Wine & Dinner of the Month Club – September 2010

This month’s entry heads to South America for both the main course and the wine. Only one recipe was found online, so I will try to reference the other sources and describe how they are made.

Menu
Fried Green Tomatoes

Churrasco (Beef Tenderloin) with Three Herb Chimichurri

Green Salad and Oven Baked Potatoes

Sweet Cherry Cobbler with Chocolate Truffle Crust

Wine
2007 Bodega Goulart Malbec

The wine this month is from Argentina and for a food pairing Mike at TNV suggested the following – MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! As an alternative he also suggested MEAT! But if you’re vegetarian you could go with lamb (see My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2002). I was trying to find a good recipe and found one in How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques by Steven Raichlen (© 2001 by Steven Raichlen). The grilling was pretty straightforward, but the preparation was a little involved. You start with center cut beef tenderloins, slice them thin and then pound them to a quarter inch thickness between pieces of plastic wrap. This process tenderizes the meat and also is a great way to work out any frustrations from your day at the office. You then marinate the meat in a three herb chimichurri made up of parsley, cilantro, mint, garlic, olive oil, white vinegar, salt and pepper, and water. The recipe for the marinade is also in the book How to Grill. Place the meat in the chimichurri and let it sit in the refrigerator for about an hour. Reserve some marinade for serving later.

I next started the potatoes. I cut these into French fry size pieces, coated them in olive oil and herbs (rosemary, sage, marjoram or whatever else you want to use) and put them on a baking sheet. Cook these at 475 degrees for about 20 minutes, turning them a couple times to cook evenly. Watch these closely so they don’t dry out.

While the potatoes cooked I make the appetizer, fried green tomatoes. These are really simple. I took green (unripe) tomatoes from our garden and cut them into slices. I coated them in cornmeal and fried them in olive oil until golden brown on both sides, seasoning with salt and pepper while cooking. I served these with a homemade aioli, which I made by mixing some olive oil, salt and pepper, and lots of garlic with some mayonnaise. Simple and delicious!

While the potatoes were finishing cooking I grilled the meat. On a hot grill cook the meat about four minutes on each side, depending on how rare you like it. I did ours about medium. I plated it with the potatoes and a green salad with ripe homegrown tomatoes. We had some of the meat left over, which made for great steak salads the following night.

I had made the dessert before and it is always a hit. The recipe is for 12 servings but you can always cut it down to whatever number of servings you want. Usually you would top this with ice cream but we used whipped cream. Mmm, mmm, good!

As for the wine I can honestly say, wow! It had very luscious berry and cherry flavors and I think when I poured it I thought I got just the slightest whiff of tobacco. The color was a deep ruby red. This was definitely a food wine, as I don’t think I could sit around drinking this by itself. It went great with all the courses of the meal, nicely offsetting the garlic in the aioli with the fried green tomatoes, complementing the steaks and herb chimichurri, and, because of the berry/cherry flavors in the wine, it also went surprisingly well with the dark, sweet cherry and chocolate flavors in the cobbler. I would definitely buy this wine again, especially to go with steaks off the grill. Thanks to Mike for another great recommendation.

Box Wine II – Electric Boogaloo

You may remember back in the late aughts when my dear neighbor Christine the Pie Queen challenged me to write a column on box wines. After some careful thought and consideration, we ended up throwing the First Annual Box Wine Extravaganza.
Somewhat embarrassingly, a couple of years have passed. A lot of wine has been poured across the alley during that stretch, but we hadn’t managed to re-extravaganzize. This year, though, a solid confluence of events stacked the boxes clearly in our path. We were back in business. We coupled the box wine tasting with a reprise of her hubby Jeff’s ribs and let the good times roll.
A quick refresher on box wines. Yes, you can still get your sugar-water box of Franzia or Vella if you really want to make huge batches of sangria, but box technology has improved greatly over the last several years. Advances in production have allowed winemakers to put wines in these containers that can last weeks if not kept cool and months in the fridge.
For a long time, winemakers used box wine as a way to get rid of some of their inferior juice – and there are still clearly cases of that, like the aforementioned Franzia. A couple, however, latched onto the idea that putting halfway decent table wine in boxes for easy consumption was a winning strategy. Three years ago, you’d struggle to find anything other than cabernet, merlot, chardonnay, Riesling, and white Zinfandel in boxes. Now you’ll find malbec, sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio, and any number of other varietals. Europe has long “boxed” table wine, and some of those are making their way to American shelves as well. As more wines appear on the shelves, quality tends to rise. (Although we have a cautionary tale below.) Prices range from $15-20 for most boxes.
So, in hopes of finding some decent wine, we cracked open four at the Extravaganza:

• Pinot Evil Winery Pinot Noir
• Folonari Pinot Grigio
• Bota Box Chardonnay
• Red Truck “Mini Barrel Red”

I have different expectations for box wine. I wasn’t looking for any kind of thunderously outstanding vino. When I pour box wine, I want something I can drink pleasantly without thinking too hard. I approached the judging in a very simplified manner. I made a few scoresheets with the following statements:

1. 1) This wine tastes good.
2. 2) This wine tastes good with food.
3. 3) I’d drink this wine at home.
4. 4) I’d recommend this wine.

People simply checked “yes” or “no” for each statement and added comments if they wished. Each “yes” gave a wine one point. The totals were averaged to determine an overall score. The results?
Folonari Pinot Grigio – Score: 4. The winner of the day. Straight yesses on the scoresheet. “Unassuming, but very pleasant” was one comment. Another noted that it went “very well with the potato salad.” This particular potato salad, interestingly, had olives in it. In retrospect, it makes sense why an Italian wine would be particularly good there. I thought that it was exceptionally drinkable, especially on a warm day. For a setting like our little shindig, it was the right wine for the right time. Around $20 for a box. Folonari also makes a Pinot Noir of which I’ve read some positive reviews. It’s on the list for down the line.
Pinot Evil Winery Pinot Noir – Score: 3.75. Personally, this was my favorite of the four. I didn’t know how well pinot noir would translate to this form. Most inexpensive pinots I see are domestic, but this was a French import. Regardless of ancestry, I thought this was a very solid, lightly fruity summertime option. “Very good. Dangerously drinkable.” was one comment (with which I totally agreed). More than one person mentioned that it was peppery. Also works well with a slight chill. A nice choice for either the patio or living room. Around $18.
Bota Box Chardonnay – Score: 3. Bota Box (along with Black Box and Angel Juice) was one of the first “quality” box wine producers that I started seeing regularly. They’ve won awards for their Zin and their Shiraz, and I was curious about their whites. The results were positive, but not overwhelmingly so. “Drinkable, but not that great” was one comment, balanced by “Me like it!” I thought it tasted like someone made a basic, semi-fruity white wine and made “adjustments” to make it taste more like a traditional chardonnay. A hint of butter and oak are certainly in evidence, but they tasted like afterthoughts. There was also some sweetness that I didn’t think belonged there. Still, folks seemed to like it enough to drink it up, so it’s got that going for it. $17.
Red Truck “Mini Barrel Red” – Score: 0. Nope. That’s not a typo. The scoresheet was a universal sea of “no” answers. “Cute packaging. Too bad the content doesn’t measure up.” That sums it up nicely. The packaging was certainly interesting: a small metal “barrel” that’s not obtrusive or unattractive with “feet” that make it stand up. The downside – the wine inside was…well…not good. Somewhat sweet with a vinegary edge. For cooking wine – maybe, but this wine was at least $10 more expensive than the other wines we tried, and the quality was nowhere close. Very disappointing. Box wine is supposed to be economical. Unless there’s a real reason to spend more, why? I think many people saw this wine on the shelf and thought the same. Assuming the wines are of similar quality, why pay $30 for red in a slightly cuter package when you can pay $20 and get something just as serviceable. I suspect that the “cask” I bought had been on the shelf for quite some time and had gone over. If they bring the price point down to a more competitive level, this might be workable. Until that happens, make sure you check the date on the wine and ask your wine store how long those containers have been there. Buyer beware.
And a little something for the kids:

Planet Bordeaux (Syndicate, Fool!)

Mike Wangbickler of Balzac Communications recently gave me the opportunity to get a first look at “Planet Bordeaux” – the new marketing project by winemakers in the Bordeaux region. The project’s mission is to help people realize they can afford Bordeaux wines of quality without either leasing their first-born or slugging the scrapings from the bottom of fermenting tanks. “Folks can afford Bordeaux as an everyday wine. It doesn’t just have to be for collectors,” said Mike.

First off, a quick review of Bordeaux wine. Bordeaux is arguably the most famous French wine region (the argument would come from their Burgundian neighbors). Some of the most expensive and sought after wines in the world call this slice of France home. Red Bordeaux is always a blend of cabernets sauvignon and franc, merlot, petit verdot, and malbec. White Bordeaux is a blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon.

Red Bordeaux, even though they’re a mix of some varietals that we may think of as heavy, tend to be lighter-styled, tannic reds. Even inexpensive Bordeaux can have complexity to the flavor. There’s usually an earthy or “cigar box” aroma and flavor along with the dark fruit, and finishes that are long and tannic. White Bordeaux usually are quite acidic, minerally, and have floral or herbal scents and flavors. They’re also usually very light in color. The deeper colored whites have more Semillon and tend to be heavier.

The mystery, allure, and frustrations of Bordeaux can often be traced back to the caste system for wines. In 1855, a “ranking system” for French wines was developed based on terroir, winemaking quality, overt and covert bribery, etc. The “best” single vineyard chateaux were classified into five “growths” – the Premier Crus are Chateau LaTour, Chateau Margaux, Chateau Haut-Brion, and Chateaux Lafite and Mouton Rothschild.

Below these are the AOC wines – wines from a certain region. These are your regional wines – Chateaux that can call themselves “Bordeaux” but aren’t in the “growth” rankings. The grapes must be grown in Bordeaux, but they come from one chateau or commune’s holdings, although they’re not necessarily single vineyard products. These tend to be a step below the “classed growths,” but are still considered from reasonably to really good wine. You know you’re looking at one of these wines if you see the following words on the bottle:

• Bordeaux Rouge (Red) AOC
• Bordeaux Supérieur Rouge AOC
• Bordeaux Rosé AOC
• Bordeaux Clairet (Dark Rosé) AOC
• Bordeaux Blanc (White) AOC
• Bordeaux Supérieur Blanc AOC
• Cremant de Bordeaux (Sparkling) AOC

Below AOC is “Vin de Pays” – a region’s “table wine.” Vin de Pays simply means that the grapes are grown anywhere in that region, but they can be from anywhere therein.

So, the top grade goes for hundreds of dollars a bottle. Collectors hoard these. Thus, there’s always a demand. The vin de pays can be found anywhere. It’s inexpensive. Thus, there’s always a demand. The AOC wines, trapped in the middle, were faced with quite a quandary. These wines are quite a cut in quality above the vin de pays, but many aren’t much more expensive. Imagine you’re a winemaker and you’re putting together quality product, could make a profit with a relatively low price point, and are still a really good deal in any case. If you could only get the word out – people would snap it up, right?

Enter the Byzantine (or would that be Gallic?) world of French wine law. There are restrictions on marketing. Chateaux and communes cannot partner to market their wines. They have to work individually, for the most part. So, not surprisingly, the Chateaux with the most cash get the most run in the press, since they can afford the publicity. The best selling AOC red Bordeaux is Mouton-Cadet – a little side project of Chateau Mouton Rothschild. You can find that Bordeaux almost anywhere. It’s almost as ubiquitous as Duboeuf’s Beaujolais.

So, along comes Syndicat Viticole des appellations controlees Bordeaux et Bordeaux Supérieur, also known as the Bordeaux Syndicate (not to be confused with Rhyme Syndicate). The entire region figured that since they can’t market against each other – they’d market alongside each other! “Planet Bordeaux” (online at http://www.planete-bordeaux.eu/) followed.

Thanks to Mike and Balzac, I was able to procure a few of the Syndicate’s samples. We had three bottles – one white and two red. Thoughts? First up, the white:

Château Thieuley 2009 Bordeaux Blanc ($14) – We opened this one weekend afternoon when we just needed something good to sip on. I was surprised at the nose on this wine. I expected more citrus, but I got a lot of melon scents and some yeast. The taste – it’s a nicely balanced flavor of thick citrus and mineral. The finish is soft and lingers for a bit with a touch of acidity. This wine probably deserved a dinner pairing, but hey – we were thirsty! “You can tell it’s not top line white Bordeaux, but it’s very drinkable,” commented the Sweet Partner in Crime. We moved on to the reds:

Château du Lort 2006 Bordeaux Rouge ($13)

Château Mirambeau Papin 2006 Bordeaux Supérieur Rouge ($20)

The difference between Rouge and Supérieur Rouge? The latter come from older vines as a rule, and they also must be in bottle for at least a year before release.

One tip: Bordeaux Reds MUST be decanted. The young ones need decanting to smooth their edges. The old ones need it to open up all of their potential yummy goodness. The contrast in both these wines was pretty remarkable once we let them sit for a bit. We tried them on their own first.

The “standard” had only a slight “Old World funk” on the nose -- more of a fresh-cut wood and some blackberry. The body starts almost tartly and hangs in there before transitioning into a tannic, graphite like finish that’s moderate. Not very earthy, if you like that kind of thing. The Supérieur had much better balance. The extra time in barrel smoothed off some of the tartness and gave it a “broader” nose – some earth, some fruit, some wood. The taste was quite pleasant, not too powerful or earthy, and with a nice transition of blackberry and cherry into tannins that hang in gently for awhile.

With some lamb loin chops, the standard red actually did quite well. The lamb calmed down the tannins and cut down on the edges of the tartness. The flavor became brighter and fruitier and turned into a nice contrast. After a few sips and bites, the Supérieur emerged as a dark, fruity sidecar.The Supérieur’s subtler flavor merged much more as an “alongside” flavor than the “standing out” flavor of the standard red.

After a couple of hours, they continued to evolve. The regular became “brighter” – with almost a floral bit on the nose. The Supérieur became deeper and darker, adding plums and tar to the nose, The regular red’s sharp edges smoothed and the wine balanced much more. Even so, I personally thought the Supérieur was a better wine all around.

Marketing or not, I think anyone who’s really interested in learning about wines owes it to themselves to form a decent idea of a region’s style and flavor. These AOC wines from Bordeaux give a nice window into those profiles, so these would all be good “starter” wines to help you develop a true sense of a) whether you even like these wines and b) whether you want to explore some more.

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Italian Indigenous

As you might remember from our Italian Wine Primer, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 grapes indigenous to Italy. Variety may be the spice of life, but that much variety makes the initially-confusing Italian wine nomenclature a straight must to keep the musts straight.

(Yes, yes. I know you’re not supposed to explain your own puns, but in case you’re wondering, “must” is WineSpeak for “freshly pressed grapes.”)

Luckily for us, there are only a few dozen commonly used grapes in Italy, so the major grapes aren’t usually that difficult to keep straight. Most of the others are grown in relatively small quantities and used in local table wines. However, as winemaking technology improves and becomes more and more available to smaller growers, some of these lesser known varietals – each with their own unique characteristics – are starting to find their way off the Boot.

If you’re looking for a change of pace, some of these wines can make very interesting alternatives. I suggest speaking to your local wine guy or gal about them. Also, since they’re not as well known, they tend to be pretty good values for some reasonably tasty juice. Here are a few that I’ve tried recently:

Mustilli 2008 Piedirosso Sannio – Sannio is a subregion of Campania, situated northeast of Naples. Piedirosso is the grape, used almost exclusively in this region. The wines made from Piedirosso tend to be on the lighter side. On a warm summer evening as I was whipping up some marinara from garden tomatoes to serve over some gnocchi, this seemed like a pretty good match to me. I wasn’t disappointed. It is indeed very light – about on the level of a Beaujolais-Villages. In fact, I’d certainly throw this out as a substitute if you like that sort of wine. I’d recommend a slight chill on it, just like a Beaujolais. It’s got a very nice cherry/pomegranate flavor with only a hint of tannin. There’s a little bit of that Chianti-ish “chalk” flavor as well, but only a hint. With I may have “over-basiled” the sauce a little (if such a thing is possible), and it was able to tame that flavor without getting overwhelmed by everything else. A really nice light red alternative with any kind of tomato-ish dish. $13.

Feudo Arancio 2008 Stemmari Grillo Sicilia – Sicilia, obviously, is Sicily. Grillo is a white wine grape. Stemmari is…well…the name of the product line. Sicily has extremely hot growing conditions and Grillo works well in those climates. Grillo is best known as one of the grapes used to make Marsala. (Marsala is a place, not a grape…surprise!) Hot weather grapes often have very strong flavor profiles. It’s quite aromatic with strong floral and lemon aromas. I thought it started just a bit sweet and then tails off into a moderately citrusy flavor. There’s a bit of oiliness to it similar to Viognier. The finish is semi-dry with a few lemony flavors on the aftertaste. It’s a pleasant enough quaffing wine. It held its own with a pseudo-vichysoisse that we created one night and served alongside some “everything” bagels with smoked salmon. A very flexible food wine. You’ll find it for under $10 – an extremely solid value.

Cascina Gilli 2006 Freisa d’Asti – Freisa is a lesser-known red varietal in Piedmont. It’s overshadowed by Nebbiolo, from which Barolo and Barbaresco come; and by Barbera & Dolcetto, the more common “drinking wines.” Freisa yields a tannic, acidic wine like Nebbiolo, but it lacks the power and fullness you’ll see from that grape. This isn’t a bad thing. You end up with a wine that can stand up next to fairly heavy food without being heavy and overpowering itself. Case in point, I recently made eggplant parmesan – one of my specialties. It calls for a muscular wine. The Friesa reminded me of a light Zinfandel with a little Chianti “chalk” thrown in. It pointed up the pepper and the garlic in the sauce while still cutting through the earthiness. I would imagine it would also pair nicely with anything Zinfandel would work with – like barbecue or ribs. Besides, any grape varietal that Robert Parker describes as “totally repugnant” is worth a try in my book. $15-18.

Wine and Dinner of the Month Club – August 2010

This month’s entry includes the meal and wine description, but also a surprise visit that I describe at the end, so make sure you read all the way through. Is this just a cheap trick to get you to read the whole article? Sure, but I’m not above a little gimmickry for the benefit of the greater good.

Menu

• Tomato and Basil Bruschetta
• Seared Tuna Steaks with Peach and Onion Salsa
• Vodka Infused Watermelon

Wine
2006 Tavel Vin Rose

Originally I was going to go with either pork or duck based on a recommendation from Mike’s (of The Naked Vine) Sweet Partner in Crime, Pam. Unfortunately, earlier in the month I had some gum surgery that precluded me eating certain meats. The tuna steaks were a good alternative.

I prepared the steaks by coating them with olive oil and rubbing on some grated lemon peel and spices per the recipe. These I put in the refrigerator and then made the simple salsa which included peaches, onion, cilantro, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and also put this in the fridge.

To make the bruschetta I sliced a baked French batard and brushed both sides of each slice with olive oil and garlic. I toasted these in the toaster oven and then loaded them up with diced tomatoes and basil from our garden, a little drizzle of olive oil on top, and a dash of salt and pepper. I had already opened and poured the wine so Christine and I sat on the back patio by the pond enjoying the appetizers and the wine, which was immensely drinkable and food friendly. Mike told us this was the case and he couldn’t have been more right.

While Christine relaxed with a fresh glass of wine, I prepared the tuna. Tuna steaks are usually cooked rare so it doesn’t take very long to prepare them. I threw them on the grill for two and a half minutes for my steak and three minutes for Christine’s steak because she prefers them more thoroughly cooked. Once I took them off the grill I plated them up with the peach salsa on top. I completed the meal with a simple green salad and some cherry tomatoes from our garden.

The steaks were good, but both Christine and I thought the salsa make the meal. The sweet and sour aspects of the salsa really complemented the fish. The wine lived up to its billing and went nicely with the steaks. The wine had good texture but did not overpower the fish. Christine commented that it wasn’t very tannic and was very easy drinking. I highly recommend giving this wine a try.

After dinner we sat around the table and finished off the bottle of wine. We were pretty sure it wouldn’t go with dessert since dessert was watermelon that had been soaking in vodka all day. This dessert was super simple to make. I cut up watermelon into bite size pieces and put it in a shallow serving dish. I then poured in a mixture of lime juice, sugar, mint (from our garden again), and plain vodka. I poured in enough of the mixture to just cover the watermelon, put a lid on the dish and set it in the refrigerator the morning of the meal. To serve I simply spooned pieces of watermelon into bowls and poured a little of the remaining liquid over them.

You could certainly taste the vodka in the watermelon, but it wasn’t overwhelming and at the end you had a little watermelon flavored vodka shot at the bottom of your bowl. I think it might be interesting to try this with flavored vodka just to see what combinations you could come up with.

I alluded to a surprise visit earlier. Well, it wasn’t that we had a visitor, it was who we visited. I don’t know if it was the wine, or the vodka or both, but it was a pleasant evening and Christine felt confident that Mike of the TNV and Pam his Sweet Partner in Crime, who happen to be our back alley neighbors, would be sitting out on their back patio so she decided to go over and offer to deliver some of the vodka watermelon. Good friends that they are, they indulged us and Mike even gave us a sneak peek at their newly refinished basement with full on man cave and wine storage under the staircase for about 150 bottles of wine. That’s a lot of wine, but is there ever really enough storage for good wine?

As is usually the case when the four of us get together another bottle of wine was cracked open. Mike picked out a lovely dessert wine from Adelaide by d’Arenberg called The Noble. It is a blend of Chardonnay and Semillon grapes that have been infected with botrytis mold which results in high sugar content in the juice and high residual sugar in the wine. [Ed.note – a very tasty faux Sauternes!] Between the four of us we finished off the bottle, but it was only a 375 ml bottle and the alcohol content of the wine was only 9% so we didn’t really feel any ill effects as we toasted the renovated basement.

It was another great wine meal with the added benefit of ending it in the company of good friends. We loved Mike and Pam’s refinished basement. If you get a chance to visit it in person, you might find yourself with an inexplicable hankering for a burrito and some chips and guacamole. Just ask Mike to pick a nice wine from the cellar to go with it.

The Naked Vine Italian Wine Primer

Ah, Italian wine. Love it. Love it. Love it. As the foodie that I am, I’m hard pressed to come up with wine that goes better with a meal than Italian wines. After all, one of the few things that Italians do better than making wine is cooking, and because they’ve been making wine as long as they have, winemakers in each region have been tailoring wines to cuisine for centuries.

As such, each region’s wine varieties tend to be fairly consistent as far as the basic flavor profile goes. I wouldn’t choose to drink a lot of them on their own for one reason or another, but line up some steamed mussels next to an Italian pinot grigio or a Sangiovese with marinara-sauced pasta and you’ve got yourself a little slice of heaven.

The trick, though, is figuring out which of these heavily vowel-labeled bottles is the right wine. Like France, Italy’s gotten a little bit better about putting the names of grape varietals and/or descriptive blurbs in English on the bottle for the “ordinary American consumer.” For the most part, however, the traditional convention still holds. The names on the bottle are generally the producer and the region. The grape is often nowhere to be found. As I’ve mentioned before, I spent most of my pre-Vine life thinking that “Chianti” was a grape varietal instead of a region in Tuscany.

Further confusing matters are exceptions to this rule. Some Italian wines do put the name of the grape on the label as a matter of course. The name of the grape is usually followed by the name of the locale, so you’ll see wines like Moscato d’Asti, Barbera d’Alba, etc. The first one, for instance, translates as “The Moscato (grape) from Asti (the town).” You’ll even run into “Montepulciano d’Abruzzo” vs. “Vin Noble di Montepulciano.” The first is a fruity, easy-drinking table wine made from the Montepulciano grape. The second is a somewhat complex Sangiovese-based wine from the town of Montepulciano.

But why? Why stick to an antiquated, confusing system of nomenclature, especially now that the world has grown much more wine savvy? Why not just label the bloomin’ bottles with whatever the heck is in there?

The answer?

Two thousand.

There are at least 2,000 indigenous grape varietals in Italy. Gaining an encyclopedic knowledge of all the grapes in the Boot that go into their bottles of yummy would be next to impossible. So, how do you know what you’re getting?

The Italian government simplified matters for us a little. They created a classification system somewhat similar to the ones in France. If you look at most bottles of Italian wine, you’ll see “DOC” or “DOCG” somewhere on the label. Without going into too much detail, the DOC/DOCG designation shows that a wine was made in a certain region using pre-determined methods containing certain grape varietals. This usually aligns with the geographic region, but a grape will sometimes be included in the designation if the varietal is a specialty of the area – like the aforementioned Moscato d’Asti, et al.

In my experience, Italian wine is an experience where you largely get what you pay for. This isn’t to say that there isn’t really good inexpensive wine from Italy. Think about it this way -- if you blindly choose $30 Bordeaux, there’s a chance that you’ll end up with a wine inferior to the $10 dollar one on the rack nearby. Italian? $15 Chianti will be perfectly drinkable, but also usually consistent with its brethren of the same price point. If you splurge on a $30 bottle, you can usually tell a difference in quality (although you may not feel that difference was worth the extra moolah).

There are hundreds of DOC/DOCG growing regions, but many of them are extremely small and you probably won’t run into them very often. Here are some of the more common regions and DOC/DOCG designations you’ll run into at the local wine stores for your reading and drinking pleasure…

Region: Campania
Common wines you’ll see: Taurasi, Fiano, Falerno
Major grapes: Aglianico, Piedirosso, Primitivo (red); Falanghia (white)
General info: Campania is the region around Naples. The best known wine from there is a robust red called Taurasi made from the Aglianico grape. Fiano is a seafood-loving white and Falerno is another big wine made from Primitivo (Zinfandel). Much of the rest of the wine from there has traditionally been known as fairly generic, although it’s improved greatly in recent years.

Region: Tuscany
Common wines you’ll see: Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino, Vin Noble di Montepulciano, Rosso di Montalcino, Rosso di Montepulciano, IGT Toscana
Major grape: Sangiovese (red – not many whites in Tuscany)
General info: Ah, Tuscany – home of some of the most famous reds wines in Italy. Most Tuscan reds are backboned by the Sangiovese grape. Brunello di Montalcino is also Sangiovese, but a specific clone of that particular grape. There’s also “Vin Santo” – a sweet dessert wine. You’ll also find “super Tuscan” wines that are bigger and heartier. These are almost always Sangiovese blended with a non-indigenous varietal like merlot or cabernet, often to please an American palate. If you see “IGT Toscana” on the label, it’s probably a Super Tuscan of some stripe. The wines tend to be very flexible, since Tuscan cuisine is some of the most varied (and delicious) food in the world. However, in my opinion, these wines are not the best to drink by themselves. They need food to show their full potential.

Region: Piedmont
Common wines you’ll see: Barbaresco, Barolo, Barbera d’Alba, Barbera d’Asti, Dolcetto d’Alba, Dolcetto d’Asti, Moscato d’Asti, Gavi
Major grapes: Nebbiolo, Barbera, Dolcetto, Moscato (red); Cortese (white)
General info: Piedmont is the mountainous region in the northwest corner of the country. The bulk of Italy’s hearty reds come from this region – especially Barolo and Barbaresco. They’re some of the most famous of the world’s wines. Barbera is a big, juicy red and Dolcetto is a lighter, acidic red – both of which make excellent everyday wines in their “generic” form. The versions from “named” places (like Barbera d’Alba for instance) have more complexity. Gavi is a crisp white made from the Cortese grape (not to be confused with Dan Cortese) which makes an interesting contrast. Piedmont wines are built to stand up to heavier meats and sauces. Even the whites handle cream sauces easily. There’s also Moscato d’Asti – a low alcohol, sweet sparkling wine which may be the best brunch wine in the world.

Regions: Sardinia & Sicily
Common wines & grapes you’ll see: Cannonau (red); Malvasia, Vernacchia, Verdicchio, Moscato (white)
General info: The islands of Italy usually end up putting the names of the grapes on the label, so you can generally run with those. Both islands, especially Sardinia, produce quantities of dry, crisp white wines made from Vernacchia, Malvasia, and Verdicchio that go perfectly with shellfish. Sicily produces a huge amount of dessert wine. The most common red is made from Cannonau, which is currently getting a great deal of publicity for its hypothesized life-extending properties. Cannonau is similar to Grenache and often makes for powerful wines, but on the islands, they’re made in a much lighter, more aromatic style.

Region: Veneto
Common wines you’ll see: Bardolino, Valpolicella, Soave, Prosecco
Major grapes: Corvina, Sangiovese (red); Prosecco, Garganega (white)
General Info: The region around Venice cranks out a huge amount of wine. The reds are usually blends backboned by the Corvina grape. These reds tend to be some of the lightest bodied in the country. Many are often served slightly chilled, much like Beaujolais. There’s actually a “Bardolino novello,” made in a similar style as Beaujolais Nouveau. The whites, like Soave are usually fruity and more or less dry. The Valdobbiadene district is the home of Prosecco, Italy’s most famous sparkling wine. It resembles Spanish cava in many ways. Interestingly, with all the light reds produced in Valpolicella, it’s also home to the most powerful red wine in Italy: Amarone. Amarone is made from raisinated grapes, which yields a concentrated, potent (upwards of 15% alcohol), tannic, tasty wine.

There are 14 other major wine growing regions in Italy and literally hundreds of DOC & DOCG designations. It’s worth it to explore. Ask for your Italian wine expert at your local store. There’s usually one major “Italophile” in every shop. They’ll usually steer you correctly. But for basics, this should take care of you for right now. Hope it helps!

Kinkead Ridge gets some notoriety

Our friends of the Vine at Kinkead Ridge Winery get some well-deserved international kudos:

Internationally-recognized, award-winning Kinkead Ridge Winery will be featured in Opus Vino, an illustrated wine reference book ($75) which will be published in the US, UK and Australia in November 2010, with foreign language editions in 2011 and 2012. Only two Ohio wineries are featured in this book, which features 4,500 international wineries.

The winery (904 Hamburg Street, Ripley, Ohio) will re-open for the release of the 2008 red wines on Saturday September 4 and Monday September 6. The vineyard will also be open to the public (4288 Kinkead Road) on these dates, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The new releases are the 2008 Kinkead Ridge Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Petit Verdot. The winery will also be open on September 11 from 11 a.m.-5 p.m., and will then close for harvest until the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

For more information, visit the website at http://www.KinkeadRidge.com or call 937-392-6077.

Festival of the Vine

(To be published in the Dayton City Paper.)
The demand for red wine in Lincoln Park was low this weekend.
Fraze Pavilion’s annual Festival of the Vine always brings out a crowd for sampling wine, kicking back to some cool jazz, and enjoying a shady afternoon. This year, however, with humidity approaching Evergladesian levels and heat indices to make Carl Nichols rethink his retirement, most of the crowd at the festival looked to be avoiding big mouthfuls of tannin.
However, the heat couldn’t stop the groove. A passing thunderstorm caused a brief scramble for shelter at one point, but for most of the afternoon, a steady diet of cool jazz and cooler wine kept the laid back attendees as comfortable as possible in the shade.
This year’s Festival of the Vine mirrored the previous ones. “Like in previous years, we want folks to get a chance to try a bunch of different wines, and hopefully they’ll find something that they like,” proudly stated Kevin Bratton of Heidelberg Distributing, provider of the 35 or so wines available during the evening. “We want to make sure that people get a chance to try things from everywhere. We’ve got New World – largely North American wine,” said Kevin, “We’ve got Old World wines and a sparkling wine tent. And we’ve got an Italian tent because of Claudio.”
This is a good strategy. With that many options, people will probably find new favorites. Festival of the Vine isn’t the kind of event where someone will be able to really *taste* different wines. What they will do is find out what wines are good to slug on a hot day, and that’s a good idea. On a 90 degree day, discussing nuances of torrontes vs. sauvignon blanc isn’t going to be a conversation I’ll want to have, but a “Yep. This helps me forget the heat for a second.” is.
The aforementioned “Claudio” is Claudio Salvador, importer of all the wines in the Italian tent and chief winemaker of Firelands Winery in Sandusky, Ohio. The same weekend as Festival of the Vine was “Toast of Ohio,” another wine festival in Northern Ohio. “I’ve got my crew up there taking care of that. I wanted to come down here!”
Claudio told me that he wanted to showcase some of his wines that were probably unfamiliar to many of the folks at the festival. “We like bringing wines in that people don’t necessarily know. They’re going to know them very soon. Everyone has Pinot Grigio, but with the whites, people haven’t usually tried Gavi or Grecho. Grecho, for instance, is originally from Greece. The Grecho is a very aromatic varietal. People think that it’s the ancestor of Sauvignon Blanc and such.”
Claudio said that he is planning to return to Dayton in November with some of the winemakers from the wines he was showing. “We’re going to do some dinners, which will all be just fantastic. We’re still figuring out exactly where we’re doing them.”
At Claudio’s recommendation, I gave the La Balle Grecho Basilicata a try. One a day like this, the crispness was a welcome respite from the heat. Fruity, acidic, and with a little bit of honey – I could certainly have imagined myself under one of the trees, wrapped around a bottle of the stuff.
I sampled a few of the other wines around the concourse as well. The Monticello Albarino was a refreshing quaff, as was the Grenache-based Belleruche Blanc, a white from the Rhone region in France. I also snagged a glass at one point of the Barefoot Brut sparkling wine. Despite the good banter at the tasting table – the conversation far outstripped the bubbly. The music outstripped both. 
Besides, doing heavy wine tasting isn’t the point of an afternoon like this. I’ll definitely lean towards relaxing and good jazz. As my newest friend “Ron from Atlanta” put it, “The wine doesn’t matter to me. I’m here for the music, man. I came up here for a family reunion. I heard [Nate White] was playing, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss him. He’s smooth!”
“Oh, and this weather y’all are having? It’s like springtime! I feel right at home.”

Wine Festivals -- a couple to choose from...

In case you're looking for something to do this weekend in the state of Ohio (or thereabouts), you've got a couple of options.

First off, Fraze Pavilion in Dayton is hosting the annual Festival of the Vine on Saturday the 14th. The festival starts at 1:00 in Lincoln Park, just outside the Pavilion itself. A free jazz concert runs until 7:00. There will be  over 30 wines for sampling and purchase by the glass. A ticketed concert featuring Jeff Golub, Gerald Albright, Kirk Whalum and Peter White begins at 7pm. Your intrepid wine columnist and the Sweet Partner in Crime will also be wandering the grounds. For more information, click here.

For those of you in the more northern reaches, the Toast of Ohio Wine Festival is this week from Thursday through Saturday in Sandusky at the Sandusky Bay Pavilion. The event "features twelve Ohio wineries, gourmet food, live musical entertainment and an artist's showcase." Admission to the event is $5 -- which includes a souvenir glass and two tastings. For more information, click here.

Cincinnati’s Hidden Gem – The Summit

(Cross-posted at The Man Who Cooks.)
“I don’t think this is the second floor.”
The Sweet Partner in Crime and I were wandering the halls of a Cincinnati State classroom building, looking for The Summit – the restaurant that’s the centerpiece of the Midwest Culinary Institute at Cincinnati State where we were going to meet our friends Mike and Shelley. Music and the laughter of students having some kind of event on a Saturday night (which was cool to see at a community college) filtered down the hall, but there was no sign of a restaurant.
We discovered that we’d accidentally pulled up a floor short, so we climbed one more flight of stairs and found a small sign pointing us down a hall past a closed-up snack bar area typical of what you’d find in just about any student union on any college campus in the U.S. The hall was lined on either side with darkened (but impressive looking) test kitchens. Around another corner and there we were.
So, what is The Summit? It’s a fine dining restaurant largely run and managed by the culinary arts students. As such, it’s located in the academic building on Cincinnati State’s campus where the students get their training. We arrived and were greeted with a smile by the manager, Donna Schmitt, who poured us our first round of Albariño while our table was prepared.
We were lucky enough to be seated at the “Chef’s Table” beside a large window opening into the kitchen, so we could see this eager bunch of twentysomethings honing their skills. Having spent decades in the world of the academy, I know how important it is for students to get real-world, hands-on experience. Even though I’d heard really good things about the place, I still had it in the back of my head that these were chefs-in-training. I wondered just how good a student-run high-end place could be.
I don’t wonder any more. It’s good. Real damned good.
What the place lacks in décor, it more than makes up for in service and quality. The Summit’s dining room is little more than a large open room with 30-40 tables. There’s not a lot in the way of fancy décor – but we were there to eat after all, not stare at pictures or admire faux paint. Our server (name) informed us that the menu was left intentionally vague so that patrons would ask questions so as to give the waitstaff practice in discussing the ins and outs of each course. (There was only one minor bobble in the service – we had to ask for water.)
We also had a visit from the chef de cuisine, Matt Winterrowd (a former compatriot of both Jean-Robert de Cavel and David Cook of DaVeed’s), at one point. He gave us a unique experience. Have you ever been dreamily devouring a course at a restaurant and asked about the details of the preparation? Most chefs I’ve met are more protective of their recipes than mama wolves are of their pups. When the chef came to the table, we asked him about the preparation of this insanely good morel mushroom appetizer that three of the four of us ordered. Instead of being vague, he basically walked us through the entire progress – starting with the two stocks (mushroom and chicken) that he used as a base for the sauce and moving step-by-step through the prep. (Needless to say, there will be some replication attempts as soon as I find some good ‘shrooms.)
So, what did we have? Three of the four of us had an appetizer of morel mushrooms creamed in an Idiazabal cheese sauce with shallots and fresh oregano. Orgasmic, off the charts good. The SPinC was the outlier with a very solid choice – probably the best soft shell crab I’d tasted outside of Baltimore. It was presented with a salsa of black beans, lime juice, avocado, and chilis.
For entrees, Shelley and the SPinC had sockeye salmon topped with a parsley-based pesto in a roasted tomato sauce with roasted fennel and potato gnocchi. The SPinC greeted her meal with reverent silence for several bites, which is far from the norm for her while diving into good food.
Mike had handmade pappardelle pasta in a cream sauce with prosciutto, parmesan, and baby peas. As simple as the dish was – the freshness of the ingredients made the entrée memorable. Mike said it was “about best tasting pasta” he’d ever had. I hold Mike’s cooking skills in high esteem, so this is serious praise.
As for myself, I tried the “teres major,” which was a cut of beef I’d never heard of, much less tried. It’s sometimes called the “shoulder tenderloin,” and isn’t used often. It’s from the front of the cow rather than the rear. It looks like a very small filet and it’s sliced thin. Served up next to a cauliflower and porcini mushroom mash, grilled asparagus, and an absolutely scrumptious sauce that I embarrassingly cannot remember, I certainly enjoyed myself.
The four of us split a delicious artisanal cheese plate for dessert. There was a Tuscan Pecorino, a “Humboldt Fog” goat cheese, Mahon (another hard cheese) from California, and Maytag Blue – a delicious stinky number from Iowa.
Additionally, the SPinC and I split a “black and blue” – a blackberry/blueberry cobbler with browned butter topping some handmade ice cream. Mike and Shelley had angel food cake stuffed with strawberries and thyme with a buttermilk icing. By this point, we were beyond stuffed, but we were floating on a culinary cloud of goodness. And the cost? For the entire meal plus wine (they’ve got a very solid wine list, too), we got out of there for under $70 a person, including tax and tip.
This was one of the best dining values that I’ve experienced in Cincinnati – but there were less than a dozen tables occupied over the course of the evening that we saw. My guess is that the setting – finding one’s way through a college campus to get to the restaurant – discourages a number of people. It shouldn’t.
If you’re someone who needs five-star décor to go with your food, then the Summit isn’t for you. If you’re someone who appreciates good food and would enjoy a relaxed evening with friends where conversation and food can be the centerpiece, then you really owe it to yourself to give this place a try. Go. Quiz the servers, ask a bunch of questions, and enjoy. I can almost guarantee you a good experience.

Planet Bordeaux (Syndicate, Fool!)

Mike Wangbickler of Balzac Communications recently gave me the opportunity to get a first look at “Planet Bordeaux” – the new marketing project by winemakers in the Bordeaux region. The project’s mission is to help people realize they can afford Bordeaux wines of quality without either leasing their first-born or slugging the scrapings from the bottom of fermenting tanks. “Folks can afford Bordeaux as an everyday wine. It doesn’t just have to be for collectors,” said Mike.

First off, a quick review of Bordeaux wine. Bordeaux is arguably the most famous French wine region (the argument would come from their Burgundian neighbors). Some of the most expensive and sought after wines in the world call this slice of France home. Red Bordeaux is always a blend of cabernets sauvignon and franc, merlot, petit verdot, and malbec. White Bordeaux is a blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon.

Red Bordeaux, even though they’re a mix of some varietals that we may think of as heavy, tend to be lighter-styled, tannic reds. Even inexpensive Bordeaux can have complexity to the flavor. There’s usually an earthy or “cigar box” aroma and flavor along with the dark fruit, and finishes that are long and tannic. White Bordeaux usually are quite acidic, minerally, and have floral or herbal scents and flavors. They’re also usually very light in color. The deeper colored whites have more Semillon and tend to be heavier.

The mystery, allure, and frustrations of Bordeaux can often be traced back to the caste system for wines. In 1855, a “ranking system” for French wines was developed based on terroir, winemaking quality, overt and covert bribery, etc. The “best” single vineyard chateaux were classified into five “growths” – the Premier Crus are Chateau LaTour, Chateau Margaux, Chateau Haut-Brion, and Chateaux Lafite and Mouton Rothschild.

Below these are the AOC wines – wines from a certain region. These are your regional wines – Chateaux that can call themselves “Bordeaux” but aren’t in the “growth” rankings. The grapes must be grown in Bordeaux, but they come from one chateau or commune’s holdings, although they’re not necessarily single vineyard products. These tend to be a step below the “classed growths,” but are still considered from reasonably to really good wine. You know you’re looking at one of these wines if you see the following words on the bottle:

• Bordeaux Rouge (Red) AOC
• Bordeaux Supérieur Rouge AOC
• Bordeaux Rosé AOC
• Bordeaux Clairet (Dark Rosé) AOC
• Bordeaux Blanc (White) AOC
• Bordeaux Supérieur Blanc AOC
• Cremant de Bordeaux (Sparkling) AOC

Below AOC is “Vin de Pays” – a region’s “table wine.” Vin de Pays simply means that the grapes are grown anywhere in that region, but they can be from anywhere therein.

So, the top grade goes for hundreds of dollars a bottle. Collectors hoard these. Thus, there’s always a demand. The vin de pays can be found anywhere. It’s inexpensive. Thus, there’s always a demand. The AOC wines, trapped in the middle, were faced with quite a quandary. These wines are quite a cut in quality above the vin de pays, but many aren’t much more expensive. Imagine you’re a winemaker and you’re putting together quality product, could make a profit with a relatively low price point, and are still a really good deal in any case. If you could only get the word out – people would snap it up, right?

Enter the Byzantine (or would that be Gallic?) world of French wine law. There are restrictions on marketing. Chateaux and communes cannot partner to market their wines. They have to work individually, for the most part. So, not surprisingly, the Chateaux with the most cash get the most run in the press, since they can afford the publicity. The best selling AOC red Bordeaux is Mouton-Cadet – a little side project of Chateau Mouton Rothschild. You can find that Bordeaux almost anywhere. It’s almost as ubiquitous as Duboeuf’s Beaujolais.

So, along comes Syndicat Viticole des appellations controlees Bordeaux et Bordeaux Supérieur, also known as the Bordeaux Syndicate (not to be confused with Rhyme Syndicate). The entire region figured that since they can’t market against each other – they’d market alongside each other! “Planet Bordeaux” (online at http://www.planete-bordeaux.eu/) followed.

Thanks to Mike and Balzac, I was able to procure a few of the Syndicate’s samples. We had three bottles – one white and two red. Thoughts? First up, the white:

Château Thieuley 2009 Bordeaux Blanc ($14) – We opened this one weekend afternoon when we just needed something good to sip on. I was surprised at the nose on this wine. I expected more citrus, but I got a lot of melon scents and some yeast. The taste – it’s a nicely balanced flavor of thick citrus and mineral. The finish is soft and lingers for a bit with a touch of acidity. This wine probably deserved a dinner pairing, but hey – we were thirsty! “You can tell it’s not top line white Bordeaux, but it’s very drinkable,” commented the Sweet Partner in Crime. We moved on to the reds:

Château du Lort 2006 Bordeaux Rouge ($13)
Château Mirambeau Papin 2006 Bordeaux Supérieur Rouge ($20)
The difference between Rouge and Supérieur Rouge? The latter come from older vines as a rule, and they also must be in bottle for at least a year before release.
One tip: Bordeaux Reds MUST be decanted. The young ones need decanting to smooth their edges. The old ones need it to open up all of their potential yummy goodness. The contrast in both these wines was pretty remarkable once we let them sit for a bit. We tried them on their own first.

The “standard” had only a slight “Old World funk” on the nose -- more of a fresh-cut wood and some blackberry. The body starts almost tartly and hangs in there before transitioning into a tannic, graphite like finish that’s moderate. Not very earthy, if you like that kind of thing. The Supérieur had much better balance. The extra time in barrel smoothed off some of the tartness and gave it a “broader” nose – some earth, some fruit, some wood. The taste was quite pleasant, not too powerful or earthy, and with a nice transition of blackberry and cherry into tannins that hang in gently for awhile.

With some lamb loin chops, the standard red actually did quite well. The lamb calmed down the tannins and cut down on the edges of the tartness. The flavor became brighter and fruitier and turned into a nice contrast. After a few sips and bites, the Supérieur emerged as a dark, fruity sidecar.The Supérieur’s subtler flavor merged much more as an “alongside” flavor than the “standing out” flavor of the standard red.

After a couple of hours, they continued to evolve. The regular became “brighter” – with almost a floral bit on the nose. The Supérieur became deeper and darker, adding plums and tar to the nose, The regular red’s sharp edges smoothed and the wine balanced much more. Even so, I personally thought the Supérieur was a better wine all around.

Marketing or not, I think anyone who’s really interested in learning about wines owes it to themselves to form a decent idea of a region’s style and flavor. These AOC wines from Bordeaux give a nice window into those profiles, so these would all be good “starter” wines to help you develop a true sense of a) whether you even like these wines and b) whether you want to explore some more.

Wine and Dinner of the Month Club – July 2010

If you live in the Cincinnati area, as we do, one of the great culinary treasures is Findlay Market, a municipal market first opened in 1855. I don’t really consider myself a foodie, but walking in the market and seeing the goods on display at the various vendors’ booths almost always inspires me to try something different. With apologies to our vegan and vegetarian friends, some of my favorite places are the meat vendors. Often I have looked at a sumptuous rack of baby back ribs and thought, “I’d like to throw that on the grill sometime!” So this month I get my chance. I picked up the ribs at Mackie Quality Meats and a mesquite dry rub from the spice vendor Herbs & Spice and Everything Nice and got to work on July’s wine dinner.

Menu
Sweet and Sour Slaw

Warm Green Bean Pesto Salad

Barbecued Ribs

Graeter's Ice Cream

Wine
2008 Seghesio Zinfandel

In this case the ribs were actually the easy part. My brother-in-law, Rob, told me his method which was super easy and made for incredibly juicy, tender and succulent ribs.

[SPOILER ALERT: In order to help Rob maintain his Lone Star street cred, those of you from Texas please stop reading now and join back in below.]

When I pictured myself cooking these ribs it was standing at the grill, patiently watching over my prize as it cooked over low heat and absorbed the smoke from some wood chips I threw into the grill. You know, like a real man. But Rob gave me a better way – cooked in the oven. Start by putting on your Tommy Bahama-like shirt and pre-heating the oven to 225 degrees Fahrenheit. Coat the ribs in the dry rub and wrap in aluminum foil, sealing it tightly. Put the ribs on a baking sheet (juices will leak) and put in the oven for just a little less than 5 hours. I went with 4 hours and 45 minutes. You don’t even have to watch them, which gives you plenty of time to make side dishes. Once the ribs were done in the oven, I took them out and finished them on the grill a few minutes while brushing on some barbecue sauce. You could also do this in the oven under the broiler, which would probably have been easier since they were so tender that the rib rack started falling apart when I tried to turn it over on the grill.

[You Texans can rejoin the conversation now. I think Rob’s reputation is intact.]

And there you have it. You often hear the phrase “fall off the bone tender”, and these ribs really were! We could not even pick them up by the bone to eat because the meat would just fall away, and they were so juicy you could almost drink them.

While the ribs were cooking, I made the side dishes. The slaw can be made early on, and the recipe even suggests making it the night before so the cabbage and other vegetables can marinate in the dressing overnight. It was just slightly sweet with a good vinegary tang. I chopped the cabbage pretty thick so it was crunchy and hearty.

The green bean salad was sort of an olio of things we had around the house. The beans were from my parents’ garden last year. We had helped them pick, wash and break the bean, and Christine helped my mom can them. As my Dad said, “She got the full bean experience.” I added some small, boiled potatoes that we also picked up at Findlay, some corn we had leftover in the fridge and some chopped onion. I mixed into this some pesto that Christine had made from the basil in our garden and warmed the whole thing up. Just prior to serving, I cut up some tomato wedges and placed them on top. I had opened up the wine to let it breathe a little and after plating the meal, I poured us a couple glasses and we sat down to eat.

As I said before, the ribs were tender and juicy, and the barbecue sauce gave them a nice smoky flavor with just enough sweetness. The acidic tang of the coleslaw provided a perfect counterpoint to these flavors, and the bean salad provided additional flavor variety. The wine went nicely with the entire meal as it complemented the ribs and was not overpowered by them. It was a nice counterbalance to the tartness and acidity of the coleslaw. Needless to say, between the two of us we finished off the entire rack of ribs and the bottle of wine.

Christine relaxed for a bit while I cleaned up the kitchen and then we went for dessert. I had not planned a dessert because I figured what would be a better after a meal of barbecued ribs than ice cream, and in this part of the country, there is only one ice cream – Graeter’s. A couple years ago a Graeter’s store opened up about eight blocks from us. This is a good thing because now we walk over for a scoop instead of buying a pint and gorging ourselves with the whole thing. Self-control and Graeter’s are not two words that play well together. Christine had a scoop of her favorite, coconut chip, and I had a scoop of mint chocolate chip. We walked home completely satisfied. It was another great meal with another great wine.

The Alphabet Soup Project – “D” is for “Decant”

How many times have you heard or read something to this effect in a wine description:

“Make sure you open the bottle and let it breathe for an hour or so before you drink it.”

Astute Vine readers probably remember that very recommendation from me in this space.

Guess what? Anyone who tells you something like this (including myself, admittedly) is more or less full of it as it applies to most bottles. Honestly, if you crack a bottle and let it sit for awhile, any difference in flavor – at least initially – is going to be largely psychosomatic…like most tasting notes. When someone tells you that a wine has a “strawberry nose,” you’ll unconsciously sniff for strawberries.

Same deal with letting a wine breathe. When you’re told that a wine tastes better after you uncork it for the hour, you’ll usually believe it. We think there should be a difference after a wine “breathes.” There is…if you actually let the wine breathe correctly. Correctly letting a wine breathe usually involves decanting.

Decanting wine is all about physics. Think about why we swirl wine – since alcohol evaporates on contact with air, bringing those wonderful aromatics to our nose so we get flavor. The more surface area gets exposed to air, the more aromatic a wine will become. Some wines also develop a sulfury smell or a sweatsock stink after being in bottle for awhile. Exposing the wine to air allows some of those scents to dissipate a bit. Simply opening a bottle and letting it stand only allows a tiny bit of the wine’s surface to contact the air. Using a decanter provides much more oxygen exposure, which causes the wine to “open” more quickly and effectively.

So, what is a decanter? In a nutshell, it’s simply any container into which you can carefully pour (usually) an entire bottle to expose more of the wine’s surface area to oxygen. Decanters come in all shapes, sizes, and styles, ranging from very simple to curvy, twisty shapes that make for better art than function. I mean, if you’re feeling vampiric…

But, honestly, I prefer something like this:

I can’t remember where we came up with this, honestly. I think it may have been a bottle of white zinfandel once upon a time that I bought for sangria, and we’ve used it as a flower vase ever since. It’s a perfect size – comfortably fits an entire bottle, easy to pour from, and I don’t have to worry about being clumsy with crystal. You can also use a water pitcher. Works fine. In a real pinch, just pour the glasses early and put them somewhere that they won’t be disturbed.

How to decant wine? Easy. Open the bottle, then pour the contents into the decanter slowly and reasonably gently. I use the pouring method long-perfected by any knowledgeable sophomore at a keg party – tilt the decanter and pour down the side. While you don’t have to worry about your wine foaming up everywhere, cabernet sauvignon stains don’t come out as easily as Natty Light. After you’ve poured your wine, just set the decanter down somewhere for 20 minutes or so (longer for certain wines) – and go to town. Now, if you want to show off the bottle itself, you can pour the wine into a decanter, let it sit, and then pour it back into the bottle. Use a funnel! (Another side benefit of decanting -- it’s an opportunity to get any sediment out of your wine – especially unfiltered wine. Wine sediment usually doesn’t have any effect on the taste, but “gritty” isn’t a sensation I want when I’m quaffing.)

During the afternoon & evening of the Sweet Partner in Crime’s recent birthday, we did a little experiment with a few bottles. We opened each bottle and tasted it immediately. Then we decanted, let the wine sit for a bit, then sampled it again. We used the following bottles:

• Domaine Bachelet-Monnot 2007 Bourgogne Blanc
• Saintsbury 2004 Carneros Pinot Noir
• Tenimenti Fontanafredda “La Villa” 2000 Barolo

First up, the white Burgundy. I don’t usually decant white wines since they’re made to be drunk young. As a rule, the younger a wine’s made to drink, the less good you’re going to do by decanting. Most of these wines, however, are built to last and we thought it would be interesting to see the contrast. At first taste, the “typical” white Burgundy profile came out – fairly crisp and minerally in a lean style with plenty of citrus. After decanting, new flavors emerged. Peach and pear popped up, as did a mild oakiness that really pointed up the lemony flavors. Made a good wine that much better. I decided to do a “day of small plates” and started off with some smoked salmon and crackers. The oakiness worked well with the smoked flavors and the acidity cut through the oils nicely.

I picked up the Saintsbury on a “vintage clearout” sale – it’s typically around $35. This vintage was getting towards the end of its “recommended peak,” and it was pretty straightahead pinot at first taste. I certainly got the “smoked cherry” flavors you’ll get from most pinot, but it didn’t seem overly complex. When you have a wine that’s getting near the end of its peak, decanting will allow you to wring all of the flavor you can from the wine. With the Saintsbury, after a little decantation, revelation. The nose picked up a caramel twist and the body added some yummy ginger and raspberry flavors. The smokiness was enhanced at the end. This went from a solid, everyday pinot to something more supple and sexy. I made a little “seared sashimi” with it. I read it was a good pairing, and I can stand and tell you to three decimal points that it’s heavenly.

Finally, the Barolo. Now, Barolo is a special case. These powerful Italian wines from the Piedmont are so tannic on bottling that they usually need a minimum of 8-10 years in bottle before the bitter edge has softened enough to drink. Tannic wines almost always improve with decanting. (The same applies to young California cabernets and the like.) This Barolo was a great deal from Garagiste Wines – even so, it was still around $45. When first opened, the light color of this wine belied the power within. At first sip, though, it was tannic but not overly so and fairly easy drinking. I might have even confused it with a Chianti. The recommended decant time for Barolo is at least a couple of hours, so I set it aside and got to work on my special birthday eggplant parmesan. When I served it up and poured the wine – a transformation. The wine “woke up.” That’s about as well as I can explain it. Everything was more powerful. The tannins were stronger, the plummy, somewhat tarry flavors were pronounced, and the wonderful complexity showed up. It went delightfully with the parmesan. Actually, the post-decanting version was too strong in the opinion of the SPinC. She said that she liked it better before decanting, actually. As I’ve said, everyone’s palate is different.

So, when should you decant? Almost anytime you can, really. Unless a wine is a bargain-line wine, you’re probably going to see a marked improvement in flavor and complexity after you decant a wine for a bit. In a pinch, you can use an aerator. These work well for most wines – but for something that needs more time in air (older European wines or younger American wines in general), you’re still going to be better off finding something to pour the wine into for awhile.

Guest Column -- Wine and Dinner of the Month Club – June 2010

Another mouthwatering entry from Jeff, halfway through his gift to Christine the Pie Queen…

The wine this month was a very nice Beaujolais paired with a recipe suggested by Mike at TNV. I put together a small cheese plate for an appetizer and a very simple, fruity dessert perfect for the warmer months. You may remember that last month we had Thai grilled chicken. This month we are sticking with the Asian theme. Enjoy.

Menu
Assorted Cheese and Fruit Plate

Thai Grilled Beef Salad

Mango and Melon Dessert

Wine
Henry Fesse 2007 Moulin-a-Vin Beaujolais

I started by making the mango puree for the dessert and putting it in the refrigerator to chill. I then opened the wine and had a brief panic when the cork broke in half while still in the bottle. I figured that couldn’t be a good sign, but I was able to get the rest of the cork out and found finding the bottom of it wet and the wine just fine. The wine had good fruit with a nice soft finish and not a lot of tannin. It went great with the appetizer and the main course.

Next, I got to work on the cheese plate. I set out some grapes, sliced pears, and bread as well as three different cheeses that I picked up at our local Kroger: brie, boucheron, and morbier. They were in that order as far as pungency. The brie was creamy and smooth while the boucheron, a goat’s milk cheese, was a little more pungent but very tasty. The morbier was even more pungent – so much so that we couldn’t even eat it. I told Christine it smelled like feet. She said she didn’t mind that because she loves stinky cheese. But after smelling it, she described it as something dead and rotting in the ocean. I think we finally agreed that it smelled like feet, if you wrapped the feet in a dead jellyfish and let it sit in the sun on the beach for a week. In retrospect, perhaps we got a bad block of cheese, so we just stuck with the two other cheeses and the fruit and it all went very well with the wine.

After the appetizer, I started preparing the main course and side dish. I prepared the beef for the grill and, at Christine’s suggestion, put some sliced zucchini in a foil packet with some olive oil, graded ginger and garlic. I also threw in some seasoning – Trade Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute to be exact – which added a nice zing. I wasn’t going to make the zucchini, but we had it to use and Christine is always pushing the healthy stuff on me. I put the beef and zucchini on the grill and prepared the rest of the salad ingredients, including some shredded mint from our backyard. After six minutes I turned the beef, let it cook for another six minutes, and then took it and the zucchini off the grill. I sliced the beef and added it to the other ingredients in the salad. I plated it up and we sat down to dinner. The wine went very well with the myriad of flavors in the salad and we finished the bottle. (Note from Christine: This was one of my most favorite meals so far – try it!)

After the main course, we took a little break and Christine relaxed by the pond while I cleaned up and prepared the dessert. I put some of the pureed mango in stemmed glasses and added watermelon balls with a sprig of mint for garnish. The dessert was cool, light and refreshing - a perfect ending to another great meal.

Here’s a quick preview of next month. I’ll be doing barbecued pork ribs to go with a zinfandel, and I might just have a recipe from a special guest contributor to this guest contributor. Check in and see how it turns out.

The Sweetly Logical Fallacy

When I do wine tastings, a lot of people say, “I don’t like dry wines – I only like sweet wines.” There’s nothing inherently wrong with liking sweet wine. A person’s taste is…well…personal. However, the notion of a wine as either “dry” or “sweet” is little more than a logical fallacy – the same fallacy used so effectively by certain political parties: the false dichotomy.

In case you haven’t taken a philosophy class lately, a false dichotomy is presenting two alternatives as an either-or choice, even though other alternatives exist. “You’re either with us or against us” is a classic example, because rarely are things that clear cut. (Unless you’re a Teabagger …)

Yes, one can think of “dry” and “sweet” as the ends of a range, but using “dry” and “sweet” as the way to describe a wine is a false choice. Why? Because not only are there countless shades of gray in between the two, but there are also other ranges that play into wine’s flavor that get lumped into “dry” or “sweet” – so one can’t simply isolate the level of sugar and call it a description.

When most people start learning about wine, they gravitate towards the varietals they’ve heard people talk about over and over: cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, white zinfandel. For many, the first experience with red wine is with big ol’ California cabs, and the high level of tannins isn’t an easy thing to deal with initially. So, after what probably wasn’t a pleasant experience, they ask someone about the wine and get “Oh, red wines are dry wines. That’s why they taste so strong.”

There’s a similar effect with chardonnay, especially California chardonnay. A mouthful of butter-covered charcoal can be a rough start. (Yes, oaky chardonnays are tannic whites.) They hear, “Yep. Chardonnay. That’s a dry white wine.” Our poor newbie then turns to the bottle of Beringer White Zin. It tastes sweet and easy to drink (and brings back memories of high school Boone’s Farm adventures) – so they stick with pink syrup and now have a prejudice against a huge slice of the wine world.

Seriously, think about how bitter your first espresso was. Coffee’s bitterness also comes from tannins. (Mine was in a coffee shop in the Mission District of San Francisco. Took me 45 minutes to drink the damned thing…and it wasn’t exactly enjoyable.) While the bitterness of tannin can have a “drying” effect – it’s not what makes a wine “dry.” A wine’s dryness or sweetness comes from sugar, not tannin.

Think about how wine is made. As I’ve mentioned before, when yeast is added to the grape’s juice, the yeast eats the sugar, farts carbon dioxide, and pisses alcohol (until it dies of either starvation or alcohol poisoning). If the yeast consumes all of the sugar in a vat of juice, the wine is totally dry. When a winemaker stops the fermentation before all the sugar is consumed, what’s left over is the residual sugar. The more residual sugar, the greater the level of sweetness. If you’re looking at the specs on a bottle of wine, the amount of residual sugar is either presented as a percentage or in grams per liter. (Take g/l, divide by 10, and stick a % on the end if you want to convert.) Dry wines will be under 1% residual sugar, if they have any at all. Off-dry wines will be between 1-5%. Sweet wines will be 5% and up. Also, the higher the residual sugar, in general, the lower the alcohol content.

Why would a winemaker leave residual sugar in a wine? A winemaker worth his or her salt strives for balance in wine. The balance of dry and sweet is an important factor. Too much sugar and the sweetness overwhelm everything else. Not enough and other flavors can take over, rendering a wine unpleasant. The balance for sweetness is acidity. To keep a sweeter wine balanced, the acid level needs to go up. Too little acid and too much sugar makes for a white zinfandelish experience.

As for red wines, “dry” and “sweet” don’t really apply, since there are very few “sweet” reds. Most red wines contain virtually no residual sugar. If you’re describing a red, you’re going to be more interested in the level of tannin than the sweetness, so there’s not really a complement to the “dry” of tannin – other than “not tannic.”

(There’s also another reason why winemakers leave residual sugar. There’s an old saying: “A little sugar covers a lot of flaws.” These winemakers are either unlucky or lazy.)

But let’s get back to the whole dry/sweet question. Stepping outside the world of White Zinfandel, word association with “sweet wine” usually lands on Riesling. If we just want to look at the real difference between sweet and dry, white wine is the easiest place to get an illustration – Riesling especially. While the fruit and other flavor characteristics are certainly varied, let’s just focus on the sugar levels for now. I looked at three Rieslings.:

• Pierre Sparr 2008 Riesling Alsace (bone dry)
• D’Arenberg 2007 “The Dry Dam” Riesling (off-dry)
• Mönchof 2006 Estate Riesling QbA (sweet)

If you decide to try these side-by-side-by side, start with the driest and work your way to the sweetest. Pour, swirl, and sip. The differences will literally leap out of the glass at you.

First, the Pierre Sparr. A lot of folks have “tooth achingly sweet” as their mental reference for Riesling. A sip of this will throw that notion out the window. There’s almost no sweetness to this wine at all. There’s plenty of fruit and a little bit of a mineral finish, but the yeast has done its work here. This is common with Rieslings (and most other whites) from Alsace. The general wine style is very dry. Residual Sugar – basically none.

Secondly, try the D’Arenberg. This is a good example of a wine that’s “off-dry,” which means that there’s a little bit of residual sugar as a balancing agent for the other flavors. In this case, the D’Arenberg is a fairly acidic wine, so a little residual sugar tames the tart “bite” that acidic wines often have. The sugar is more of an honey undertone than sweetness right up in your face. Residual sugar – 1.1%

Finally, the Mönchof. You could certainly class this one as a sweet wine. The residual sugar level is about 5%, which also yields a lower-alcohol wine. The acid level is similar to the D’Arenberg – but the acid in this case prevents the wine from becoming syrupy. If you want a general idea of the level of sweetness and flavor, think baked apples with a little less sugar. It’s still reasonably well-balanced and quite pleasant. (And, at under 10% alcohol, you could almost have it for breakfast.)

To go back to the beginning, to help someone transition away from the world of Black Tower, Beringer, and other such syrups, I’ll usually slide something along the lines of the D’Arenberg or a friendly sauvignon blanc. I might then let them try a merlot or zinfandel if they’re willing to go red. Once they’ve made that transition, it’s a quick jump to broadening the horizons – which is the point of trying new wines, after all…