The beautiful, highly knowledgeable and hospitable owner: Coralie de Bo*ard, daughter of Hubert de Bo*ard, owner of Chateau Angelus in St. Emilion. Her equally knowledgeable, affable brother-in-law: wine merchant Marc Rivoal.

Her excellent and somewhat still closed red wines: La Fleur de Board 2001, 2002, 2004 and Chateau Angelus 2001. Insufficient double decanting. Her unappreciated lecture. Superb fresh Pacific oysters. A memorable white Bordeaux: Arums de Lagrange Blanc 2006. Intriguing naming of dishes: Confucius oyster gratin, US Kobe rib eye. Deep-sea gourmet fish with a crab-like texture, firm white flesh and mild tasty flavor: Orange Roughy. Yemeni Ambassador Abdul Rahman Alhothi.

These are the pictorial and aromatic flashes that form a mosaic in my mind as it reviews the high-profile Chateau Angelus and La Fleur de Bouard wine dinner held at Oyster in Plaza Senayan, Jakarta, on Jan. 28, 2009.

As its name suggests, the chic, upscale restaurant specializes in oyster dishes but "apparently those who like oysters are mostly expatriates", said host Herman Iskandar whose wife, Eva, jointly owns the establishment with friends.

So other gourmet food was also introduced in the dinner, such as the deep-sea perch, bright orange and with rough scales, found in deep waters off Australia and "New Zealand 300 meters below sea level", according to Oyster's food and beverage consultant William Wongso.

He added the fish's fat layer and skin had to be removed otherwise they would upset the stomach. The fish, reportedly sought to be added to Australia's list of endangered species because of overfishing, was wonderfully presented inside a smoked salmon bread crust.

And with sweet orange sauce, it was a good match for the smoky, meaty, concentrated La Fleur de Bouard 2004, whose smooth but deep tannins nicely balanced the dish's flavors.

Another dish, written on the menu as US Kobe rib eye, baffled me. Upon spotting the word "Kobe" I immediately thought it was the famous Kobe beef. However, after eating it, I wondered why it did not taste like Kobe beef. So I asked William and he told me to pay attention to the word "US". Of course, if the Kobe comes from the United States, it cannot be the genuine one from Japan. It is just another way of saying "prime Wagyu beef", William added

As for Confucius oyster gratin, it is so named because, William told me, it was imbued with leaves locally known as "ginseng leaves". But the leaves actually belong to a medicinal plant whose roots resemble ginseng roots and is called tu ren shen in Chinese, som Jawa in Indonesian, and panicled fameflower in English.

The gratin was a simple but great dish and went very well with the wonderful, smooth, refined, delicious Arums de Lagrange 2006. With the aperitif wine, Legende R Bordeaux Blanc 2006 (Lafite) being no match for this memorable white, the blend had a beautiful floral fragrance and peach, apricot, and lemon flavors with a dash of smoky oak, which created a sense of sweetness when paired with the oyster.

Attended by Jakarta's glossy magazine socialites, the event did not do justice to Coralie. The part-owner, who has been in charge of public relations since 2003, gave an excellent speech on her family's wines and property with a well-made film projected onto a wide screen to aid understanding.

She also mentioned the 1982 Angelus Daniel Craig drank in Casino Royal during Bond's dinner with Vesper Lynd. However, most of the diners were so busy talking among themselves that host Herman Iskandar had to ask the audience several times to be quiet and respect her.

Of course, people who attend a wine dinner are not always interested in the wines, no matter how prestigious the wines are.

They may just come to socialize, to see and be seen. But I had an enjoyable pre-dinner discussion with Coralie, in which she explained fluently and enthusiastically so many things about La Fleur de Bouard, the family's property in Lalande-de-Pomerol that the family acquired in 1998, and which has since undergone many technical changes, starting from the way vines are grown in vineyards, gradual de-leaving, green harvesting, climatic adjustments, grape by grape sorting, gravity extraction, the use of very wide instead of very high tanks, up to natural filtration benefiting from ionic reaction. This amazed me.

The meticulous care and treatment lavished on the vines and the winemaking process are like the work of perfectionist haute Swiss watchmakers. She told me she is particularly proud of La Fleur de Bouard 2001 because Wine Spectator praises it as the Petrus of Lalande-de-Pomerol and the Pomerol of Lalande-de-Pomerol.

Equally enjoyable was the conversation I had with Marc, her brother-in-law, during the dinner in which we evaluated the wines together. I enjoyed very much the humus smell and minerality of La Fleur 2002, the complex, deep La Fleur 2001, which was more open and sweeter, with floral, incense and dark chocolate notes, than the 2004, and of course, the best wine of the evening: the elegant, smooth but gripping, delicious Chateau Angelus 2001 with its wonderful cassis, sun-dried chili smell and velvety tannins.

However, they all might have tasted better if the waiter in charge of the wines had not put their corks back into the bottles when double decanting them.

At the end of the dinner, I discussed with the Yemeni Ambassador which wines he liked best and asked him a question I have long wanted to ask him: "You are the Ambassador of Yemen, a Muslim country.

Why do you drink wine? Muslims are not supposed to drink alcohol, are they?" He replied with a big smile, "What about your very own country, Indonesia? Many Indonesians are Muslim and here you see they also drink wine." We shared a good laugh and said goodnight to each other.

Wine was renounced in the Arab world in the eighth century. But the ambassador apparently follows in the footsteps of certain Caliphs, and certainly Seljuk and Ottoman Sultans, who saw no sense in postponing the pleasure until the afterlife.

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