Young on the nose

The sommelier approached our table, a bottle in each hand. With one, he poured some Champagne for my wife, Lucy, and me. Then he turned to Lucas, our 14-year-old son, and with the other, he half-filled Lucas’ wine glass.

“This has an exotic floral essence that will go well with your carrot soup and curry mousse,” he told Lucas.

We all laughed. This was no joke, though. The “wine” he was pouring for Lucas was not wine at all. It was grape juice -- but not your typical, overly sweetened commercial kind that comes in a screw-top juice bottle. This juice -- in a real wine bottle, with a real cork and a real capsule -- comes from Navarro Vineyards, and it’s the same natural juice that, when fermented, becomes the winery’s Gewurztraminer.

We were at the French Laundry in Napa Valley, and this juice was the first of four non-alcoholic beverages Lucas would be served that night, each selected to complement a particular dish and each served in whichever model Riedel wine glass Lucy and I were drinking our current wine from. Since Lucas would be having 18 courses, just like his parents, the sommelier figured he should also experience something similar to our course-by-course wine and food pairings.

So he poured two Navarro grape juices -- the Gewurztraminer and a Pinot Noir (which he assured Lucas would go well with his squab), as well as a Welsh “lemon refresher” (sparkling lemonade) and a French sparkling apple cider made by the same family that owns one of the great Bordeaux wine estates, Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande.

Auberge du Soleil, also in Napa Valley, serves children the same cider -- “in a Champagne flute, so they’ll feel part of the game,” says sommelier Kris Margerum.

This could be the beginning of a trend -- and a good one, in my opinion.

Tra Vigne (another Napa Valley restaurant), Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Melisse in Santa Monica and Napa Rose at Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim all serve children the same Navarro juices that the French Laundry does. Both Campanile and Valentino say they would like to start serving them as well.

Campanile already serves French apple cider to children. So does La Cachette. Michael’s serves them sparkling apple juice. Josie’s makes seasonal fresh fruit drinks -- melon, blood orange, pomegranate and mango among them. Opaline serves a blend of fresh fruit juices, mint and soda water.

Bin 36, in the Chicago suburb of Lincolnshire, offers adults 48 wines by the glass -- and, for really young kids, the restaurant provides a “milk flight”: plain milk, vanilla-flavored milk, strawberry milk and chocolate milk, each served in a plastic cup, with a straw.

“What? No Riedel?” I asked David Schneider, one of the partners who run Bin 36.

He laughed.

“No. But we do put the cups on the same place mat, called a ‘flight map,’ that we use for flights of wine.”

The “flight map” has circles on which each glass or cup is placed, and below each circle are several lines on which wine (or milk) drinkers can record their tasting notes. (“The bouquet on the chocolate milk suggests the essence of cocoa, which perfectly matches my bacon cheeseburger”?)

Restaurants serve their various nonalcoholic beverages -- including Ariel wines -- to adult nondrinkers as well, of course. But they’re increasingly intended for children.

“We don’t want them to feel left out when everyone else at the table is having a good time with their wine,” says Brian Kalliel, the sommelier at Melisse.

Many children these days are ignoring the kids’ menu (if there is one) in favor of the regular menu -- or even, in some cases, the tasting menu -- and this presents a challenge of sorts: What do you serve 10- or 12- or 14-year-olds to drink during a long food and wine evening? What will both please them and keep them interested and engaged while their parents’ wine glasses are being filled and emptied -- and are appearing and disappearing -- with metronomic regularity (perhaps even accompanied by a running commentary from the sommelier)?

In Western Europe, where wine has traditionally been integral to the dining experience, this isn’t a problem. Children are routinely given small tastes of wine -- or half-glasses of heavily watered wine. Though my wife and I are not European, we have given Lucas occasional sips of wine for years. But alcohol laws -- and nervous parents -- prevent restaurants in this country from offering even the tiniest sip to minors here.

Giving kids something interesting to drink can greatly enhance the dining experience for them, though. It can make them feel -- and act -- more grown-up. So, what to serve?

Water? Coke? Canned fruit juice? Glass after glass of any of these can be bloating -- and ruinous to the appetite. Shirley Temples and Roy Rogerses have the same drawbacks, as do nonalcoholic versions of traditional cocktails. On our recent vacation in Hawaii, for example, Lucas drank so many “virgin” pina coladas that I thought he’d turn into a pineapple. Or a coconut.

Then, on our way home, we went to the French Laundry, where -- with help from Navarro -- sommelier Paul Roberts has come up with the most creative solution to this problem that I’ve encountered so far.

Navarro has been making its unfermented juices since 1980, shortly after the winery opened its tasting room and “wanted something to keep the kids occupied while their parents were tasting wine,” says the winery’s Bill Mitchell.

The winery makes about 2,000 cases of the Gewurztraminer juice and 1,500 cases of the Pinot annually, all cold-filtered and chilled to prevent natural yeasts from starting the fermentation process. The juices are available at the winery and on its Web site for $9 a bottle.

After our experience at the French Laundry, I ordered six bottles of each and put them in my wine cellar. Now Lucas can’t wait for our next dinner party. He wants to see the look on our adult guests’ faces when he whips out a corkscrew, opens one of the bottles and pours himself a glass of “wine.”

David Shaw can be reached at [email protected].