The Sake Was the Best Thing in My Glass at The Inn at Little Washington
There is a moment in every wine pairing where you decide whether to be honest with yourself.
The sake was the best thing that happened in my glass all night. Which is not the sentence I expected to write about a restaurant sitting on a cellar of sixteen thousand bottles.
I took the pairing. My boyfriend didn't, which meant one of us was drinking through the entire Gastronaut's Menu and one of us was watching. Full account of the meal itself here. Five pours, four hours, one very quiet drive home while I worked out how I felt about it.
The Champagne
Andre Clouet Grande Réserve opens the meal, poured against the Tin of Sin and the Foie Gras Mousse. It's a blanc de noirs from Bouzy, all Pinot Noir, and it does what a grand cru Champagne is supposed to do against caviar and cured richness. Weight without heaviness. Enough acid to reset your mouth between the crab and the brioche.
It's a correct pour. That's the word I keep coming back to. Nothing about it surprised me, and at this price point I want at least one thing to surprise me.
The Sake
Chef Patrick's Infinite Summer Tokubetsu Honjozo arrives with the tuna and swordfish carpaccio and the wasabi sorbet, and this is the pairing that earns its place.
Nobody reaches for sake here. The lazy move is a Sancerre or an Albariño, something with citrus that gets out of the way. Instead you get something clean and faintly savory that meets the wasabi sorbet where it lives, cold and sharp against cold and sharp. It doesn't fight the raw fish and it doesn't disappear into it.
I've thought about this pour more than any of the others.
The Chardonnay
2022 Lingua Franca AVNI Chardonnay from Oregon's Willamette Valley, poured against the lobster mousse-stuffed cabbage with the French butter sauce and caviar.
The logic is obvious and it works. The dish is butter on butter with a saline hit on top, so you need something with real acid or the whole thing sits on your tongue. AVNI has it. Crisp, some orchard fruit, restrained oak.
But this is the pairing I'd have fought about. The dish was already the smallest, most delicate thing on the menu, and the wine matched it so closely that neither one raised its voice. Two polite people at a dinner party. I wanted friction.
The Garnacha
2021 Alto Moncayo Garnacha from Campo de Borja, the only red of the night, and it lands on the meat course. It goes with both the Szechuan Pepper-Crusted Venison and the Duck with Foie Gras and Grilled Figs, which is a lot to ask of one glass.
It's a big wine. Black currant, cocoa, coffee bean, plenty of alcohol behind it. Against the venison and that spicy crust, it holds. Against the duck, with the crème brûléed figs and the port demi-glace, I thought it went heavy on heavy. The duck already has sweetness and fat and depth. The Garnacha piles on more.
That was the duck's only weak moment, and the wine caused it.
The Muscat
2022 Jorge Ordoñez Muscat from Málaga, poured against Faira the Cow and her five cheeses. Goat's milk from Spain, Torta del Casar, a Virginia cow's milk, Époisses, Caveman Bleu from Oregon.
This is the smartest pour of the night and it isn't close. Sweet wine against salty, funky, aggressive cheese is not a new idea, but it is done properly here. The Muscat has enough sugar to stand up to the Époisses without going syrupy, and enough acid that it doesn't coat your mouth. The blue cheese in particular. That is the pairing everyone talks about in theory and rarely executes.
If I could have had a second glass of anything, it would have been this. I couldn't. The cheese supplement stops at five slices and the wine stops with it.
The Sommelier
Alejandro Tenorio poured for us and he was warm about it, generous with his time, never once condescending. Which matters, because I hold a WSET Level 2 and I have been talked down to by people holding much less.
He works under Lindsey Fern, who has run the wine program since 2014 and is one of the only women directing wine at a restaurant of this rank in the country. Fern has said she knows exactly where O'Connell wants acid to land and where he wants cream, and that this is what lets her build pairings fast. Reading that afterward, I understood the pairing I'd been served. It is technically right in every place. It is built to complement the food, and it succeeds at complementing the food.
That's the problem. I don't want a wine that agrees with the dish. I want one that argues with it.
The cellar is sixteen thousand bottles, over two thousand selections, and it has taken the Wine Spectator Grand Award every single year since 1995. Everything I wanted was in that room. I just wasn't the one choosing.
What I'd Do Next Time
Skip the pairing. Sit down with Alejandro before the first course, tell him what I actually drink, and let him go into the cellar with a real brief instead of a script. Corkage is $200 a bottle if you want to bring your own, which given what's on that list would be a strange decision.
The pairing costs money and gives you competence. The list costs money and gives you a chance.
Somewhere under that dining room there are two thousand selections and a wine director who retires in her imagination to France with a bicycle and a wheel of cheese. Next time I'd like to find out what she'd pull if I asked her properly.
Notes
Restaurant: [The Inn at Little Washington, full dining review here]
Address: 309 Middle St, Washington, VA 22747
Reservations: (540) 675-3800 | theinnatlittlewashington.com
Wine program: Director of Wine Lindsey Fern. Sommeliers include Christine Barr and Alejandro Tenorio. Cellar of roughly 16,000 bottles, 2,100 selections. Strengths in Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, California, Oregon, Virginia.
Pairing: Offered with both the Gastronaut's Menu and the vegetarian Good Earth Menu. Sommeliers will also build custom pairings on request.
Corkage: $200 per 750ml bottle, for wines not on the list
Accolades:Wine Spectator Grand Award every year since 1995
Instagram: @innatlittlewash
About the Author
Kelly Gomez is a creative director who eats well, travels far, and lives with intention. She has sat at tables that required months of planning, flown routes that cross a dozen time zones, and found herself in rooms most people never find. She is precise about what she loves and honest about what falls short.
A WSET Level 2 Wine Certified writer and Advanced Open Water Diver, Kelly covers luxury travel, hotels, fine dining, wineries, diving destinations, and the trips built around them.
Her work reaches a US-based audience of travelers between 25 and 44, with a near-even gender split and a meaningful following.
