The Naked Vine: Wine Advice for the Rest of Us.™

20 Mondi

2012-05-21T08:53:00.000-04:00

“Italy is not spaghetti and Chianti wine.”
-20 Mondi introduction

I imagine Michael Loos sitting at a table in a trattoria in Milan, Italy, musing on his fledgling project, 20 Mondi. “Over the years of living in Italy, discovering the immense varieties of Italian wines, I yearned to share the experiences with my friends outside of Italy. Basically, I wanted to let them in on the ‘other world’; the non Merlot/Chardonnay/Cabernet world.”

Loos grew up in Dayton, Ohio “watching Gilligan’s Island while eating warmed-up Spaghetti-O’s.” An alum of Butler High School, he graduated from the University of Cincinnati’s world-renowned graphic design program in 1985. He worked in New York City as a graphic designer until 1989 when he lit out for Florence, Italy. In 1997, he moved to Milan and opened his own design business, Loos Image Communications. His passion, however, is the country of Italy and its wines.

20 Mondi, which translates as “Twenty Worlds,” is Loos’ attempt to explore and document the winemakers and, by extension, the people and the culture, of each of Italy’s 20 wine growing regions. Loos pointed out that few outsiders realize that much of Italy lies in central Europe – bordering and sharing languages with Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland and France. It also extends southward to within 43 miles of Africa. (I had no idea.)

The driving force behind the project? Autochthonal grapes.

What the heck’s an “autochthonal” grape? Pronounced “aw-TAWK-tow-nal,” autochthonal is the proper term for a grape indigenous to a specific region. There are over 600 autochthonal varieties of winemaking grapes in Italy. Some of them are fairly well known – Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, Prosecco, Nero d’Avola. But most of us have never had a glass of Forgiarin or Pompanuto. “The small producers [of these grapes] are being squeezed out by more mainstream, primarily profit-driven producers,” explained Loos. Many of these producers are introducing better-known grapes like merlot and chardonnay to more easily market wines internationally. “Each territory,” Loos said, “is a treasure island unto itself, full of unique landscapes & family trees, folks & folk tales, and oral & oenological traditions and customs.”

Loos wants to bring attention to these grapes and, by extension, the people who carry on local traditions in winemaking, special regional foods, and local arts and crafts. Historically, people from a certain region tailor local wine to go alongside “hometown” cuisine. Loos fears the loss of these distinct regional Italian identities, so he wanted to showcase them. His plan? Get a camper, some close friends (including his sister and brother-in-law), and take a 10,000 mile road trip around Italy, exploring these winemaking worlds. “I start with suggestions from people I know in each region, then connections usually progress by word of mouth… I ask about their wines and the stories begin. People talk when they have a glass of wine. Or two.”

Loos is currently raising funds for 20 Mondi across Italy and the globe. “The Barolo-colored camper is waiting on the sales lot for us to plop down the cash,” said Loos. He’s optimistic about raising the capital to make the trip a reality. “The great thing is that we've discovered that there is a real interest out there to support our project; we just need to harness it. In the meantime, we've started creating some content for our first "world,” Lombardia [the region surrounding Milan], just using the car.”

Michael Loos, friend to autochthonal grapes everywhere...

As Loos and his companions travel around the Italian countryside, they hope to create a comprehensive video and photographic record of their trip, the wines, and local recipes. They are creating a series of online guides set up as downloadable apps for visitors to these various regions, as well as some large-format photo books, documenting the highlights. I’m certainly planning to follow along on his trek. To do my little part for the world of autochthonal winemaking, here are a few I’ve recently tracked down. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to put together autochthonal recipes to go alongside these wines, but I did the best I could:

Leone de Castris 2008 Maiana Salice Salentino – From Puglia, which is the “heel of the Italian boot.” This wine is made from a 90/10 blend of Negroamaro and Malvasia Nera grapes. When I poured it, the dark, dark purple gave me the expectation of a monstrous wine. Not so. It’s medium-bodied, bordering on lean. Imagine coffee-flavored cherries, with a mouthfeel a lot like coffee, and you’ll get the idea. The wine’s tannins are subtle, as is the “chalky” characteristic that many Italian wines possess. The finish is an interesting mix of tartness and soft tannins. I thought this was quite pleasant. Tried it first with a couple of cheeses --“drunken goat” cheese was a particularly interesting pairing. Dinner was flank steak marinated in lemon juice and garlic with some steamed veggies – it turned out yummy as I hoped. About $13.

Tenuta Delle Terre Nere 2010 Etna Bianco and Tenuta Delle Terre Nere 2010 Etna Rosso – Both these $15 wines are from Sicily, the island being perpetually punted by the Italian boot. These wines hail from vineyards on the slopes of Mount Etna. (“Bianco” is “white” – “Rosso” is “red.”) The Bianco is a blend of Carricante, Inzolia, Grecanico, and Cataratto. The nose is full of tangerines and flowers. The flavor starts with a biting acidity that mellows into an orange-ish citrus. Body-wise, imagine a pinot grigio muscling up to a chardonnay. The finish is tart and lemon-rindy. On its own, just OK. Sicily’s cuisine includes a lot of shellfish, so I made a meal of shrimp & beans seasoned with garlic, sage, and pancetta. The food dialed the wine’s acidity way back, but the flavor had enough oomph to stand up to the big flavors in the food. Nomnomnom.

The Rosso was described to me as “very Burgundian,” which I can see since it’s lighter-bodied and fruit forward. I hit lots of cherry and mineral flavors right off the bat. Made from 100% Nerello, it’s certainly a friendly, delicate red. For dinner, though, I’d made an earthy pasta: rotini in a sauce of caramelized onion, pancetta, cremini mushrooms and parmesan. The pairing was outstanding. This wine was particularly to drink against a dusky background like that. Sign me up.

Azienda Agricola San Giovanni 2010 Il Lugana – This white, which you’ll probably find at a little closer to $20, is made from 100% Trebbiano from the province of Lugana in Lombardy. Two folks at one of my favorite wine stores independently described this wine as “killer.” I’d agree. This fairly complex, medium bodied entry is a dinner party pleaser waiting to happen – both flavorwise and because of its short, stumpy, cool looking bottle. It starts with a deliciously fragrant nose of apple cider and lemon meringue. The body is smooth with more apple and a twist of tartness to give it a little grip. The finish is lasting and slightly sweet. I thought this was a particularly nice white on its own, and it held up exceptionally well with a fresh green salad with a vinaigrette – a combination which would ordinarily be a wine killer. The salad was a side for some grilled chicken breasts stuffed with asparagus, tomatoes, and fontina cheese which, unsurprisingly, worked extremely well. I’d put this wine next to almost anything up to roasted red meat. Imagine an Italian dry Riesling if you need a comparison, but, as Loos points out, it’s best to think of these wines in context.

As we wrapped up, I asked Loos to posit a suggested pairing for his childhood lunchtime staple: “A good Bonarda [made with the autochthonous grape Croatina], I would guess would be superb with SpaghettiO's, but I'm just postulating from a 40 year-old memory!”

Information about the ongoing project can be found at the website – http://www.20mondi.com

Memorial Day shindigs

2012-05-20T11:52:00.000-04:00

If you're casting about for things to check out over the upcoming long weekend, a couple of the local wineries we've featured here before are having events. Both of these are about an hour's drive (and a very pretty one at that) east of Cincinnati.

Kinkead Ridge Vineyard & Winery will be having their traditional Memorial Day release of their 2011 white wines. They're going to be releasing:

2011 Kinkead Ridge Viognier/Roussanne. $15.99
2011 Kinkead Ridge White Revelation. $13.99
2011 Kinkead Ridge Riesling. $11.99
2011 River Village Cellars Traminette. Residual sugar 1.9% Production. $9.99.

The winery will be open for tasting on May 26 & 28 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day They will also be showing these whites on June 7 at the Cincinnati Art Museum's "A Taste of Duveneck." Kinkead Ridge is located in Ripley, OH.

La Vigna Estate Winery will be having their 2nd Annual La Vigna Food and Wine Festival on May 26 & 28 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day. They're releasing their 2011 Proprietary White, made from 100% Petit Manseng.

The festival will feature Fireside Pizza made to order, complimentary goat cheeses from JZN Goat Farm, vegetables and herbs for purchase from Organic Farm at Bear Creek in Clermont County, and live music from "Rockin'" George LaVigne. La Vigna is about a mile north of Higginsport, OH.

Previous Naked Vine coverage of these wineries can be found here and here.

The Naked Vine tries Naked Tchopstix

2012-05-12T13:22:00.002-04:00

Some restaurant experiences are wonderful. Some are awful. Some simply need to be documented.

Sushi is one of our indulgences. The Sweet Partner in Crime and I cook a lot, as followers of the Vine know, but sushi is an exception. Finding sashimi-grade fish and other ingredients, the prep, the ritual – it’s just better left to the experts. We were lucky to have one of the Cincinnati area’s best sushi restaurants, Aoi, within a short walk from our front door at Newport on the Levee. Aoi was a modern, classy establishment with excellent service, a quiet atmosphere and some of the freshest, best prepared sushi I’ve had anywhere. We were so disappointed when it closed.

Fast forward a few months. We read that a new Asian restaurant called “Naked Tchopstix” was opening in the old Aoi space. Naked Tchopstix is a small Indianapolis-based “sushi, pan-Asian food, and bar” chain, and the Newport location is their first outside of Indiana. The SPinC and I had a mutual sushi crave, so we decided to take an evening stroll to check it out.

Naked Tchopstix is a big place. They annexed a small art gallery next door and converted the space into additional bar/club space. A sign in front announced the evening’s featured appetizer as Hawaiian pizza. My eyebrow arched. We went inside. The place had been somewhat redone. The Japanese style partitions had been replaced by a more open, traditional dining room, part of which was set up for tatami – which were all in the middle of a room rather in more traditional private nooks. New place, new design – we could go with it.

Aoi set a very high standard, so I tried to keep an open mind. However, after being greeted by a young woman in a Sinful t-shirt whose perfume smelled like overripe apples, I began to worry a bit. She led us to our table, dropped off our menus and a drink list, and told us that our server would be there soon.

The menu is overwhelming. Imagine porting the Cheesecake Factory dining concept to Asian food. The menu was 10-12 pages long. Sushi (nigiri and about three dozen types of rolls), sashimi, Korean dishes, various Chinese stir-fries, noodles of various preparations, almost 30 appetizers (including frites?) and salads, and on and on. At the end, they had a list of “suggestions for the undecided” – which consisted of “rolls without raw fish” and similar things.

As our eyes began to glaze over, we were approached by our server, who introduced himself, asked if we’d like something to drink “and the specials tonight are $2 Buds and Bud Lights and $3 Kentucky Bourbon Ales.” We asked for a couple of waters and I ordered a bottle of (nicely priced) Albariño. Our server said, “Is that all?” Erm…ok. I said yes and he departed, we assume to figure out what the heck “a bottle of “all beer eenyo” was.

Several minutes passed with no sign of our server. The SPinC suggested that I go check out the fish on the sushi bar. I looked it over – the fish looked good – and the sushi chef, who looked to be a recent college grad, asked if he could help me. I told him I was just checking out the fish. He said, “Yeah. We’ve got some really good stuff here.” I told him I was looking forward to it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just stopped short of calling me “brah.”

I returned to the table. Our drinks hadn’t shown up yet. At this point, a man who had been standing across the room pointedly watching our table, comes sauntering over. He looked like a thin version of Quarles from “Justified.” He asked in a raspy smoker’s voice if we’d been helped. I told him we’d placed our drink orders. He said, “Oh, OK” and walked off without another word. A bit creepy.

Finally, our server returns with a couple of waters. He puts them on the table and says, “And I’ll be right back with your wine.” Whew. At least we got the drink order cleared up. He returned with the bottle in a chiller. He struggled mightily with the screwtop for a minute before opening the bottle, turning to me, and saying – I shit you not – “Say when!” He poured some, I said when, and before I could reach for my glass, he started filling the other.

As I was checking the wine (which was fine), he then started telling a wonderfully ironic story about watching another server who “had never done a wine presentation” trying to open a screwtop bottle with a wine opener. He chuckled to himself about how dumb the guy looked. I tried desperately not to shoot wine from my nose.

He asked if we were ready to order. We decided to stick to our plan – sushi. We ordered the two-person minimum chef’s choice “Slow Boat to Tokyo” option. We said that we were pretty adventurous, so they could be creative. We just didn’t want any tempura. He told us that it would be about 25 minutes or more because they’d have to “work around the tempura.” We asked if it came with soups or salad or anything. He said that it didn’t, but added “That’s a lot of money, so I think I can find you some soup.” He returned a few minutes later with some miso soup which tasted OK.

We finished our soups as we waited for the sushi. After several minutes with our empty bowls in over on the edge of the table, Quarles returned and rasped, “I’ll take these for you.” We shuddered a bit.

The sushi boat eventually landed. When I order “Chef’s Choice,” I’m hoping for a little fun and a little flair from the chef. What arrived was a fairly standard array of nigiri and sashimi (tuna, white tuna, smoked salmon, salmon, yellowtail, snapper, octopus, eel) and two rolls – a “corona roll” and a “volcano roll.” I could have cobbled this array together a la carte more cheaply, I think. I asked the server what we had in front of us and he paused for a moment. He started pointing at the fish. “This is salmon…this is tuna…” and the SPinC stopped him, asking about the rolls. “That’s a corona roll and that’s a volcano roll.” I asked what those were. His face went blank.

He took a deep breath and launched into a story about how there’s a lot of things to learn on the menu. “And when the high rollers come in, they have these special kinds of tuna and shrimp that they only get in four or five times a month for them, and they have a whole other special menu we have to learn. You know, for the high rollers, like city councilmen and stuff.” I asked him again what the rolls were and he said, “Wow, you’re really testing me.” He came back with descriptions of what the rolls were and departed.

So…Sushi time! We dug in. And looked at each other with “hmmmm….” expressions. The sushi wasn’t *bad,* mind you. It looked really good, but with the exception of the yellowtail and white tuna, tasted completely unremarkable. The textures weren’t great, the flavors were OK. It was a step above what’s available in the fridge case at Kroger, but it was a huge step down from what had been such a wonderful dining experience for us for several years. When we’re going to drop sushi-type money on an indulgent meal, we’re hoping to be wowed. My overall thought was exactly what I told the sushi chef when he came over at the end of the meal and asked how everything was, “Eh…it’s alright.”

Naked Tchopstix isn’t gunning for the sushi-loving dining crowd. Their target audience is families, large parties of folks who want a mid-priced dining experience with lots of options, or twentysomething bros and chicks who want to feel adventurous before heading to the clubs.

Maybe I can convince Mayor Peluso or one of the other local “high rollers” to invite us to join them dinner there sometime. Otherwise, we likely won’t be coming back. If you’re a foodie searching for sushi, save your money for cab fare to one of the area’s other options.

Three Fat Guys

2012-05-07T08:42:00.000-04:00

“Believe it or not, football players all want to be wine drinkers.”

-Daryn Colledge, Arizona Cardinals offensive lineman & winemaker.

Start with three NFL football players weighing over a half ton combined; sprinkle in a business venture and good-natured rivalry with a Hall-of-Fame caliber defensive back; add some cabernet sauvignon grapes. Mix well. What have you got?

Jason Spitz, Daryn Colledge, and Tony Moll -- the Three Fat Guys
(courtesy threefatguyswine.com)

Three Fat Guys Cabernet Sauvignon.

The aforementioned large individuals are Daryn Colledge, Tony Moll, and Jason Spitz, all current NFL players. The three were drafted in 2006 by the Green Bay Packers out of Boise State, Nevada, and Louisville respectively. A combination of talent and injuries landed all three in the starting lineup for ten games as rookies. The seeds of a lifelong friendship friendship were sown. And over a conversation at Milwaukee steakhouse “Carnivore,” so was a different project…

"We'd had a few drinks, a huge dinner and we were all talking about being fat. Somewhere along the line, the idea came out and the name followed. The details after that are a bit cloudy," Daryn Colledge declared.

I had the chance to chat with Colledge for a few minutes as he took a break from his daughter Camryn tugging on his beard.

“Wine kind of snuck up on me. We did it initially just for ourselves and to be able to give some away as gifts. But people we knew who really knew wine said, ‘This is really good. You should try to sell it! It kind of went from there,” said Colledge.

One of Colledge’s teammates in Green Bay was Charles Woodson, future Hall-of-Fame cornerback – himself a winemaker. At a party sometime after the aforementioned carnivorous feast, they cornered Woodson and his winemaker Rick Ruiz. Some negotiations ensued and Three Fat Guys emerged.

To Colledge’s credit – he didn’t rise to the bait when I asked him who made better wines: offensive or defensive guys. He chuckled and said, politically, “You know that we’re each going to argue for their own side. Charles Woodson’s legacy and talent speaks for itself, and he’s been making the stuff a little longer than we have. He makes really good juice, and I like to think that we’re right there.”

Three Fat Guys released its first vintage in 2007. That was after the triumvirate’s second season in the league. I noted that they all must have been 24 or 25 years old. I was impressed. At 24, I thought Rolling Rock was high-end stuff. I asked Colledge how he got into wine so early. “It has a lot to do with the culture of the business that I’m in. In the offseason, you end up doing a lot of charity auctions and the like, and wine gets served. That’s what really got me into it. Then throw in Tony. He grew up in Sonoma, so he was around it as a kid. So when we’re over at his place, you know that’s what you’re getting.”

Colledge gave the nod to Moll for “best palate” honors. “Tony and Jason probably argue over the flavors more. I have to give the nod to Tony, though – he’s just been around it so long. He leads wine tastings in the offseason when he goes home and such.”

Three Fat Guys was good enough to send along a couple of samples. The bottles themselves are heavy enough to register as deadly weapons. These bottles have the deepest punt I’ve ever run across, perhaps as a tip of the cap to their special teams brethren. (WineSpeak: the “punt” is the dent on the bottom of the bottle.)

The 2007 is, not to put too fine a point on it, a vanilla bomb. The nose hits with a big whiff of vanilla and cassis. It’s medium-bodied for a California cabernet. The Sweet Partner in Crime described the powerful flavor as “strawberries and blueberries slathered in vanilla.” It does calm down a bit with some air. The finish is moderately strong with vanilla and some grippy tannins. If you’re a cab drinker that likes a big ol’ fruit-forward bottle, the ‘07 will be right up your alley. Myself, I think a couple of years might serve this well.

The 2008 was a different story. Nose is still full of vanilla and dark fruit, but it’s more balanced with some fresh cut wood and earthy scents. The flavor was much more balanced. Vanilla, blackberry, and oak all mingle very pleasantly. The finish of even tannin, vanilla, and fruit was much longer than the ‘07. This one pushed the right buttons for me.

Since many California cabs are fairly consistent from vintage to vintage, I asked Colledge how much tweaking they’d done with the mix. “We do a fair bit of sampling during the process to try to find what works best. We’re split on the vintages – Jason really likes the ’07 and Tony & I prefer the ’08. We offer up our ideas and our preferences, but the real genius lies with our winemakers: Rick and Gustavo (Gonzales). They’re amazing. Rick & Gustavo both say that the ’09 is going to knock it out of the park. We’re excited, to say the least.”

I asked Colledge about his suggestions for food pairings. “Well, you know I’m an offensive lineman, so I’m pretty much a traditionalist. Steak and potatoes are my thing, and I love it with them.”

I’d already broken into these wines before I spoke with him. I’d made this pretty tasty Asian beef & basil stew over some rice noodles a few nights before. The suggested pairing was a cabernet, so we used that as an excuse for our side-by-side. Both wines went well with this particularly yummy dish, but the ’08 was a particularly luscious pairing. The flavors ricocheted perfectly.

The three have all moved on from Green Bay. Colledge is now with the Arizona Cardinals. Moll is with the San Diego Chargers and Spitz is with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The wine helps their bond strong. “I like to think it’s one piece of what holds us together. We really forged a great friendship in Green Bay. We’ve all gotten older and gotten married. We’ve all got kids or kids on the way. But we always make sure that we take at least one trip together to California each year to celebrate the new vintage.”

Since “wine tasting” and “testosterone” generally don’t occupy the same sentence, I asked Colledge as we were wrapping up how his teammates reacted to his hobby. Are they into it? Do they give him shit? Colledge laughed: “You might not think it, but football players all want to be wine drinkers. They want to be able to do the business thing and seem sophisticated. But as for my teammates, they’ll tell me that they’re into it, but I know most of them just want free wine. So, we drop a couple of free bottles on them, then make them go through the distributor and jack up the price once we’ve reeled them in.”

A tried-and-true business model, to be sure. If the 2009 vintage makes the same sort of leap that the 2008 did, they’re certainly on to something. They also are in the planning stages for a “Skinny” chardonnay with their wives as consultants. For more information, you can check out http://www.threefatguyswine.com and/or follow on Twitter at @3FatGuysWine

(A final tangential observation: With the advent of fantasy football, offensive linemen have become the last players hometown fans can root for unreservedly. While a sizable number of “home team” fans in the stands may be rooting for an opposing running back to have a 3 TD day or an enemy linebacker to have multiple sacks, few leagues give fantasy points when a play happens the way it should.)

K is for Kabinett

2012-04-19T09:54:00.000-04:00

I’ve neglected German Riesling for a bit around these parts. Not long after I started the Vine, I got asked in an interview what my favorite wine was. I said something to the effect of “Riesling. It’s tasty and it goes with anything.”

That was many moons and a considerably changed palate ago. German Riesling gave way to dry Riesling from the Pacific Northwest. Dry Riesling virtually disappeared after I discovered the lean, minerally joys of Alsatian Riesling, which is where my tastes dwell today. For old time’s sake, I decided to swing back around to Germany.

I had to give myself a refresher beforehand, though. Whereas the French and the Italians simply put the name of the region on the wine label and expect a wine drinker to know what’s inside, the German detail-orientation comes out. Look at a German bottle and you’ll get the winemaker, the type of wine, the style of wine, the wine region, and often the vineyard the wine came from. Throw all this together and you’ve got a long, intimidating string of Prussian to sort through. Thankfully, untangling those strings of consonants and diacritics isn’t too difficult. Here’s a quick vocabulary lesson:

There are two types of German wine you’ll usually see. Qualitätswein, which is abbreviated somewhere on the level as QmA. This is generally table wine. The other is Prädikatswein, which is a higher quality wine, subject to classifications. Until 2007, Prädikatswein was labeled with the abbreviation QmP. I mention this because most German wines are age-friendly. Good Riesling can age almost indefinitely. So, if you run into bottles with vintages from a few years ago, don’t be alarmed.

Prädikatswein is divided into a number of categories, based on the amount of sugar present when the wine is fermented. The three types you’ll see most commonly are Kabinett, Spätlese , and Auslese. Kabinett wines tend to be the lightest and potentially the driest. Spätlese , which means “late harvest,” is made from grapes left on the vine longer, thus increasing the sugar content. The best Spätlese grapes get made into wines called Auslese, which means “select harvest.” Spätlese and Auslese wines tend to be sweet or semi-sweet. Kabinett wines can be either dry or sweet. How to know which is which? “Trocken” is German for “dry.” If you see “Trocken” on the label, you’ve got a dry wine. The exception would be Trockenbeerenauslese, which is a sweet dessert wine made from dried grapes.There's also "halβtrocken" -- which is "half-sweet" or "semi-sweet."

Since I’m into lighter-styled whites these days, I decided that I’d sample some Kabinett. I opened these three long, intimidating strings of Prussian:

Darting 2004 Dürkheimer Fronhof Riesling Kabinett Trocken

Darting 2007 Dürkheimer Michelsberg Riesling Kabinett

Leitz 2008 Rüdesheimer Klosterlay Riesling Kabinett

I tried them in that order, thinking I’d lined them up in order of sweetness. All three wines had very low alcohol. Usually, the lower the alcohol, the sweeter the wine. The Dartings were both 11.5%. The Leitz somehow turned out not to be as sweet as the sweeter Darting, checking in at only 8.5%. (Brunch wine, anyone?)

The Darting “trocken” started with a minerally, lemony nose. The taste was right down that alley -- minerally and sharply acidic. My note on it says, “Like a granite grapefruit.” It reminded me a great deal of the Alsace Rieslings that I mentioned above. I found it light in body and flavor with a dry finish that had a little hint of a metallic taste.

I found some big contrasts when I poured the other Darting. It had a similar mineral and lemon nose to the first, but it somehow smelled “fatter.” When I tasted it, I recognized a lot of that granite grapefruit” flavor – if you’d dropped that grapefruit into a bowl of honey. I found it to be quite sweet initially, but that sweetness mellows into a peachy flavor. The finish starts as honey and ends up as grapefruit rind. That sensation wasn’t as gross as it sounds, trust me.

The Leitz had a very light nose. I got faint apple blossoms and pepper, but I really had to sniff at it. The initial taste was like apples and honey, but the honey morphs into a Granny Smith apple-ish tartness, along with some of that pepperiness. After a few sips, the flavor reminded me of Chinese take-out “sweet and sour” sauce, if you dialed the sugar was back.

Riesling, as I mentioned before, is exceptionally good food wine, especially when paired with Asian dishes. I made a green Thai curry with shrimp & halibut to go alongside the wines. The Darting trocken, somewhat surprisingly, didn’t fare very well. Paired with the curry, it became somewhat alkaline. It simply wasn’t as good as the other two. The pepper in the Leitz jumped up and danced a little jig with the spice in the meal, cutting the sweetness a fair bit. Very pleasant and flavorful. The sweet Darting definitely held up to the spice, but it initially tasted too “honeyish” for that dish, overwhelming the flavors in the curry. Since Thai food is “creeper spicy,” the sweeter Darting got better as the meal went on.

There are flavors all over the map in German Riesling. With a little research, you should be able to find one you like. It’s also a great choice if you have friends who “don’t like dry wines” but you’d like to serve something a little more complex than white zinfandel. Don’t fear the umlauts.

Prost!

Naked Vine One-Hitter: Moscato Allegro

2012-04-09T15:32:00.003-04:00

On the heels of the lovely package I received from Shannon Ridge, I received another small box a week later. Inside was a bottle of Martin & Weyrich 2010 Moscato Allegro.

My immediate thought was that this was an Italian wine sample, since I've rarely heard (and never tried) a Moscato from anywhere else.

I came to learn that this wine is not Italian, but comes from vineyards in the San Joaquin Valley. The growers of the Muscat Canelli grapes that go into this wine are Eric and Mike Shannon. "Too much of a coincidence," I initially thought. A little research turned up that they and the aforementioned "Shannon Ridge Shannons" are acquaintances but not kin. Simple serendipity works around here just as easily. We're flexible.

For those of you not familiar, Moscato is a sweet, slightly effervescent wine with extremely low alcohol content. When I say "low," I mean about as low as possible while still being considered wine. Moscato Allegro clocks in at 7.5% alcohol. (By contrast, many California reds are north of 15%.)

My old pal Brian once commented, "You can drink it for breakfast," when talking about Moscato. He's absolutely correct. Moscato is a top choice of mine for a brunch complement -- only a little below bloody marys and mimosas. (The SPinC makes the world's best bloody marys. I digress...) The Moscato Allegro is an excellent addition to such a menu.

I don't think it's easy to make quality sweet wine. Too much residual sugar makes a wine taste like syrup -- an unfortunate characteristic of much Moscato. Getting the balance right takes some care. That sort of care has certainly been applied here. The particular style of sweetness reminded me much more of fresh fruit than cane sugar. Big flavors of peach and citrus dominate here. The citrus notes are a nice touch, stemming from a relatively high level of acidity that cuts through the sweetness and makes the finish actually somewhat crisp. "Crisp" and "Moscato" aren't usually found in the same sentence.

At $10-12, it's an excellent choice if you're looking for something to go with a morningish meal. Or just if you're looking for something a little more on the sweet side.

Shannon Ridge – Not baaaaad…

2012-03-26T11:41:00.000-04:00

The good folks at Balzac recently gave me the opportunity to give the wines of Shannon Ridge a run. Shannon Ridge is in Lake County, California – a region rapidly gaining in notoriety and availability. I’m always interested when samples arrive, but I was especially intrigued by this line from the accompanying press release:

“Shannon Ridge’s vineyards are certified sustainable, and are known for their woolly compost machines – a flock of 1,000 sheep, complete with shepherds and a team of highly trained sheepdogs. The sheep do an excellent job of canopy management and leaf removal, and pick the vineyard clean after harvest. They also manage the cover crop in the spring and work hard to reduce fire danger in the surrounding hills the remainder of the year.”

Sheep are cool (and tasty!). I was already a fan before I cracked a bottle. It turns out that you can order parts of their “mowing system” for your own consumption. They direct-ship any cut of lamb you’d like. (see http://www.shannonridge.com for more info) Additionally, the Shannons have reserved the unused land on their ranch as a wilderness area. They also planned their vineyards so as not to interfere with eagle nesting areas and animal migration trails. Good on ‘em.

They produce a broad range of wines on their ridge, both white and red. I was sent four bottles to try. The suggested retail on these wines is $19 with the exception of the Sauvignon Blanc. That one’s $16. How were they? Overall, I was pretty pleased with them, as you’ll see below:

Shannon Ridge 2010 Sauvignon Blanc – As you may have noticed, I’ve been on a bit of a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc kick thanks to the New Year’s feast. It was nice to get domestic for a change. The Shannon Ridge was pleasant enough. I got apples and lemons off the nose. The first taste had a bit of an acidic bite amongst the apple and citrus flavors and I thought it had a slightly alcoholic aftertaste. It finishes dry and lemony. It was a decent wine for the price point. Didn’t blow me away, but it’s of good quality.

Shannon Ridge 2009 Merlot – My notes on this wine read like copy from a 70’s Schlitz beer ad: “Easy drinking, smooth, not too heavy.” Don’t be put off by the description. The “easy drinking” part is the only similarity with the aforementioned swill. This wine was the only one not entirely sourced from Lake County. They pulled some grapes from Mendocino (one of my favorite California regions!) to blend with the Lake County fruit. The result was a pretty classic California merlot – lots of up-front blackberry and plum, a tannin that gradually builds as you work your way through the glass, and a balanced, silky finish. (And I don’t know anyone who could legitimately describe Schlitz as “silky.”) I gave this one a big thumbs up. As a side note, this wine reminded me that I need to start buying good “f’n merlot” again.

Shannon Ridge 2010 Chardonnay – I always open California chards with a little bit of trepidation. The unoaked ones can be uninteresting, and the oaked ones can be like sucking on a Kingsford briquette. Thankfully, this was neither. This chardonnay was another nicely balanced wine. Lots of pineapple and apple on both the nose and body. There’s oak here, but it’s at a quiet undertone level, balanced with a little bit of malolactic creaminess. The finish is a little firmer on the oak side with some sustained fruit. I think this could be an excellent, flexible food wine selection as grilling season comes on.

Shannon Ridge 2009 Zinfandel – This wine brought back some wonderful memories. During our first trip to Sonoma, the SPinC and I fell in love with Zinfandel -- the varietal that made us go “Hey, we need to learn more about this wine stuff.” We lived on Zins for a while, then moved away to less in-your-face varietals. We reminisced about the start of our mutual addiction over this classic NoCal Zin. Word of caution – if you try this one, it needs a considerable amount of air to open. Once it’s good and aerated you’ll find, in the SPinC’s words, “Fruit, fruit, fruit – vanilla, vanilla, vanilla…” As with the other Shannon Ridge selections, this a good balance of blueberry, vanilla and tannin with a finish that gets grippier as the evening wears on. We opened this one with roasted boneless pork chops in a mushroom sauce with some baked sweet potato “fries” and it was a wonderful complement. Like most big ol’ Zins, it was divine with end-of-evening chocolate. Another solid choice.

Shannon Ridge also does a petit sirah and a zinfandel-based blend they call “Wrangler Red.” They also have a slightly more expensive line of single vineyard wines. For a “nice bottle” evening, I’d certainly recommend the latter three.

Naked Vine One-Hitter...Terrapin Cellars

2012-03-23T19:20:00.003-04:00

One of the great perks of this gig is receiving samples. Wine at the door always brightens the day. Wine showing up unexpectedly really brightens the day. I'm not sure exactly where this particular bottle came from. I have my suspicions, but I'm sure not complaining...

Terrapin Cellars 2010 Oregon Pinot Gris

Oregon has become rightfully well known for Pinot Noir. I've had a number of Gewurztraminers and Rieslings from Oregon, but I was interested to learn that the "other" Pinot -- Pinot Gris -- is actually the second-most planted grape in the state. A number of winemakers recently decided to start carving out a niche for Oregon Pinot Gris. The wineries in this marketing group have vowed to stop making comparisons to Italy or Alsace, focusing on the uniqueness of their own terroir. I'm personally very interested to see where this marketing effort goes.

I'm even more interested after trying this offering from Terrapin Cellars. My first thought was, alas, "Alsace." The pleasant aromas of melon and lemon made me immediately think of an Alsatian wine. The flavor was quite different. Yes, the high acidity and minerality were certainly there, but there was a creaminess to balance those characteristics that's often lacking in Alsatian wines. Pineapple and melon were the strongest flavors I picked up. The finish is fruity, gentle, and lasting. We had this wine with a pretty tough pairing grilled orange roughy alongside asparagus sauteed with ginger. Most wines shrink from asparagus. This one most certainly did not. If it can handle asparagus, it can handle just about anything you'd have a white with.

Simply put, this wine's a winner, especially at a $14 price point. I'll extend an apology to the folks at Terrapin for drawing the Alsace comparison, but for any of the readers who are fans of that style of wine -- you'll probably dig these Oregon offerings. You'll also save a few shekels in the process.

Whomever sent this along, many thanks. It's a keeper.

The Alphabet Soup Project – “J” is for “Jumilla”

2012-03-08T08:37:00.000-05:00

I like climate-based cooking. Lighter dishes and salads in spring, cold soups and garden-laced goodness in summer, grilling in autumn, soups and stews in winter – you get the idea. The wacky weather we’ve had has occasionally left me flatfooted. I find it hard to plan a menu when the temperature’s swinging 40 degrees from day to day, paired with the occasional severe thunderstorm. (And no frickin’ snow.)

Unpredictability requires flexibility, which means I have a perfect excuse to open some Spanish reds. I’ve always thought they were great food wines. They’re usually big enough to handle chops and steaks, but they have enough subtlety to go with roasted or spiced chicken and some vegetarian dishes.

Unfortunately, some Spanish winemakers have become victims of their own success – especially in Rioja, the best known of the regions. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good wines from Rioja, but many winemakers have gone the route of California Zinfandels (and many cabernets) in the 90’s and early oughts – high oak, in-your-face extracted flavors with monstrously high levels of alcohol. There’s nothing wrong with wines like that if you’re grilling ribs, but they’re not really for sipping and can overload a lot of foods. Luckily for us, there are plenty of Spanish reds out there which aren’t replications of those kind of fruit bombs. My choice for this stretch of menus is Jumilla.

Jumilla (pronounced who-MEE-yuh) is a fairly mountainous region in the southeast corner of Spain, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Weatherwise, Jumilla can be a blast furnace. The constant winds from the sea do nothing to cool things down. The average high temperature in the summer months is north of 90 degrees (over 110 is not uncommon) with sharply cooler nights and almost no rainfall. This climatic arrangement is a little slice of heaven for wine grapes.

Red wine is Jumilla’s calling card. Jumilla reds are largely made from the Monastrell grape. Never heard of Monastrell? It’s known more widely as Mourvedre – a grape widely grown in France, especially in the Rhone valley. Also, as in the Rhone, Monastrell is sometimes blended with Garnacha (Grenache). Left to its own devices, Monastrell produces powerfully fruity, tannic, peppery wines, reminiscent of Zinfandel – especially since the alcohol content is usually north of 15%.

Where Jumilla differs from the cinder block-like subtlety of Zinfandel is in how well it pairs with food. Wines this strong aren’t normally considered flexible food wines, but a skilled winemaker can cool some of the harsh, hot edge Monastrell can bring to the table. The basic Naked Vine pairing rule certainly holds in Jumilla – people make wine to go with food they regularly eat. Jumilla is in the Murcia region of Spain, known as the “fruit and vegetable garden of Europe.” Thirteen percent of all vegetables grown in Europe come from Murcia. Pork and chicken are very common meats, and the proximity to the Mediterranean allows for a fair amount of fish. Paellas and stews are extremely common, as are salads and a number of gouda-ish cheeses. With a potential tapas menu that broad, a one-note wine wouldn’t work well.

Speaking of paella – I was in the mood to cobble one together after the Sweet Partner in Crime had a particularly stressful several days. The one I managed to put together, I have to say, was perhaps the best I’ve ever made – featuring chorizo, chicken thighs, and bay scallops spiced, baked and simmered to perfection. I poured the Bodegas Juan Gil 2008 Jumilla ($15) alongside. I was concerned at first sniff. The first taste held a lot of oak and tannins that immediately parched the back of my throat. That sharpness faded quickly, thankfully, leaving a punch-packing but nicely-balanced mix of blackberry, chocolate, and pepper. As a side note, this wine starts much like a Beaujolais – with carbonic maceration (adding yeast to whole clusters of grapes), but the flavor isn’t in the same neighborhood. I was afraid such a big wine would demolish the subtle flavors in the paella, but my worries faded quickly. As muscular as this wine was, it was about as lovely a pairing as I could have imagined for a cool evening.

The next night, we cracked a couple of others:

Bodegas Juan Gil “Wrongo Dongo” 2010 Jumilla ($9) – This is the Juan Gil “second label” wine. They’ve changed the label recently – from a confused-looking man to a geometric pattern that reminds me of a Roach t-shirt iron-on. At first sniff, I would have mistaken it for a cabernet. The wine holds a pronounced note of vanilla on the nose along with some leather and mild fruit. My first sips were intensely tannic, but like its slightly more expensive cousin, it eases back a bit into cherries and leather. The finish is more tannic than the other Juan Gil, also.

Bodegas Luzon 2008 Altos de la Luzon Jumilla ($14) – Although this wine starts you with a Wrongo Dongo-esque vanilla blast, it’s a much more subtle wine all in all. The vanilla is underlain with some floral scents (lavender?) and blackberry. The tannins are much tamer – so much tamer, in fact, the fruit ends up overwhelming the tannin a bit initially. Like the others, it balances out after a little bit of air. As for which is the better wine, it depends on your taste – if you like drier, stronger wines, the Wrongo Dongo is for you. If you want more fruit, go with the Luzon.

That night, we made a scrumptious veal, mushroom, and artichoke stew. The Altos was the better choice here. Its subtlety meshed with the flavors more easily. The Wrongo Dongo was a little overly assertive, so it masked the delicacy of the stew’s flavors.

The following night, we had the remainder of these two wines (it’s true -- we didn’t finish either bottle) with chicken breasts braised in a dried fruit and olive sauce with some saffron rice. The Altos, after a day open, had lost much of its complexity. It wasn’t great on its own and was nondescript with the food. The Wrongo Dongo held onto much of its character (since it was a simpler wine to begin with) and was much tastier with the assembled plate.

Summing up -- Jumilla – it’s wine for people who like big reds but have a varied food palate. I think these are some of the most flexible “big reds” you’ll encounter. Definitely worth a try.

A Super Basic Primer on French Red Wine

2012-02-03T07:32:00.000-05:00

I had the good fortune of leading another wine tasting last week focusing on French reds. While it’s pretty impractical (and nearly impossible) to run the gamut of French wine in a single tasting, a “’round the country” on the basics is possible. I didn’t have a map of France handy at the tasting as a visual aid in this circumnavigation, so I went with a geometric example.

France looks roughly like a pentagon pointed upwards. (Work with me here.) Almost all the French red wine you’ll commonly see comes from one of five regions. To get a sense of where these regions are, if you travel clockwise around this shape with the tip of the pentagon at 12:00, Burgundy is at 3 o’clock. Almost in a straight line south from 4-5 are Beaujolais and the Rhone Valley. Continuing around, Bordeaux is at around 8 o’clock and the Loire Valley runs inward from the coast at around 10.

[In case you’re interested, Paris is straight south of high noon, Champagne is at around 1 o’clock, Alsace is at 2, and Provence and the Languedoc run along the south coast from 5-6. Armagnac clocks in at 7 and Cognac is at 9. Put all this together and you have what sounds like a perfectly reasonable drinking schedule.]

Let’s rock around the clock, shall we?

Burgundy – We’ll start with my favorite of the five. Burgundy is easy to understand. If you see a bottle of red Burgundy, there’s a 99% chance that you’re looking at a bottle of Pinot Noir. Yes, there are a couple of other types of red grapes grown in Burgundy. Much like Jerry Lewis movie marathons, you usually won’t see wines made from them outside France’s borders. Good Burgundy curls sensually around your palate. Sipping away a bottle of this light bodied deliciousness is an evening’s pleasure. In my experience, no wine changes and develops more once the bottle opens. With well-prepared food ranging from meaty fish to almost any kind of beef or pork, Burgundy is an absolute champ. When a special occasion meal rolls around, you’ll almost always find Burgundy on my table.

The only downside to this fabulous wine? It’s pricey. It is very rare to find a decent bottle of Burgundy for under $20, honestly. The one for the tasting, the Domaine Jean-Luc Dubois 2008 Chorey-Les-Beaune, checked in at around $24. As an entry to the world of good Burgundy, though, it’s worth every penny. Deliciously balanced and soft cherry, pepper, earth, and smoke in every sip. If you can’t find that particular bottle, try almost any in your price range from anywhere near the town of Beaune. (as in Chorey-Les-Beaune, above.)

Beaujolais – If Burgundy is slow, languorous, and sensual, Beaujolais is a quickie on the kitchen floor. Maybe it’s not quite as romantic, but there is joy in being straightforward, fun, and a little sloppy. Beaujolais is made from the Gamay grape, which yields light-bodied, food-friendly wines that tend to lack the delicacy of Burgundy. These wines tend to be more acidic and “fruit forward.” Beaujolais are produced in a slightly different style. Rather than picking grapes, crushing them, and fermenting the juice, winemakers put the grapes in a tank, add yeast, and allow the grapes to crush themselves as they ferment. This process is called carbonic maceration. Also, while Burgundy can age for decades, you’re not going to impress anyone by pulling out 1999 Beaujolais. These are wines to enjoy within 3-4 years of bottling. You can pair Beaujolais with just about anything short of a big steak or a rich stew, and you can guiltlessly open one and knock it back, as it’s relatively low in alcohol. You can usually find higher-end Beaujolais, called Beaujolais cru (the name of its town will be on the label) for $12-20. A good starter Beaujolais is the Louis Jadot 2010 Beaujolais-Villages, which is a small step down in quality and is usually around $10.

Rhone Valley – The wines get a little heavier as we move south into the Rhone Valley. As you learn wines, you might see a wine referred to as “masculine” or “feminine.” Preferences for human gender pressed against your lips notwithstanding, this phrase usually refers to the general style of flavor. Feminine wines are usually lighter bodied and delicate. (Burgundy is the quintessential example.) Rhone wines are more “masculine.” Masculine wines have more “in your face” flavors, be it the fruit, the tannin, the bouquet, etc. Rhone wines are almost universally blends. Some 21 different grapes end up in Rhone wines – but the majority of the ones you’ll usually find will be largely comprised of Grenache and Syrah.

Rhone wine flavors are all over the map, but there’s usually a plummy or dark berry fruit, some fairly strong earthy scents, and medium tannin. The most famous Rhone wines are from the area called Chateauneuf-de-Pape. They command fairly high prices (like the one we poured – the Cuvee Papale 2009 C-d-P at $36). I normally stick to the ones labeled “Cotes-du-Rhone,” which can be similar blends – but just aren’t from that particular locale. I use Cotes-du-Rhone as a pairing for earthy dishes, stews, and dark chocolate. You can find very decent Cotes-du-Rhone (similar wines are Cotes-du-Luberon, Cotes-du-Ventoux, and Gigondas) for $12-15.

Bordeaux – Returning to our masculine/feminine comparison – Bordeaux is the masculine yang to Burgundy’s feminine yin. Bordeaux alone produces almost as much wine each year as the entire state of California. Known as claret in Great Britain, Bordeaux is a blended wine usually comprised largely of cabernet sauvignon and merlot. (Other grapes allowed are cabernet franc, petit verdot, and malbec -- the latter two usually in very small quantities.) If you’re looking at Bordeaux in your wine store, ask whether a bottle is “left bank” or “right bank.” This refers to the side of the Garonne river on which the vines are planted. Left bank wines are predominantly cabernet sauvignon, while the right bank wines are majority merlot.

The flavor profile of Bordeaux usually centers on currants and blackberries. There’s usually a floral or “vegetal” scent in the bouquet as well as leather and earth. Bordeaux is a classic pairing with beef, pork, and lamb roasts as well as strong cheeses. Bordeaux does have a pricing issue. There’s a classification system for Bordeaux set up in 1865 that rewarded certain producers, thus cranking up the price for “” Bordeaux, such as Chateau Latour or Chateau Lafite Rothschild. However, wines grown less than a quarter mile from the vineyards producing the most expensive bottles in the world can sometimes be had for a tenth the price. The one we poured was the Chateau Briot 2009, which you can get for $10.

Loire Valley – Finally, we work our way around to the Loire, home of some of the more interesting reds in France. The Loire is best known for whites such as Muscadet and Sancerre. The Loire has one of the coolest climates for wine growing in France. In many vintages, the grapes don’t ripen fully. To combat this, winemakers in Loire can add sugar to their fermenters (a practice called chapitalization, which is illegal in most of the rest of the country) to “make up” for some of the unripeness. Loire reds are exclusively cabernet franc. You may have to hunt for them a bit, as they’re relatively uncommon. If you see “Chinon” on a bottle, that’s a Loire red. These reds tend to be medium bodied and almost always have an undertone of minerals – described as a “graphite” flavor. Raspberry is the fruit flavor most commonly associated here.

Loire reds also often have what wine critics refer to as “brett.” Brett is short for Brettanomyces, a strain of yeast that, unchecked, will give a wine a horrid odor. A little bit, however, adds a scent of smoke (or sometimes bacon) to the bouquet. The one we poured – the Catherine & Pierre Breton 2009 “Trinch!” (French for the sound of two wine glasses clinking) certainly had a bacony nose, and the flavor was quite nice. ($19) Loire reds are polarizing. People usually either really like them or can’t stand them. I’m in the former category, thankfully.

Jeff's Wine & Dinner of the Month Club: The Last Hurrah!

2012-01-31T22:54:00.000-05:00

Editor's Note: It is with a heavy heart that I present the last entry of Jeff's Wine & Dinner of the Month Club. What started as a birthday present for his lovely wife, Christine the Pie Queen, turned into a two-year labor of love for the Vine. Many thanks from the bottom of my Vinous heart for his well-written, love-driven, good-eatin' entries.

Jeff, if you didn't live across the alley, I'd sure miss you...

****************

This is the final entry for the Wine and Dinner of the Month Club. I started this as a present for my wife – a paired wine dinner cooked by me each month. It’s been very well received and I plan on continuing to prepare the meals each month for Christine, but I won’t be blogging about them. Thanks to all my readers and enjoy this month’s entry. With the exception of the Coq Au Vin, for which I provide a link, the recipes come from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, Third Edition © 2010 by The Editors at America’s Test Kitchen. January is also Christine’s birthday month, so I added an extra dessert wine as a special treat.

Menu
French Onion Soup

Slow Cooker Coq Au Vin

German Chocolate Cake

Wine

2008 Gerard Raphet Burgundy

2008 d’Arenberg The Nobel Wrinkled Riesling

I woke up early on the day I was preparing the dinner and started the Coq Au Vin. This entailed browning the chicken and layering it over the chopped vegetables in the slow cooker. I set the cooker on low and went about my day. Don’t be surprised if the recipe seems oversized. The chicken and vegetables cook down considerably and while I thought we were going to be eating leftovers for days, we actually had just enough for the two of us with a little for one serving left over.

Later in the day I started the French onion soup. I cut the recipe to one quarter what was called for and it came out to be the perfect amount for two. I simply cut up the onions and sautéed them in a sauce pan. The recipe calls for using a Dutch oven, but we don’t have one so I improvised with the saucepan and it worked just fine. Once the onions are dark and sticky (about 30 minutes) you add beef and chicken stock and some other ingredients and let it simmer. In the meantime I baked a baguette and cut it into some slices to top the soup. When the soup was ready, I dished it into our new soup bowls (given to us by Christine’s parents for Christmas) and floated the bread slices on top. These I topped with some shredded Gouda cheese and put into the oven until the cheese melted. The recipe called for Swiss cheese, but we had Gouda in the refrigerator so, again, I improvised. The soup was hearty with a smoky flavor and was excellent with the Burgundy.

After the soup course, I dished up the Coq Au Vin. This dish can be served over rice or couscous, but I didn’t think it needed anything added to it, particularly since we had already had the soup course. However, I did serve it with the rest of the baguette. After being in the slow cooker all day, the chicken literally fell apart, so it made sense to eat it more like a stew (thank goodness Christine’s parents gave us four soup bowls for Christmas). Like the soup, the Coq Au Vin was hearty with deep rich flavors that went very well with the Burgundy. Even novices like Christine and me can appreciate wine pairings. A light white wine would have been swallowed up by the rich flavors of either the soup or the Coq Au Vin.

Finally, we had dessert. Christine’s favorite cake is German chocolate, and it’s become a tradition for me to make it every year for her birthday in January. I paired with the d’Arenberg Noble Wrinkled Riesling. The wine was a very sweet dessert wine but not cloying. The cake, while being sweet, is made with semi-sweet chocolate so it is not overly sweet. I actually think this helped it pair well with the wine. If the cake had been too sweet, I think it would have been a little overwhelming given the sweetness of the wine.

And now, a word from Christine the Pie Queen:

I have thoroughly enjoyed my two years of wine-paired meals that have been amazing (ribs!), fun (WV debauchery and KY neighbor brunch!), at times strange (jell-o!), fattening (four cheese lasagna!) and just plain wonderful, cooked and served with love by my hubby. Thank you Jeff!

How does one motivate their partner to start cooking? What is my secret, sly recipe? Well, I did it with a little help from a friend of mine at The Naked Vine. Mike had been the inspiration for Jeff to start brewing beer and making hard apple cider (both of which he does extremely well) and so, I said to Mike, “Now, how can we get Jeff more interested on the food side?” I do the majority of the cooking around the house and just wanted to share that “joy” with Jeff. Along comes my birthday and Jeff decides to buy me 12 bottles of wine for the next year. He goes to Mike for wine suggestions and *BOOM* Mike sees his opportunity and suggests pairing each of those wines with a home-cooked meal…the rest now documented in pixels. Quite a success story! Thank you Mike!

And thank you, Jeff and Christine! Cheers!

Naked Vine Live -- French Reds

2012-01-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

Hello all! Looking for something to do this week? Truck on down to the Party Source on Wednesday evening. My pal Danny Gold and I will be pouring French reds from the major vinicultural regions. The show gets going at 6:30 on Wednesday the 25th. Tickets ($20 -- and you get a $5 gift card) are available by clicking here.

Come on down. Learn some basics. Drink up.

Hope to see you there!

New Year’s, New Zealand

2012-01-10T08:48:00.000-05:00

Welcome to 2012, everyone! May it be an excellent year for us all. This year’s started off with a bang here, thanks to the welcome return of the Naked Vine New Year’s Feast & Festival of Sloth.

For the last couple of years, the Sweet Partner in Crime and I haven’t been able to prepare our usual table. For the uninitiated, we usually pick a theme or region of the world, get a bunch of wine, hunker down, and cook a raft of recipes to pair with them. This year, we decided to do New Zealand. Why?

Well, aside from the whole notion of discovering new cuisine, I’d picked up a couple of relatively high-end New Zealand pinots in my wine-shopping “travels” a year or so ago, and I wanted a good excuse to do a side by side tasting. So, armed with this notion, we took to the reference sources to find foods and to the wine stores to collect other wines. Here they are:

We quickly discovered that New Zealand hasn’t historically been a big contributor to international cuisine. New Zealand is historically known for the “boil-up,” a Maori dish of boiled pork, squash, and whatever else is lying around. Since we both prefer low country style if we’re just going to boil meats and such, we needed to be a little more creative. Thankfully, the invasion of hobbits also brought along some very interesting Asian & Australian fusion cuisine, so we decided to approach it from that angle. (Maybe not completely authentic, but hey…it’ll be tasty…)

New Zealand, of course, is known for sauvignon blanc. They make unique versions. Many of the commonly found ones are from the Marlborough region, although there are more and more available domestically from Hawkes Bay and Wellington. (Together, these latter two are called “East Coast” wines – and they are the “first grapes to see the sun each day” because of their geographic location.)

Another difference this year…the advancing of years first gave us the idea to do our little culinary adventures in the first place and do an all-day feast. The still-advancing years (and our wildly successful “Channiversary” celebration) had us stretch New Year’s Eve into a full weekend’s better-paced gluttony. So, away we go…

Friday – New Year’s Eve Eve

Our first course was a “New Zealand Fish & Chips.” Baked sweet potato fries alongside some mussels, steamed in a red vermouth and garlic sauce. (No real recipes for these. The sweet potatoes were cut into strips, coated with olive oil and tossed with salt, pepper, and garam masala. The mussels were – well – steamed up with the aforementioned sauce.) Next to this little bit of yumminess, we put Cloudy Bay 2011 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. ($20) The Cloudy Bay was a very pleasant, mineral-laden sauvignon blanc with a strong lime-citrus flavor. Just before I served the mussels, I added some parsley to the sauce, and that worked nicely, playing off the traditional New Zealand-y herbal flavors in the wine. We kicked our little adventure off with a bang, to be honest.

Next up was a roasted red pepper soup with seared scallops, paired with Villa Maria 2009 Cellar Selection Marlborough Riesling. ($17) This is the first New Zealand Riesling that I can remember trying. Based on my experiences with the sauvignon blancs, I expected this to be a big, fruity Riesling. I couldn’t have been more off. This is a lean, aromatic wine that really reminded me more of an Alsatian Riesling than anything else – although it had a wee bit of sweetness there. Actually, this became a theme with the non-Sauvignon Blanc wines we tried. Most of them were lean and minerally, regardless of varietal. As for this one, I found lots of lime and lavender on the nose. “Crisp and cool” was my note.

The food pairing note I have was simply “OH MY GOD IS THIS GOOD.” This was easily the best pairing of the whole weekend and was honestly one of the best hand-in-hand food and wine pairings that I’ve had in the last year. I can’t begin to explain why. It just works. Trust me. It’s an easy recipe, too. Try it. Trust me!

Saturday – New Year’s Eve

A lazy New Year’s Eve in front of us, we spent the day relaxing on the couch, watching crappy bowl games, as is our tradition, and we started getting peckish. For Christmas, we’d been given a Hickory Farms-style sampler, and one of the cheeses was something called “Brick Cheese.” Turns out it’s a cross between cheddar and swiss, and one of the recommended pairings is Chardonnay.

I braved the crowds and brought back a bottle of Oyster Bay 2009 Marlborough Chardonnay ($11) from the store to go alongside. This was a really interesting wine. As we were discovering, this wine was full of crisp citrus and mineral flavors, but the oak gave it a little bit of butterscotch. with a little butterscotch from the oak. Again, lime was a major flavor in the mix. We decided that, had it been from anywhere else in the world, we would have thought it to be a sauvignon blanc. It reminded us of Sancerre (a French Sauvignon Blanc) a little. You know, it actually went really nicely with the Brick.

The dinner hour came near, and it was time for what I thought would be the main event, cracking open these two pinot noirs from Pyramid Valley Vineyards. These pinot noirs, called “Earth Smoke” and “Angel Flower” are from adjacent vineyards, one of which faces north – the other facing east. I was curious to see the differences. These were both from the 2008 vintage, so they may have been a little young. Still, I thought it would be tasty. We decided to pair them up with grilled beef medallions with a cauliflower-broccoli hash, but we wanted to try these wines first.

These may have been the two lightest pinot noirs I’ve ever tried. They looked almost watery, but they were fully-formed, although super-delicate wines. I think they were definitely young – probably a couple of years away from full maturity. They were…well, like nothing I’ve ever had. I started with the Angel Flower. My note says, “I have no frame of reference for his wine. Smells like wind blowing across a meadow and pond. Delicate and fascinating. A wine to be drunk rather than paired.” That said, there really wasn’t much else to this wine other than the interesting delicateness. There were some spice and some berry flavors, but nothing overly strong. The SPinC said that the smell reminded her of the “Divinity” dessert from Stuckey’s that she’d long ago sampled on the byways of the Midwest on the drive to Grandma’s house.

The Earth Smoke had, as implied by the name, a little bit of a smoky, earthy undertone – as well as some strawberry but still, the delicacy of the flavors were hard to catch. The SPinC said that these wines “don’t taste like anything in the world, and I don’t know if they’d pair with anything in the world.”

Still, we tried. We put together the meal – and, not surprisingly, even something as simple as the grilled beef overwhelmed it. We pulled a random Australian pinot noir from the rack, and it was a better match. I didn’t regret opening the wines at all to assuage my curiosity, but I’m glad I have a couple of other bottles in the cellar to stash for a couple of years.

After that, we had a fire in the backyard, then popped a bottle of bubbly as 2011 came to a close…

Sunday – New Year’s Day

We slowly recovered from our revelries and finally got the energy up to do some exercise. By this point, it was mid-afternoon, so we decided to split our last day’s meals up. We figured we’d be fine with one dish for the day. This time, we went with a Kim Crawford 2008 East Coast Pinot Grigio ($12) to go alongside a spicy ginger ground pork in lettuce wraps. Something a bit lighter, you know. Turned out to be a very nice pairing. The pinot grigio was quite tasty, full of apples and pairs, again with a backbone of that lime and mineral. Cooled down the heat of the pork nicely and just made for a nice little meal.

For that evening, we decided to just have some leftovers and relax. We figured that we’d do the last pairing the next night. Well, you know what they say, “life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”

Monday – Black Ice

I had to go to work on Monday. My office doesn’t have windows, so I didn’t realize that while I worked away that afternoon, the roads were slowly becoming covered with a bizarre black ice event. There was a 30 car pileup on the interstate, which I didn’t hear about until after I almost fell on my ass going to my car. On the way home in bumper to bumper traffic, my car overheated. (The mechanic told me later that my radiator had actually exploded -- a “baseball-sized hole” in the top of the radiator qualifies as an explosion in my book.) I was stuck for three hours in 20 degree weather on the side of I-275, waiting for a tow. Needless to say, I didn’t feel much like cooking when I got home. So, we strung things out for another day.

Tuesday – The Finish

I make a killer risotto. And one of the recipes we’d found during our research on New Zealand cuisine was a Mediterranean-inspired risotto with asparagus and mint. Now, this would have been a more appropriate meal for springtime, but hey…it’s summer in New Zealand, right? Since I had feeling in my extremities, I cooked this up for us to enjoy to close out the feast. We had this with the And Co 2009 Sauvignon Blanc – an SB from Hawkes Bay. It had a fascinating top – it was sealed with a beer cap. (Which, honestly, would be the best way to seal any wine for longevity.) We took one sip and just looked at each other for a second.

It’s unlike any other EnnZedd sauvignon blanc we’ve ever tried. It bills itself as “old world wine in the new world” and it certainly tastes more like a white Bordeaux than a Marlborough sauvignon. The nose is full of almonds and apples. It’s medium bodied, braced with more apple and pear flavors and just a hint of herb. There’s barely a trace of bitterness. Seriously, I felt like the “bitter” taste buds on the back of my tongue were taking a rest. Then came the meal. The asparagus risotto couldn’t have found a better pairing. Since asparagus makes most wine go bitter, the complete lack of bitterness allowed everything to mesh – the creamy risotto flavors and the milder fruit went hand in hand. This was a strong runner up pairingwide to the soup.

Automotive strangeness aside, I’d chalk this up as a success – and I would definitely recommend trying New Zealand whites other than their famous Sauvignon Blancs – especially if you’re a fan of minerally offerings like you’d find in Oregon or France.

Happy New Year, everyone!

The Naked Vine does Simply Naked

2012-01-09T09:23:00.000-05:00

On the heels of my review of the Dreaming Tree wines, Megan at Constellation (thanks again!) asked me if I’d like to give the “Simply Naked” line of wines a try. The connection, after all, is reasonably obvious. I said that I’d be happy to give them a run. Any excuse for more of The Naked.

Simply Naked markets itself as the “nation’s first complete line of unoaked wines.” I thought this was an interesting twist. I appreciated when California started easing back on the heavy oak on Chardonnay, but I hadn’t given much thought to what might happen if a winemaker did, say, cabernet sauvignon entirely in stainless steel.

The wines are produced with grapes sourced from vineyards across California. The wines are the brainchild of winemaker Ryan Flock, who is also the winemaker at Talus and Elkhorn Peak wineries.

These wines should be fairly easy to locate. All of them have a suggested retail of around $10. Here’s my thoughts on this lineup:

Simply Naked 2010 Unoaked Chardonnay – This is a fairly straightforward unoaked chardonnay. The nose is floral with a just little bit of citrus. On the palate, the dominant flavor I got was melon with just a tad of earthiness. The finish is slightly alkaline and has a touch of honeylike sweetness from some residual sugar. I thought it was a decent enough wine as an everyday selection, although I wouldn’t call it outstanding.

Simply Naked 2010 Unoaked Merlot – At first sniff, I was greeting with a big, plummy, “traditional fruity merlot” nose. I completely expected this to be a straight-up fruit bomb. When I got a taste of it, it turned out to be much more subtle than a lot of inexpensive California merlot. I thought it had some nice dark fruit flavors and solid, nicely balanced tannins. The finish is smoky and evenly dry. I really liked this wine, to be perfectly honest. Exceptional with chocolate, too. A keeper.

Simply Naked 2010 Unoaked Pinot Grigio – Dropping the old snoot into the class gave me a nose of lime and peaches. The body is heavier than I expected. There’s certainly a little weight – perhaps more in line with what I’d expect from a sauvignon blanc. There seems to be a bit of residual sugar, which likely adds to the weight. It still comes across as reasonably crisp with flavors of lime and apple juice. The finish is fairly light, fruity, and has an interesting hint of smoke. Interesting to me, but probably not for everyone.

Simply Naked 2010 Unoaked Cabernet Sauvignon – Like the merlot did, the nose made me brace myself for fruit-bomb land because of the big plum and blackberry scents. The body is more tame. The fruit on the palate is somewhat subdued, moving from blackberries into tannin and hanging out there for awhile. It seemed a bit imbalanced, though, so I gave it some air for awhile and came back a couple of hours later. Unfortunately, even with air, there’s much the same flavor – fruit forward, then the tannic tug at the end. Fairly simple and plonkish. Not my favorite.

A cool thing for Kinkead Ridge

2012-01-05T10:21:00.001-05:00

Our friends at Kinkead Ridge winery in Ripley, OH recently earned themselves a pretty cool distinction. Here's the release from Kinkead:

Kinkead Ridge featured in 1000 Great Everyday Wines from the World's Best Wineries

As reported by the Wine Buzz Magazine (www.thewinebuzz.com), two Kinkead Ridge wines are featured in the recently published "1000 Great Everyday Wines from the World’s Best Wineries" (DK Publishing, 337 pp.; $25). Former Wine Spectator editor Jim Gordon and his team of writers/tasters identify a range of good and affordable wines (which he equates with “the price of an entrée at a good restaurant”) from around the world with character that reflects their origin. France gets the most ink, followed by Italy, Spain, Germany, California and other wine-producing regions.

“The rest of the U.S.,” which is everywhere but the West Coast, gets a mere two pages. Ohio merits a mention of Kinkead Ridge Winery for its Cabernet Franc and Viognier-Roussanne, long lauded by an enthusiastic fan base for their high quality.

Interspersed among the recommended wines are charts on how to read labels, profiles of grape varieties, tips on doing a home tasting, and many other useful tidbits for the wine enthusiast.

I can attest to the quality of these wines. Congrats to Nancy and Ron!

#NakedVineNewYear

2011-12-31T16:48:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year, everyone!

We've stretched our New Year's celebration over a few days, so follow the feast on Twitter at #NakedVineNewYear...

Belt Tightening, Celebration & Last Minute Gifts

2011-12-20T13:42:00.000-05:00

As we prepare to bid adieu to 2011, we find ourselves in the last throes of the holiday season. The last two weeks of the year become a multicolored haze of festive dinners, office parties, and gift exchanges all wrapped up in a nice pretty bow of the holiday shopping orgy. You can’t really go wrong this time of year with the Swiss Army knife of presents – a good bottle of wine.

For most events, an inexpensive bottle (such as most of the ones we normally discuss around here) will suffice. Anyone who wends the way through this social maze knows that people are usually looking for something palatable to quaff so that making small talk becomes more bearable.

That’s not always the case, though. Sometimes you need a special bottle – something with a little more flavor and complexity for a more meaningful occasion. As we’ve discussed in this space before, the end of the year is the best time to snag major bargains for your cellar or gift bag since wine stores are trying to clear inventory to make room for “next year’s model.”

This opportunity is further amplified by the continued economic doldrums. The super high end stuff that can cost hundreds – wines like classified growth Bordeaux, Screaming Eagle cabernet from Napa, rare Barolo and the like – they’re always going to sell. There will always be collectors who can afford them. On the other end of the scale, the demand for the $15 and under bottle increases as wine drinkers are more judicious about discretionary income. The market slice getting hammered are the wines with “in-between expensive” price points – say $20-100. Ask almost any wine buyer. These wines just aren’t moving very well.

Here’s where you can score big if you look closely. There are “in-between expensive” bottles just sitting out there. If you’ve read those descriptions on shelves in wine stores, you’ll see many lines like “Drink between 2005-2011.” Odds that these wines will sell briskly after that window closes? Small. Wine stores need to clear these puppies off the shelves, so many of them get offered at enormous discounts. You can also find good values looking for wines that are from neighboring regions to super-expensive wines, especially if you’re thinking about French wines. For instance, a wine from a classified growth chateau may be hundreds of dollars a bottle, but a wine produced a few hundred yards away from similar grapes can go for a fraction of that cost.

Feel free to use these ideas as a great way to either score cool gifts or try some higher-end stuff that you might not have had the opportunity to crack on your normal travels. Take advantage of this. Go to your wine store and ask your friendly neighborhood wine guide to show you some “special occasion” wines that they have on end-of-vintage sale and see what happens.

Great example – the Sweet Partner in Crime and I got hitched a couple of years ago on Dec. 10^th. As readers of this space know, we’ve been together awhile. Prior to our actual wedding, we’d used Dec. 18^th, the date of our first date, as our anniversary. So we wouldn’t have to choose, we deemed these eight days our “Channiversary.” For our celebration this year, The SPinC went looking for three bottles – one from 2001 (the year we met), one from 2009 (the year we tied the knot), and another bottle, because things work better in threes. Here’s what she came up with:

La Croix de Rameaux 2009 Brouilly – The SPinC is a sucker for Burgundy, so that’s what she asked about first. Burgundy from 2009 would be too young to drink now, but she was pointed in the direction of Beaujolais (which is, after all, in Burgundy). 2009 is, by all accounts, one of the best years in Beaujolais in history, and the cru Beaujolais are not only exceptional – they’re ready to drink right now! (A Beaujolais cru will have the name of its city instead of “Beaujolais” or “Beaujolais-Villages” on the label.) Many Beaujolais, including cru, can be a little thin, but not this Brouilly. For a light red, this had an exceptionally friendly and layered fruit and acid balance. Lots of full cherry flavors and a smokiness that was more reminiscent of a Burgundy than a Beaujolais. It was good on its own, but it truly shined as a charcuterie wine. (Which was good, because we didn’t feel like cooking the night we opened it.) With the serrano ham (oh yes!), salami, and chorizo we’d laid out...all delicious. We found it was also especially good with goat cheese, a usually-challenging pairing. Just a lovely wine to munch with. Ordinarily $32, we got this one for about $24.

Il Bosco 2001 Cortona Syrah – Italian syrah? I think I’ve seen some of it blended into Super Tuscan wines, but I don’t remember it as a single varietal. Apparently more and more Italian winemakers are giving it a go but, until recently, these wines were much more a boutique purchase. This was the wine with the “Drink between” dates I mentioned above. Strike while the iron is still hot! Goodness, was this some tasty wine. My initial comment was “it smells more Italian than it tastes.” (Although I didn’t have much of a basis for comparison with syrah.) The nose is lovely. Plums, flowers, and smoke. Lots of earthy blackberries and cherries on the palate with a hint of that underlying Italian chalkiness. There’s also some smoke that got amplified towards the end as the tannins kicked in, leaving coffee behind. Wonderfully complex. I’d certainly be interested in trying more straight syrah from Italy. For dinner, we had salt-crusted roasted leg of lamb. Heavenly pairing. Cut straight through the lamb’s fattiness, enhancing the rich flavors. Super. A $80-ish wine that ended up at around $35.

Chateau de Bellevue 2000 Lussac-St. Emilion – I readily admit that I don’t usually get Bordeaux. It’s just not one of those Old World wines that I generally crave the way that I do Burgundy or various Italian bottles. Just the same, a nearly 12-year old bottle has an appeal, and I’ve since learned that 2000 in St. Emilion was a historically good vintage. In retrospect, that little factoid makes perfect sense. We decided to open this with an attempt at making a more-or-less true cassoulet. (Mmm…rendered duck fat!) We got to cooking and I poured the wine into a decanter. Bordeaux are notoriously slow-breathing wines. After about an hour and a half, we decided to try a glass. Oy! Tannin bomb, coming in! This wine gave both of us lockjaw. We couldn’t speak. Heavy charcoal and graphite. We decided that it needed a little more time to open, and we had an hour or so before the cassoulet came out of the oven. In the interim, I swirled the hell out of what was left in my glass for awhile, and hooboy -- was I ever rewarded. The wine started to open beautifully. The nose exploded into herbs and chocolate covered cherries. The charcoal and graphite powered flavor mellowed into a much more pleasant balance of cherry and smoke. The finish went on and on and on. The wine continued to change over the course of the evening, yielding more and more complex flavors. This was the big deal about Bordeaux.

With food? Ye gods. While waiting for the cassoulet to finish, we tried it with some “drunken” goat cheese. Absolutely outstanding. A true “eyes rolling back in your head” combination…at least until we finally got to the cassoulet. Heaven. There really aren’t words for how good this pairing was. We did a version of cassoulet with ham instead of sausage and smoked duck. The smokiness of the wine complemented the rich duck perfectly, while the tannins tamed the salt from the ham while cutting through the fat. We lingered over this meal and the last drops of wine in the decanter for a long, long time, savoring. Perfect pairings come along rarely – those French know what they’re doing with wine and casseroles, to be sure. Many 2000’s from St. Emilion currently run well over $100. This wine from the surrounding region? $30.

So go forth, find bargains, and enjoy your holidays! We’ll see you in 2012!

Naked Vine One Hitter -- The Bookmaker

2011-12-17T17:47:00.001-05:00

Thanks to the good folks at Balzac, I had the chance to try the Parlay “Bookmaker” 2009 Red Wine. Parlay is the “blended wine label” for Ramian Estates winery. Ramian is the fairly recent creation of Brian Graham, a Bordeaux and Burgundy-schooled winemaker who now calls Napa home.

Many California red blends are put together to maximize something –tannin, a certain fruit flavor, et al. Graham says that his French experience taught him the importance of balance in blending, and he’s tried to use that framework for this series.

For this particular blend, he’s managed to cobble together a pretty decent balance for a big, fruity, unquestionably Napa-flavored red. It’s about 70% cabernet sauvignon with the rest an amalgamation of syrah, petit sirah, and petit verdot.

First sniff brought along strong vanilla, blackberry, and mint notes. Lots of dark fruit and pepper on the body. It’s fruity, but definitely not a fruit bomb. The tannins aren’t particularly heavy, which I thought was nice, and the peppery finish goes on a good long while. I thought it was a pretty good quaffer on its own and it’s quite nice with a chocolate-based dessert. I thought the price point was slightly high at $20, but it was certainly worth a $15-16 snag. (Graham says that this wine can be aged for 6-8 years. Since this is the brand spanking new vintage, it might be more in its wheelhouse in a couple of years.)

The Parlay label also has a Viognier-based white blend called “Payout.” Raiman makes a single-varietal “reserve” series and a higher end “J.Garret” series. Brian Graham is also the winemaker for Jack Wines, another fairly new Napa label. I haven’t had the chance to try those. Bottom line, a pretty solid wine. I’d be very interested to try it in a couple of years after the flavors have had a chance to even out a little.

Wine & Dinner of the Month Club -- December 2011

2011-12-12T14:18:00.001-05:00

This month’s wine is a nice Italian white that goes well with seafood and creamy dishes. I had to make some alterations to the recipe and the dessert wasn’t as big a hit as I thought it would be, but it all turned out well. Enjoy.

Seafood Risotto with Steamed Asparagus
Green Salad with Grape Tomatoes and Sliced Dates
Strawberries 'n Cream Minis

Wine

2008 Bisci Verdicchio Di Matelica

We didn’t have an appetizer this month so I started right on the main course. When I was searching for a pairing for this wine, I kept coming up with seafood risotto so it seemed a simple enough decision. The only problem is Christine isn’t a huge seafood fan, so I altered the recipe to only include shrimp, adding extra to replace the now missing scallops, and exchanged the clam juice with an extra cup of chicken broth. The risotto was creamy with a slight briny taste from the shrimp and a subtle yellow color from the saffron. Risotto can be a side dish, but is so rich that it also works as a nice main course. The wine was a perfect pairing with nice acidity that helped cut through the creaminess of the risotto. I steamed some asparagus as a side dish, but let the asparagus steam a little too long. It tasted okay but was a little mushy and everyone knows you don’t want to have a limp spear.

After the main course, I served a green salad using the last of the lettuce that Christine grew this year in the local community garden. I garnished that with grape tomatoes and sliced dates. Then it was time for dessert. I was looking for something simple and what could be simpler than Jello (our neighbor Marlane, a native Minnesotan, would be so proud!) Who doesn’t love Jello? But instead of just Jello, I souped it up with some white chocolate and condensed milk. I was able to make it ahead of time and just had to garnish the individual servings with strawberries before serving. Okay, it was alright, but not great. The texture was a little odd. I think Christine likened it to strawberry Play-Doh. We finished the dessert, but I don’t it will be repeated…ever.

The Dreaming Tree -- Wines from Dave Matthews

2011-12-06T21:22:00.001-05:00

Let’s go drive ‘til the morning comes,

Watch the sunrise to fill our souls up.

Drink some wine ‘til we get drunk…

-Dave Matthews, “Crush”

For the sake of full disclosure, I’ve never been an enormous fan of the Dave Matthews Band. I’ve always appreciated them, but they’re one of those bands that have always been on the periphery of my music collection. However, after a friend of mine forwarded me a press release announcing the release of Dave Matthews’ new “Dreaming Tree” series of wines, I got curious. I sent an email to Megan at Constellation Wines and lo and behold, there were samples to be had! While I may not be a fanboy, I’ll give big ups to anyone willing to let me try his wine.

I do, actually, have a tangential connection to Dave Matthews. Several jobs and a couple of lives ago, I found myself working at the University of Richmond (VA). I lasted less than a year there – working in residence life, riding herd over drunken, horny, segregated-sex college students wasn’t exactly my bag.

from http://www.dreamingtreewines.com

However, I was in Richmond right around the time the Dave Matthews Band (from just up the road in Charlottesville) was blowing up around the country. Not long after I moved to Richmond, the DMB was playing a show in Richmond just before the release of their second album – the now-ubiquitous “Crash.” More than one of my students told me, “Dude (yes, “Dude.”) – you gotta go to The Dave Show.” That’s the only way I ever heard him referred to in Richmond – “Dave.”

A small, fragrantly smoky venue in Richmond is probably the best way to experience the Dave Matthews Band live for the first time. As my musical tastes expanded, DMB joined a few other bands I liked in my mid-20’s as bands I’d hear from time to time and go, “Hmm…not bad” and then let it pass from my attention. Except for “Crash into Me” – which I heard once as a first-dance wedding song – which is just lyrically creepy if you think about it.

In any case, Dave Matthews’ first experience with winemaking was a property he bought in Charlottesville, Virginia he wanted to farm. “I started making wine and that process kind of enlightened me,” said Matthews. “Through a few different instances I met Steve, and that brought the possibility of making wine in a place that’s designed for making wine!”

“Steve” is Steve Reeder, head winemaker at Simi winery in Healdsburg in Sonoma County, the aforementioned well-designed place for wine. “From the first time I talked to him on the phone,” said Matthews, “I got the sense that he wanted to do something with me. Not because he thought I was a great winemaker, but because he was curious. I think that’s pretty bold and also pretty generous.” Matthews went to Sonoma to discuss life and winemaking with Reeder, and The Dreaming Tree (named after a song on his “Before These Crowded Streets” album) sprouted.

“I want to work in collaboration with Dave to make wines that are approachable, still food friendly, fun wines that are available for pretty much everyone to drink,” said Reeder. “I like to make wines for people to drink, not wines to be put in the cellar.” (This is only half true. Simi makes some cabernets in the $60-$100 range that I wouldn’t classify as everyday!) Matthews and Reeder collaborate on the composition of the wine in small batches. Reeder takes care of the heavy lifting in production, since he has Simi’s ample resources at his disposal.

The Dreaming Tree produces a chardonnay, a cabernet sauvignon, and a red blend called “Crush,” all from California grapes – a much better source than Charlottesville, to be sure. The information on their website stresses environmental sustainability in production and bottling, which is a nice plus. All three retail in the neighborhood of $15. So, how are they? Have a seat crosslegged ‘round the fire and read on:

The Dreaming Tree 2010 Central Coast Chardonnay – Sourced from grapes in Monterey and Santa Barbara counties, my note after the first sniff was “lemony!” I was pleasantly surprised with the balanced fruit and oak. There’s definitely a background toastiness to it, but it’s doesn’t overwhelm the flavor, which is the tendency of many newbie California winemakers playing with chardonnay for the first time. Solid flavors of lemons and apples on the palate. The finish is quite gentle with a hint of citrus and some lingering toasted oak. I thought this was a very pleasant bottle of white that paired nicely with some broiled salmon filets topped with sautéed fennel and a light curry sauce. The oak brought out a little more of the grill smoke flavor, but it was quite pleasant on a cool night.

The Dreaming Tree 2009 “Crush” North Coast Red Blend – The Crush is a 2/1 blend of Merlot and Zinfandel. While these wines are designed to be “open and drink,” this one certainly benefitted from a little time in air. At first slug, the flavor was a little “grapey” without much structure, like a very inexpensive merlot. However, some time in the glass with a few strong swirls pulled vanilla out of the nose. Once the wine opens up a bit, it’s got a very full flavor with strong blackberry and vanilla tastes. I thought it was just a bit too dry for a “quaffing by itself” wine. As it is, it would likely be good for gnawing on a plate of barbecue ribs. Unfortunately, that’s not what we had that evening and disappointingly, it wasn’t all that tasty with evening chocolate. Another recommended pairing from the website was “Spanish orange and onion salad,” but I have a hard time envisioning that.

The Dreaming Tree 2009 North Coast Cabernet Sauvignon – Made with grapes largely from Sonoma County, this was my favorite wine of the three. The nose is full of blackberries with a little bit of vanilla. When I took a sip, my first thought was “Bacon?” There’s a smoked meat flavor that I didn’t see coming at all. After a few days, it hit me where I’d run into that scent before. Dave Matthews is a native South African, and this smelled as much like a Pinotage (the pride of the Rainbow Nation) as any Cabernet I’ve tried. That bacony smokiness mellowed out quite a bit after a few minutes to something a little more balanced, although as the finish sat, there were still hints of that savory goodness at the end. Otherwise, lots of dark blackberry and cherry tastes with a finish that doesn’t start tannically at all, but quickly dries into smoke. This wine ends up being a mouth-coater of a cabernet. Like most wines with a South African flavor, this would be right at home next to a big hunk of something grilled. They recommend rack of lamb or lentil salad, both of which I could see without too much of a problem.

Matthews claims his wine philosophy is “If it tastes good to you, then it’s good wine,” which has been one of my standard lines at the tastings I have led for years. As Reeder so aptly put it, “Great minds drink alike.”

A Chill in the Air, Some Whites for your Glass

2011-11-18T13:24:00.001-05:00

I had a couple of requests after the last column (“A Chill in the Air, some Reds for your Glass") for a companion piece on cool-weather whites. As I ease into fall, I tend to think about white wines less. I don’t usually get a craving for a big glass of pinot grigio on a day where the wind is whipping the heat from my bones, but I can’t lose sight of them altogether. Dinner parties, social events, or perhaps the occasional 80 degree day in December might call for whites, albeit slightly heavier ones. Here are a few that you might want to stash away:

Yalumba 2010 Viognier – I haven’t had a lot of luck with inexpensive Viognier lately. Viognier’s a great blustery-weather white. It’s probably got my favorite white wine aromatics, but the inexpensive ones can taste a little bit “oily” and have an alkaline aftertaste. Not pleasant in my opinion and not my usual cup of tea. Still, since it had been a while and after happening along a few offerings from South Australia, I thought I’d give the grape another whirl. I was pleasantly surprised to find this one. The Yalumba (great name, too – Aboriginal Australian for “all the land around”) has plenty of peach and floral scents on the nose, followed up by a nicely balanced peach flavor. It’s “weighty without being heavy,” if that makes sense. Viognier is a great choice with a traditional turkey meal and it also works well with spicy stuff. As a bit of a warning, this is a high-alcohol white. It clocks in at 14.5%, which is around cabernet sauvignon level. Not to worry, the alcohol is masked with a little residual sweetness. Swirl well and approach gently. $9.

Villa Maria 2008 Marlborough Riesling – Staying with the Down Under selections, we pop “next door” to New Zealand for this extremely food-friendly Riesling. I found it to be a intriguing mix of some of my favorite “traditional” Riesling styles. My best description would be “dropping a hunk of pineapple into a glass of Alsace Riesling.” Alsace Rieslings are almost always bone dry and full of mineral flavors, while the pineapple reminds me of Pacific Northwest dry Riesling. Trust me – for some reason it works. The Villa Maria has a lovely tropical-fruit-and-flowers nose. I picked up lots of minerality at first taste, blended with the aforementioned pineapple. The burst of fruit quickly yields to dryness and flint on the finish. If you enjoy “drinking rocks” as I do, you’ll love this wine. At around $13, this is a nice alternative to more expensive Alsatian offerings.

Adler Fels “Kitchen Sink” (NV) California White Table Wine – I’m honestly not sure why I picked this wine up. I was browsing the California white section for a sauvignon blanc. Since I’d used “everything but the kitchen sink” in a work context that day, the faucet on the label caught my eye. I took that as a sign. I read the back label and thought, “Huh…Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, and Gewurztraminer. That should be fun.” I thought it might have a little more oomph than a sauvignon blanc for the meal I was planning, and I wasn’t disappointed. Even though it’s comprised of over one-third California chardonnay, it’s still a fruity, acidic white. My first taste yielded lemons and tangerines. The finish is surprisingly crisp even with its nice weight. I thought it was very pleasant on both palate and pocketbook for around 10 bucks. What was the meal? Orecchiette pasta with chickpeas, greens, and grilled calamari (sounds weird, tastes nummy). Flavors from all directions made friends in this pairing. I would imagine it would stand up to cream sauces as well.

Gruet (NV) Blanc de Noirs – I would be remiss in putting together a whites column without throwing in a sparkler. One of the primary differences I find between French sparkling wines and other sparklers like cava is the “creamy” flavor that accompanies the fruit and the bubbles in the French offerings. There’s usually also a pleasant, somewhat “yeasty” aroma in the bouquet that reminds me a little of freshly baked bread. When I got a sip of this little number from New Mexico, I thought it was about as French-tasting as any inexpensive sparkling wine I’ve sampled. I found berries and cream on the tongue with good “mousse” (WineSpeak for “bubble strength and feel). The finish is toasty and pleasant. We cracked this as an aperitif for a recent dinner party for our neighbors (including Dinner Club Jeff) and it got raves. Around $12-13 and well worth it.

Wine and Dinner of the Month Club – November 2011

2011-11-18T10:34:00.001-05:00

This month’s meal was a simple affair, but no less tasty. The wine was a Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon which said on the label it was good with grilled rib eye or braised lamb shanks. We had braised lamb recently and I wasn’t really in the mood for a big rib eye, but some strip steak fit the bill. I don’t really have any recipes this month except for the dessert, but I think it’s mostly self explanatory.

Mushroom Bruschetta with Parmesan Cheese
Grilled Strip Steak with Sautéed Mushrooms, Turnip Puree and Purple Broccoflower
Green Salad with Walnuts and Steamed Beets
Apple Fritter Rings

Wine

2006 Kunde Family Estate Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

I started out early in the day by marinating the steaks in olive oil, garlic and a little salt and pepper. When I was ready to start dinner, I baked a small baguette and sautéed some chopped mushrooms. I sliced the baked bread and brushed olive oil on both sides of each slice. I rubbed some garlic on each side as well and then topped the bread with the mushrooms and a little parmesan cheese. I put these in the oven and let them bake at 350 degrees until the cheese melted thoroughly. I had already decanted the wine and Christine and I sat down for the appetizers.

After the appetizer, I started the main course. First I started boiling the potatoes and turnips for the puree. After these were cooked, I put them in a food processer with a little butter, buttermilk, salt and pepper. You really just have to experiment to get the right consistency. Mine was a little loose, but it worked out okay. I threw the steaks on the grill since they did not need a lot of time to cook and started steaming the broccoflower. Once I brought the steaks in and the broccoflower was ready, I sautéed some more mushrooms and plated it all up. Now, you may ask yourself, what is broccoflower? Well, it’s a cross between broccoli and cauliflower. I was planning on having broccoli as the side, but when I was in the grocery store I saw the broccoflower in purple and orange and green and decided to have a little fun. I think it added a nice and unusual splash of color to the entrée.

After the main course, we had a green salad with lettuce that Christine grew in our community garden, steamed beets from the local farmers market and walnuts from our local…grocery store. Okay, so the walnuts probably weren’t that local. In America the salad is usually before the main course, but Christine likes to have it the Italian way after the entrée as a little bit of a palate cleanser, particularly with a nice vinaigrette dressing. I agree that it does make for a nice transition. Give a try sometime to mix things up.

Finally, I prepared the dessert. This recipe actually came from the December issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazine. We had some Northern Spy apples from Hidden Valley Fruit Farms near Lebanon, OH that are delicious cooking apples. I first cored, peeled and sliced two apples to make little apple rings. I dredged these in a batter and dropped into 350 degree vegetable oil in a cast iron skillet. They cook really quickly with one turn half way through. After they had a chance to dry a little on some paper towels, I tossed them in a little cinnamon/sugar mixture and served them warm. The batter gives them a nice crispy texture and the cooked apples inside are like apple candy. And the best part is that they actually came out looking like the picture in the magazine (well, enough of them did for this picture).

As far as the wine, it was an excellent pairing with the bruschetta, the steaks and salad. The richness of the wine nicely balanced the earthiness of the meat, mushrooms and the root vegetables. However, as you might expect, it did not go so well with the apple rings. They were far too sweet to go with the dryness of the wine.

Wine and Dinner of the Month Club–October 2011

2011-11-07T09:10:00.001-05:00

After being chastised by my editor for tardiness last month, I made sure to get this entry written in time. I did; however, my lovely assistant had a month of intense work and travel and in her not-so-usual way, submitted the article late. She also thought she deleted the photos, but happily found them included with the Hallowheeling “Pollination” photos.

In early October Christine and I were in Washington, DC and went to dinner with her parents at Taste of Morocco in Arlington. After enjoying all the great flavors, I decided that this month’s dinner would be a Moroccan feast.

Menu

Dates Stuffed with Goat Cheese and Almonds
Date and Celery Salad
Lemon Couscous
Moroccan Bastilla (Chicken)
Moroccan Orange Cake

Wine

2007 Wild Horse Central Coast Chardonnay

Though it looks involved, the entire dinner was really pretty easy. There was some prep time involved, but once you got past that it all went quickly and a lot of it could be done ahead of time. I was home for the day so I was up early working on the meal. The first thing I did was bake the cake to get that task out of the way. Next I prepped the salad ingredients which involved slicing dates and pealing and cutting up the celery.

It was helpful that this step could be done ahead of time and the ingredients stored in the refrigerator until dinner time. Next I started on the bastilla. The ingredients for this dish can be prepared ahead of time as well and assembled later. After preparing everything and putting it in the refrigerator I even had a little extra time to go outside and work on the deck. Who says I can’t multitask?

About half hour before we planned to eat, I started cooking the bastilla, placing sheets of phyllo dough in an oven proof pan, adding the filling, and cooking it for about 15 minutes. While it was cooking I stuffed the dates with goat cheese and almonds and started cooking the couscous. You may remember the stuffed dates from an earlier dinner. At that time I stuffed the dates with parmesan cheese and walnuts. This time I switched to goat cheese and almonds for a more Mediterranean twist.

After we had the stuffed dates, I assembled the salad by mixing the celery in with coarse salt, shaving some parmesan cheese on top and sprinkling it with balsamic vinegar.

I served the warm bastilla with the couscous on the side. The bastilla was filled with an egg and chicken mixture surrounded by an almond, cinnamon and sugar mix. Additional sugar and cinnamon is sprinkled on top creating a delicious combination of savory and sweet. I have to admit, when I researched bastilla, chardonnay did not come up as the best pairing, but we thought it actually went very well. The chardonnay was crisp with a bright acidity that complimented every course.

We ended the night with a slice of orange cake before heading off to our local theater company to see Debbie Does Dallas the Musical. But that’s another story.

A Chill in the Air, Some Reds for your Glass

2011-10-27T19:19:00.001-04:00

Can you feel the cool on the underside of the breeze? It’s a’comin, folks. Real fall weather. Red wine season. I personally go through a lot more white wine in the spring and summer, but when the leaves start to change – I load up on the rouge.
Recently, my wine-pal Danny and I led a wine tasting. Since autumn is descending, and many stores are already hanging their seasonal decorations, we thought we’d get a jump on the holiday season and do a full spread of red. We wanted to provide a few suggestions for the upcoming dinner party (and party in general) season. Whether you’re stocking the cellar or stuffing the stockings, snagging a case of most of the wines we poured wouldn’t set you back too far. All of them fall squarely into the “flexible food wine” or “slurpable party wine” categories. (Well, there was one deliciously notable exception…)
Have at ‘em:
Vina Borgia 2008 Garnacha – I’ve long been a big fan of this wine. It’s one of my go-to inexpensive bottles. It’s 100% Garnacha (or Grenache, if you prefer) from the Aragon region of Spain. You won’t find anything overly complicated here. You’ll pay six or seven dollars for a bottle and be rewarded with a nice nose of blackberries and spice, a body that’s medium weight with a good balance of dark fruit and pepper, and a nice firm finish. For the price, it’s one of the best balanced reds out there. It’s perfectly drinkable on its own or a good accompaniment with flavors from chicken to grilled meat. I think it’s great wine choice for a holiday table when you’re buying in bulk. The Vina Borgia is also available in a 1.5 liter bottle for around $12 or a 3 liter box for $18. Can’t beat it.
Vinterra 2010 Pinot Noir – One of the things I love about pinot noir is that the grape has a real sense of “place.” If you pour a California pinot, you’ll usually get bigger fruit flavors and higher levels of alcohol. Burgundies will be lighter and earthier tasting. New Zealand pinots, like this Vinterra, tend to be light, delicate critters. It’s a very pretty smelling wine – flowers, cherries, and strawberries are prominent. The body is extremely light for a pinot. By way of comparison, I’d put it at the same weight as a Beaujolais. This is another wine with very nice balance, giving you flavors of strawberry and cherry cola. The finish is gentle, drifting away on a mist of cherries. Like most pinot noirs, this wine basically goes with any food, and it’s a great wine to pull out if you have someone around who “doesn’t like red wine.” It’s almost impossible to find pinot noir this good at $15, but here you have it.
Ocaso 2008 Malbec – I wouldn’t want to write a column that extended through football season and the requisite manly grilling without throwing a masculine malbec in there. As I always say about malbec, anything you can drag across fire –veggie burgers to grilled mushrooms to a big ol’ ribeye – will snuggle right up to a tasty malbec. Argentinean wines remain some of the best values out there. As Danny said, “Take most wine from Argentina and double the price. That’s what you’ll pay for a comparable red from France or California.” Blackberries and coffee were my first thought when I got a slug of this one. It’s tannic, but not overly so, and it’s nice and muscular if you’re in the mood for something along those lines. I’ve read that it actually goes well with vegetables, too – but that wouldn’t be my first choice. You can find this for around $10-12. Ocaso also makes a malbec rosé that I poured next to the aforementioned Vinterra. The rosé ($8) is actually heavier, believe it or not.
Elvio Cogno 2007 Dolcetto D’Alba – If you’re looking to step outside the Chianti world for a relatively light Italian red, Dolcetto is a very nice alternative. Dolcetto translates as “little sweet one,” although this is hardly a sweet wine.. I thought this was a wine that was basically built to be passed around a dinner table – like most good Italian wines are. It’s got a fair amount of acidity, which allows the flavor to cut through almost anything with a red sauce, be it pasta, chicken parmesan, or brasciole. I recently poured this next to a roasted eggplant-and-red-pepper soup and it was simply divine. If you don’t like the “chalky” flavor that Chianti sometimes have, but you like the acidity and the full fruit flavors, this is a great choice. It’s around $15 and worth every penny if you’re cobbling together a little feast for friends.
Chateau de Bel 2009 Bordeaux – Bordeaux is one of the more vintage-dependent wines out there. Bordeaux from an “off year” can be overpriced and uninteresting. The 2009 vintage, however, apparently has the potential to be one of the great vintages in Bordeaux (and in much of the rest of France, as well). The quality even trickles down to the more inexpensive bottles, like this one from Chateau de Bel. This 90/10 merlot/cabernet blend is an impressive bottle, especially for $15. Intense fruits and a nice dose of the “old world funk” that I like so much in Bordeaux. A little tannic, a little oaky – it’s just a very solid all-around wine. For the Francophiles out there, consider squirreling away a few bottles of for five years or so. I’m very interested to see how this one develops over time. Or just lay out some rich cheeses, grilled pork chops, or some good stew. You’ll thank me later.
Domaine La Roquete 2007 Chateauneuf-de-Pape – Danny couldn’t resist being a showoff. He pulled this little gem to put the rest of our selections to shame. He said that if he were forced to only drink one kind of wine for the rest of his life, he’d choose Chateauneuf-de-Pape – which is a predominantly Grenache/Syrah blend from the town of the same name in the Rhone valley. This is one damned delicious wine. You may have heard wines described as “elegant.” This one falls squarely into that category. It’s a deeply layered wine. As you take successive sips, you’ll find different flavors emerging: currants, cherry, nutmeg, blackberry, and a backbone of nice earthiness. Chateauneuf-de-Pape is an expensive wine. You’ll often see this wine start at around $50-60 and go up from there. This one was under $40, and for my money – if you want to impress – this is a nice selection to have in your arsenal. Or have this one the day after your dinner party as you’re relaxing the next evening. Be selfish. You deserve it.

Massandra 1931 Ai-Danil Tokay...and Happy Birthday, Dad!

2011-10-19T09:09:00.000-04:00

I could devote many column inches on the enormous impact my father has had on the fabric of so many people’s lives over the years (Google “John Rosenberg AppalRed” or “John Rosenberg civil rights lawyer” for a taste), but that’s for another venue. What’s the wine connection?

What do you get the man who doesn’t need anything? He’s happy, healthy, and still doing the work he loves. A milestone like an 80^th birthday deserves an appropriately celebratory gift. After some pondering and a little poking around online, I was able to locate (via Sotheby’s Wine – a New York offshoot of the London auction house) something appropriate. Ladies & Gentlemen, let me introduce:

Massandra 1931 Ai-Danil Tokay

The wineries in Massandra were built during the reign of Czar Nicholas II. During the process, wine caves containing thousands of bottles were constructed beneath the city. This “personal wine cellar” of the Czar contained tens of thousands of bottles. These caves survived the Russian Revolution, both World Wars, the fall of Communism, and Yakov Smirnoff. In 1990, about 13,000 of these bottles – never before available in the West – were put to auction. (Read more about the auction here: http://goo.gl/B86Uc) A couple of decades later, FedEx brought one of those bottles to me.

The bottle itself was quite a sight. Standard sized wine bottle, green glass, no label. The Sotheby’s wrapper had the identifying information. The wrapper was necessary for cleanliness purposes, as the bottle was still caked somewhat with the Crimean cave dirt in which it had rested for about sixty years. Wax seal, still mostly intact, over the cork.

Tokay (or Tokaji), in case you’re wondering, is a dessert wine originating in the Tokaji region of Hungary (the wine is mentioned in the Hungarian national anthem). During the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ukraine was part of the Tokaji region, so those wines maintained the moniker. The wine is made from grapes affected by “noble rot,” like French Sauternes. The result is a golden-colored, fragrant, sweet wine with enormous aging potential. As the wine ages, the color changes like a sunset – from gold to increasingly deep red. The complexity of flavors follows.

I consulted with a couple of sommelier friends of mine to get some pointers on handling such an old bottle. The short version of said advice: “Keep the bottle as still as you can so you don’t disturb the sediment, and be careful decanting it.” Later in the evening, my brother-in-law said that he thought there was either something alive or explosive in the box, since I was handling it so gingerly.

The potent fear when opening wine this old is that it might not be wine anymore. It doesn’t take much going wrong over the course of 80 years to complete a wine’s journey to Vinegar-land. After Dad had a chance to see the bottle, the moment of truth was at hand. I slowly started extracting the cork. I immediately saw that there was only about a quarter inch of dry cork left. I’ve seen two-year old bottles with similar looking corks be utterly shot. Butterflies were cutting complex maneuvers in my gut. The cork came free.

My nose met a blast of honey, fruit, and flowers. Intact! The relief and excitement evoked a long-ago summer camp memory of a brown-haired girl’s smile as she whispered, “You can kiss me if you want.”

Grinning and trembling a bit, I decanted the Tokay. All things considered, I did a pretty good job. I was able to keep almost all of the sediment in the bottle. The wine had continued its darkening over the years and was now a deep reddish-chestnut. I poured small amounts for everyone and we toasted my father.

How’d it taste? Unbelievably good. One of the most “layered” wines that I’ve ever tried -- rich, full, and sweet without being cloying. Each sniff and sip yielded something a little different. The notes I managed to scribble (which really don’t do it justice): “Nose: honey, prunes, sunshine, violets. Body: raisins, caramel, honey, peach, pear. Back: spice, honey, little lemon zest. LAYERS. 3 minutes of finish. Stupendous, worthy, rich. Wine for a king’s table.” (Or, as I learned above, a czar’s.)

Since very little of the wine had evaporated over the years, we had enough to actually brave a food pairing. The suggested pairing with Tokay is pears and blue cheese. Lovely. The pears amplified the fruit in the wine. The creamy funk of the Roquefort shook hands and gave the honey a warm hug. Stunningly tasty.

We continued with the birthday celebration, and I managed to slyly move the decanter from the table so that the Sweet Partner in Crime and I could have a nightcap. Not surprisingly, the soul of the wine, preserved so long, left quickly. The wine was still

drinkable a couple of hours later, showing some of the same flavors, but the bouquet and layers of wonder and complexity had flattened. No matter. This wine lived 80 years and shone brightly for we who were lucky enough to be around when it was opened…like my Dad.

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