Faithful readers: let me first apologize for the long delay in this post. I was (unfortunately) at a staff retreat all last week in Sihanoukville and in Kampot for the weekend. I also (even more unfortunately) had to move back to my apartment and out of the house sitting gig, so I’ve been busy with that.
Anyways, about two weeks ago my boss’ wife, Leah, invited me to join her and some others on a trip to Celliers d’Asie, a
Sharing a tuk-tuk with my boss and Erin, we headed for Celliers d’Asie, a few kilometers from the main part of town and under the
As we waited for the rest of our entourage – my boss’ wife and two other middle-aged couples – Dominique showed us some descriptions of the wines we would taste. Once the others arrived, Dominique, who is French in all the best ways, disappeared and reemerged with half a dozen bottles of wine and array of tantalizing victuals including bread, brie, blue cheese, ham and pâté. He informed us that since my boss’ wife is such a good friend (and, I assume, such a good customer) we would not only get five-star treatment but discounts on his normal prices. In fact, the price list even had a column for “special Leah prices.”
Just a brief aside on how small the world and Phnom Penh are: Erin sat next to a woman named Anne, who was not only from Buffalo (like Erin), but went to school with Erin’s childhood babysitter (still an incredibly close friend of Erin’s family) and it is highly likely that Erin babysat Anne’s niece and nephew. When they are both back in
We started with a handful of white wines, mostly of the chardonnay and sauvignon blanc varieties. Once six bottles were opened and nearly drained, we switched to red, tasting a few shirazes, cabernet sauvignons, merlots and a pinot noir. I was quite surprised at the high quality of wine we were tasting for such a seemingly low price; of the eleven bottles that Dominique opened for the eight of us, none was more than $16.
Early on in the tasting process Erin and I realized that we were comparatively inexperienced wine tasters compared to our companions, not that it mattered much. As the wine continued to flow, with less and less being poured into the bucket provided, we all became experts on the flavors of our wines – fruity, sharp, oaky, acidy, peppery, hollow, full, etc – as well as on our long-forgotten French, much to the amusement (and perhaps chagrin) of Dominique. It was tremendously fun though seemingly quite out of context; it was as if the setting for Sideways had been moved from the wine valleys of
The icing on the cake, if you will, was the “dessert” Dominique shared with us. He opened a $150 bottle of cognac that was so smooth and tasty that I was immediately transported to my mansion (perhaps thirty years in the future) with myself sitting in a stiff but expensive-looking chair in my red silk smoking jacket and sipping this cognac.
As we wrapped up, three hours and far more inebriated than after we started, I ended up with two bottles of merlot (at $8 a pop, not at all pricey, but certainly more expensive than the $2.50 table wine Shanti and I are used to) and Erin with a bottle of South African wine. We stumbled outside and headed home to leftover Indian food and bed, even though it was not even nine o’clock. I am coming to realize more and more to expect the unexpected of
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