THE WINE LIST

No doubt you’ve heard about the fabulous wine list at La Scala. Jean Leon, the Spanish vineyard owner and restaurateur, was rightly proud of the underground wine cellar at his former location.

It had some 30,000 bottles and was praised in the world’s major wine centers.

So when I headed for his new location on Canon Drive, I anticipated a wine list equivalent to what went before.

The good things about this list are obvious. There is marvelous value to be had, including a few wines that are priced at or even below retail. You may have 1987 Mondavi Fume Blanc at $11 or 1984 Chalone Pinot Noir at $19 or any of a host of excellent Spanish wines all priced below $20. One of the sleepers is Leon’s own Cabernet Sauvignon from Spain, the 1982 at $19.

Also, there is decent breadth in the California Cabernet section, a number of exciting Italian wines, a handful of French stars (sample: 1981 Chateau Lascombes, $79), and an array of sparkling wines.

But the failures of this list, and this program, are many.

Start, for instance, with the scene. This is a place that bespeaks wine. Red wines are sitting on partitions adjacent to the tables. Whites are stored lying down in a glass cooling cabinet at the rear, just under the glassware rack, which is itself just beneath the shelf of Armagnacs and Cognacs and Drambuie, which is adjacent to the the partition that holds the classic amphora, the Green wine jug of centuries past.

And yet, at lunchtime on a warm Saturday afternoon, I saw very few glasses of white wine sitting on the tables around me. Ordering one myself (it cost $2.50), I discovered why. The wine was of fairly poor quality and, I decided, would not go well with many foods.

So to the list. It appears, on first glance, attractive--it has the right cast. But it has no vintage dates for roughly half of the reds (and for none of the California Cabernets). For a wine-loving restaurateur, and one who owns a vineyard, this is unconscionable. (Does he think we think all vintages are the same?)

Then something hit me. I looked at the wine standing on the partitions. Here was a bottle of 1977 Torres Grand Coronas Riserva ($23), and there was the 1975 of the same wine. And over there was the 1976 Antoniolo Gattinara ($19) and there, right next to it, was the 1980. It was evidently wine from Leon’s former cellar.

I decided to test the waiter.

“We’ll have the Torres,” I said.

He reached behind me and grabbed the ’75. He showed it to me. I inquired about the ’77. He grabbed it, too, and held it out. I waited a second, hoping he would point the way. There was no indication, from his face or demeanor, that he even knew this was red wine, let alone knew enough to make a recommendation. (I have some bottles of the ’75 left in my cellar and can vouch for them, if they’ve been properly stored.)

I then said, “Perhaps we’ll try the Gattinara,” so he put the Torres wines down and grabbed the 1980 Gattinara. I asked about the 1976, and, to his credit, the waiter suggested that it might not be a wise order. “The label . . . “ The color of the label on the ’80 was buff colored, but the label on this bottle was edging towards gray. “It might have spent some time in a window.”

But 1976 was a far better year in Gattinara than was 1980. So I said, “Well, I think we’ll try the ’76 anyway.”

The wine was absolutely shot, both maderized and oxidized. Undrinkable. Since I had already rejected the waiter’s recommendation against ordering the wine, I felt I should now pay for it. But the wine had been so badly stored (and the cork showed it), I couldn’t drink a sip.

Then something came to me. Not every bottle of wine at the former La Scala location was stored in the underground wine cellar. Some bottles were stored in the cafe, in fact just as our waiter had suggested, in a window!

Which of the bottles at the new La Scala were stored in the cellar at the old location and which in the cafe? The ’76 Gattinara we had probably had not been in the cellar. But if it had, were the other red wines likewise badly stored?

If the waiter who had initially touted me off the wine knew for a fact that that bottle wasn’t in good enough condition to serve, why wasn’t he more forceful in saying something like, “This bottle is here only for display.”

Perhaps Leon doesn’t know that some (at least one) of the wines he has in the new location are not fit to drink. I asked myself: how many other bottles are equally unfit to be served?

After we had finished lunch, the waiter noted that we hadn’t touched our glasses of red wine, nor had we poured any more from the bottle. At that point, he could have said, “Was something wrong with the wine?”

He never asked.