A follow up to Gazapacho...

I spoke of some possibly wine pairings in my last post. I think many may be looking at their garden and thinking the same thing. Ironically enough, I received a nice little recipe from my friend Robin Garr who oversses the internet's finest wine & food discussion boards. For a quick gazpacho recipe, visit last week's Food Lovers' Newsletter and see my pervious post on what to pair it with. Robin seemed to come to may of the same conclusions about food matches - Rose, dry, crisp spanish whites such as Albarino or Txakoli and (as I added) bubblies of all sorts always work....

Quick Gazpacho - and Finding A Wine For It

(Note: I have discontinued the series of posts on choosing wine from a wine list as I have taken a job as Wine Director of a rival restaurant in Pittsburgh. But I will continue to write about matching food & wine, beginning right now.) If I take a peek at my garden, I have tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and corn. So I walked down to the grocery store and bought an onion and went to the fish market for some shrimp and - voila! - fresh gazpacho!

The problem is gazpacho isn't the easiest thing to find a wine for. Tomatoes have a good bit of acidity in them. + as a chef once taught me, the key to great gazpacho is a really good vinegar providing the balance.

If you search around the internet, you see a lot of people that aren't sure what will work. You also see a lot of people who give things a try and fail.

Here are my two suggestions. (1) Take a hint from the food. Where is gazpacho from? Spain. Try a crisp Spanish white. This was the solution I used. At my restaurant I'm currently pouring 2006 Albarino from the producer Vionta in Galicia. Crisp, fresh and lively, the albarino and gazpacho are perfect comlplements to each other, each as refreshing as the other. (2) One other choice is a rose with good acidity. I recommend either a Tavel Rose from France's Rhone Valley or an Italian Rosado.

In short, don't fret. You already know that you have the perfect ingredients for gazpacho in your garden. Follow my suggestios and you'll have no problems...

Garth Brooks - The Thunder Rolls (Brilliant)

Here's a good video

The Thunder Rolls

I seem to have an abundance of time recently :) Let's review, first, I nearly destroyed my shoulder and had to drug myself up for the better part of week. Then I had to skip out of town for a good friend's wedding (drinking a bit of madeira in the process). So I wake up Thursday, actually through no choice of my own, because frankly we were in the middle of probably the worst thunderstorms I have ever seen or heard. My power finally went out about 8:00 or 8:30 AM and about 10:00, bored out of my skull and with no TV, TiVo, computer/internet or radio, I went over a friend's house a few miles away. Sure enough about 2:30 as the storm continued if not intensified, his power got dinged too and I was back where I started. On Friday morning, with my power still out, I decided to leave my apartment and head for the "sticks", namely my mother's house about an hour away.

The end result no that I have returned to my home is that our "dinner" that we have been featuring in our choosing a wine from a wine list series of posts is becoming the longest dinner in history. Even so, I could't help but mention this article detailing the two upcoming and controversial films about the 1976 Judgement of Paris Tasting, a tasting that I have discussed previously. (I must admit that I was unaware of the two movies until this article was pointed out by Robin Garr, custodian of Robin Garr's Wine Lover's Page, a long running place for me to both learn and interact with wine geeks from around the world.)

I just want to add a small point, have we lost our _______ minds? (Fill in the appropriate adjective of your choice.) So I guess Sideways wins a few awards so now we're going to start making wine movies - in fact two rival wine movies - about a ______ wine tasting? I can just picture it now, thirty years from now, a movie about William Bellomo and I and our friends from Philadelphia cooking appetizers and drinking wine at the old apartment above the Detour (jazz club) in Manhattan.

Judgement at 13th Street

William Bellomo played by David Beckham

Alan Uchrinscko played by Ashton Kutcher

Doug Donovan played by Drew Carey

James Regan played by Ray Liotta

and starring Michael Madrigale played by Danny Devito.

Can't wait. Waterworld here we come...

Choosing Wine From a Wine List (Part 3)

This post is part of a series of ongoing posts that I began a few weeks ago on choosing a wines from a wine list. If you have not read the previous posts, please first visit:

Choosing a Sparkling Wine
Choosing Appetizers

(NB: I have no affiliation or financial interest in the Sonoma Grille, the restaurant featured in these posts.)

-------

So here's where we stand:

Aperetif
NV Iron Horse Brut Russian River Cuvee

First Courses
Tapas for Two: Shrimp Tempura, Veal Cheek, Ahi Tartare, Sesame Fried Calamari
Serrano Wrapped Diver Sea Scallops
Wild Mushroom and Goat Cheese Strudel

Now we need a white wine. We have already determined that we'd like a white wine that will have some or most of the following characteristics (as explained in our previous post): we need a wine that is palate-cleansing; it will cut through fatty fish or greasy fried foods; it should match the spiciness of our foods, be earthy and ripe with good acidity. The wine list is here so that you can follow along.

I'll be honest, instinctively I was going to shy away from a California Chardonnay because many of them are too full-bodied, creamy and/or buttery for a few of these dishes. For example, a full, buttery California Chardonnay would be a terrible choose for Shrimp Tempura or Ahi Tartare. But let's go back to this.

When I think of a palate-cleansing, spicy, earthy, ripe white with good acidity, I think Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc. Those are the two wines that are the most likely candidates. We've already determined that we're drinking California no matter what in the first post because we're at the Sonoma Grille. And California doesn't specialize much in Riesling, a fact reflected on the wine list: not one choice above $50. I'm a bit tempted by the Wente because they offer fairly consistent value, but a $40 isn't special enough for this dinner. We're really looking between $50 and $100, $75 would be about perfect.

So let's look at Sauvignon Blanc. Between $50 and $100 we have four choices. Three of four are from the Napa Valley, and the Napa Valley is generally very hot. We don't want to take the chance of getting a rich, full, buttery Sauvignon Blanc an unfortunate side-effect of heat on white wine. That leaves us with the Merry Edwards Sauvignon Blanc at $97, probably too rich for my blood for a Sauvignon Blanc.

Keep in mind, many of these choices would work perfectly fine with richer dishes, but considering that are appetizers run the gamut from Ahi Tartare to Goat Cheese Strudel, we need a wine with more flexibility.

Let's peak at the Chardonnays, between $50 and $100.

BV Reserve 2001 (Carneros) 15 52
Domaine Chandon 2001 (Carneros) 55
Trefethen 2003 (Napa) 17 56
Talbott "Sleepy Hollow" 2002 (Santa Lucia) 18 57
Marimar 2002 (Sonoma) 63
Simi Reserve 2003 (Sonoma) 64
Ojai 2003 (Santa Barbara) 65
Jordan 2002 (Sonoma) 20 68
Staglin “Salus” 2002 (Napa) 74
Chateau Montelena 2003 (Napa) 223 77
Mer Soleil 2002 (Napa) 78
Kalin "Cuvee LD" 1994 (Sonoma) 82
Sonoma Cutrer “The Cutrer” 2002 (Sonoma) 85
Cakebread 2004 (Napa) 89
Michaud 2000 (Monterey) 90
Rochioli 2002 (Russian River) 95
Grgich 2001 (Napa) 97
Patz & Hall "Dutton" 2003 (Napa) 98

Fair or unfair, we are going to eliminate the Napa wines for the same reason that we elminated them in the case of our Sauvignon Blanc, we don't want to take the chance that the wine is to full. So let's look again:

BV Reserve 2001 (Carneros) 15 52
Domaine Chandon 2001 (Carneros) 55
Talbott "Sleepy Hollow" 2002 (Santa Lucia) 18 57
Marimar 2002 (Sonoma) 63
Simi Reserve 2003 (Sonoma) 64
Ojai 2003 (Santa Barbara) 65
Jordan 2002 (Sonoma) 20 68
Kalin "Cuvee LD" 1994 (Sonoma) 82
Sonoma Cutrer “The Cutrer” 2002 (Sonoma) 85
Michaud 2000 (Monterey) 90
Rochioli 2002 (Russian River) 95

The BV Reserve and Domaine Chandon are probably less than we want to spend, plus Chandon is best known for it's sparklers. They are also widely available. Talbott "Sleepy Hollow" I always love, but it's too rich for our purposes.

I'm eliminating Rochioli because, despite the fact that their wines are delicious, they are also too ripe for our purposes. I'm elimating Sonoma-Cutrer because that wine has skyrocketed in price and really should be $60. Jordan is tempting, but probably also too ripe. Marimar seems interesting, and if it was recommended by my server I might consider it, but I know little about it other than the fact that it is owned by the Torres family of Spain and the vineyards are largely Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast. Stylistically I have no idea where it falls, so short of a recommendation, I'm skipping it. Simi is too widely available. I want something that I might not have every day.

We're left with these choices:

Ojai 2003 (Santa Barbara) 65
Kalin "Cuvee LD" 1994 (Sonoma) 82
Michaud 2000 (Monterey) 90

Ojai can be pretty nice. Earthy and with good acidity. I'm going to pass on Ojai only because I have found in the past that their wines take a little bit of time to fully integrate the oak and the primary flavors. In two years, especially if the price remained constant, this might be my choice, but not today. Michaud Winery is owned by Michael Michaud, former winemaker of Chalone. The vineyard is way up in the mountains - mountain vineyards are cooler and have better acidity. This is an excellent choice. But I'm taking Kalin. I have always loved Kalin's wines. First of all you'll notice the vintage on the wine - 1994. Kalin always holds bottles, only to realease them much later. This very well may be the current release for all I know. Kalin wines tend to have good structure (+1); because of their age they show a variety of complex earthy and developed charcteristics (+1) without sacrificing fruit (+1); and Kalin Chards tend to fall on the light- to medium- side in terms of body (+1). This is my choice, but if you're uncomfortable with the Kalin, a unique wine when compared to its peers, you can get the Michaud.

Next we're going to pick our main courses and reds...

What to drink with George Washington...

I'm fresh off a trip to New York as one of my best friends was married last Sunday. Actually, fresh probably isn't the best word, more like exhausted, but I digress. We'll return to the series on analyzing a wine list next time around, but I'm frankly just so happy to be relaxing after such a crazy week and a half. I was also reminded, since my hotel was in the financial district, of one of my favorite taverns in the whole world - Fraunces Tavern.

Fraunces Tavern is the restored tavern that was once the site where George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and the boys used to hand out for their relaxation. More often, when they were there, they drank one of the world's finest but very much forgotten beverages, Madeira.

Madeira is a fortified wine made in the Madeira Islands of Portugal, which is prized equally for drinking and cooking. According to Wikipedia, Thomas Jefferson used Madeira to toast the signing of the Declaration of independence.

I have spent quite a bit of time studying menus from early America, and it's amazing how much different a wine list looked in the 1800's compared to now. A typical wine progression was often:

Champagne
Sherry
Chablis
Red Burgundy or Bordeaux
Madeira

This would be a set of wines I'd love but admittedly the taking in of both Sherry and Madeira at every meal is pretty eclectic. Either way, a toast to Fraunces Tavern, our Founding Fathers and of course my good friends Giovanni Ruffini and Yelena Sorokina who were wed last Sunday!

(N.B., if you'd like to read more about Madeira and other fortified wines, please visit my good friend Roy Hersh's web site http://fortheloveofport.com)

Kryptonite and picking appetizers...

When last I blogged , I began discussing piece by piece what a wine geek might look for when looking at a wine menu. I chose a Pittsburgh Restaurant, the Sonoma Grille, as my sample restauarant and wine list, and in Episode I, we picked a sparkling wine to start with, NV Iron Horse Brut "Russian River Cuvee".



Then, I forgetting that I am not Superman and also forgetting that I am no longer athletic, decided to play two-hand tab football with some younger relatives. I was awesome on the first drive. The second drive, not so good. After landing directly on my shoulder after attempting to make a Deion Sanders-esque interception, I have now announced my retirement. And I don't mean in that "The Who" kind of way. I mean for good. I felt like Superman in that Lex Luther's swimming pool with the Kryptonite chained to me. For about a week. My flag football career is over because I have only in about the past 24 hours regained the ability to move my left arm and hence type. (Not so ironically, this coincides with the release of EA Sports College Football 2008.)



Back to the meal and menu. Okay, so we're sipping on some Iron Horse Bubbly and now we have to look at the appetizers/first courses and then start thinking about the white we will order. Let's look at the apps (http://www.thesonomagrille.com/DinnerMenu1.php?SECT=3)



[Disclaimer again: I have no affiliation with the Sonoma Grille. I know one of the bartenders vaguely that's about it.]



I'm going to purposefully order a variety of things so that this isn't to easy. (If you read part 1, there are four of us dining.)



My date and I are going to get the Tapas for two. One guest is going to order the Serrano Wrapped Diver Sea Scallops, and our other guest is a vegetarian and will be getting the wild mushroom and goat cheese strudel.



Okay let's start determining what we might be looking for in a wine by looking aty the important elements in the dishes:



Tapas for two:

Shrimp Tempura, Asian slaw, scarlet orange and apricot chutney: Normally with most breaded or deep fried things, I drink something with bubbles, either sparkling wine or beer. Our Iron Horse will continue nicely with this, but if we're going to drink a "still" white wine the slaw, orange, apricot combo leads us to something with sweetness - not necessarily sugar - but ripe fruitiness, spice and sour. This is a complex dish that needs a complex wine, not to full-bodied, but with a lot of character and probably a good dose of acidity to cleanse the palate just like the bubbles would.



Veal cheek and black truffle ravioli, roasted shallot cream, black pepper demi-glace: The truffle and veal cheek are going to be very earthy, the shallot cream sweet, the demi-glass spicy. Again sweet and spicy, and now a wine with some earthy flavors would probably be a good idea as well.



Ahi tartare, sushi roll, white truffle and wasabi mayonnaise, fried lotus root, Tobiko caviar: Spicy. Truffle again - earthy. Tuna is fatty, and the best thing for fatty foods is to use the counterpoint of acidity.



Sesame fried calamari, yuzu and roasted poblano remoulade: FRIED needs bubbles or acidity as we've already covered. Poblanos are a type of pepper of course, not real biting, but a little sweet and a little spicy.

And...

Serrano Wrapped Diver Sea Scallops: The Scallops have a fatty texture like the tuna + the spiciness of the serrano ham.

Wild Mushroom and Goat Cheese Strudel: The mushrooms, like truffle, are earthy. We'll go back to the goat cheese.

Okay so we need a wine that is palate-cleansing; it will cut through fatty fish or greasy fried foods; it should match the spiciness of our foods, be earthy and ripe with good acidity.

In the next post, we're going to start crossing off white wines from the list until we get a few possible choices for our white wine..

Mi casa su casa

What I love more than anything else is sitting down and cooking a nice meal and enjoying it, along with a few bottles of wine, with some friends new or old. Since my readers are from throughout cyberspace, distance prevents this from happening. So, barring my inability to concentrate too long, I'm going to walk you through our imaginary dinner, or more importantly, our selction of wines, at a well-known Pittsburgh restauarant, the Sonoma Grille. Before you ask, I have no affiliation with it whatsoever, it just has a really nice wine list for lover's a California wines. Even wine lists in many other major metropolitan areas boast more eccentric, pretentious or what have you wine lists, this i s a good one to look at and perhaps have you look at a wine list the way I do.

Their web site is http://www.thesonomagrille.com/

Before we even get to food, we're going to start with a bottle of sparkling wine. The sparkling wine list is http://www.thesonomagrille.com/WineList.php?SECT=4&CAT=2&SEP=20.

First, what are we dealing with:

Kenwood Brut NV (California) $7/glass $28/bottle
Villa Sandi Prosecco NV (Italy) $8/$32
Gloria Ferrer Blanc de Blanc 2001 (Carneros) $44
Schramsburg Blanc de Noirs 2001 (Carneros) $75
Iron Horse "Russian River Cuvee" 1999 (Sonoma) $80
J Brut Rose NV (Napa) $82
Veuve Clicquot "Yellow Label" (France) $16/$90
J Schram 1999 (Napa) $175
Dom Perignon 1998 (France) $250

Okay. We're going to elimate anything above $100 for starters, because we're going to have four bottles of wine - 1 sparkler, 1 white, 2 reds and maybe after dinner drinks. We're also going to eliminate anything outside of California (although I love Prosecco): after all we're at the Sonoma Grille, not Alain Ducasse. We want to experience California. So we're looking at the following choices:

Kenwood Brut NV (California) $7/glass $28/bottle
Gloria Ferrer Blanc de Blanc 2001 (Carneros) $44
Schramsburg Blanc de Noirs 2001 (Carneros) $75
Iron Horse "Russian River Cuvee" 1999 (Sonoma) $80
J Brut Rose NV (Napa) $82

I've never had Kenwood sparkling wine, and I'm sure it's good, but frankly Kenwood is best known for it's Merlot, and Merlot is not a grape that goes into sparkling wine, so I'm deleteing that as well. (I'll be honest, I didn't know they made sparklers.) Gloria Ferrer is a nice enough choice. As one enters Sonoma County from the south, the vineyards that line the highway are Gloria Ferrer. You're in the Carneros AVA, one that straddles souther Napa and Sonoma. It is a cooler region owing to the breezes that blow north off the bay. This is a good choice, expecially if we're pinching pennies, but we're going to look further. I REALLY like Schramsberg. Schramsberg was the sparkling wine that Nixon served to the Chinese during a summit in the 1960's. Even so, we don't want Blanc de Noirs. Real Champagne (and those wines that copy it from outside of France) use three grapes in their production - Chardonnay (White) and Pinot Noir or it's lesser-known cousin Pinot Meunier (both Red Grapes). Blanc de Noirs (literally white from blacks) is Champagne made entirely from the two red grapes. While the color is still lightish, the body is fuller, in fact, fuller than we want at the beginning of a multi-course dinner with four bottles. By the same reasoning, we're skipping the Rose. Hence, we are left with one of my old-stand bys, Iron Horse "Russian River Cuvee", not an unenviable choice. The Russian River Valley is a coller microclimate perfect for sparkling wine production (as is Carneros as we have mentioned). By it's nature of using both white and red grapes, it's flavorful but yet refershing, and a perfect way to start the dinner.

Peruse the menu and the whites, and we'll start picking our appetizers next time...

Chinese Proverb

"Once upon a time I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I woke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man."

When it comes to wine or anything else, I prefer quoting Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the Chicago Nobel Laureate and my idol in re-iterating the Mahābhārata:

The Simple is the Seal of the Truth.

My first job in my entire life was working for a chemical processing company called Vertex Image Products. I thought I was smart, but more often than not the partners and shareholders in the company proved me wrong.

Im sure that to this day I don't undertand what went on behind the scenes. I'm also sure that my opinion didn't matter because I was the one person who had the least understanding of what was going on. In fact, I didn't know what the hell we did and when we were slow and I worked on the farm cows scared me.

I find myself in a weird position today in that it seems that no one in the wine industry knows what's going on. I truly believe that. The proliferation of "independant analysts" and bloggers and blah blah blah annoys me extensively.

I LOVE the fact that your hobby is wine, I LOVE the fact that you drink expensive wines daily because you are affluent, but frankly my opinion is that you shouldn't listen to the majority of the people that talk about wine.

Reviewers try to justify themselves through playing the reverse logic theme. "I have no professional affiliation, so I am unbiased." Rubbish. If you buy wine from someone ask of them not how much they know, but whether or not they have SOLD wine.

Any stock trader will tell you they learn more from their losses than their gains. A wine merchant, although there are seemingly none left, sometimes wins, sometimes loses; he evaluates what you like and don't like and hopefully in a case of 12, 7 are enjoyable to you. He goes from there.

The proliferation of wine has allowed lawyers, bankers and everyone in between to criticize outstanding wines from around the world. Let me give you a tip - blog frequency does not verify quality of opinion.

Ask questions. Have you visited these wine regions? If so, did you taste the best and worst producers? Why is this better than any other wine from that region? Wine professionals travel to France or California to reassure their opinions; tourists go to brag and eat expensive dinners. I prefer trusting people that havr looked at the bad and the good and know that their choice is the best suggestion. I would also prefer for possibly every person in New York to leave the wine business because frankly I don't need a retail employee to spit out facts they learned from a wine's distributor...

Say it ain't so...

If you think that my "normal posts" are circuitous, this one will stop even my most devoted readers in their tracks follow along. A while back, I met my friend William Bellomo through a handful of mutual friends from Philly. We actually didn't put this together until much later, because at the time, we (myself from the City of Champions, my friends from the City that Celebrates Fictional Boxers for lack of anything to actually Celebrate and occassionally William) used to regularly gather on Fridays to have dinner parties: the only requirement was to bring a bottle of wine.

Well on Saturday - would that have been 2002 -- during the winter Olympics, I sat with the Fictional Boxer Idolators and actually rooted against Mario Lemieux. The USA was playing Canada in the Olympic Hockey tournament and I was being forced to root for John LeClair to defeat Mario Lemieux. It was very much akin to picking the grey Army Men instaed of the Green ones or (for you females) trying to hook up with Blair rather than Jo from the Facts of Life with the Dreamie guy. Simply unheard of.

So then it happened. We thought it might. The #8 Budweiser car and its driver (along with it's current and exponentially increasing $2Billion in merchandising) joined forces with Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson - a fate truly worse than death. I strongly considered buying a case of Miller Lite rather than one of cool, crisp mildly-hopped refreshing American lager with nuances of beechwood aging. But I instead began to consider the other, more likable options. Being an emotional person, I considered the immediate purchase of #11 FedEx Merchandise, but cooler heads prevailed (although I have not eliminated the possibilty).

(Here's the point at the end of my seemingly random session of complaints.) Do you know what a corked wine is? A lot of people don't. Let's review. You're at a restaurant. The sommelier offers you a taste of the wine that you are about to consume. You don't like it. Do you send it back? The answer is emphatically no. The waiter allows you to taste the wine to ensure that it is not flawed. If he recommended it, and you detest it, you drink it and never come back. You are given a taste of wine to check for flaws, not quality.

I once submitted a bottle of wine to a journalist that I thought was best in class. (The wine was 1998 Fleurie, Vieilles-Vignes, Domaine Bigot/Alex Gambal.) It was truly unbelievable Beaujolais. The journalist brogught the bottle back to me the nest day and said "Taste this". It was floored. I gave him another and a few hours later he called me to tell me that it was one of the finest under $15 bottles of wine he had ever experienced.

When a wine is "corked", it smelles of wet cardboard. It's a little hard to describe until you experience it, and honestly that bottle of Fleurie was on of the most corked bottles of wine that has ever been. The wine itself is good, but a bacteria gets in the cork and permanently taints it.

This causes a lot of problems for wine geeks because somewhere between 5 and 10% of all wines experience cork taint - and it's completely random.

So to return to Mario Lemieux and Dale, Jr., recently a few producers of Grand Cru Burgundy have decided to begin bottling their Grand Cru wines in synthetic corks - that is corks that are not susceptible to being corked.

My opinion remains: wine is a living breathing thing. There is a better chance that I will drink a wine with the wrong dish or at the wrong stage in its development than pull the cork on one that is flawed. Call me traditional, but when I open a 30 year old-bottle of Vintage Champagne I want to hear a (rather improper by Sommelier's rules) pop. Somehow a screwtop doesn't cut it - even if there's a 10% chance that the cork will fail me.

I want a cork. I don't look down on a screw top - rather I evaluate a wine on quality alone: the importer doesn't matter, the price doesn't matter and the type of encolsure certainly doesn't matter. But do I really have to root for Jeff Gordon?

To Age or Not to Age?

As I mentioned in my last post, I had the pleasure of having a quite delicious bottle of 1987 Robert Mondavi Cabernet sauvignon Reserve the other day. I always love to add a wine with a bit of age to it to any tasting I run because it allows people to experience something unusual and perhaps get them to understand what the fuss is all about. As they always say though, with an aged wine, there are no good wines only good bottles. Luckily the Mondavi was stored properly, and was just beautiful.

When a grape is presse and the juice has certain flavors and aromas typical of the grape. So for instance the juice from your Merlot will smell of plums, Cabernet Sauvignon will smell of black currants and cassis, Pinot Noir will smell like red and black cheries. These are called primary aromas. Primary aromas are present before the winemaker does anything.

Once the winemaker becomes involved and after fermentation occurs, some new and very different aromas - called secondary aromas -- are introduced. These can be quite varied, but the most obvious example is vanilla or coconut from the oak barrels. These secondary aromas add complexity to the wine, so that it smells and tastes like something other than just plain grape juice.

As a wine ages, an additional layer of complexity is added; indeed the more developed a wien is, the more prominent these aromas are, eventually coming to dominate the wine. They are tertiary aromas. The Mondavi in particular had a pronounced bouquet of dried leaves and also a bit of earthiness. These are the types of aromas that are in an aged wine. They can't be produced from merely grape juice alone, nor by a winemaker or fermentation. The intense bouquet of an aged wine can only be achieved through the gentle processes that occur in the bottle over the course of years or maybe decades. It is with age that a wine finally eveolves into a noble beverage to bee savored.

If you are going to age wine, here are a few tips:

The wine should be stored in a cool, dark preferably moist place. Cool - as in 55 degrees - ensures that the wine doesn't get "cooked". Dark because wine doesn't like light, and light can prematurely oxidise a wine.

If you stick to those three things, or purchase one of the many excellent designer wine cellars that mimics a traditional one, then you should have no problem replicating my experience with the 93 Mondavi.

Let's review...

I led a very enjoyable tasting this evening for an avid group of participants. I will get to a discussion of "aged wines" as promised in my last post in the next few days. Until then, I will leave you with this:

I truly enjoyed 1993 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve this evening. I have to respect a producer that can maintain market share by producing wines of good quality at affordable prices but at the same time is capable of producing profound wines. Yet, Mondavi is hit or miss at the high end for me. Tonight was a hit. The best Mondavi I have tasted was the '78 en magnum (wine #12) about five years ago. At the same time I basically skipped an '87 Reserve Cab about seven years ago (a gift from a client) in favor of an $18 bottle of Jean-Louis Grippat St.-Joseph from the Northern Rhone. I wish Grippat were still alive and making affordable simply yummy wines.

In any case, I don't think the Mondavi was profund, but wow was it good. A nose of dried leaves and earth. A hint of cassis. At its peak. Perfect balance. This wine is a good example of why my personal perferences (which lean toward elegance and balance) lead me more to very good '93's than the more voplutuous '94's. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but I do so love a wine in perfect harmony, and the Mondavi did that and more...more later...

I do wish to highlight a few things I refrenced in my tasting tonight and upon which I have previously blogged. There are a few random items that came up during our tasting, so here are the relevant links:

Why don't I like what the experts do?
Because the experts, or at least, I, like balance...

Why do Chardonnays taste differently?

Birth Year Wines

Tapas

I know if you were at my tasting tonight you are curious about Liquid Gold? Here's the extended version...
Liquid Gold
Liquid Gold Part 2

And by the way, I didn't mention this tonight , but Matt Karmer does a great job of explaining most of the California wines one will encounter...

My Pick for the Year's Best Wine Book [2006]

If you participated in my tasting this evening, thank you for a splendid evening. I learned a lot.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme

I remember the first time I ever smelled sage in a wine. Not just a little hint, but plunged my nose into the glass and immediately felt as though my entire nasal passage was filled by the smell of fresh sage. (The wine was 1997 Beaune 1er Cru Greves "Vigne de l'Enfant Jesus, Bouchard Pere et fils).

While I've always been a huge fan of sage, across the board I love all fresh herbs. They are highly under-utilized by the home chef, who can add just a touch to almost any dish and improve its flavor and expression immensely. Since my plants are finally coming up, I thought I'd pass on some quick and easy ideas for what to do with your herb garden. If you DON'T have an herb garden, consider it this year. For the price of a handful of plants ($10), a few flower pots ($15) and some soil ($7) the results are, to steal a phrase, priceless.

Rosemary - cut up new potatoes, douse heavily in olive oil, garlic salt pepper and finish with fresh rosemary. Put it under the broiler. A great side for your next cookout. Or get some baker's yeast, flour, water and olive oil, mix in some fresh rosemary and put your choice of olives, sund-dried tomatoes, etc on top for easy foccaccia.

Basil - Insalata Cabrese is a favorite. Fresh buffalo mozzarella, slice tomato, and basil leaves drizzled with olive oil. Or ender fat from pancetta, sautee garlic and shallots, add whole tomatoes and basil and cook low, slow and long for a great pasta sauce.

Sage - one of my all-time favorite appetizer/first courses, from David Rosengarten: Sausage-Stuffed Radicchio Cups.

Parsley - Add chopped parsley, capers and a bit of dry mustard to Chopped Tuna for the best tuna tartare.

Send me your ideas if you have more to add, we'd love to add it to our recommendations.

(My mint is still coming alive, but you can be sure that when it does, I will be mixing up a mint julip and doing some sun tanning).

I have some interested wines to taste later in the week, and hope to explore a much discussed question, to age or not age in my next post...

The Golden Rule

As I mentioned in my last post, I became an Uncle recently, so I have been spending much of my free time trying to explain terroir to my niece Riley. I got into an argument with a few people on a wine discussion board regarding this very subject.

Here's the rundown.

Wine, like anything else, gives people who know (or claim to be in the know) a possibility to make you feel dumb (if you let them). Now I love Rielsing; I actually probably drink Riesling more than any other wine, mainly because they are generally lower in alocohol than other wines and so I can drink a whole bottle and not worry about the side effects. The problem is that Riesling people have a certain air of importance about them - you mean YOU don't think Rielsing is the greatest wine on earth.

Now admittedly, I am like that about Burgundy, but I freely admit that. I freely admit that I think that Burgundy is the greatest wine on earth (red or white) and I am a pretentious, arrogant slime because of that. But I'm not smug about it. It is what is.

More importantly, if YOU think that MERLOT or some other grape is the greatest grape in the world, I'm fine with that. I ahve often said that as a professional, I don't taste a wine thinking whether or not I like it, I taste a wine thinking who would like it. That my saound like a very capitalistic approach, but I don't mean it in that sense. YOU and I like different things. I like Haydn [a dead white guy] and George Strait for music, I like Burgundy for wine, I like the engravings of Albrecht Durer [another dead white guy], I enjoy sage more than basil, and I live and die black and gold with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Penguins and Pirates.

I'm only an expert in one of those cases - wine - but you still don't have to agree with me. I strongly suggest the wine sthat we have available for sale. If you read my posts, it's obvious which ones I prefer. But My 90 pointer may be your 80 pointer. Give us a call or send us an email. Although Riley may eventually hate Haydn's Symphony 101 "the Clock Symphony", for now, she's going to sleep every night to it (or well, occassionally she's at least sleeping). I won't do that to you!

More Cowbell?

I (you, we) hate the prices of wine. Wine is an imperfect market as I learned very quickly working for an auction house. Although stocks can dip or crescendo on the whims of one investor (Buffet buys a railroad - all of a sudden we think we're playing Monopoly), given the number of stocks that's not the norm. Wine's different. Public opinion and quality are very irregular.

I was recentlt preparing a list of wines to be tasted for a business group and I had a few ideas going into the project. Nothing earth-shattering: I like themes like "A Walk Thorugh Napa Valley", "An Introduction to the Wines of France", or something like that. In particular, the latter is very inclusive and is a good theme. The novice interrogates, "Oh, so Sauvignon Blanc is from the Loire. Tell me more...". The more advanced taster asks, "Do you prefer Chateauneuf-du-Pape from 1998 or 1999 and why?" In short there's a broad range of exciting possibilities about which we can talk, and I feel out the audience.

Here's the thing, I've been given a budget that's "too high" for what I feel I can accomplish in a tasting, unless of course I'm reviewing, for example, the evolution of 1998 Grand Crus from Burgundy. I'm putting together my list, and I'm ignoring the budget, because my wines are going to be less. Why? Because once you're getting into the $60-$80 range (minimum) per bottle, another $40 doesn't really buy you better wine, unless you're talking vintage wine (i.e. '74 Heitz Martha's Vineyard) - and then the event becomes more than a gathering and instead a few hours for analysis and contemplation.

I have to be honest, I think wine can/should be less expensive than most people think it is. If two couple commit $30 - $40 once a week, you can taste 104 wines a year (all other dinners excluded) and cook a really nice brunch each weekend + have an appropriate amount of wine for a Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon for the young and adventuresome!

So as is typical of my history, I'm currently planning on a "down"-sell, but that's all right. I much prefer wines that are appropriate to the goals of the event (or consumer in question). In the end, more cowbell doesn't always do it...

It's a Girl!

After a false alarm Monday and another 20+hour wait on Thursday, I am finally an Uncle. Riley Elizabeth Puckey needed a bit of time in the oven but I'm happy to that she is doing fine and came home to my sister's today.

Now, I'd imagine her parents are thinking about things such as college, whether she'll be a ballerina or a teacher, you know, the important things. Of course these are the last things that a Wine Consultant like myself would want to be bothered with right now; the most obvious question is, how will the 2007 Vintage turn out, since these will be Riley's birth year wines. I admit that I'm pretty twisted.

It's an important consideration. Very few years produce excellent wines in every wine region, and not every well-made wine will age for the requisite twenty-one years or more required to head into adulthood in style. As a wine consultant, if I had a dime for every time I was asked, "My daughter was born in xxxx, what wine should I buy to celebrate her 21st Birthday", I would already be retired. So without further ado, for your consideration and reference, here's my far-from-complete, super-unofficial birth year wine chart:

2005 Bordeaux, Sauternes, Burgundy, Northern Rhone, Southern Rhone, Spain, Australia
2004 Port, Spain, Italy, selected Bordeaux and California Cabs
2003 Rhone, Burgundy, Bordeaux
2002 Burgundy, California Reds, Australian Reds
2001 California Reds, Burgundy (Cote de Nuits), Sauternes, Rhones north and south
2000 Bordeaux, Port, Rhones especially Southern, Italy
1999 Burgundy, Rhones especially Northern, Italy
1998 Rhones, Bordeaux (Right Bank), selected Burgundy
1997 Italy, California
1996 Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux (Left Bank), Spain

That'll give you a decade to play with for starters. Keep in mind that buying the best producers as well as the producers noted for longevity will go along way in making sure Birthday #21 is special, but without proper, that is, impeccable, storage, you might as well just flush your money (and wine) down the toilet...

Bing!

“When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.”

Being a big fan of Bill Murray (a living White Guy) and Anton Chekhov (a Dead White Guy) I couldn’t help but think of the above quote from Groundhog Day this afternoon as continued working my way through some of the latest releases of Pope Valley Winery. It was the Rose that had me particularly yearning for this weather to break.

The new apartment into which I moved several months ago has the perfect little area for a picnic with some vino and me as the grillmaster. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to make an assortment of light appetizers for a handful of my good friends – tapas – which if you read this blog regularly, I’m sure you already realize that I’m a pretty big fan of quite a few simple yet interesting dishes, much like my wine.

I cracked a bottle of Pope Valley Winery’s 2005 Sangiovese Bella Rosa this evening and it had me thinking of my upcoming gathering. First, my projected menu:

pan a la Catalana // pimientos estilo gernika // aceitunas mixtas
toasted bread topped with garlic, tomato & coriander
grilled poblano peppers with sea salt
mixed Spanish olives

serrano y manchego // champiñones al ajillo
Spanish cheese wrapped in ham
fried oyster mushrooms

paella de chorizo // pollo y limon // coredero moruno
seafood & sausage paella
chicken cooked in white wine, lemon juice and thyme
skewered marinated lamb

Now there’s no doubt in mind as I drink this wine that I’m going to have to add some tuna tartare to the list, but this wine is what I’ll be serving – along with some Sangria and some sherry and probably some Madeira when it’s time to relax.

I have always personally thought that the White Zinfandel Craze is kind of off base. Not that I have a problem with pink wines – by all means I love rose wine. But White Zinfandel comes from the (red) zinfandel grape. Zinfandel generally achieves uber-maturity, and so when making White Zin, rather than fermenting it to 16% alcohol they leave a bit of sugar. (Sugar converts to alcohol in fermentation. To simplify, if a winemaker leaves some unfermented sugar in a wine, the alcohol is less.) I generally don’t like sweet wines unless they have quite a bit of acidity to counterbalance them (such as in a well-made German Riesling). That’s why I’ve always thought lower-alcohol grapes such as Pinot Noir and (as is the case here) Sangiovese make better rose – pink wines.

In the bottle I have before me, the Pope Valley Winery 2005 Sangiovese Bella Rosa, I have a wine that served just slightly chilled (European Cellar Temperature – about 55 degrees), would pair with just about anything – and certainly please the most discerning palate when served with a diverse menu of foods such as those listed above. I’m looking forward to my upcoming picnic and more bottles of Pope Valley’s Wine. Dry, versatile and spicy with a touch of clay and a touch of chocolate. Nice acidity, fresh and aromatic. I can already taste it with pan a la Catalana and some paella. I suggest you to do the same! For the record, this would be great with one of my favorite slightly pretentious but inexpensive brunch items - an omelette of tomatoes, leeks and steamed mussels. Or Quiche. Or just about anything else one can dream up for a nice brunch...

So although I am starting to belive the words of Phil Connors, who tells us, “There is no way this winter is *ever* going to end as long as that groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don't see any way out of it,” I’m looking forward to some tapas and rose REALLY SOON, on the deck with some friends!

What clear liquor is drunk more often than Vodka, Gin or Rum?

The surprising answer is Soju, a Korean distilled spirit with which thanks to many very good Korean friends I have quite a bit of experience. Although it's a bit of a departure from my normal topics, a recent and very informative episode of The Thirsty Traveler got me thinking that it might be a good topic to explore.

Admittedly I have had A LOT of Soju at select celebrations with some of my best freinds in the world, but knew little bout the beverage itself until now. What follows is mostly information collected from The Thirst Traveler and from Wikipedia. But I hope you enjoy learning about this exotic beverage all the same.

Soju is an alcoholic beverage with origins in Korea. The main ingredient is rice, almost always in combination with other ingredients such as wheat, barley, sweet potato, or tapioca (called dangmil in Korean). Soju is clear in color and typically varies in alcohol content from about 20% to about 45% alcohol by volume (ABV), with 20% ABV being most common. Its taste is comparable to vodka, though it is often slightly sweeter due to the addition of sugar in the manufacturing process.

There are two styles of Soju - old style and new style. Old Style Soju is extremely high in alcohol, and as far as I can tell pretty similar to a grappa or something similar. Old Style Soju is made with rice. New Style Soju has more variable contributions, often beginning with rice but also other additions such as tapioca or sweet potatoes. It's probably this mixture of ingredients that makes Soju remind me of Gin more than other "White Liquors".

Along with the mass-produced brands, which are widely available in Korea, there are several regions which are famous for making soju in a more traditional way, with the soju made in Andong being the most famous ( apoint that The Thirsty Traveler episode pointed out). I must say that for me watching elderly Korean women making artisan Soju in Andong as featured on the television program was one of the most truly fascinating things I have ever seen.

Soju is typically consumed in small shot glasses. The traditional toast is "Kombe!" A guest (and host) will often show respect by pouring and/or accepting the shot of Soju with two hands. When drinking with an elder, it is customary to turn your body entirely away and do the shot facing away from this person as a sign of respect.

What to eat with Soju. Again The Thirsty Traveler showed a beautiful recipe. A thin slice of flattened beef is layered with cooked black rice and julienned carrots. It is rolled and tied. The exterior is seared and flambeed in flaming soju, about 30 seconds a side. Set it aside so the jusices stay inside and then slice medallions.

Kombe!

Follow Your Heart

Those of you who know me best know that I had open-heart surgery when I was younger. I went for a standard checkup at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh today, where I had my surgery in December, 1976. As expected (or at least as I hoped), I am in perfect health. I gave some thought to my next blog while I was in the waiting room, and, in one of those many "You might be a Wine Geek if…" moments, couldn't get Chateau Calon-Segur out of my head (see label). Not as bad as when I was at a relative's house who had a magnet on their refrigerator of the 1982 Farmer's Almanac for some unknown reason and I thought it was '82 Petrus, but still fairly geeky. Despite the image of Calon-Segur's label in my head, I started instead to think about what was going on in the wine industry in 1976. That's an easy answer: the 1976 Judgement of Paris, a tasting I have mentioned elsewehere.

In my opinion, the Judgement of Paris is possibly the most overdramatized, preposterous piece of marketing nonsense in the wine business, although those who I offend with that comment would probably point to terroir as the same. Before everyone beats me down, let me give you my reasons.

First though, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Judgement of Paris let me briefly quote from Wikipedia as I often do to save my restating and retyping that which anyone can find with a simple Google search.

• Until 1976, France was generally regarded as having an unchallenged reputation as the foremost producer of the world's best wines. In that year a wine merchant in Paris, Steven Spurrier, organized a prestigious wine tasting in Paris, now known as the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 or the Judgment of Paris.
  

  The 11 judges were Steven Spurrier, Patricia Gallagher of l'Academie du Vin, Odette Kahn, editor of the Revue du Vin de France, Jean-Claude Vrinat of the Restaurant Taillevent, Raymond Oliver of the restaurant Le Grand Vefour, the sommelier Christian Vanneque of Tour D'Argent, Aubert de Villaine of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Pierre Tari of Chateau Giscours, Pierre Brejoux of the Institute of Appellations of Origin, Michel Dovaz of the Wine Institute of France, and Claude Dubois-Millot. Blind tasting was performed so that none of the judges knew the identity of what was being tasted.
  

The results were that 1973 Stag's Leap Cabernet Sauvignon beat out its able competitors from both California (and more importantly) Bordeaux, including the famous Chateaux Mouton-Rothschild, Montrose and Haut-Brion. This signified (at least for Americans) that California wines could compete with the best in the world (and I certainly agree that they can).

Why do I think the Judgment of Paris is ridiculous? Mainly because I think blind tasting and/or rating wines I ridiculous.

Blind Tastings

Blind Tastings are tastings in which the participants have no idea what wine has been poured for them. In this way, they have no pre-conceived notions as to the quality of wine. I have done blind tastings a million times, and still find them meaningless. I remember the first time I visited Domaine Daniel Dampt in Chablis. I had never had a wine from the Domaine before I arrived, but I was and am intimately familiar with the vintages and vineyards of Chablis. Following a brief tasting of his current vintage, five wines from the year 2000, he poured me a wine blind. After some evaluation I correctly identified the wine as 1997 Chablis Premier Cru Cote de Lechet. I also remember once tasting a wine and saying, "I would bet my job that this is a Premier Cru Meursault from the 1997 vintage": it was 1996 Staglin Rutherford Chardonnay. Luckily I was able to keep my job. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. It's like the stock market or playing darts. Over a sustained period of time, everyone I know in the wine business gets more wrong – and oftentimes vastly wrong – than anywhere close to right. As Emile Peynaud claims in his book, in a truly "blind" tasting where participants can't even see the wine, most degustateurs have a difficult time determining which ones are white or red.

But, in the Judgement of Paris they weren't picking wines, they were rating them. Personally, I think this is more ridiculous than trying to identify wines "blind". Magazines, most notably the Wine Spectator, claim that because all wines are tasted blind, there is no slant. On the other hand, "independent" reviewers such as Robert Parker indirectly point out that because they accept no advertisements, there results are not biased. Either way, they're all in the business of sales. Despite the fact that I am a wine professional, I, like you, do buy wines for myself, and I'll put myself entirely into the hands of anyone who has a palate I respect, ads or no ads, blind tastings or not.

When David Heimbourger (my apologies if I misspelled this) worked predominantly in Acker Merrall's retail store in Manhattan's Upper West-Side (last I checked he was largely running tastings and corporate events) I would regularly give him a price and a quantity and let him pick. "Dave, give me six bottles of good, cheap whites from Germany, Alsace and the Loire, around $120 total, and I'll pick them up tomorrow". I trusted him, as many of my clients trust me. In the end that's all that matters.

But I digress. Here's the thing, all wines are not created equal in a blind tasting. There's a reason why wines are served in a particular order (although modern cusine has skewed this quite a bit). Different wines have different characteristics. Let's take an extreme case. Unoaked Chablis (the real stuff, from France) would get lost in a tasting with nine Chardonnays from Australia, because it is less fruit-driven, is not as full-flavored and has lower alcohol. Its merits are lost. This is similar, by the way, to beer. Put the subtly powerful Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter among nine highly-hopped American Microbrews, and it has a good chance of finishing last although it is one of my favorite beers in the world.

So in the end, the 1976 Judgement of Paris while signaling an uptick in notoriety for California helped promote blind tastings as a useful tool, although in only rare cases, in reality they aren't. It also wrongfully promoted the notion that wines can be given a number or rating. They can't. As I always say, if you like it today, right now, then it's a 90 pointer. If you don't it's not. And that number may very well change depending on your mood, your company or what you're eating the next time around.

 

Uncle Pythagoras Would be Proud

I wanted to talk today about the use and misuse of the word "terroir". I will not give in to my desire to defend my beliefs as a "terroirist" despite my yearning to do so. But, whether one agrees with terroir or not, its frequent misuse only adds to everyone's confusion. Continuing with my theme of Dead White Guy refernces, I was thinking of how similar it was to the Pythagorean Theorem: in a right-angled triangle the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse, c, is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sides, b and a, that is, a2+b2=c2. One of the simplest equations ever written, but the greatest minds tried to prove it for centuries to no avail. Terroir is the Pythagorean Theorem of Wine.

Terroir is the combination of natural factors that affect the way grapes grow. I personally stick with a pretty rigid definition, namely that within the larger arena of climate, one can largely determine the character of a grape by knowing the vineyards soil, altitude, slope and aspect. The point is not whether you agree with my assessment of terroir or not. What bothers me is the misuse of the term terroir.

I FREQUENTLY see posts on discussion boards or white-collar-professionals-cum-weekend-wine writers who think that terroir means earth. "The 2005 Chateau _____ Vintage Champagne was full of terroir with earthy tones throughout." Without delving to far into details and exceptions, Champagne grows on Cretaceous Chalk, so if it was "full of terroir" or tasted of the soil, wouldn't its flavors be dominated by chalk?

The French word for earth is terre not terroir. True terroir comes from the root terre, but it's not a direct correlation. The word sinister has its Latin roots in decribing one who is left-handed, but I have yet to hear someone refer to Osama Bin-Laden as that bastard, left-handed murderer.

The use of the word terroir is not restricted to wine. Its used for other agricultural products such as cheese, but also things such as forestry, specifically oak. Scholarly research, such as that of Drs. Paul Kolesar and Bruce Beaver of Duquesne University, doesn't examine how much earthiness an oak barrel imparts on a wine (and certainly not how much the wood tastes like earth!), but rather the characteristics of oak due to the sum total of natural influences and how this in turn affects the chemical composition of the wood. It's the same thing for grapes.

March Madness Update
In an earlier post "The Ides of March", I revealed my pick for the NCAA Tourney, Georgetown. I also revealed that I am usually out of contention very early. Turns out I was spot on, as Georgetown is heading to the Final Four, and I am in the bottom 3% of ESPN's Tourney Pick 'Em.