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

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...

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Menu

• 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

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

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

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.

Menu

• 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

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.