Inspiration Buffet

Wabeck, Greece and ‘Rioja funk’

By Warren Rojas

Courtesy of Rob Sinskey

“He knows exactly what kind of wine you are looking for—even if you don’t,” Kelly Magyarics says of toque-turned-Inox wine director John Wabeck. She hails the seasoned wine sleuth for turning her onto the 2005 Robert Sinskey Merlot, a well-balanced red—Magyarics is most impressed with the “smooth and supple tannins”—she finds to be “restrained and elegant, and oh so quaffable.”

Jake Parrott, on the other hand, has Wabeck pegged as “a Rioja nut.”

He holds out the 2008 Bodegas Laukote Rioja Blanco ($22)—an oak-aged white with “plenty of pineapple, almond and just a tinge of classic Rioja funk”—as evidence of Wabeck’s watchful eye, urging fellow oenophiles to seek out the “Jonas Gustafsson Selections” for an even greater value.

A trip to neighboring Bazin’s on Church prompts Parrott to leap from Spain to France, leading the roving gourmand to the 2005 Chateau Jacquet de la Grave Bordeaux rouge ($20). “The palate is dusty, with enough acidity to make this wine a perfect lunch accompaniment,” Parrott says of the black cherry-tinged cabernet blend.

Meanwhile, Magyarics was so intrigued by the Mediterranean bubbly she saw floating around at Kellari Taverna, she just had to give it a swirl. She bills the NV Domaine Spiropoulos Ode Panos as a classic chardonnay-pinot noir sparkler, exhibiting “a touch of yeasty complexity” as well as “persistent bubbles and crisp fruit.”

(March 2010)