Bacchus
The book says “the apple tempted eve, our book says, “it must have been the grape”; the first sentence from The Purple Café’s wine list. Here, the world of wine meets the abundant metropolitan cuisine of the Pacific Northwest.
The food, drink, and ambiance of Purple makes you feel warm and happy inside and then there’s the courteous prices that makes it affordable for any connoisseur to come back for more. The first café was opened 20 minutes North of Seattle in the neighboring city of Woodinville, in 2001 and with great success more restaurants followed with Kirkland in 2003, Seattle in 2006 and Bellevue in 2009 filling an empty niche in the area.
“Step into my office”, said Chris Horn, Wine Director for the Seattle location. We walked up a spiral staircase wrapped around the central wine library column; a huge cylindrical rack of wine, the centerpiece of the restaurant, and through a hidden entrance we stepped inside.
~ In this Photo: Chris Horn, Wine Director of The Purple Café in Seattle, WA holds a bottle of his favorite champagne in his office.
After loosing the awe-struck look from my face I turned to Chris with a feeling of being one up’t to say, “This is quite the office”. I thought that winemakers had the best office in the world but this takes the cake. “How do I become a wine buyer?” was my first question for Chris.
Chris believes that to be a wine buyer for a restaurant you first have to take yourself out of the picture. He says, ”What I think about food and wine may not relate to anyone else who walks through the door”, eluding to the fact that no two people perceive taste the same way, “so you have to get help from the people around you and their experiences with pairing food and wine”, such people as the chef, the distributor and the customers. Chris chooses many of the wines for Purple from suggestions that the customers make, a collaborative approach that seems appropriate given the diverse ethnicity of Seattle.
For food and wine paring, Chris mentioned that the chefs create dishes that are presented in a more natural state, not over seasoned, so that the food does not overpower the wine, “you can’t ruin the delicate flavor and aroma of a really expensive champagne with too much spice”. This makes pairing the wines with the menu much easier, a constant process at Purple seeing as how each time the menu changes, the entire wine list is updated to reflect it.
So, if you have not been to Purple yet you need to make plans, and if you have trouble choosing what to eat I recommend the lobster mac & cheese.
