Interview: sommelier Eduardo Porto Carreiro

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Sommelier Los Angeles

INTERVIEW CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

Who have your mentors been?

The person whom I consider my mentor, under whom I worked probably a year and a half, is a gentleman named Matt Straus. Seven, eight months ago, Matt opened an extraordinary restaurant in San Francisco in the Mission District, called Heirloom Café…He had his own philosophies, and most importantly, he allowed me to foster my own philosophies as well. He and I had very similar palates. There were times when I was in the kitchen, expediting, and he’d pop in and just hand me a glass of wine – not tell me what it was – just had me sniff, taste and I’d report back to him when I had a moment. He always challenged and taught me along the way. He’s probably a mentor. Then he left to go to culinary school, because his goal was eventually to open his own restaurant, and thankfully, finally has.

When he left, the owners of Grace offered me the job of Wine Director. I was struggling a lot with that. It’s kind of an interesting dilemma. 23 years old, am I ready to take this on? Do I want to take this on? Is it too much responsibility? He pretty much just said, “Eduardo, relax buddy. You have what it takes, you can do this. If you want to do it, you’ll kill it.” With that sort of calming, sage words of advice, I said, “Okay, let’s do this,” and kind of went on from there. I haven’t had the traditional apprenticeship, mentor experience a lot of folks have had because it was so compressed, and still to this day, I’m always asking, asking, asking people I respect in the business what their thoughts are on things.

I think the most important aspect of wine is to keep an open mind, and to realize that we don’t know anything. We can strive and strive to learn, but the more we learn, the more we don’t know anything. It’s such a vast, huge topic. It changes every single year, and that’s what keeps most of us in it. Every week, I have a new variety. Every week, I hear about a new place that’s growing grapes. Every week, there’s a new producer coming out with a new wine. It’s so exciting.

The L.A. restaurant and wine community tends to really take care of itself. The past 8 years now that I’ve been part of the wine business in L.A., we’ve all sort of grown up together. When we don’t know, we’re not too proud to ask, and it’s been really, really lovely. There’s that great sense of camaraderie in that way.

What is it you enjoy about pairing wine with food, and what are a few important things to keep in mind when doing it?

Pairing wine with food is that wonderful pursuit of synergy. It sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s true. If you think of it as, if you’re putting together an arrangement of the notes, you need to make sure that you end up in harmony and not in dissonance. It’s very easy for anybody who doesn’t know about music to listen to a second chord and it will jarring, it will be something that’s dissonant, it will be something that may make you cringe a little bit, if it’s not in the right context. When you heard a perfect third, it’s melodious, it’s beautiful, it’s warm, it’s comforting. The same thing goes with wine. You’ve got these different instruments, wine and food, and you’re just trying to create that perfect chord, that wonderful harmony. The only way to do it is to jam, to improvise, to try, to play around and see what works and what doesn’t.

You read stories and biographies of the best jazz musicians, and they talk about how important it is to royally fuck up, so you can actually make good music, after you’ve royally fucked up. I am absolutely positively content with the fact that I have done a lot of fucking up, in my past, with food and wine pairing, and I always encourage people to try, try, try. Just try, because you won’t know whether it works or if it doesn’t. Just like you’re listening to music, you listen to that chord and it makes sense. Oh yeah, that’s awesome. Or, oh no, that sucks.

Are you a musician?

I love music. I’ve sung since I was little. This is embarrassing, but I’ll tell you. I was in a pretty damn good a cappella group in college. One of my favorite things on earth is harmony. With food and wine, food and spirits, food and beer, you won’t know until you try. For me, I’ve done a lot of that, and it’s such a tremendous passion to find the synergy. Now, I like to think I’ve done most of my screwing up and left that behind me, so now I can fine tune the way that things work.

As far as the unique challenges in pairing the food at Lukshon, what are they?

The food at Lukshon is wonderfully intense. There’s an array of bold flavors and there are certainly dishes that provide heat and spice. If you’re dealing with wines that are usually set for say, a steak dinner, or a pasta course, or beef bourguignon, those classic pairings – if you were to take those wines – say a Napa cab for a steak dinner, or a lovely Nebbiolo from Piedmont for an agnolotti course, or this great, rich, lovely Châteauneuf-du-Pape for the beef bourguignon. If you were to take those wines and put them in southeast Asian context, they would fail miserably. You could have the perfect experience with a classic pairing, and you bring in a spicy, hot dish, because the components aren’t meshing, it’s going to be that jarring sensation. It’s not going to feel right. It’s going to be that same way that you hear you that note that’s slightly off and makes you cringe, that combination’s going to make you cringe. So what you need to do is completely re-set your assumptions and roll with a blank slate and look at the components and the flavors of southeast Asian cuisine. And the best way to play with those flavors and those dishes, tend to be A) white wines B) always dealing with wines of extraordinary balance, high acid, mineral driven, transparent wines, often times wine that have some residual sugar.

If I had to pick one wine to drink with southeast Asian cuisine, it would be Riesling. Riesling, to me, and I say this with a lot of bias, because it’s my favorite white variety on earth, is one of the most versatile wines there is on earth. It comes from bone dry, crisp, clean iterations, to extraordinary, opulent, rich sweet expressions, and everywhere in between. Just by definition, Rieslings are high in acid, have minerality, and are beautifully transparent, you can play very well with those dishes. If you use that as sort of the benchmark, and work around it and look for wines with similar attributes, with great aromatics, wonderful minerality, lovely acidity, those will all fall into place.

What’s a misconception that you would like to address about wine?

There are a lot of misconceptions about wine. One of the things that I feel strongly about, is the fact that there still seems to be a mystique around wine. I remind as many people who will listen that wine is a beverage, just as we sit and sip on tea or wake up and have a cappuccino, we finish the night with a whiskey, wine is just a beverage…There aught not be as much mystique and glamour around wine because it tastes good, it goes great with food and it gives you a nice buzz.

Do you feel like that mystique has shifted at all in the eight or nine years you’ve been working with wine?

The thing that I love about L.A. and L.A. wine drinkers and L.A. and Southern California being one of the largest wine markets in the world, is that we have opened our arms to eclecticism and unique varieties. In so doing, we’re trying a lot different things about being open to a lot of wines. So that I think is the change and evolution we’ve undergone in wine drinkers, but there are still a lot of people who aren’t drinking wine. L.A. wine drinkers are some of the most astute, sharp, open wine drinkers in the world. Fearless, not scared to drink wines from Croatia, the Canary Islands. If there was a decent wine from Kentucky – and no disrespect because I’ve actually never had wine from Kentucky, I’m sure there are decent wines from Kentucky – I’m sure the L.A. market would be totally down to try it because we’re open to it.

The big goal of a place like Lukshon for me, and the sort of mantra that I’ve been rolling with for the entire staff, is to challenge assumptions and exceed expectations, and we’re doing that every day. We’re serving red wines before white wines. One of my favorite pairings on the menu is Lambrusco with the chicken pops. We’re not serving any red wines by the glass.

How much value do you see in using a 100-point rating scale with wine?

That is a very, very controversial topic. I will start by saying that the 100-point rating for wine has opened a lot of people’s eyes and has turned wine into something that’s a bit more accessible to a lot of people. However, if I had my druthers, I would get rid of assigning wine a numerical score for giving a wine a description or a metaphor. The old ways of writing about wine were practically poetic and perhaps a bit over the top, but they were fun and you got a sense for the soul of the wine. You’re stripping that soul, that story, when you just place a number on a wine.

When you’re not working, where do you like to drink and what do you like to drink?

I am a big beer guy. I love to drink beer. I also love a great cocktail. Beer-wise, Father’s Office. It’s been extraordinarily convenient having Father’s Office two doors down from Lukshon because I will always – after work – finish up the evening with a great pint. The Eastside, Beer Bar in Silver Lake, Covell in Los Feliz, always has extraordinary ales. Wurstkuche downtown, I love for the best French fries in L.A. and a great doppelbock on draught. I’m a hophead, so any fresh hopped kegs about town, I’m all about. I can’t wait to finally try Pliny the Younger. We’ll see. Hopefully that will work out.

What about for cocktails?

Early in the evening, at the Roger Room, if Damian [Windsor] and Jason Bran are there, and I can sit down and chit-chat about cocktails and just relax, those are some extraordinary drinks. Damian turned me on to the Brooklyn cocktail, and if I’m ever there, I have to have him make me a Brooklyn.

If you had to fill your glass with one final wine, what would be in that glass and how come?

That’s a sad question. Right now, one wine comes to mind, and that is from an extraordinary producer in Germany. His name is Keller. He makes Grosse Gewachs wines, which means Grand Cru wines. They’re dry Rieslings. Any Kir Schpiel, which is this particular vineyard. Keller Kirchspiel Grosse Gewachs.

Would you have any food with it?

That’s such a good wine. Right now I’m thinking more about – I would have it outside on a friend’s porch with some freshly shucked Malpeque oysters and a – you know what, screw the oysters. Oysters are for Champagne. I would have the Keller Kirchspiel Grosse Gewachs out on the porch, on a nice, sunny day with good friends and a hunk of fresh unpasteurized Chevre. I think that would make a phenomenal snack.

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Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

Blog Comments

[…] wax romantically about how great it is, but I’ve never had the pleasure.  That  changed when my Riseling—loving sommelier friend poured me some von Buhl Riesling Sekt Brut. It was slightly effervescent, citrusy and bright, and […]

Reply

Matthew Zachary Blair

Eduardo,
You are the MAN!! The Knowledge, Style, and Grace that you bestow is invaluable. I thank you kindly for taking me under your wing. I too will see you soon at Covell.
Zach

Thanks Matt Straus!
Eduardo, you are superb. See you at Covell!

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