The tastes of two coasts: a small vintage Napa winemaker joins a notable Southampton chef for a dinner that would delight anyplace in America
From Napa to Southampton
Answering a clarion call to epicurean action, I showed up at the Plaza Café in Southampton. Douglas Gulija, the owner and chef, and a man worth knowing if you care about eating well, serves some of the most original and best food in the Hamptons. On a recent evening, he teamed up with Sean Capiaux, a man worth knowing if you care about handcrafted California wines, especially pinot noir, for a festive wine dinner. Standing around with a group of East End pleasure seekers I started the evening with some of the Plaza Café’s signature canapés and—as a bit of a surprise—a pair of Long Island wines.
I am not sure to what extent Mr. Capiaux was involved in producing the particular vintages we had—a 2006 Jamesport sauvignon blanc and a 2004 Schneider cabernet franc—but I know he worked on previous vintages of both wines during his stint as a winemaker on Long Island. Even if serving them was a gesture to the past, for me it was a good sign. Past vintages of Jamesport’s sauvignon blanc and Schneider’s cabernet franc have been among the best of their varietal types produced on Long Island. But nice as it is to know that Mr. Capiaux has a background here on the East End, it is really his work in California that is most notable. Mr. Capiaux is a restless bicoastal multitasker, and he has two jobs there, one as the winemaker for O’Shaughnessy Estate Winery in the Howell Mountain appellation of Napa Valley, and the other as winemaker and proprietor of Capiaux Cellars, in the same location.
Once we were seated, each of the first three courses was accompanied by a different Capiaux pinot noir: Chimera 2005, Widdoes 2005, and Garys 2005. The wines are differentiated by the vineyard locations—most are small fields of a bit over an acre—and the difference shows. But it was the pairing of food and wine that most intrigued me. Good pinot noir is graceful, elegant, subdued and light, but does not compromise on structure and flavor. It has more latitude with food than heavier reds but I’d still hesitate to serve a pinot noir with more delicate fish or seafood dishes. It seemed a fine conceptual match with a spiced tuna course, but I was a bit doubtful about serving it with sea scallops.
It turned out to be a terrific pairing—and the secret was in the recipe. These were no frail scallops. They were robust and complicated. Chef Gulija achieved this by sautéing the sea scallops and combining them with lobster-sweet corn polenta, foie gras, matsuki mushrooms and a pinot noir reduction. The result, lush, concentrated and layered, was in complete harmony with the Capiaux pinot noir accompanying it.
With another course—sliced sirloin accompanied with truffled macaroni and cheese—we drank an O’Shaughnessy 2004 cabernet sauvignon made by Mr. Capiaux. It is a supple, muscular and delicious cab, just what you’d expect from a good Napa location, and it demonstrated that while pinot noir might be his specialty, Mr. Capiaux is no slouch with other grapes.
He and his wife, a doctor of pharmacology, seem to travel comfortably between Eastern Long Island and the Napa Valley. Perhaps he will be returning here in the future with new vintages and new culinary challenges for Douglas Gulija. It will be a treat for all of us when that happens.
