're not talking wimp wine here. At crowded downtown spots like the Capital Grille and Abe & Louie's, it's Big Wine that's on offer. That means lots of power and concentration, of course, but it also means the high-profile labels their carnivorous clientele have learned to recognize and demand: Caymus, Jordan, Silver Oak, and Far Niente, among others.
In the land of Big Steak, Bordeaux and Barolo may be peers of the realm, but California cabernet is king. If you're in doubt, just run the numbers. At Abe & Louie's Boylston Street location, California cabs and Meritage blends (which typically contain high proportions of cabernet) overwhelm every other category, with nearly 100 individual entries. At Smith & Wollensky on Arlington Street, where beverage manager Marcus Palmer takes pride in the restaurant's all-American cellar, more than 200 distinct cabs and cab blends appear on the standard and reserve lists -- and that's out of a total of fewer than 600 wines.
Meanwhile, at Grill 23 & Bar -- home to one of the finest and most diverse wine lists in the city -- 70 percent of the wine poured is from California, and a high percentage of that is cabernet. Still, wine director Alex de Winter could tell me the American corner of his 16,000 bottle cellar in the Back Bay ''is a little weak right now." Not so weak, I note, that it fails to offer not only pretty much the full roster of Cal cab luminaries but a clutch of coveted Napa ''cult" labels such as Araujo, Colgin, and Screaming Eagle to boot.
What's the logic at work here? Well, you could plausibly argue that cabernet's high acidity and characteristic ''cut" provide a pleasing foil for the fatty richness of a precisely seared New York strip and a side of salty fries. But that by itself wouldn't explain why cabernet-rich (and often edgier) wines from Bordeaux or Italy are less successful at these venues. It also doesn't explain why other higher-acid red varietals -- syrah, sangiovese, and nebbiolo, for example -- tend to be relegated to the margins whatever their place of origin.
You can bet that some of it is attributable to our discomfort in pronouncing foreign place names. But my guess is that cabernet dominance has most to do with a kind of parity of scale these New World heavyweights bring to bear on 20 ounces of medium-rare beef. The fruit is intense, the oak lavish, the alcohol unstinting. It isn't subtle, and you don't need an instructed palate to experience the impact. It's wine that seems to get right to the point and speaks our language, you might say. Something we Americans deeply appreciate.
Stephen Meuse can be reached at onwine@comcast.net. 