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Wednesday, March 17, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
'A Good Way of Life'
Aureole sommelier strives to make wine less snobby, more accessible
By Ken White
Review-Journal
They take their wines seriously at Aureole.
The creation of chef Charlie Palmer, the new restaurant in Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. South, has as its architectural focal point a $1.2 million, 42-foot-high wine tower. It's four-stories tall, keeps wine at 55 degrees and 70 percent humidity, and is made of stainless steel and glass.
An impressive sight, the storage facility adds a touch of theatricality to the dining experience as wine stewards are hoisted up the tower to fetch a customer's request.
The tower itself holds 9,500 wine bottles, but there are another 6,000 bottles in a rare wine cellar, a cold cellar that holds 10,000 bottles and 25,000 bottles in backup storage. An additional 25,000 bottles are out of service.
There are nearly 2,000 wines to choose from the wine list.
But the restaurant has gone beyond show to make itself a serious player in the wine world. Under master sommelier Steve Geddes and his assistant, sommelier Andrew Vadjinia, Aureole held last week a four-day series of winemaker dinners and tastings that received press coverage from the New York Times, USA Today and Bon Appetit magazine.
Fifteen winemakers from Austria were on hand, plus another six from Spain, Alsace, the Rhone Valley, Sonoma Valley, Washington state and Germany.
Trade tastings and winemaker dinners, at which multicourse meals paired food with wine, were held Wednesday through Sunday.
The event drew people from the restaurant and hotel industry locally as well as from California, Arizona, Illinois, Wyoming and Idaho.
"It's showing our commitment to the food and wine industry here in the city," says Geddes, Aureole's wine director who formerly was director of the Southern Wine and Spirits School of Beverage
Service and an examiner for the Court of Master Sommeliers.
The Austrian's heavy showing was Geddes' idea, since he has been a supporter of that country's winemakers for the past three years.
While, in the minds of many wine lovers, Austria may not be the first country to spring to mind when wine is mentioned, Geddes says the country has been producing top-notch wines for 10 to 15 years, despite its cooler climate.
"It is a cool climate, so they do have difficult challenges of that nature," Geddes says. "But so does Germany, Washington state or Canada or any of these cold-climate winegrowing regions. They just have to be more careful."
Austrian wines, from such wineries as F.X. Pichler, Knoll, Prager, Hirtzberger, Freie Weingartner, Kracher, Nigl and Brundlmayer "are as good as any wine region in the world. It's a matter of style and preference of taste and food compatibility more than anything. They're really noted for their white wines, and they are world class white wines."
The Austrians are especially vigilant when it comes to keeping an eye on what other regions are producing, according to Geddes.
"They're very aware of what's going on around the world, much more so than anyplace I've ever been," he says. "It's just like any other country in the world. As modern technology gets in there they can continue to execute finer styles of winemaking techniques."
Austrian wines are gaining recognition, but Geddes doesn't believe they will ever be huge because their production is small.
At Aureole, Austrian wines cost $25 to $150 per bottle.
Overall, Aureole's wine list ranges in price from $25 to $45,000 per bottle, with $125 per bottle the average and 50 to 200 bottles sold per night, according to Geddes.
"For some reason, the wine tower and the wine list itself lend themselves to people wanting to experience new and more exciting wines," Geddes says. "Our wine list is definitely not commercial or mainstream. There are a lot of great wines on the list that are hard to find. And people are willing to experiment and try these wines because many of them they've heard about or read about but they haven't been able to see or find anywhere because they're so limited (in availability)."
Geddes sees the tower as a way to make wine "accessible and fun and part of dining entertainment. It breaks down all the snobbery, it throws all the arrogance out the window. Wine is fun, it's meant to be enjoyed by friends and family and loved ones, with food or without food. It evokes good memories, it evokes good times. It's about pleasure, it's about memories, it's about art, it's about history, it's about a good way of life."
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1999 Best of Las Vegas.
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Printable version of this story
Master sommelier Steve Geddes selects a bottle from the wine tower at Aureole at Mandalay Bay.
Photo by Jeff Scheid.
The Aureole wine tower stands 42 feet high and holds 9,500 bottles of wine.
Photo by Jeff Scheid.
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