Bacchants

Shared experiences keep a relationship supple and strong--the more intense and delightful, the better. The wine at your Valentine’s dinner can be a withering bore that you gamely endure together (what a team!), or (much better) an amiable guest, cheerfully forthcoming, with untold depths, teasing subtleties, intoxicating perfume. Wine pasha David chooses his favorites from the Sage wine lists to best accompany your Valentine’s meal.

1. Pink Champagne
Henriot, Brut Rosé, NV, France
One of the oldest producers of Champagne, founded in 1808, Henriot sold to the kings of Holland and the Emperor Franz-Josef. This cuvée is a complex assemblage of grands crus from the Montagne de Reims (where the best pinot noir grows), chardonnay from the Côte des Blancs, and red wine from the Vallée de la Marne. Rounder and fuller than regular Champagne but just as dry, you can enjoy Henriot with dinner and toast all the clever monks and industrious widows that made this celebration of your love possible.

2. Rosé
Saxon Brown, Rosé, Flora Ranch Vineyard, Chalk Hill  2005
Partake in a glorious bit of summer in the midst of February. This dry rosé is a sensory delight, exploding with flavors of strawberry and juicy stone fruit. Winemaker Jeff Gaffner slow-ferments his grapes to preserve the vibrant fruit character, creating a pink elixir for a budding romance which hints, nonetheless, that good things take time.

3. Rhône Blend
Foxen, Cuvée Jeanne Marie, Santa Ynez  2003
Plush and richly styled, this Rhone-style blend of grenache, mourvedre, syrah (plus a soupçon of viognier) delivers expressive plum and Bing cherry notes on the mid-palate and finishes with a mildly tannic muscularity. Co-fermenting viognier with syrah is a traditional practice in the Rhone region, making those earthy reds a bit brighter. Francophiles may gaze at their beloved while gleaming with pride at the perspicacity in Santa Ynez. A Wine Spectator 89.

4. Napa Carbernet
Lamborn, Cabernet Sauvignon, Howell Mountain  2003
The inaugural vintage from the Lamborns and winemaker Heidi “Screaming Eagle” Barrett flaunts its hilltop pedigree. Extra sunshine makes for more potent fruit, and this wine is intense and concentrated, yet still silky and elegant. Make your move now; this is a very limited production.

5. Syrah
Qupe, Syrah, Bien Nacido Hillside Estate  2003
An explosively ripe wine from Bien Nacido’s sunny Z Block. Dense notes of blackberry, cassis and charcoal give way to a smooth cascading finish. Ride it together. 92 points from Robert Parker.

6. Washington Cabernet
Gordon Brothers, Cabernet Sauvignon, Columbia Valley  2003, 2004
The vintage is changing but the quality isn’t. The 2003 received 90 points from Wine Spectator and the ’04 vintage is reportedly better. Just what you hope for from Washington State: great quality and a Napa-defying affordability. Not that you’re looking at prices tonight. More paté?.

Le Sage

“If you weren’t perfect, you were sent home,” Sage on the Coast pastry chef Robert LeSage says of his training at the Culinary Institute of America’s Hyde Park campus. “Your shoes, your sideburns—they had to be just so. They were trying to teach you the hard way.” He has a yeomanly imperturbability, aloof from petty circumstance. He cuts scones for a tea service and glazes his Banana Boston Cream Pies while patiently explaining to a visitor the secrets of chiffon cake and the composition of diplomat cream.

He recalls the rigorous, exacting work at the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point. During an 18-week externship, he spent days baking shortbread to shingle the shed-sized gingerbread house in the Christmas lobby, and weathered a barrage of French-accented invective when caught combining cream and chocolate in the wrong order when making ganache for the first time. The Ritz offered him a job at the end of his stint, but he returned to school to finish his AOS degree in baking and pastry. Then he married his high school sweetheart and joined the family business: heating and air conditioning.

The call of his vocation was, happily, ineluctable. “I love food and I love cooking. My mom always baked. She loved to cook at home. Her recipes were passed down to her. Her enchiladas are still the best I’ve ever tasted.” Finally practicing his vocation (he hired on in September) may account for his blue-eyed placidity in the face of a citrus-scourging freeze. “Tammy brings me her lemons,” he says, pointing out the tiny slices of Meyer lemon in his Shaker Lemon Tart. Tammy’s have thin, tender skins that candy easily—perfect for the old Shaker recipe. “It came with the house,” says lunch server Tammy of the generous 45-year-old dwarf Meyer lemon tree in her yard near Seal Beach. It’s already provided Robert with three bushels this season.

The tabloid peregrinations of celebrity chefs make his eyes roll ever so slightly. Will he try a sea urchin crème brulee? “I’ll do a lavender crème brulee for Valentine’s Day. And a trio of chocolate desserts for two: a dark chocolate soufflé, a caramel-milk chocolate tart and white chocolate-raspberry mousse.” Why is it all the good ones are taken?

Happy Hearts

Love happens, and it is usually, outside the pages of Stendhal, unspeakable. The candid rituals of your Valentine’s celebration are, in their very harmlessness, dizzyingly seamy.
Sage catering manager Maryann, married 27 years to her husband John, rarely spent Valentine’s Day with him: “Oh, I always worked them.” Plenty of tables, rose petals, candlesticks, and space for privacy were her specialty. One year, when she was Food and Beverage Director at a country club, she was pressed to hire entertainment. “I thought it would be a flop. I was very leery of working with this person. This was a friend of mine, an opera singer, but eccentric. She went from table to table asking for requests and singing them a cappella. I was not for it, but people totally enjoyed it, even the young people. It meant a lot to hear their special song.”

And what would Sage bartender Greg and his wife have requested? “Brother Israel” says Greg. The ukulele-strumming version of “Over the Rainbow” and “Wonderful World” was their wedding song. Before he came to work for Sage, the two frequented a cozy boîte in Corona del Mar, reserving well in advance their favorite table for the second seating on Valentine’s Day, when familiar faces handed them a steadfast menu. Greg gave his valentine, whose birthday is February 14, two separate cards, separate presents (separate wrapping paper) and two sets of bouquets. When they lost their cozy spot to the "summer wind" (by now you had already guessed it), they celebrated at Sage Eastbluff. She invited him there for his birthday, December 3, and he surprised her with an engagement ring. They were so lost in their own happiness that they didn’t notice the Sage anniversary party going on around them.

Each Valentine’s Day Chef Rich takes out his magic chalk and draws a low secret door to opulence. Suddenly there’s Maine lobster, John Dory, oysters, black trumpet mushrooms, porcinis, the freshest Pacific seafood flown in overnight, and liberal dollops of precious saffron, truffle oil, cognac. He and Chef Kris are still working out the menu (never prix fixe) in the Sage test kitchen. But expect the best and reserve early.

Eastbluff Shopping Center
2531 Eastbluff
Newport Beach, CA 92660
949.718.9650