Las Vegas Weekly

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It’s 6:15 p.m. as I raise a glass of Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande Bordeaux for inspection. I’m holding a tasting card in my hand with blank spaces labeled “Appearance,” “Nose,” “Mouth” and “Conclusion/Score,” and I’m trying not to be distracted by the roomful of friends, the band playing lounge classics and the waiters with full trays of canapés wandering through Napoleon’s at Paris Las Vegas for this KNPR Crush event. I’m failing miserably.

“Looks like wine,” I say to a friend who knows more about these things than I do. “Yeah,” he replies, “it’s dark in here.”

It is, but not in a bad way. The room, just off the hallway from self-parking, has the kind of low light and dark wood that I picture in many a French wine bar or neighborhood watering hole. I don’t know, because the last time I was there, I was living on baguettes, cheese and a bag of lychees. I ate one kabob and one crepe before hitting the road.

My friend and I do as we’re supposed to at Paris’ month-long Crush celebration of wine. We sip and sample. We swirl and smell. He tells me to stick my nose in a glass of Bordeaux and inhale as deeply as possible, blocking out everything around me. I breathe in the tannic liquid, trying to pick out stone fruit, fresh grass and French winemaker. Mostly, though, I’m just getting barnyard.

“It smells a little like sh*t,” he laughs, then takes a long swig. “But that’s not a bad thing.”