Celebrating Great Wine And Gastronomy With Opus One And Smith & Wollensky
Exploring how the collaboration between Old and New Worlds continues to birth stellar vintages from this Napa Valley winery.
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When in pursuit of some of the greatest Napa Valley wines, the conversation invariably turns to one of its earliest wineries, one that has long established the superstar status of its vintages. On this particular evening, at the new Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in Suria KLCC, the journey into great Napa Valley standards arrived with the story of Opus One, a collaborative bottling that established the foundational success of its wines, and the many Napa Valley greats that came after.
The credit for the dinner belonged to wine distributor Bordeaux Liquid Gold (BLG), whose enviable portfolio of official distribution includes ultra-elite wineries: Domaine Leroy of Burgundy, Petrus from Bordeaux, and Napa Valley’s own Screaming Eagle. At this dinner of 40 wine connoisseurs, we met Laurent Delassus, Opus One’s vice president of international sales and marketing, who raised the curtains on the evening. He opened with the story of two men who would forge a friendship and a wine label that has outlasted their lifetimes.
“Opus One’s origins began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Baron Philippe de Rothschild—whose visage adorns every Opus One label—was living in Santa Barbara, and married to his first wife,” Delassus said to the intimate group of guests. “He was also drinking wines from Napa, which was quite unknown at the time, and he recognised the great potential of the wines coming out of this New World terroir.”
Throughout the baron’s continual discussion with his team in France, the name that he kept coming back to was Robert Mondavi, a second-generation American of Italian immigrant parentage. “So, you have, on one side, a very aristocratic French European family and, on the other, a second-generation Italian-American,” Delassus said. “And when both of the men met, they discovered the same passion for winemaking, which would eventually lead to the Baron de Rothschild extending Mondavi an invitation to visit Bordeaux.”
In 1976, following a three-day visit, the famous retelling of the story is of how Baron de Rothschild met Mondavi and his daughter Marcia in his bedroom at Chateau Mouton-Rothschild early in the morning at 8am. Without anyone else present, the two men proceeded to shake on a deal in which they would produce a wine composed primarily of cabernet sauvignon grown in Napa Valley, exemplifying the style of a First Growth Bordeaux.
A year later, the baron would send his 55-year-old winemaker and technical director for his wine operations, Lucien Sionneau, to Napa to work with Tim Mondavi, Robert’s son. They began blending barrels from the elder Mondavi’s reserves from the cellar, producing the very first bottle from this partnership—a 1979 vintage that they would release to the market five years later in 1984.
The next great chapter in the Opus One saga occurred after the baron’s passing, when his wife, the baroness, decided that a wine such as Opus One required a dedicated vineyard in the concept of a chateau, which was how the best parcel of land—35 acres of the To Kaylon vineyards—became one of the most iconic vineyards in Napa Valley, producing the Opus One vintage of 1991.
“The Opus One story is found in your glass of wine,” Delassus said as he yielded the floor to Opus One winery’s director of winemaking Meghan Zobeck. Kicking off the culinary pairing was a beef tartare with Grand Couva chocolate shavings and white truffle vinaigrette, paired with the 2022 Opus One. “We tend to pick on the earlier side to capture the acidity and freshness,” Zobeck said. “The decision was a good one because the year ended up with two heat waves instead of just one—so this vintage shows smooth tannins, almost marble-like, and with lots of brightness, freshness, and red fruit.”
Overture by Opus One from the same vintage year would then serve as a comparison with its friendlier approach. “I would say Opus One tends to be more complex and layered, and definitely very intellectual. So, it’s great to have these two expressions side by side because you can even taste that it comes from a different soil type that expresses the wines differently.”
From here, the culinary line-up continued with Pacific lobster, Muscovy duck, and a 28-day dry-aged Manhattan strip and Australian yabbies, drizzled with dark cherry thyme jus. Meanwhile, the selection of Opus One vintages comprised the 2018 (black fruit with orange zest and dark chocolate), 2014 (silken dark fruit with hints of baking spice, black olives, and a touch of mocha on the finish), 2012 (a round mouthfeel of satiny tannins around cassis, blackberry, and black cherries) and the 2006 (an aroma of fresh-cut roses and blackberry pie, dense on the palate with espresso flavours).
In describing the vintages, Zobeck spoke of the 2014 and 2022 as “early vintages”, a bit on the warmer side where you see more concentration of flavours from the smaller berries, whereas the 2012 and 2018 were the textbook perfect vintages, with slow ripening seasons. The 2006, which was paired with the Manhattan strip and yabbies, offered a counterpoint with its more matured, elegant finish, a bouquet that was both floral and savoury, with a smooth finish to the end.
Photography by Joshua Chay / The Spacemen
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