'Badass, aged red wines' at APL Hollywood, 2/21/19

Saul Cooperstein put together an amazing offline at APL in Hollywood, featuring steaks aged up to 403 days. That restaurant was incredible - the meat locker is insane and the food incredible.

The theme was ‘badass, aged, and red’ and it was an incredible spread. Amazingly, we didn’t have a bad wine in the bunch (other than the reconditioned Conterno, which I feel is not authentic as an old wine anyway so it doesn’t count), and considering the youngest was 1999 (by a long shot) that’s pretty incredible. I jotted down short notes on my iPhone, so I’ll go TomHill a bit here:

‘58 Conterno - amazing, still changing, meaty - structured after all these years, complex and interesting
‘64 Conterno (reconditioned) meh - madeirized yet some fresh fruit - odd
‘71 Torres - superfine dusty tannins, nice acidic backbone, milk chocolate & coffee nose, sweet red fruit, great, short finish
‘78 Gruaud Larose - Raw red meat, beautiful color, cassis, great space now, slight astringency
‘71 Sterling - slightly ripe-fruited/pruney, brilliant acidity and mouthfeel
‘73 Sterling - surprising nose - blue fruited? Bright nose, some mint, gorgeous color, bright and lively, wow, still tannic and structured
‘77 Mayacamas - ever so slightly corked, beautiful mouthfeel, fruit intact, finish short
‘82 Ducru - milk chocolate nose, red and black fruit - super complex nose, still fresh and young - tannic and structured, fantastic, slightly soft
‘90 Lagrange - classic dirty Bdx nose, rustic - more than any other wine - graphite, dark, rich soil,
‘77 Weinert - color looks almost new, peppermint patty nose (never wrote this as a note before), bright, fresh nose, beautiful mouthfeel, perfectly weighted, salty, falls apart quickly in the bottle/glass, though. Super interesting
‘99 Phelps Backus - so young, so fresh, almost too young in this group, after 2 hours, wow - huge nose, a little green/vegetal but also bright fruited and sparkly, lively palate, richer and opulent

Charlie has some wine and food photos to amaze…

The actual cooked steaks from APL last night. My friend Steve (www.instagram.com/hungry.md) took the photos.

The steaks in photo order
30 day ribeye
150 day ribeye
220 day porterhouse
403 day strip
120 day short ribs

The 220 day porterhouse was pretty amazing.

Wine pics to come in a bit

Gulp, looks amazing. Some of those wines I drank while in school way back when.

Quite a lineup all the way around…

Wine!

Nice steaks…

Didn’t see the LB on the list.

Maybe it wasn’t bad ass enough. [scratch.gif] What criteria have to be met for a wine to qualify as bad ass? Are there different levels of bad ass? Would Richard Roundtree as Shaft bad ass be less bad ass than Chuck Norris as Braddock bad ass, or vice versa? Where on the scale does Charles Bronson as Bishop bad ass fall? Clarification is needed here.

FOMO. So sad that I missed it. I recovered sufficiently yesterday to join my parents at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse, which serves the most disgustingly bad food in SoCal. So, I’m doubly pisssed off to have canceled the APL dinner.

1958 is my birth year. The G Conterno Riserva is a stunning wine. I have been lucky to have it twice. Sounds like it showed here too. Thanks for the notes Todd. Excellent!

Ha. Everyone only got a small splash. It was leftovers from lunch that Steve and I had. Maybe 1/3rd of the bottle left.

Needed that 8 hours of air. Absolutely singing.

How was the 403 day aged strip? When I saw that APL was selling > 1 year meat, it honestly didn’t appeal to me, as seemed like it would be too much funk.

the nose was incredible. Roasted garlic, long braised onions, smoked beef. Palate was more texture wise to a thick cut prosciutto and similar flavor

Steaks, for the most part, look like they were cooked perfectly.

Exactly. And is bad ass the same as kick ass or is it some other type of ass? neener

Random thoughts:
First off, thanks to Saul for setting up a fun and interesting night. I’m glad that I didn’t take up Brian’s suggestion for a cocktail at the Frolic Room after, as I was just a bit hungover Friday.

I kinda cringed at the “badass” category for the wines, but no one took it too seriously.

I showed up last, five minutes late, with a bottle of bubbles ready to go but these guys were already drinking reds.

The wines showed well and it wasn’t kind of surprising that none were dead at all. Todd’s notes are pretty accurate.
The Mayacamus Cab was just the tiniest bit corked. Not badly, it was still drinkable, and I am not sure that everyone even agreed. The reconditioned 64 Borgogno was interesting. There may have been some bias in knowing so, but when one attended to it one could seemingly tell. I wonder what was added and how much as it really seemed like a significant portion. The wine had a taste of something much younger with a slightly madeirized olderr base. The 58 was still good and had the interesting ancient Barolo nuances which do show a commonality with Burgundy. The 71 & 73 Sterling cabs had both held up well and it’s was a tough choice between the two for me. I wonder what those cost at release? $5-6? The Weinert really interesting. It showed more like a 97 than a 77, both in age and style, and only the 99 Backus seemed younger to me. The Weinert was really dark and rich, maybe with a bit of structure lacking for all the fruit, as one might expect from S.American Malbec.

I loved the 82 Ducru and 90 Lagrange. Being Marshall’s friend is a good thing as he has much more pre-90 Bordeaux, esp. 82, than most of us! Both of those wines have plenty of stuffing left. The 99 Backus was clearly the youngster in the group, but was really classic Cab and evolved over the night. I haven’t had a lot of luck aging 99s as many have an over-ripeness and hollowness, but no such problem here. I actually liked the bigger wines with the meat. We had a discussion about whether going old would match secondary and tertiary flavors in thos wine season with the complexity of the aged meat. That didn’t necessarily come to pass for me. With a fatty steak, even the aged, I like the presence of the tannins in the “younger” wine.

As far as the meat, I really am not a lover of extra age, though I’ve never had anything over 90 days. 28-35 days seems best to me. So I was a little curious about whether the Super age would be funky. It really wasn’t. Maybe the extent of the trimming affects that. The meats were all really tasty and it was meat overload. The only thing green involved in the dinner was the wedge salad which was loaded with blue cheese and topped with bacon. I think my favorite cuts were the 150 day ribeye and that 200+ Porterhouse. I thought the 400+ day was interesting, but maybe my least favorite. As Charlie said, it took on the texture of a hunk of prosciutto. Texturally, that was not juicy and the fat homogenized. It did certainly have the most interesting aroma and flavor, but not strikingly. I didn’t see how much they charge for the 400 day, and thank got Saul got us the friends and family rate on the holy grail of beef-fests.

The aging room was awesome. There have to be five tons of beef down there.
CB28E199-2E9A-4669-8E1F-9F98E62DAA5D.jpeg
D3DF3A23-53C8-4F49-AA77-9A851EB95843.jpeg

Thank you all. Wines and company were amazing. Notes are pretty spot on…for me the WOTN was probably the Lagrange.

On the beef side I thought that the 223 day dry aged porthouse was truly transcendent with a mouth coating finish that lasted 10+ minutes. Just about as good as beef can get for me. The short aged ribeye was a perfect execution, the meat itself plus seasoning and cook. Didn’t come close to the level of the porter but the kind of thing that can be enjoyed much more frequently and would have been steak if the night in almost any onlther setting. The 400+ strip was very unique as has a much more cured flavor profile and texture. The short rib also a very interesting cut as aged on the outside of the bone on one end of the tomahawks. It was very intense and probably the gamiest steak of the night. In terms of quantity of beef, the tomahawks and the porters were each between 50-60 oz, the short aged ribeyes about 16-20oz, the 400+ day around 12 oz and the short rib around 8 oz…so all in around 250+ oz of steaks for the 8 of us.

Again a great night and great company.

250 oz divided by 8 - that must be why I hit my meat wall!! Rare occasion for me.

Fair amount of bone in the steaks tho! The tomahawk bone was gigantic.

You didn’t see on your throne end of the table that John and Brian were gnawing on the bone. (Actually cutting off the ‘flavor’ (gristle) )

That was one heck of a dinner/experience. Thank you, for sharing!