Winemaker’s dinner at BLOC

On Tuesday night we were invited to a winemaker’s dinner at BLOC in Shanghai with Matt Evans, who makes wines in both New Zealand and in California. The interesting thing about Matt is that he started out as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, but changed his career around 2003 to follow his passion and become a winemaker. Because I love wines and am also looking at doing something with wine in the future I was happy that I was invited to join the small dinner with him.

BLOC is a newly opened contemporary Eastern European restaurant on 139 Changle Lu. Chef/owner Mike Solovay told me during the dinner that the place just opened 2 weeks ago (no wonder I had not heard about it before), but there were quite a lot of people already despite the approaching typhoon. Mike is from Chicago, but his parents originally came from Ukraine, and this is the kind of food that he liked to eat when he grew up. And I can tell you, the food is great. The portions were huge, but the food was so good that I finished all 4 courses and could hardly walk down the stairs afterwards.

An investment banker friend of mine had organized the small dinner (as it turned out he had been a colleague of Matt Evans at Morgan Stanley in the 90s) and invited me because he knows my interest in wine. Although Matt lives in New Zealand, the wines during the evening were not New Zealand ones but from California. Specifically, they were from Elke Vineyards in the Anderson Valley (2 different Pinot Noirs), from Baccharis in Mendocino (a Sauvignon Blanc) and from Halcon in the Yorkville Highlands (a Syrah).

The wines had been paired with the food and I felt the combinations were pretty good. We started with a fried goat cheese salad with strawberry balsamic vinaigrette. The chef at BLOC had put some caramelized sugar on top of the salad which gave it a very special taste. We had the Sauvignon Blanc with this, which fit well. I am a huge fan of the dry but fruity New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and this California one was of course very different. To be honest, because I now only drink NZ Sauvignon Blancs I probably would not have guessed that this was a Sauvignon Blanc as well. It was a very nice bottle and it fit well with the dish, but it’s probably not a wine that I would buy myself.

The next course was a salmon baked in bread crumbs and herbs. Normally when I order salmon I tend to go for a white wine, but for this dish it was paired with a light Pinot Noir. It was a great combination, especially because the salmon had a coating of bread crumbs. I liked the Elke Vineyards Pinot Noir a lot, it’s relatively light but has a beautiful flavor (incl. some smoke that you could smell, because of nearby forest fires in the harvest year!).

As a comparison we also tried a one year older Elke Vineyards Pinot Noir, which was very different. I actually liked this one even better because it had a deeper flavor and seemed to have a darker color. I explained to Matt that for red wines I generally am more of a Cabernet Sauvignon fan than of Pinot Noir, which probably explains my preference. At home I hardly ever open a Bourgogne wine or a new world Pinot Noir, I mainly go for a Cab if I drink a red wine. Maybe I should actually try some more Pinot Noirs once the height of summer is over in Shanghai, this wine (and several NZ Pinot Noirs that I tasted during our trip in January) was so good that I would not mind buying a few bottles and drinking them instead of Cabs.

After the salmon we had a cider glazed pork loin on top of a potato pancake. A very nice combination! At first I decided only to eat half of it because I was quite full already, but in the end I realized that without thinking I had eaten the whole pork loin. Maybe the combination with the wine was the culprit, because this was once again a good pairing. Matt had decided to open a 2009 Halcon Syrah with this course, which was an excellent combination. Very different from the Pinot Noirs, and it was nice to see and taste the difference. Also a nice wine to buy a few bottles from.

We ended the night with a dish that the chef titled “Red Hot Chili Chocolate Lava Torte”, a chili infused chocolate cake filled with molten hot chocolate, combined with ice cream. Heavenly! And guess what, the Syrah fit very well with this dish as well. Normally I don’t really order wine with a desert, except for an occasional desert wine, but this red wine paired very well with the hot chocolate. So I decided to have an extra glass of course!

I am not sure what time we left the restaurant, but I know we were the last guests and that outside the first rain and wind of the typhoon had arrived. We had a great evening and I learned a lot about wines and wine making, and especially about some of the differences in wine making between the California and New Zealand. Matt, thanks and we’ll stay in touch! Also thanks to Michael Gaudette of Golden Gate Grapes (site still under construction it seems) for providing the wines for the dinner.

BLOC: 2/F, 139-19 Changle Lu,长乐路139-19号2楼, phone 021-6404 6685, http://blocshanghai.com/

And in case you are wondering, there are no pictures with this blog post because I was so busy talking and tasting wines that I totally forgot to take out my phone and take some photos.