Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2000 | 10:20 a.m.
Great wines have been part of the Las Vegas landscape ever since the first high- roller threw a pass, but during the past decade or so the city has blossomed into a world wine center. We now have more master sommeliers than anywhere else. And most major hotels have at least one restaurant with an impressive wine program.
The following three places were singled out because each one brings something unique to the table. Aureole is the first Las Vegas restaurant to have won the Wine Spectator's coveted Grand Award. Andre's French Restaurant downtown has an incredible selection of large format bottles and vintage Bordeaux. Piero Selvaggio's Valentino is unmatched locally for Italian wines.
Aureole, Mandalay Bay
A constant stream of tourists flock to Aureole, just to catch a glimpse or snap a photo of Adam Tihany's 32-foot, 9,500-bottle Plexiglas wine tower. It is a breathtaking restaurant design and a signature item of the new Las Vegas. But it has immense practical value as well.
"You can't imagine how much the Grand Award has meant to us," Head Sommelier Andrew Vadjinia said. "Our phone has been ringing off the hook, Germans who want to build a replica of the tower, Koreans who flew in just to drink a Bryant Family Cabernet ($850) and a Colgin ($1,000), and people curious about the restaurant."
Vadjinia is tall and scholarly and he knows his wine. Nonetheless, the chief architect of Aureole's massive list, which contained 2,386 selections in its latest print, is Steve Geddes.
Geddes is a local product. His official title is director of wine. He is a master sommelier and involved in a consulting project in Jackson Hole, Wyo. So that means Vadjinia is the one to see should you have any questions about Aureole's list. He, not Geddes, is handling the day-to-day wine operation.
No one can fail to be impressed by the wine tower. But Aureole's list is impressive, too. For one thing, Vadjinia claims that his list has the largest selection of Austrian and German wines in the country.
For another, his prices are reasonable for a deluxe Strip restaurant. No other wine list in the city offers such a diversity of top quality wines priced below $50. Here you'll find wines from virtually every wine region in the world, from South Africa to New Zealand. You can, for instance, find a delicious Hiedler '97 Riesling from Austria for only $47. Billecart-Salmon champagne from France is $39, and there are more than 50 wines for less than $50 on this list.
"I guarantee that we are more reasonable than places like Eiffel Tower (at the Paris Las Vegas) or some of the top restaurants at the Bellagio," Vadjinia says.
Money no object? Why not try a 1900 Chateau Margaux, a cool $16,000.
Andre's French Restaurant, 401 Sixth St.
Andre Rochat is the man who really got the ball rolling in this town. The well-liked Frenchman considers wine a passion, and he's been collecting for more than 20 years, even before his restaurant opened in 1980. As a result, he has many wines no one else in the city has, or can get. He also is fair with regard to their prices. "When I bought some of these wines," Rochat says, "they were not that expensive, and I haven't adjusted the prices much."
Boston-born Sommelier Hank Maglia handles the restaurant's 86-page list for the chef. "The city has grown so much," he says, "and everyone fights for great wines now. But where else can you find these large bottles, ones like the Imperial, which holds six liters, the Balthazar, which holds 16 bottles, or the enormous Nebuchadnezzar, a whopping 20-bottle bottle."
Rochat stores his red wines in a downstairs cellar, which is perfectly maintained at 70-percent humidity and is temperature controlled. He has around 1,400 different wines on his list, not as large a selection as Aureole, but more extensive with regard to French wines.
There is, for instance, a 1980 Haut-Brion for $200, and also a 1975 Pichon Lalande for $175, on the house list. These are not inexpensive wines, but consider this: You won't find either one wholesale at near these prices. The average markup, according to Maglia, is about 2 1/2 times their cost. This is normal for a restaurant, not at all high for a restaurant of this caliber.
Valentino, the Venetian
"The only reason we don't have a Grand Award," General Manager Arturo Nieto says, "is that a restaurant has to be open for one year in order to be in consideration, and we were only open 100 months when they made their choices."
That may or may not be true, but Valentino's Los Angeles restaurant was one of the first in the country to receive a Grand Award, and his Las Vegas list, while not quite as extensive as the one in his flagship restaurant, is mighty well-stocked.
Nieto put the list together with Selvaggio and it is, like Gaul, divided into three parts: 20 pages of French wines, 20 pages of Italian wines and 20 pages of California wines.
The sommelier is Jack Gerow, an expert in matching food and wine. As this is an Italian restaurant, he places his emphasis on Italian labels, but says his entire list is high quality. The list contains 600 different labels and, says Gerow, the largest selection of half bottles in the city, around 90. This list is heavy with pricey Super Tuscans and Chiantis. But there are many Dolcettos and Rosso di Montalcinos, wines priced well under $40.
You drink your wines from elegant Spiegelau stemware. But if you order a big-ticket wine, or in fact if you do so at any of these restaurants, you'll get a hand-blown Riedel glass from Austria, which cognoscenti call the finest wine glasses in existence.
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