How do you welcome the owners of one of the world`s most famous vineyards to Chicago? With wine and food, of course.
The question arose when the Count and Countess Alexandre de Lur Saluces, whose family has owned Chateau d`Yquem for almost three centuries, agreed to be guests of honor at the recent benefit wine auction for the Lyric Opera. Immediately, a number of folks set out to make sure they would be neither hungry, thirsty nor lonely during their four-day stay here.
Chateau d`Yquem is a sauternes, a luscious, sweet wine from Sauternes in the Bordeaux region of France. Extravagantly praised by wine critics (among them Thomas Jefferson), it is considered by many to be the world`s greatest white wine. A vivid testimony to Yquem`s status is its price. The 1983 vintage is currently available at Sam`s Liquors for $170 a bottle. At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a bottle of 1970 Yquem is a mere $400.
Not surprisingly, wine buffs elbow one another aside for the privilege of shaking the hand that puts the corks in these costly bottles. The Lur Saluces, in turn, donated not only their time but three cases of their wine to the auction and volunteered to autograph bottles for successful bidders.
He, at 56, is a slightly portly, soft-spoken intellectual. Berengere, his petite and slender wife, possesses-and frequently employs-a dry sense of humor that is a rarity among the often-brittle French nobility. The absence of snobbery in both of them, perhaps because running Yquem and promoting its wine is a full-time job, is readily apparent.
Tubby likes it light
The auction is scheduled for a Friday night. The Lur Saluces arrive on Wednesday and go directly to the Winnetka home of their hosts, Robert H.
”Tubby” Bacon and his wife, Julie. Bacon, a businessman and wine collector, is head of the Chicago chapter of the Commanderie de Bordeaux wine society and a longtime friend of the count and countess.
They are served an eclectic dinner: marinated tuna steak cooked rare with couscous, cauliflower, a salad and fruit for dessert. To stave off homesickness, the wine is from Bordeaux, a 1966 Chateau Lynch Bages.
At home, the countess confesses, they eat rather simply. ”Soup, I like very much,” she says. ”And crudites (raw vegetables). For the main course we may have rabbit or a piece of beef. I do find it hard to have a meal without wine, but we drink not-very-fancy red and white. For us, Yquem is not for every day. After all,” she adds with a grin, ”we must be charitable and save some to share with the world.”
Breakfast at the Bacons each morning is minimal, ”considering what is coming,” Julie Bacon says. Orange juice, grapefruit juice, toast, coffee and ”a little jam.”
Loosen up those belts
So the Lur Saluces are in fine trim when they face their first ceremonial feast-lunch for 22 at the corporate dining room of Paterno Imports, a wine wholesale company. Paterno`s CEO, Anthony J. Terlato, an opera lover who has made major donations to the wine auction, is a passionate amateur chef. After leading the countess, a reluctant cook, into his kitchen to show her how to prepare Italian-style tomato sauce, Terlato serves pasta, grilled beef tenderloin and a peach tart along with French champagne, two Italian white wines, a California cabernet, the 1983 Chateau d`Yquem and a taste of port.
Only four hours after their final sip, the Lur Saluces are in black tie at The Casino, a private club, for a meal hosted by the T. Kimball Brookers
(Nancy Brooker is president of the Women`s Board of the Lyric) and the Arnold A. Silvestris (Jane Silvestri is chairwoman of the Lyric Opera`s wine auction). To begin, more champagne and caviar with all the fixin`s. The four- course sit-down dinner for 80 consists of smoked trout, consomme, breast of duck with two sauces and pears in a cassis sauce. Two Napa Valley wines, Grgich Hills fume blanc and Shafer merlot, are served before the champagne reappears with dessert.
On the day of the auction, the Bacons give a lunch for the Lur Saluces and 56 others at Jackie`s restaurant. Chef Jackie Shen produces a notably (and noticeably welcome) light meal. It consists of a trio of hors d`oeuvres including a ”tuna tamale” and shiitake mushroom caps topped with smoked salmon and salmon caviar, a luxurious main-course seafood salad and individual lemon tarts. The wines are three and splendid: Jacquart 1982 brut rose champagne in magnum, 1978 Leflaive Puligny Montrachet and Chateau d`Yquem 1975 in half bottles.
Only the best
Auction night! After hors d`oeuvres and champagne, about 450 mostly-new friends join the count and countess on the stage of the Lyric Opera for a dinner prepared by the Hyatt Regency Chicago. They eat and sip their way through foie gras and 1980 Chateau de Fargues (another magnificent Sauternes estate owned by the Lur Saluces), salmon and 1987 Cuvaison chardonnay, roulade of veal and vegetables with 1985 Chauvenet Cote du Beaune Villages, cheese and fruit with Chapoutier`s 1983 Chateauneuf-du-Pape ”La Bernardine.” Sampler trays of small desserts, coffee, Delamain Cognac and B&B liqueur are left on the tables during the auction itself.
(Too much food and drink? Evidently not. The bidding is lively and total receipts exceed $250,000, well beyond pre-auction estimates.)
Bravo for the unpredictable
So, to celebrate, the count and countess, members of the committee and several wine collectors from out of town assemble for lunch the next day at the Cafe de Paris restaurant in the Hotel Sofitel in Rosemont. It is given by Andrew F. Lawlor, an Ann Arbor, Mich., collector. At this last performance, both Lur Saluces wines are offered.
After the inevitable champagne and less predictable appetizers, such as tiny hamburger buns containing a tartare of smoked wild boar, the guests are served tuna steak in a sauternes sauce with 1975 Chateau de Fargues. Next comes stuffed pheasant breast with two wines from Chateau Lafite Rothschild, 1976 and 1962. (In the most decadent gesture of the festivities, a bottle of 1983 Lafite is sacrificed to make the sauce for this course.) Then, a ”Prince and the Pauper” ending: 1982 Yquem is poured from an imperial (an outsized glass container that holds the equivalent of eight normal bottles) to accompany pain perdue, a dessert version of french toast.
That evening, after a little black bean soup at the Bacons`, the Lur Saluces attend the Chicago Symphony. No one suggests grabbing a bite after the concert. The next day, just before catching their plane to Paris, they are eager to have lunch in Chinatown, however.
”I really don`t eat very much,” the countess told an inquiring reporter. ”I take small bites.”
Advice to feast by!
