Vacation Stories

Suppah is Served

By Warren Bobrow

We were discussing the salinity of some crisp; fresh Sauvignon Blancs the other day at the wine shop CoolVines. When the cool fermented liquid touched my lips the resin quality and razor sharp acidity reminded me immediately of a trip to Damariscotta, Maine about 23 years prior.

It's amazing to me how a taste of a wine can vividly recreate a memory or the taste of a place, as a good film puts the viewer into the action. At this time we were sitting on the deck at one of the fresh seafood pubs that graced the once working waterfront. I was a chef at that time. It was about 1986, I found myself working for Jim Ledue at Alberta's one of the first gastro-pubs located in Portland, Maine. We changed our menu daily depending on what was fresh from the local farms and piers. He encouraged his cooks and all of his staff to taste food, preferably from near and also from way Down East. We were gifted in Maine to have a wealth of some of the freshest seafood-much of it goes by air overnight to Japan for their dinners.

Jim Ledue had told me about a place way up the coast a piece that served Pouilly Fum~ -not the maligned "Chablis" in the Box wine that was and still is served with every fish "suppuh" meal up and down the Maine Coast. This special place was known for its wine list, especially the French wines from the Loire Valley that went with a very specific kind of food, one that was brought over from Brittany in France to be eventually introduced then grown in vast beds surrounding the Damariscotta River. There in those pristine waters, many types of seafood are found living their lives in a place that time and the frantic pace of modernization have not changed. The relentless tides which churn and combine brackish mineral laden river and icy cold ocean salt water only improves the specific terroir of the water-bound place. Tides rise and fall 20 feet or more with a frenetic frothing power.

Just north of the town of Damariscotta the products that are raised in tidal inlets produce whelks, lobster, clams, sea urchins, peeky-toe crabmeat and Belons. These are the usual fare at the restaurant we were sitting in. A plate sat in front of me set amid a swirl of locally collected and very colorful Dulse Seaweeds. Set haphazardly over the pristine stainless steel plate, lemons chunks, a red wine mignonette, freshly ground horseradish was overflowing with roughly cut ice.

I could smell the seaweed- saline sweet and fresh, it stung my nose the moment we arrived having just been delivered from a local fisherman. An ancient wooden skiff was tied roughly to the deck. Wooden boxes of local seaweeds and urchins were being off-loaded.

I ordered a bottle of a mineral tinged Sauvignon Blanc. Our feast was to be a few plates (then a few more) of several local varieties of the local specialty. I raised my tiny seafood fork to my mouth. All at once the taste of cool icy briny salt water rushed into my palate, cleaning it of the wine immediately followed closely by deeper foam, all framed by a brackish sea charged, living finish. This mouth-feel created a vivant tabla rasa for the next taste. This one was deeply creamy with its liquor tasting of freshly raked grey fleur de sel- more liquid saline and life spilling out. Tasting more of them I was keenly enjoying the extracted liquids, which coated my tongue.

This stirred some of my deepest cravings. There is no wonder to me that these crisp, acidic steely wines were the perfect foil to this primal food. I dipped my fork and the contents into the shallot and cracked pepper infused mignonette, squeezed some fresh lemon and chewed another one- taking time to breathe in the tang of the sea, then the softly yielding creaminess of its texture, its very soul so to speak, as this product was alive, unable to escape from my tongue and teeth.

I devoured my plate and ordered another dozen, then another... Seagulls yelled for handouts. Sipping more of the wine I took in the day around me- there was a salt infused breeze that blew in as fog off the coast. I sipped some more of that Sauvignon Blanc.

I was in Maine all in an instant.

Warren Bobrow jockeyhollow@mac.com