Jofré: shall we stay, or shall we go…?

Cool place; great food… service? Room for work…

Did you ever notice how some people are just not cut out for service? And how much a difference it makes in how you feel about a place?

Last night a group of friends decided on the spur of the moment to go get a drink and a bite. Someone suggested Jofré… Great place; I’ve been there several times over the course of its 6 or so years in business… Low-key Latina bistro type, set in a renovated cité with small dining rooms and a nice terraza. There’s cool artwork on the exposed adobe walls,  the kitchen’s open to view, and the wine list is printed in colored chalk on an enormous board on the wall…

Food wise it’s a keeper too. The menu usually offers 4–5 reasonably priced dishes determined in accordance with the daily market finds… (in fact, the menu is printed daily). But last night we were there for drinks and apps, so I didn’t even check out the main courses.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First impressions first. Let’s start with one foot in the door.

We arrived at 8:50 (which is on the early side of a Santiago evening). The waitress met us at the door with a startled look… which was odd… we were dressed appropriately, no scary tattoos or intimidating face jewelry, no swearing, no pushing, no shoving, in fact, we were behaving like the professional adults that we are.

Did you call? (no)
Why not? she demanded. You should have made reservations… (Well THAT was very welcoming, nice to see you too…).

Four of us came in together and we told her that another 2–3 were on their way.

But I already have several reservations… (She drawls it out slowly, and to make sure we get her point, she extends her arm for us to observe the attractively appointed but very empty room). You know you should write down our phone number and call first.

I couldn’t help but remember my husband’s stories about working as a classical guitarist in a hoity-toity hotel restaurant, and the Maitre’D who reveled in making people squirm as he glowered at them and dragged out his favorite sneer, “Noooo… ti-en-e… me-saaa” (so you don’t have a table……)… Shouldn’t we beyond that these days?

She was nearly beside herself, and my initial reaction was to turn heel and leave. I don’t need someone lecturing me at the door about how to reserve a table. Okay, I get it, this is not my grandmother’s house and she is not going to be glad to see me any time I decide to pop in. But… if she doesn’t want our business, there are plenty of other places in town that do.

But my friends were oblivious and just looked at her til she found us a table. An excellent table, actually, in the back by the bar, and as it turned out, we had the whole section to ourselves; so what was all the fuss?

She emanated her  holier than thou throughout the evening, although I must say that we enjoyed ourselves despite the attitude.

Oh! You’ve finished all the bread already….

A bottle of Tres Palacios Merlot, a Tiger beer, and a Paceña, along with Daditos de Carne (cubes of beef in a rich sauce), Grilled goat cheese with arugula (yummy), and Corvina tartar (this ceviche-type dish was my least favorite of the three, but it still disappeared pretty quickly). We had originally ordered the Mollejas (sweetbreads), but were told they would take too long.

Oh… you’re not ordering dinner? Hmm, then give me back the menus…

At one point our conversation turned to a new restaurant that had opened recently, and she actually contradicted the person who was talking… Excuse me? It’s not that I think that waiters should be invisible, and I do enjoy a bit of light conversation with them, although I pretty much draw the line at someone interrupting a guest’s conversation to contradict them… wouldn’t ya think?

Most people think of service in terms of competence, but this was not an issue. Her order-taking skills and ability to get things on and off the table without mishap were just fine. But the part about making guests feel welcome and comfortable? Not so much…

The bill (including tip) came to $30,000 pesos for 6 people. Not bad.

Ratings:

Food: Good, tasty, sufficiently innovative

Menu: Updated daily in accordance to the market offer

Wine list: Good

Beer list: Good

Ambiance: Cool, informal, comfortable (dress up or down, as you prefer)

Price: Reasonable

Service: 1 step forward, 2 steps back…Needs some work…

Address: Jofré 388, downtown Santiago

Phone: (56-2) 635-1927 (be forewarned,  she really wants you to call first!)

Casa Silva puts Colchagua’s Cool Coast on the Map

Terroir is a big thing in the wine world… It has to do with wines of origin… wines that reflect the geological and geographical and climatic conditions of the vineyards to create wines that cannot be reproduced any place else. Chile has produced wine for more than 450 years, but in the last 20 or so, it has engaged in the search for new places to grow wine grapes… and in a country full of amazingly diverse little nooks and crannies, there is plenty to be discovered!

The Colchagua-based Viña Casa Silva has spent the last 4 years making a go of its own terroir project and today launched its first wine to come out of this cool-climate coastal vineyard outside of Paredones and just 5.5 miles (9 km) from the Pacific Ocean. They flew a small group of winewriters  out to the site (see the flight path on the map). Check out  “Chile by Air” on Cachando Chile for aerial photos of the Colchagua Valley.

Viña Casa Silva's chief winemaker Mario Geisse. (Photo © MSnook 2009)

Chief winemaker Mario Geisse gave us the run down on the 40-hectare vineyard planted in 2006 (half Sauvignon Blanc, half Pinot Noir), along with the particular conditions that make the site special: the typical clay-coarse sand soils of the Coastal Mountains, the very moderate temperatures that vary as much as 25ºF in a single day, but that don’t change significantly from season to season, the favorable conditions of water and wind, and other factors to produce one very special wine.

Next stop: Buculemu, the fishing village 5.5 miles due west, to taste the new 2009 Cool Coast Sauvignon Blanc from Paredones.

There’s no comparison between this and the Sauvignons you know from Casablanca. None of that peach and ripe pineapple here. This is austere, mineral-laden, and citrusy, bursting with lime and loaded with grapefruit dancing around a stony backbone that makes it easy to drink and keeps you coming back for more. It’s more palate than nose, which is just fine, because after all, it’s flavor we’re after anyway, right?

It’s got a nice texture, plenty of structure, and the body that helps it stand up to a variety of foods… and just to make sure we got that point, they served up an ample selection of seafoods: octopus ceviche, oysters on the half shell, white fish ceviche, Chilean abalone, mussels, reineta, salmon, quinoa salad, and caldillo de congrio (Pablo Neruda’s famed fish soup). In fact, it was the only wine served throughout the entire meal, and no one missed the reds.

This one’s a treat, with a price tag that will keep it that way… at $12.000 CLP, it’s not going to be showing up at the table on a regular basis, but will certainly be savored when it arrives and missed when it disappears.

Back Talk on Back Labels

By Margaret Snook, May 10, 2009

Walk into any decent grocery store, or better yet a specialty shop, and you’ll find hundreds of bottles of wine to choose from. How to decide? You could (1) know what you’re looking for, grab it and run, (2) ask someone who works there and hope that they know their stuff—and fortunately, they increasingly do, or (3) check out the bottle and decide for yourself.

There’s a heck of a lot of marketing going on in and on a wine bottle. Dozens of decisions have been made about the size and shape, the color and weight, the depth of the punt, the type of closure (cork, screw cap, etc.), and then, of course, the most obvious of all, the label, or better put, labels.

The role of the front label is clear enough. It has to be eye-catching and provide certain required information: identifying characteristics and a design that hopefully (though not always successfully) attracts sufficient attention to entice someone to pick it up and read the back label. And that, right there, is where too many wineries fall short and miss the good-marketing boat. Inadequate information, unattractive presentation, excessively small font size, and poor translations mean the bottle goes back on the shelf, and the consumer moves on to the next bottle—and the next—searching for something that sounds interesting enough to walk it down the aisle to the register.

Back label: clincher or a clanker?

A back label is the place where a winery gets to tell consumers what’s actually in the bottle! It’s their final chance to clinch the sale by convincing us that this is the wine that we want on our table tonight… But, Oh! the missed opportunities! What do we get? Time and time again, we turn the bottle over and find yet another densely printed back label—way too often in unreadable 4-point font. Get out your magnifying glass, and you’ll learn about family history, soil textures, climate types, and canopy management, but little or nothing about what the wine tastes like.

True Example:

This blend of ___, ___, ___ (fill in 3 varieties) is a limited production wine from our ____ (very long name) vineyard in the ____ Valley. It was aged for ___ months in _____ (fill in French or American) oak barrels.

That’s it? Some 40 words dedicated to selling the wine. Take away the varietal and valley information repeated from the front label and what do we get? 14 words that tell us that the winery happens to own a vineyard and some oak barrels. So what? —CLANK— Would that convince anyone to shell out hard-earned lucas (that’s “bucks” in Chilean) for an unknown wine? Doubt it.

Back labels are small to begin with, and there’s not much room left over after including the bar code, warning labels, and other obligatory legal yada-yada, but why not dedicate that precious remaining space to the consumer? Leave the geek talk for the tech sheets that go out to buyers and distributors who might actually have some idea of what it all means. Tell the consumers something they really want to know, and give them what they need: plain language information they can use to make a decision on buying your wine!

So, on behalf of consumers everywhere, I’ve taken the liberty of drafting the following letter:

Dear Wineries:

We, the wine drinkers of the world, have a bone to pick with you. We want to try new wines, we’d love to experiment, and are even willing to try yours, but you’re not making it very easy on us. We are overwhelmed by volume and selection and frankly, more than a bit confused. We like your bottle, your label caught our eye, and we look to the back label to convince us to take it home… but we don’t know what “alluvial” means. Or “spur-pruned.” Or “mid-palate” either, for that matter, and we certainly don’t know what they have to do with anything we want to drink with dinner. And you know what? We don’t care how many hectares you have planted, unless of course we discover that this wine is really good and you’re trying to tell us that there’s plenty more where this came from. And sure, while it’s nice to have a bit of back story about your family and your winery’s architecture, or the llama that eats the grass, what we really want to know is what’s in the bottle.

We aren’t asking for much—just a little useful information that will give us a hint about what to expect from this wine. What does it taste like? Is it fruity? Oaky? An easy-drinking fun wine for movie night or a sophisticated, complex wine that will impress our guests? Is it bright and acidic and perfect for ceviche? Rich and heady and ideal with lamb? A refreshing aperitif best served chilled on a summer afternoon? Give us some ideas! Do a bit of marketing! Help us decide!

We’ve got the money and want to try something new. Please give us a hand. Convince us!

Cheers, Salud,

The Wine Drinking Public

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