Vin de la Table

It's Not You, it's Brie

2009-04-21T17:42:00.000-07:00

It's not so hard to say goodbye after all when you're only going next door, to a cheese kingdom.

To my dear Vin de la Table readers, I spend all day pouring, tasting, selling, and writing about fermented grape juice, and although I love it and my former blog base, I am very excited to finally start sharing my other gastronomic love on the blogsphere. Sadly, there is only so much time in a day, and because I won't be able to keep up with all things, I'm letting this blog go. It's had a good run.

I invite you to instead visit my new blog, “It’s Not You, it’s Brie.” Focusing on dairy magnificence, "it's Not You,.." will serve as a platform for fromage obsession, explore cheese’s role in our everyday and ceremonial lives and include recipes, cheese memories, and interviews.

Feel free to email me questions about wine and food pairing anytime at itsnotyouitsbrie@gmail.com, and feel comfort in knowing that it will be a rare occasion that I will write about cheese without involving wine.

To my Vin de la Table fans, I still have a candle-lit shrine devoted to you. I hope that you still love me too and will visit me at my new home often. Thank you so much for your readership. It's meant so much to me.

Edible East Bay & Wine and Cheese & Dessert Classes

2009-04-14T16:15:00.000-07:00

Hello. I've been away. I've been working on projects galore, including a new cheese blog that I'll be very happy to share as soon as it looks half as good as Baskin Robbin's peanut butter & chocolate ice-cream does in my favorite ice-cream dish. Does anyone else eat this anymore? You should.

Until I get more going in the blog world, I'd like to share an article that I wrote for Edible East Bay called "Wear Shoes to this Year's Crush." Maybe it will distract you from the neglected blog page. Anyhow, working on this article provided me with a wonderful opportunity to interview some of Berkeley's finest winemakers, and was really fun to write. And believe it or not, it is even more fun to read. I swear.

On a final note, I will be teaching both a French cheese and wine pairing class and another focused on dessert wines at Solano Cellars in Albany, CA (bordering Berkeley) in May and June, respectively. If anyone is interested in going, or reading more about them, they can do so here:

Regional French Cheese and Wine Pairing: Le Duet Dynamique Saturday, May 9th, 2-4pm

Stickies and Sweets: The Last Course - Thursday, June 4th, 6:30- 8:30

Nicoise Steamed Monkfish Salad: What Would You Pair With.....?

2009-03-26T22:53:00.000-07:00

If you were throwing your father a birthday lunch, and served a nicoise salad, a la monkfish, what would you serve as a wine or refreshment? Where would you serve it? Who would be there sipping the refreshment too?

Homemade Mozzarella Focus: Home Creamery Event III

2009-03-20T05:42:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be out of commission for a few more days, dear readers, due to a short trip to L.A, articles deadlines, a wine list that I'm updating at Brown Sugar Kitchen, and the demands of starting a new blog devoted entirely to cheese (and wine, of course, always about the wine). Did I mention that I really need to wash my car? But I wanted to take a moment to emerge from my office hermit hole to announce the object of the next Home Creamery Event's devotion. It is mozzarella.

I must admit I'm a little scared. Anything involving heating milk more than once and stretching the outcome two or three times is a little dangerous in my accident-prone kitchen. I'm excited for this sexy venture too, but mainly fearful of my runway elbows hitting pots while stretching.

As mozzarella is a feat that requires a little more time than other Home Creamery focuses, we're going to take a little more time to make this one. The entry for this pasta filata style cheese is due in a month from now, on April 20th.

A recipe for buttermilk starts on page 82 in Farrell-Kingsley's book. Online, more recipes and advice for making buttermilk are available at these links here , here , and here . Look around, see which inspires you most. These recipes can be surprisingly different. Anyone know why? I don't....

Warning: Check out your specific recipe before the event. Some require cheese-making products that not everyone already has at home.

Event Rules:
Home Creamery Event Guidelines:
1) Make the dairy product (MOZZARELLA FOR APRIL) of the month at home.
2) Optional: Suggest a wine you think you might enjoy sipping with your milk creation in a raw or transformed state (i.e with buttermilk fried chicken or cardamon-buttermilk pie).
3. Send me one of two following things by the last Wednesday of the month (Feb 25th for the second month):
a) If you have a blog, send me the link to the post where you talk about your Home Creamery experience and I will post some of your findings on my Home Creamery post.
b) If you don't have a blog, email me a photo of your results (vindelatable@gmail.com) by the last Monday of the month and/or a brief 2-4 sentence sum up of your experience and your delectable pairings, which I will feature on my blog post.

Buttermilk: Home Creamery Event III

2009-03-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

Don't my buttermilk biscuits look gorgeous? Aren't these buns just the perfect blend of crispy exterior and fluffy, inner, buttery goodness? The story this picture tells is that the last Home Creamery exercise of making buttermilk worked out as smoothly as Jane Fonda in a three-piece leotard.

But no.

My buns were flat. And I think it was because the homemade urban buttermilk I made to use in the biscuit recipe and the buttermilk with which Dorie Greenspan's biscuit recipe was tested were structurally different. I hope. Darn that baking. Darn those exact measurement devices and chemical reactions. See below for the actual size and lack of height of my little creations.

Alas, that's how baking goes. And that's how I bake. Sigh. Maybe I should have used the recipe Dan did below. His buns were fluffy. Why? Why? Although the Home Creamery event suggests pairing the Home Creamery creations with wine, just for fun (!), I couldn't. I was busy throwing my biscuits against the wall when I had a break in tears rolling down my face.

Dan's Biscuits and Buttermilk Experience, in His Words

"Making the buttermilk was easy; I followed the simple recipe from the Homery Creamery which called for whole milk (Strauss Family Creamy) and Creme de Tartar. And I couldn't resist attempting to make the buttermilk Fantail biscuits on the cover of the recent Gourmet magazine. Build the yeast, make the dough, cut 'em up, fill the muffin pan, let it rise again and then wack it in the oven.

The biscuits were a delicious mix of light and flakey and rich and creamy. The small pieces fanning off each other were easily separated and allowed us to spread either a tarragon butter or olive oil marinated goat cheese with oregano and red pepper. We paired these buttermilk bread treats with our other appetizers and 2006 Sancerre from Alphonse Mellot (Edmond). The wine, made from 100+ year old vines, was refined and elegant, yet rich and juicy. When tasted against a 2006 Larkmead Sauvignon Blanc, it was quite the opposite - the Larkmead being intense and textured. Both faring quite nicely with the biscuits. Thanks for choosing buttermilk for this month's activity - I have always been curious about it, since eating Thomas Keller's buttermilk fried chicken at Napa's Ad Hoc. Looking forward to next month's challenge!"

And here's a link to participant's Simone's buttermilk action at her Bricole blog . She made a gorgeous blueberry buttermilk sorbet, but it seems as if she wasn't satisfied with her Home Creamery attempts either. Is it possible that we picked the only recipe in the book that doesn't work? I think we both chose the recipe that used vinegar rather than cream of tartar.

Does anyone know why the buttermilk flopped?

Also, any ideas for our next Home Creamery dairy selection?... I'd love to hear, leave em' in the comments below.....

Chick Pea Salad: My Legume Love Affair

2009-02-26T08:55:00.000-08:00

If I had to choose my favorite legume, it would be chick peas. Or lentils. Or the peanuts in Reeses peanut butter cups.

Although my heart is warmed upon tasting homemade hummus laden with enough garlic to keep vampires away for seven nights and part of a twilight, and the manner in which Greek chick pea and lemon soup manages to taste like actual chicken thrills me like dandelions do a two-year old, when I cook chick peas, their destination is most often Salad City. And they don't just get tossed on some lettuce. I compose a salad around them. Or rather, I roast off what's remaining in my vegetable drawer right before it's time to go shopping again, add some olive oil and lemon, and call it dinner.

On occasion, for a super fantastic night, I go all out, think about flavors and textures, and put some fish on top. Like I am doing, for example, for the following event.

At the wine bar where I work, we have a winemaker dinner this weekend with Sergio Germano of Germano Ettore winery in Piedmont, Italy. I wanted to do something special because, well, he's one of the nicest guys in the winemaking world, and because his lemonesque, mineral, clean and sprightly dry Riesling, which we are serving with the first of four courses, deserves some extra attention. Extra special chick pea attention, that is. Since the My Legume Love Affair blogging event just happens to take place on the date of that occasion, I'm going to share a little chick pea love with the legume folks too.

The meaty chick peas carry the mineral, fiesty nature of Germano Ettore's Reisling well, and I made sure to pack the salad full of lemon, in zest and juice form to carry the citrus flavors and high acidity of Ettore's wine. For the event, I am cooking squid to top the salad. In the photo below, marinated anchovies that I used to top the salad another time are featured. Instructions for both preparations follow the salad recipe.

Chick pea, feta, and arugula salad

* Serves 4-5 people
* Soak legumes in water overnight or for at least six hours before cooking.
* Salad will taste best if all but arugula marinates overnight.
* In the salad photo, you might notice I tossed some carmelized onions into the salad. For the event, I choose to keep it a little fresher and omitted the onions. Include if like.

8 oz chick peas, soaked
bay leaf
rosemary sprig
zest of one lemon
juice from 1 1/2 lemon
2 - 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
5 oz French feta
1/2 bunch fresh chervil, chopped
1/2 bunch fresh tarragon, chopped
2 large handfuls arugula
salt and pepper to taste

1. Bring soaked chick peas to boil (in fresh water) in a medium-sized pot with bay leaf and rosemary. Once boiling, adjust heat to simmer and cook for 45 minutes or until legumes are tender, but not mushy. Drain, and discard herbs.
2. Once peas are cool or at room temperature, place in a large bowl, add lemon zest, lemon juice, and olive oil and stir until well-blended. Crumble feta and add to bowl along with fresh herbs. Salad may be set aside to marinate now, or before arugula is added.
3. Add arugula right before serving, and divide among 4 plates

Anchovies
This was my first adventure cooking at home with the sweet, oily little fish. If you want to top your chickpeas with anchovies per photo, do as follows.
Cleaning:
Wash the little guys in cool water. Make sure your cat is outside. Cut off head directly beneath gills. Glide fish knife from underneath the gills on the crease of fish's belly to the end of its tail. Open the fish, it should open into two flaps. Remove the organs. Pluck out the blones with the tip of the knife and pull out with fingers until removed. Cut the anchovies into two fillets.
Cooking:
Heat a sauté pan to high heat. Once hot, drizzle with canola oil/olive oil mixture. Gently place fish in pan, skin side down, and cook for one to two minutes each side. These fish are salty, salt with extreme caution. After cooked, set aside in small bowl and cover with thin lemon slices and olive oil to marinate until ready to serve.

Squid
Oh how I love calamari, in all it's glorious forms.
Cleaning
(thank god for video):
Cooking:
Cut into rings about half an inch thick. Heat sauté pan to high heat, and drizzle with canola oil/olive oil mixture. Add squid rings and tentacles to pan, and saute briefly. The key to cooking squid without going rubbery is to either cook the swimmer for under three minutes, or over thirty minutes. Cook here for two minutes or under, or until rings and tentacles are just firm and no longer translucent. Top the salad and drizzle the juice in pan around the plate.

Do you have a favorite chick pea dish you make at home or enjoy at a restaurant?

Homemade Buttermilk: Home Creamery Event II

2009-02-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

Buttermilk fried chicken and cornmeal waffles from Brown Sugar Kitchen.

The forces have spoken. The dairy focus of the next Home Creamery Event will be.... BUTTERMILK. That's right, buttermilk. What's the point of buttermilk, you ask? What culinary magic can one create from this tangy, creamy lactose haven?

First, there's a recipe for buttermilk pot cheese (cooked in a pot, you naughty readers) in Kathy Farrell-Kingsley's Home Creamery book. Second, buttermilk pancakes. Or fried chicken, buttermilk ice cream, buttermilk biscuts, Panna-Cotta, cardamon-buttermilk pie, or, of course, there is the old standby of buttermilk wrapped in bacon, simmered in buttermilk and a rare late-harvest Sancerre from the Loire Valley, then wrapped in short pastry dough and topped with a reduced bacon and buttermilk sauce. Wow.

Two different recipes for buttermilk can be found in Farrell-Kingsley's book on pages 38, and 39, or very different recipes for buttermilk are available at these links here, here, and here . Look around, see which inspires you most.

Hope to see your buttermilk concoctions soon!

Event Rules:
Home Creamery Event Guidelines: (for the end of the month)
1) Make the dairy product (BUTTERMILK IN FEBRUARY) of the month at home.
2) Optional: Suggest a wine you think you might enjoy sipping with your milk creation in a raw or transformed state (i.e with buttermilk fried chicken or cardamon-buttermilk pie).
3. Send me one of two following things by the last Wednesday of the month (Feb 25th for the second month):
a) If you have a blog, send me the link to the post where you talk about your Home Creamery experience and I will feature it in on my Home Creamery post.
b) If you don't have a blog, email me a photo of your results (vindelatable@gmail.com) by the last Monday of the month and/or a brief 2-4 sentence sum up of your experience and your delectable pairings, which I will feature on my blog post.

Lastly, the contest (see below) for guessing Dot's favorite cheese to win a copy of Farrell-Kingsley's The Home Creamery is still on, as no one has guessed correctly. Consider that an itty bitty hint.

Any buttermilk or buttermilk making experiences to share? Any helpful hints that we all should know or recipes favorite we have to try?

Home Creamery Event Giveaway: Guess Her Favorite Cheese

2009-02-10T10:21:00.000-08:00

It's finally time for the second of three Home Creamery Book Giveaway Contests, and this month, Miz. Dot Joo (on right) is the star. Storey publishing has donated three of Kathy Farrell-Kingsley's books, The Home Creamery, in honor of Vin de la Table's monthly event, and we're going to send one of the books off to the lucky event participant who is able to correctly guess Miz Joo's favorite cheese. There are five given possiblities. It's a good time to mention that although the event is based upon Farrell-Kingsley's publication because of its ease and friendly nature, no one will be turned away from participating in this event for lack of this book. Any recipe is fine. As long as one makes the monthly dairy love product, they are invited to play.

Following the five cheese guesses are the contest rules, the main event guidelines are included at the end of this post, and have fun guessing the cheese! Please leave a comment at the end of this post with your cheese of choice guess by this Sunday night, Feb 15th, 12pm Oakland time. Thanks!

Is Miz Joo's favorite cheese:
Livarot
Vella Dry Jack
Roquefort
Garrotxa
Hook's Cheddar

Info about Miz Joo that might or might not help one win the contest:
1. She was a guest blogger on Vin de la Table .
2. Her parents own a deli on the East Coast.
3. She loves cheese.
4. She made Hello Kitty waffles for her neice on Christmas morning and a space ship out of wooden wine boxes for her to play in.

Contest rules
1. Anyone who wins the book must participate in Vin de la Table Home Creamery: Making Cheese and Drinking Wine event.
2. Unless willing to support all of the book's shipping costs, all contestants must live in the United States or have a shipping address in North America.
3. Individuals may win the contest only once.

Home Creamery Event Guidelines: (for the end of the month)
1) Make the dairy product of the month at home.
2) Either sip your dairy product to a wine or suggest a wine you think you might enjoy sipping with your milk creation in a raw or transformed state (i.e the cheese itself or a cheesecake). Also, I'll forgive you if you don't want to pair your goodness with wine, and just want to make join in on the dairy love.
3. Send me one of two things by the last Wednesday of the month (Feb 25th for the second month):
a) If you have a blog, send me the link to the post where you talk about your Home Creamery experience and I will feature it in on my Home Creamery post.
b) If you don't have a blog, email me a photo of your results (vindelatable@gmail.com) by the last Monday of the month and a brief 2-4 sentence sum up of your experience and your delectable pairings, which I will feature on my blog post.

Home Creamery Event: Makin' Cheese, Drinkin' Wine, and Ricotta and Sweet Potato Gnocchi

2009-02-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

Gnocchi recipe at end of page

As fellow Home Creamery Event participant Dan Petroski stated, ricotta is "quite possibly the easiest and least timely cheese to make." It is also a strong contender for the least photogenic cheese ever. It doesn't ooze. It doesn't stack. It doesn't glisten in the right places- it just sits there, waiting for its white curds to be baked or drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. If there were paparazzi of the cheese world, they wouldn't waste time scaling ricotta's Berverly Hill's gated mansion. Ricotta does not look good in a bikini.

But bless the cheese, although it is not as succulent as Brillant Savarin or studded with diamond-like crystals like Beemster, it rolls up its sleeves, puts in full days at work, and only stops for cigarette breaks. In short, it is the ultimate cooking cheese.

For the first Home Creamery Event, the dairy product of choice was ricotta and the participant number was three: Dan Petroski, the assistant winemaker of Larkmead vineyards and Simona Carini of Bricole, blog and me.

Although the Home Creamery Event is based on Farrell-Kingsley's book, Carini made two types of ricotta. One was the buttermilk and whole milk recipe from the book, and the other she made from whey and milk she had leftover from an earlier home cheesemaking venture. I loved this. Anytime a recipe for the dairy product of the month other than Farrell-Kingsley's inspires you, by all means, use it in addition to or instead of the one in the book. The link to Carini's two experiments can be found here . Keep on eye on this girl's blog, she's a dairy master. Prior to playing ricotta with us, Simona's been crafting aged goat cheeses at home with milk from a friend's farm.

Makin' Ricotta
Now, instead of talking about my own ricotta making experiences, I'm going to share parts of Petroski's write-up about his time in the kitchen. I'm doing this because Petroski summed up the experience so well, and even though my own time with curds and whey was much more exciting than his (I alternated between watering the plants outside and visiting the local strip clubs during the acidification process) I like the way his words flow. Plus, he emailed me cool pictures that I swear I didn't shrink to make mine look better. Towards the end of this post is my ricotta and sweet potato dumpling recipe that I made with my homemade ricotta.

Petroski's Cheese: A Homemade Ricotta Experience

"My ingredients, as pictured, were pretty straight forward - Strauss Family Creamery organic whole milk and heavy cream, white wine vinegar and salt. After getting the temp up to 185F, I removed from heat and stirred in three tablespoons of the vinegar for thirty seconds and then half a tablespoon of salt for thirty seconds and let stand, covered, for about two hours.

As soon as the vinegar was added, the milk/cream mixture began its curdling and at that point, by smell alone, I knew things were going to turn out well. After the alloted time I moved the curds to the cheese cloth and let sit, wrapped for two more hours in a colander above a bowl.

While the cheese was coming together, I halved a couple of Roma tomatoes, de-seeded them and filled a pyrex glass dish with a half of cup of olive oil, placed the tomatoes, drizzled them with more oil added salt, sugar and oregano and baked them in the oven, cut side up, for one hour and then flipped them for another 15-30 minutes. I plated the tomatoes drenched in their own oil and juices; cut open the cheese cloth and sliced some ciabatta.

All the while, during the waiting period, I pulled the cork on a 2001 Val di Suga Brunello di Montalcino. Tasted for corkiness and then double decanted to let it develop, opened, in bottle until we were ready to snack, The Val di Suga translates to "Valley of the Sauce." With the vineyards slopped high on a hill facing the Tuscan sun, these Sangiovese Grosso grapes bake all day long, giving the wine a wonderful core of red and black fruit hidden under pepper and earthy terroir; the refined tannins and bright acidity confirms why Sangiovese is the king when pairing with tomato sauce drenched pasta. However, our little creation this night with a little extra sweetness coming from the tomatoes, the texture of the cheese and the crusty bread all helped round out this relatively young wine and allowed the food and wine to sing in concert."

After making my two cups of ricotta from a gallon of milk and quart of buttermilk (I choose a different recipe in the book from Dan), I decided to put the cheese to work. It had, after all, cost me around the same amount as high-end ricotta purchased from a store so I thought that I should get my money's worth out of the curds and create something in addition to the cheese. My dish of choice was sweet potato ricotta dumplings. Whether you choose to call them gnocchi or not is your choice. I've heard that gnocchi made from anything other than potatoes and flour are gnocchi impostors and should really be called dumplings. I'll let you decide if you want to shame yourself as I have in the title.

SWEET POTATO AND RICOTTA DUMPLINGS

An Italian mother once told me that when boiling potatoes for gnocchi, always use the older ones laying around one's kitchen. Water won't be able to penetrate though the older, tougher skin as much as it would with a new tuber with thin skin. This is good because less water in the gnocchi mix produces a lighter, fluffier dumpling.
* a food mill or ricer is recommended for this recipe.
* have a small pot of boiling water ready to test the dumplings.

2 medium sized sweet potatoes (I used the standard orange guys found in supermarkets across the country)
1 cup ricotta, well drained
1/4 - 1/2 cup flour
salt and pepper

1. Put sweet potatoes in a medium-sized pan, cover with water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, bring to a simmer and cook until a fork inserted into the potato slides out with little effort (about 20-30 minutes).

2. Once potatoes are cooked, remove from water and let set only until cool enough to touch. Peel, cut into thirds, and run through the food mill over a bowl. It is easier to put potatoes through the mill when they are still warm and the resulting puree will have a smoother consistency. Cool after milling.

3. Add the ricotta to the bowl and mix throughly with fingers.

4. Add a little flour at a time to the bowl until the mixture starts to cling together and sticks less to your fingers. I eventually used around a half a cup of flour. Use as little as you think might be necessary because the more flour used, the heavier the dumplings. Salt and pepper to taste at this point.

5. Now do a test run. Form an oval ball about half the size of an egg with your hands and make an indentation with your thumb unto one side of the dumpling. Drop into the boiling test water already on the stove and lower the heat to a simmer. If the dumpling rises to the top of the water and does not fall apart within 3-5 minutes , you're good. If it falls apart, you need to add more flour to the original batch and make another tester to check your progress.

6. When ready to cook the entire batch, bring a large, salted pot of water to a boil. Add only half the dumplings to the pot at a time so they will have room to move about and cook throughly. After 3 minutes, run a gnocchi under running water and then taste. If it tastes of uncooked four, continue cooking the batch for one to two more minutes.

7. Remove dumplings from water with a large slotted spoon or small sieve. Continue process with next batch.

8. At meal time (these gnocchi keep best uncooked in the fridge until ready to cook and serve), cook gnocchi and serve with sage leaves and browned butter.

I enjoyed this hearty dumplings with an arugula salad and an Uvaggio Vermentino from Lodi. The nose on the Vermentino was lightly floral, pear and lemon-laced, and crisp and dry on the tongue. Most times when I make a light sauce like browned butter and sage for a pasta or dumpling, I like to let the ingredients shine and keep the wine light, but I've been known to pour a Viognier or Rhone blend with this dish, which brings out the earthy and sweet butter and potato flavors.

This is the end of the ricotta home creamery edition. I welcome you to join us for the next Home Creamery Event and would love to hear about your ricotta experiences or any prefences for the next dairy product we tackle in the comment section below. Thanks for playing!

To sum up the event's guidelines again:
1) Make the dairy product of the month at home.
2) Either pair the dairy product to a wine or suggest a wine you think you might enjoy sipping with your milk creation. There are no limits here- it's okay if you want to make something with your creation beyond the raw dairy product, like ricotta cake, dumplings, or baked ricotta, or you can suggest a wine to sip with simply the fresh, buttery ricotta. Your choice. Also, I'll forgive you if you don't want to pair your goodness with wine, and just want to make join in on the dairy love.
3. Send me one of two things by the last Monday of the month (Jan 26th for the first month):
a) If you have a blog, send me the link to the post where you talk about your Home Creamery experience and I will feature it in on my Home Creamery post.
b) If you don't have a blog, email me a photo of your results (vindelatable@gmail.com) by the last Monday of the month and a brief 2-4 sentence sum up of your experience and your delectable pairings, which I will feature on my blog post.

Visiting Domaine Carneros, Etude, and Darioush & Home Creamery Submissions

2009-01-26T15:52:00.000-08:00

Home Creamery Event Participants: Out of consideration of shopping lists gone awry and butter muslin sheets not arriving in time, I am extending the first Home Creamery Event ricotta submission deadline to Wednesday night, Janruary 28th. I do, however, welcome and love early submissions. Event details may be found in paragraph three or four of this post, and submissions may be emailed to vindelatable@gmail.com.

Most weekends, our excursions involve deciding whether to hike in Oakland's Redwood Hill park or walk down Fruitvale Ave to get a taco. Or pan dulce. This past Saturday, however, my husband and I filled up the gas tank, said farewell to Oak Town, and drove to Napa. Our mission: wine tasting at Domaine Carneros, Etude, and Darioush.

It's been our practice to visit wineries during the winter months when there are less elbows to nudge at the tasting bars and (slightly) fewer swerving cars on the road. Fortunately, one out of any two winter days in Napa is guaranteed to have clear skies, so in addition to seeing sullen clouds cloaking the haunted Domaine Carneros chateau, we spotted yellow wild mustard shining in vineyards. Here's a little piece of our trip.

The Domaine Carneros Chateau.

Sure, the high end Pinots Noirs we sampled from the Domaine were nice, but the sparklings were the big hits. Our favorites were the rosé and "Le Reve," (The dream) sparkling. Good Pinots run rampant all over California, they can be practically found at every rest stop. Good Cali sparklings, on the other hand, are few and far between.

My husband knows we're not allowed to stop the car without a promise of cheese. Domaine Carneros had a plate that went smashingly with their wines that featured Cypress Grove's Mad River Roll goat cheese, Bellwether Carmody (both amazing with everything), and a brie, that while tasty, was overshadowed by the local beauties.

I love Etude, and this is the 1999 Heirloom Merlot that we took home with us. It had raspberry and plummy fruit with smokey tobacco flavors and enough acidity and tannins to last two to five more years. We just happened to visit Etude on a day when they were sharing their Heirloom wine with club members and managed to invite ourselves to the release party. We had party hats in our back pockets. Etude's Heirloom wines are limited edition bottlings available for purchase at the winery that are intended to express the nature of old vines around Carneros. They are, quite simply, gorgeous.

Thalassa Skinner, manager of Oxbow cheese in downtown Napa and part-owner of Culture , a new quarterly cheese magazine just released that has taken on the duty of singing me to sleep at night, selected cheeses to pair with Etude's Heirloom wines with the help of assistant manager Ricardo (not pictured). My husband is the lurker.

Cheeses pictured from Oxbrow market are Abbaye de Belloc, a sheep's milk cheese made by Benedictine monks in the Pyrenees mountains of France, and Beecher's Reserve Cheddar.

Our last stop was Darioush. They make yummy, very expensive wines and their tasting room is modeled after a Persian palace. Enough said.

Winter Carrot-Apple Salad and Gros Manseng

2009-01-18T17:55:00.001-08:00

When it's a warm day and the seventy-degree California air outside whistles at you with disgust when you reach for a skillet but your vegetable crisper is still packed to the till with the root vegetables the January weather normally dictates, reach for the grater. Make a root vegetable and apple salad, dress it with a light lemon, olive oil and dijion vinaigrette, and call it lunch. Sip with Gros Manseng.

After a week of days blessed with sun that warms the soul in the middle of winter, turning on the stove feels like a kitchen sin. Take heed, dear readers, there is a livelier way to utilize those those previously soup and braising-bound veggies.

While we normally think of using spring peas or summer tomatoes for a seasonal salad, grated root vegetables can rock a salad bowl too. Just as braising winter produce soothes their starchy nature and brings caramel-like sugars to the surface, shredding a carrot or parsnip into fine pieces breaks down the grainy fibers and softens the plant's rough edges. Futhermore, the acid in the vinaigrette cooks the veggies like citrus cooks or processes fish in ceviche, so the vegetables soften, and guests won't still be chewing on fibrous roots on the car ride home.

There are a couple things to keep in mind when going root-style. First, since root veggies generally become limp and uni-textural when shredded and dressed, adding something with a snap like apple or celery to the mix adds another dimension to the salad that keeps your mouth coming back for more. Unless your a fan of that soft slaw that sits on family picnic tables, adding crunch is key, otherwise, add mayonnaise. Another way to booster even more crunch is by tossing in a small handful of roughly chopped nuts like walnuts or pecans at the last minute. Next, to liven up the salad's sugary, simple winter flavors, make a punchy extra virgin olive oil vinaigrette heavy on the lemon, seasoned with a handful of chopped herbs and dijon that will contrast the sweetness of the roots and offer the salad balance.

Quick and Easy Winter Root-Vegetable Apple Salad
serves 3-4 people

shredded root vegetables- 2 carrots, 2 parsnips or 1 small celery root (mix and matching possible)

1/2 tsp. dijion mustard
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp fresh herbs, chopped

1 small handful roughly chopped pecans

1 crisp apple, such as fuji

salt and pepper

Place shredded root vegetables and chopped pecans a large bowl. In a small bowl or jar, mix dijion, lemon juice, oil and chopped herbs and set aside. Cut apple into match stick pieces at the last minute to avoid browning and add to large bowl. Pour dressing over salad and mix well. Salt and pepper to taste.

What to drink

It's afternoon, it's cool. If you're feeling like a glass of cold wine, grab a bottle of Gros Manseng or another crisp, punchy white from Gascony or the Laungedoc regions of France. Typically made with Gros Manseng, Petite Manseng, and sometimes Ugni Blanc, whites from this region are typically high-acidity, aromatic wines that pair with vegetables like Sophia Loren pairs with a slim-cut dress. If you were under the impression that Gruner Vetliner had no match in the contest of who paired best with vegetables, well.... Gros Manseng (get ready for this) tastes good with brussel sprouts, broccoli, and even asparagus. I know, I know, life continues to amaze. And best of all, it's relatively cheap in the world of good wine. The Domaine des Cassagnoles bottle I drank, pictured above, went for $13.50, and the bottle I had from the Laungedoc last week sported a $9 pricetag. The flavors, you ask? Granny smith apple, quince, apricot, flowers, lemon, and a finish that makes your lips purse.

Any favorite salads that utlilize the tougher winter produce in your house?

A Brief Intermission: A Stroll Down Fruitvale Avenue

2009-01-15T08:34:00.000-08:00

When my husband and I couldn't decide whether we wanted to head to Redwood Park five miles from our house, or go for an urban hike down the long stretch of Fruitvale Ave, in Oakland for our leisurely Sunday activity, it was the food that swayed us. Here's a short photo essay capturing our decision.

Is there an area near you that you go for awesome Mexican food?

The hot sauce aisle at a Fruitvale grocery store.

El pastor and carne asada tacos from a corner taco truck.

Los Mexicanos Pasteleria- everything made in-house. You tell them when you're ready to order, they hand you a silver tray and tongs, and you select your morsel.

Coconut Cream Pan Dulce from Los Mexicanos.

Lastly, a quick note for Home Creamery event participants, I found a great website where one could purchase butter muslin and other supplies that will be needed for future dairy adventures that can be found here

Book Giveaway Home Creamery Winner!!!

2009-01-12T12:15:00.000-08:00

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Just a little cheese porn to get us all supped up for the dairy love to follow.

After excluding my father's vote in the comment section for Claire's favorite cheese, which we later determined he probably knew because she told him, there was only one contender. The competition was fierce and furious. I wrote his name on a piece of paper and put it in a hat, shook it around to give him a fighting chance, washed the bones to clear the air, and then grabbed absolutely the first name my fingertips brushed and drew it from the hat.

The winner for the first of three monthly Home Creamery Book Giveaways is...... JACK!

Way to go Jack! Congratulations.

While my heart would be warmed if Claire's favorite cheese was a bandaged wrapped cheddar or Epoisse, the young cute pie is a picky eater and would probably wrinkle her nose at the sight of bandages on cheese or the smell of Epoisse. But, we'll get her. She's moved from string cheese to cheese with holes. This is big. Next time I see her, I'll cut holes in slim peice of Comte, make it into a mask shape to involve her in the cheese process, then eat the cheese holes. We'll get her folks, oh, we'll turn her around.

Now, for the first assignment from The Home Creamery book by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley (drum roll please, again)... RICOTTA! Ricotta's story starts on p. 68, and the recipe starts on pg. 70. It's probably a good time to mention that no one will be denied participation in the Home Creamery Event if they are interested in making dairy products at home. Although the event is based on Farrell-Kingsley's book, partially because of its easy,d friendly nature and partially because I love the idea of supporting this author whose teaching us to take cheese into our own hands, participants are welcome to use any recipe of their choosing for the dairy challenges. I would encourage everyone to buy this awesome book, but I just really want you to play dairy with me.

To sum up the event's guidelines:
1) Make the dairy product of the month at home.
2) Either pair the dairy product to a wine or suggest a wine you think you might enjoy sipping with your milk creation. There are no limits here- it's okay if you want to make something with your creation beyond the raw dairy product, like ricotta cake, dumplings, or baked ricotta, or you can suggest a wine to sip with simply the fresh, buttery ricotta. Your choice. Also, I'll forgive you if you don't want to pair your goodness with wine, and just want to make join in on the dairy love.
3. Send me one of two things by the last Monday of the month (Jan 26th for the first month):
a) If you have a blog, send me the link to the post where you talk about your Home Creamery experience and I will feature it in on my Home Creamery post.
b) If you don't have a blog, email me a photo of your results (vindelatable@gmail.com) by the last Monday of the month and a brief 2-4 sentence sum up of your experience and your delectable pairings, which I will feature on my blog post.

That's it for now, i'm so excited to start the event. Please leave any questions, concerns, or excellent ricotta making advice in the comment section. This is my first time with ricotta, so if it's important not to eat the concoction until it's finished, someone warn me.

Thanks for playing! Remember, in the next two months there will be two more chances to win The Home Creamery book.

Jack, please email me at vindelatable@gmail.com with your info so we can get you that great book.

Home Creamery Event Giveaway Contest: Making Cheese and Drinking Wine

2009-01-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

Some readers might be wondering why cutie Claire's picture is topping the Vin de la Table home page. Although appearances are deceiving, she does not look old enough to disperse coq au vin and Burgundy pairing advice or impart a baconsnap recipe upon the masses. Ah, but there is a glorious reason. Read on.

Get out your milk and pots, dear readers, for the first Vin de la Table Home Creamery Event: Making Cheese & Drinking Wine is almost upon us. After months of anticipation, the blogging event that will applaud your attempts and triumphs at creating dairy morsels in your own kitchen has arrived. No longer will you have to pay thousands for that tub of fresh ricotta, because after making it once from the Home Creamery book, you will have the power to create that plush goodness at home.

Home Creamery Event Details: The event is open to the public. Every month, I'll pick a recipe for a cheese or dairy good from The Home Creamery book pictured above, and participants (that's you!!!) will make the dairy products. Suggestions for next picks are welcome. After making the dairy product (here's the Vin de la Table hook), participants would pair it with a wine of their choice. There are no limitations. Say we're making mozzarella. Jane Doe (ohh, how she loves fresh cheeses) could focus entirely on pairing the cheese she just made with a favorite wine, or she could make a fried mozzarella sandwich, then tell us about the wine sauce she dipped her creation in and the glass of wine she sipped with her fried cheese (Jane's a naughty girl).

All entries are due until the last Monday of every month (first entries are due January 26th), and contestants are urged to purchase the Home Creamery book by the wonderful Kathy Farrell-Kingsley because while the dairy product recipes and advice included on each page are straightforward and pretty simple, they are too long to post on this blog. Plus, it might provoke fuzzy feelings in us to know that by buying the well-priced $16 book , we are supporting a writer who is nuturing our own creative cheese endeavors.

But before the actual event, I have more good news having to do with the aforepictured Claire. Are you sitting?

In celebration of all things blogging and milk-related, Storey publishers have agreed to donate three books to kick off the Home Creamery event! So, in honor of Storey publisher's generosity and the Making Cheese & Drinking Wine event, I'm holding a contest called: Guess the Cheese.

Guess the Cheese

Every month for three months, I will post a picture of a person (Claire rules January) and contest participants will guess that lovely lady or man's favorite cheese out of a selection of five offerings. The names of all correct guessers will be tossed into a hat, one name will be drawn, and the winner will win a Home Creamery book that they will use to participate in the Vin de la Table event. Please leave your guesses on the comment section of this blog, and for privacy's sake, email me (vindelatable@gmail.com) your contact information in case you are the winner.

Please remember to email me your contact info in case you are the winner so we can decide where to send the book!

And now we begin!

Guess the Cheese:

Is Claire's favorite cheese:
Époisses
Swiss Cheese (with holes)
String Cheese (at room temperature)
Comté
Fiscalini Bandage-Wrapped Cheddar

Info about Claire that might or might not help one win the contest:
She is six.
She likes to decorate tables for Christmas.
She aims to grow out her hair until it reaches her lower back.
Her mother is a teacher and her father is a cook.

The contest will end Sunday, Jan 11th, midnight, Oakland time.

Good luck! Lastly, three book giveaway rules:
1. All contest contenders must participate in Vin de la Table Home Creamery: Making Cheese and Drinking Wine event.
2. Unless willing to support all of the book's shipping costs, all contestants must live in the United States or have a shipping address in North America.
3. Individuals may enter the contest only once.

Bi-Coastal Chinese Food & Wine Pairing II: Red-Cooked Lamb

2008-12-29T08:36:00.000-08:00

Finally, the meat. For those of you who haven't been keeping up with the joint wine and Chinese food pairing between RedCook and myself, I'm not saying you should be ashamed of yourself, or make yourself go a day without carbs for punishment, I'm just saying, read here.

Last time, RedCook, the magical Chinese food blogger based in NYC, and I paired daikon and chive blossom salad and steamed tofu and mushrooms to two white wines. This time, to even the palate, give honor to the circle of life, and to soothe the protesters out my window holding signs reading "Where's the Lamb" and "Gimme Meat," we decided to prepare a classic Chinese meat dish paired with red wine. That crowning glory of a meat dish is called Red Cooked Lamb, and the recipe can be found on RedCook's part of the joint post.

Slowly cooked with star anise, cinnamon, tangerine peel, Sichaun peppercorns, fennel, dried chilis , ginger, soy, Shaoxiing cooking wine, sugar, daikons and carrots, the lamb takes on a reddish brown color and absorbs the warm to hot aromatic spices that make your mouth tingle and your tummy warm.

How to Pair?

If one was consulting the Chinese food-focused Vin de la Table guide featured in Bi-Coastal Chinese Food and Wine Pairing I when considering what wine to pour, they might look at the sections talking about how to pair wine with prominent sweet and spicy flavors. When choosing a red, I suggested going with a Zinfandel or Grenache because they have an especially fruity, friendly nature that highlights any sweetness in a dish, and because their peppery and spicy qualities strike an especially harmonious cord with high aromatics and picante heat. The sweetness in this dish comes from the tablespoon of sugar, Shaoxing cooking wine, and touch of soy sauce added to the braising liquid. The heat comes from the chiles and fresh ginger. Keep in mind, as noted in the spicy section of the guide, to stay away from the high-alcohol wines because high-alcohol + spices = amplified pain on tongue and throat. To be avoided.

When my guests and I enjoyed the red cooked lamb over rice, we drank a 2006 Vina Valoria Tempranillo from Rioja, Spain. I choose this wine because although it wasn't Grenache or Zin based, I remembered that it had a dark berry spicy taste, and was low-alcohol with unusually low oak for a modern Rioja. For RedCook, I suggested he find a Grenache based Rhone blend and a Zinfandel that I found at a wine store near his place by looking on their website. Did I pick three different wines for us to prove my point that as long as one considers how the components of a dish will react with the general characteristics of a wine, that nothing is set in stone and they should have fun playing around? No. We couldn't find the Vina Valoria in Oakland and Manhattan. But gosh darn it, it was fun to play around.

For those of us on the west coast, the Vina Valoria was a great match. It was a pure fruit and spice festival. For RedCook's pals on the East Coast, the Rhone/Grenache-blend worked very well, but the Zin I suggested, which I coincedentally didn't taste before recommending, was almost too sweet for the lamb. Ahh.....maybe I should have done what I swear by and asked the knowledgable clerk at the wine shop to describe the wine to me to see if it fit the bill, or (I know, I know) asked how she thought it might pair with a spicy lamb dish. To hear what RedCook had to say about his pairings, see here.

Well, dear readers, this post marks the end of the Bi-Coastal Chinese Food and Wine Pairing with Vin de la Table and Red Cook, but only marks the beginning of a beautiful food and wine pairing friendship between you, RedCook and VindelaTable. I urge all of you to check out his site as often as possible. He's got more Chinese food cooking knowledge in his little pinky finger than many of us have in our whole bodies, and he likes to share. Thank you RedCook!

Have any of you had any amazingly good or horrible Chinese food and wine pairing experiences, maybe with wines I didn't mention?

P.S. The beautiful lychee fruits that we had for dessert.

Five Wine Gifts: For The Juice Lovers

2008-12-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

Before Red Cook and I bestow our final post next week, I thought it fitting to share some of my gift ideas for the wine lovers in your life. This way, there's still enough time to shop and enjoy Redcook's recipe for red cooked lamb with Vin de la Table wine recommendations before Christmas.

The list is packed full of wine related things that I either own and love or items that I covet. If you haven't done your Christmas shopping this year and still have plans to do so, here are ten things I would bet a true vinophile wouldn't mind getting in their stocking. Most products can be found on my amazon store.

The Home Creamery Book, so they could join the Vin de la Table Home Creamery event that will officially begin in January, make cheese at home, and then pair their creations to wine.

The World Atlas of Wine, Sixth Edition by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. The holy duo just released this edition, and I couldn't think of another book that better explains who does what where.

Riedel Wine Decanter
Good for separating sediment from juice in an old bottle of wine and highlighting the flavors in an ordinary bottle, a Riedel decanter is a gem to have around. Especially when your other one breaks.

Wine Books by Jay McInerney
He's decadent, he's got high standards and old-fashioned tastes, and he could very well be the funniest wine writer typing keys on the keyboard to date.

Solano Cellar'sWine Club Membership
Okay, this may seem a little self-serving, since I'm kinda affiliated with this place, but let me tell you, these wine clubs rock. There are two ways to go (on the right hand side of the linked page). Make someone a sampler case member, and they'll receive 12 bottles of fun, hand-picked (yes, I'm involved) everyday table wines monthly, or make them a pick a two-bottle club member, and they'll receive two of our favorite wines that month from the choosen category (Zin, Pinot, Red, White, Red & White or Fringe Drinking).

What will you be giving to good little wine lovers this year? Corkscrew reindeer heads? A vineyard? Nothing (naughty wine drinker!)? A glass or two of wine and some good converstaion?

Bi-Coastal Chinese Food & Wine Pairing

2008-12-09T18:40:00.000-08:00

All it took was one link, a picture or two of pork belly, and I was hooked.

I found RedCook blog's through Matt Bites' blogroll. As if it wasn't cool enough to just be included on Matt Bites Matt Bite's blogroll (Matt Bites as in the Matt Bites that is on Martha Stewart's blogroll), RedCook's blog delivers a whole lot of cooking love, beautiful photos, and provides insights into a Chinese kitchen and home.

The focus of RedCook is Chinese home cooking, or Chinese cuisine versus the food dished up in most Chinese-American restaurants. Kian, the blog's author, focuses on the traditional cuisine he ate while growing up in Singapore and China, and tells the stories behind the recipes he posts and the ingredients within them in fantastic detail, which befits many a average cook in the United States unfamiliar with Chinese produce, sauces, and fish and meat cuts and preparations. While most posts introduce recipes, when Kian focuses entirely on cooking methods, or shares his amazing experiences cooking for New York chefs in his own home, or his recent role as translator and cook at the Dumplings & Dynasties James Beard dinner, the results are just as educational and inviting.

Why the name Red Cook, instead of Kian Cooks, or Cooking Chinese not in China but Instead from Kian's Harlem Apartment, you ask? The "red" part of the name is used to describe a cooking method common to Chinese home cuisine that utilizes warm spices like star anise, clove, and peppercorns to impart rich red and brown hues to the tender meat that's sitting simmering in the braising liquid. This cooking method in particular expresses what is so compelling about Kian's blog. Through showing us what was on his parent's stove and what's on his own stove now, like red cooked meats, he's gently and passionately educating those of us who didn't grow up cooking with five-spice blends who may be more familiar with chow mein than silken-mushroom tofu or mooncakes- about the true and wide realm of Chinese cuisine.

Why Red Cook and Vin de la Table?

Well, I'm an excited food and wine dork who gets amazing thrills just thinking about pairing awesome food like RedCook's to wine. So, after oogling the dishes on his website for months, I finally struck up the nerve to ask if he'd let me play wine pairing with him after school one day. And he said yes!

The pairings

Focusing on three dishes, our joint post turned out to be a true wine pairing blogging adventure. The deal was this: RedCook would send me recipes, I would head to my local Chinese market, rustle up the ingredients, choose wines to match the dishes, try them both at home, and give him the names of the wine I tried so he could do his own wine pairing tasting in New York City.

Simple, yes?

No...... Did you know that it can be an extreme pain in the booty to find a wine on both coasts if you're not going with Gallo or Kendalll Jackson? I'm of the small-production wine persuasion and believe that wine tastes better when produced in small batches -the key word here being "small," which in the wine world translates to limited. The wines I was accustomed to swilling here were somewhere in New York I was sure, for if one can buy a roast chicken at three in the morning, they could certainly find a small-production French wine, right? Ah....well, let's just say that dear RedCook ended up having to make two dinners to test through suggested wines, and I decided to suggest some higher-production wine than I normally would. And then there was that hurricane. So expect to see more wine notes on RedCook. Note to self- just because a wine is listed on a shop's website does not mean that they haven't sold out. RedCook, you are a trooper.

Anyhow, we found wines to sample and we had some profitable hits and misses with what we poured (and aren't misses the most educational!). Here goes.

Pairing Wine to Chinese Cuisine: A General Guide

Chinese cuisine tends to have three characteristics in particular that demand attention when pairing wine to a meal. Separately, the characteristics aren't too daunting, but when they are combined in one dish, as they very often are, it's good to have a general idea of how to charm the flavors into getting along with wine. They're proud flavors and have become accustomed to owning the show. However, as the ideals behind Chinese cuisine are achieving harmony on the palate and health, a happy wine pairing with this cuisine can feel especially poetic once achieved.The main attributes to keep in mind that can puzzle when pairing wine to Chinese cuisine are sour, sweet, and spicy.

SOUR OR HIGH ACIDITY

Just as pairing wine to salads with vinaigrettes has caused futile alarm to wine fans for centuries, pairing wine to sour elements in Chinese food can provoke raised eyebrows.People fear that the acidity in the food will throw the acidity in the wine off balance. As the dishes with the most sour elements seem to be salads and lighter, cold dishes, we'll focus on white wine. The key to having an enjoyable white wine experience with the sour, or higher acidity flavors in Chinese food is to pick a wine that still has remaining residual sugar left in the bottle after fermentation (i.e.,that is lightly sweet). Or, one can go with a super fresh (not tropical), yet fruity aromatic, unoaked white like a Godello or Gruner Vetliner. The sugar in the slightly sweet wine will be a study in contrasts with the vinegar in many Chinese dishes, make the sauce or dressing appear even more vibrant, and even highlight the sugar that (see below) will inevitably also be included in the recipe. On the other hand, a fresh, fruity, unoaked, not sweet wine will play on the acidity in the dish and highlight the feisty, punchy sours flavors in, say, rice vinegar or Shaoxing cooking wine. If you appreciate bright vinegar notes, go with a fruity, fresh wine like Godello or Gruner Vetliner. If you're not afraid of a little bit of sweetness in your glass, pour a Riesling or friend to celebrate the harmony on your plate.

SWEET

As mentioned earlier, Chinese food is much about balance (and deliciousness, yes). If there's vinegar or higher-acidity cooking wine included in a recipe, there's most likely going to be sugar or fruit too, so the dish will have the tools necessary to reach an tasty internal equilibrium. This is similar to how the best, sweet-as-perfectly-ripe-fruit Rieslings will have lip smacking acidity. And just as sweeter wines paired and contrasted expertly with the sour flavors in the cuisine, they will match well with dishes that have a touch of sugar too. The sweetness in the wines will match with the sweetness and highlight any high acidity notes in the food, and the food will return the favor in full for the wine. The fruity wines mentioned in the above sour section will, as Kian demonstrates with his own pairings, also be successful here. Note to readers: If you want a straight wine winner every time with a lighter Chinese dish, a good Gruner Vetliner is a sure bet. Gruner Vetlinr, is simply put, a magical wine, and can be found on the wine lists of the best Asian Restaurants accross the country because it pairs to spicy, sweet, and sour notes like no other wine does. And it loves cilantro and green onions, and even the asparagus dishes that make other whites crinkle their nose. But don't go with a Gruner Vetliner every time just because it's easy. Play around. To match dishes with sweet characteristics with a red wine, think of Zinfandel or Grenache, both of which are sweeter grapes even on the vine.

SPICY

Food spiked with those spices that demand complete and upright attention of your senses- like Chinese 5-spice mixes, star anise, ginger and Sichuan chiles, for example- favor spicy, peppery, and and often fruitier and sweeter wines that dually highlight and calm the spices at the same time. For whites, Gruner Vetliner wins again (like Governor Arnie at the Olympia contest), as do wines with just a hint or a whole lot of sweetness, like Riesling, Sylvanner, white Rhone blends (Viognier, Marsanne, Roussanne), and sometimes Chenin Blanc or Pinot Gris. For reds, Zinfandel, Grenache and Grenache-blends are go-to wines, as they naturally show a fruitier sweetness, and tons of spice and peppery. But, watch the alcohol level. High alcohol + spices = horrible burning sensations in mouth, throat, and nose areas. High alcohol wines can be just as detrimental to sweetness in dishes, amplifying any sugar notes until all you can think of are Pixie sticks. Note this for white wines as well. In particular, Rhone whites can be very high in alcohol and set your tounge ablaze just as easily. It would be preferable to drink a white 13.5% alcohol, and a red no higher than 14.5% alcohol (and much lower if possible) if you're having a hosting a spice fest.

Lastly, with Chinese cooking, a dish's prominent flavors are generally in the sauce or dressing. So focus on that rather than the protein or vegetable being served.

Time to pair

Just in case your boss enters the room and you've already spent a good ten to forty minutes reading my prologue, we'll focus on two pairings today, and address the meat dish in part two of the post later this week or early next. All recipes can be found on Redcook's blog on this post here

Part of the fun of wine is that it provides a different experience to everyone, and Kian and I hope that you enjoy, as RedCook and I did, that our and our guests's wine pairings preferences differed. In the same vein, I hope that my descriptions of pairing wine to Chinese food flow well with Kian, and that the photos I took of his recipes, made Vin de la Tble style, resemble the actual dishes, and that he doesn't laugh so hard that he has to lie down for the rest of the day. By the way, I'm pretty sure that I cooked chive blossoms where I shouldn't have.
Let's start with the courses that we poured with white wines.

GARLIC CHIVE BLOSSOM AND DAIKON RADISH SALAD

The wine I picked for this lively salad was the Val de Sil Montenovo Godello, Valdellorras, Spain (whichever vintage). Godello is grape native to the Galacian area of Spain whose scent is a cross between a Riesling and an Albarino. Apples, peaches, lime, floral, crisp and dry, I could drink a lot of this. However, it proved to be a controversial (yeah, stay away if you can't handle the heat) pairing among the guests. I liked the way it rocked the bitter flavors of the daikon and contrasted with the sugar in the dressing. But, it seemed that just my husband and I like this wine with the the daikon salad's sweet and high-acidity vinaigrette. To be fair, I'm not sure that my husband's vote counts because he told me that he liked my recent peanut-butter bacon cookie experiment before I admitted that they were a bad idea. But I still think you should try the wine here if you like the bitter daikon bite amplified like we (I) did. We also tried the white Rhone listed below, which matched the sweetness in the dressing and let the daikon rest. Kian, unfortunately wasn't able to sample the Godello because it had sold out when he reached the shop. So I suggested a Chenin Blanc which appears to have struck him on similar notes as the Godello did with my guests.

STEAMED SILKEN TOFU WITH MUSHROOMS

Let me start by saying that I was a vegetarian for seven years who ate bacon from time to time, and I have never eaten tofu that tasted this good. Furthermore, the night we served this, my meatlover husband almost left me for soybean curd. Maybe you shouldn't cook this. The recipe made for earthy, succulent, tofu garnished with bok choy and mushrooms in a slightly sweet sauce. For this dish, I decided to go with 05 Guigal Cote du Rhone White, from the Rhone Valley, France. Made from Marsanne and Roussane, this wine was slighty spicy, was warm with apple and vanilla scents, and earthy enough that I immediately wanted to serve it with mushrooms. There was a little sugar in wine too that snuggled up to the flavors in the slightly sweet sauce. For me this was a winning combo.

Part two in progress.

The discerning guests: Miz Joo of the post "Korean BBQ and Beer: Drinking Against the Wine Pairing Grain", and my husband.

Fontodi Winery: Drinking in Chianti

2008-11-29T10:08:00.000-08:00

A couple months before leaving for Italy, the owner of Fontodi winery visited our wine shop. After learning that my mother and I would very soon be in his neck of the wine world, he invited us to visit his Chianti hills haven.

I knew that, similar to how French cheese exhibits more flair when consumed in the motherland, and how Kettle Korn tastes better at the California State Fair than when popped at a mall, that his wines would be even more enchanting when poured on Fontodi grounds. I also thought that my mother, always appreciative of a fine dresser, might enjoy seeing the owner in his immaculate Italian three piece suit among his vineyards. So I said yes.

Pictures of the winery follow. Unfortunately for those readers hoping to spot an Italian suit among the collection, we missed the owner on our tour. But I have included a picture of our kind and dapper tour provider, who closely resembles an unnamed Italian-American actor. All in all, the grounds were gorgeous, our tour guide was incredibly nice and informative, and the wines were fantastic. We had a great time.

The winery office and tasting room.

Carts used to pick grapes next to the crushing facilities.

Fontodi buys their oak barrels from several French barrel makers in order to evenly distribute the differing flavors and attributes characteristic of each barrel maker's oak.

Our lovely tour guide, who my mother and I refrained from telling looks like one of our favorite actors so we wouldn't sound like all the other silly American tourists. Because we're not silly.

Interested in learning more about Fontodi? Check out some of the links here, here, and, a video of harvest here . If you plan to be in their area, tastings are limited, by appointment only, and worth every twist and turn to reach the property.

The view from the winery office.

Driving, Getting Lost, and Then Drinking in Italy

2008-11-18T10:21:00.001-08:00

I, um... left the cord that transfers my photos from my camera to my computer in Italy. Inside the house whose balcony was the staging grounds for the above photo. Don't tell my husband- I'm hoping he won't notice that the temporary cord I just ordered is small and grey and the old one is long and black. Anyhow, the people whose apartment we stayed in will be returning to their lovely home in a couple weeks and might be inspired to ship me the one that's resting on their computer desk. Or in the kitchen. Or under their bed? So, although I was hoping share oodles of pictures and Italy stories with you, I won't be doing so for a while. Until then, I'll distract you with a wine pairing story relating to cars in Italy.

We drove in Italy. Well, my mom drove in Italy. I was useless because I can't drive stick. And the "automatic" cars in Italy, they aren't really automatic like we have the states. While they don't have clutches, they still shift sticks that need to be vigorously jiggled when driving.

After driving for hours in Italy, we got lost in Florence. In the future, when I learn how to drive stick, I'd happily drive in the Italian countryside. It's gorgeous (see below) and serene. But I will never drive in an Italian city. Nor would I sit in the passenger seat of a car steered by a foreigner who is simultaneously trying to navigate the city's signs, one way streets, blockades, and considering whether the many honking cars around her mean anything besides, "i have a horn!"

The driving situation in Florence was intense. So was asking directions in extremely limited Italian in the very outskirts of Florence at night while wearing a skirt and looking lost. The medieval town of Siena, on the other hand, was relatively calm and compact and there weren't as many bridges to cross. This made for easier navigation once you got outside the city walls, as cars aren't allowed inside the huge, bricked walled of the inner Siena fortress.

Anyhow, if one ever gets lost while trying to drive in Florence then waits for a taxi for an hour that doesn't come and then has to park in an underground station because they can't find the rental car return garage, they should have a wine and food pairing experience to help them through the rest of the night.

I suggest salami, prosciutto, crostini with pate or liver, olives, and wine. At this point, any type of wine will do, but one should go in either of two directions when pairing on this night. First, if you want to gently relax, choose a regional red of the area that you are visiting, such as a Chianti, and enjoy a glass with your charcuterie. Or, if one would rather drink with the aim of forgetting the entire night, and quickly, choose a high alcohol Zinfandel that you packed in your suitcase just for this occasion, pour the wine in plastic cups provided by your hotel, and consume. Then turn down your bed, because after quaffing two glasses or three glasses of the high-octane jammy juice, you'll sleep like a baby. Then return your car in the morning.

More photos to come.

Florentine Sweets

2008-11-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

White chocolate-coated torrone

Pistachio gelato topped with a waffle piece, and held by mia mamma

Vivoli Gelateria, the best in Florence

Oh, pan forte and marzipan, I love you

Food prep

Yogurt Adventures in Italy

2008-11-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

Bunnies in Oakland, California, reindeers in Reykjavik, Iceland, and yogurt in Florence. A major source of protein in different culture's diets? No. Graffiti and stencils across the globe. For the first of my Italy series, meet Yogurt graffiti. It's Florentine.

Gingersnap Bacon Fat Cookies: What to do with those velvety drippings

2008-10-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

If after reading my coq au vin post, you decided to multiply the recipe by six to feed a party of twenty-five for a Burgundy dinner at the wine bar you manage, you might have extra bacon fat left over. That is, if you stayed true to the roots of coq au vin and used the bacon and its fat as a flavoring agent rather than as a deep-frying vehicle. Not that I wouldn't try chicken deep-fried in bacon fat, I would, but within a mile's proximity from a doctor's office.

Let me tell you, with fat from five pounds of bacon, one can cook and bake a lot of things. One thing that one should not do, by the way, is make peanut butter bacon-fat cookies. They taste like peanut butter and ham sandwiches. Not that I would know from experience. One thing one should do is bake the best gingersnap cookies that you'll ever eat in your life. Sorry grandma.

The following cookie recipe is an adaption of NY Times Fashion Critic Cathy Horyn's family recipe. She adapted the recipe from Nelle Branson's Trinity Episcopal Church Recipe Book, whose author orginally got the recipe from Kevin Bacon's mother's cousin.

The bacon adds a smoky character to the cookies unattainable by using butter that touches your heart in that special way. Good lord they were good. I didn't change very much in the recipe, but the photo accompanying her recipe shows her cookies as thin and crisp when mine were thicker and crunchy. Should we play a riveting game of guess which cookies were made by the fashion critic? The difference in texture could be ascribed to me toning down the sugar in the recipe because, wow, they used a lot of sugar. I also mixed the ingredients in bowls rather than using a food processor.

And I'll admit, I ate these cookies with milk, no wine, and it was all that I hoped for. But if I were to serve these cookies, say as the bread part of a cinnamon ice cream sandwich, I just might serve these babies with an Auslese Riesling, a sparkling moscato, or nearly any late harvest white dessert wine.

Cheers, happy baconing, and please, tell me about your bacon fat delights in the comment section. Kitchen experiences only, please. Oh, and I'm leaving for Florence next week and am requesting your input in the next post down! Have any insights? Include them here.

Bacon-Fat Gingersnaps

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup bacon fat, cooled (from 1 1/2 to 2 pounds bacon)
3/4 cup sugar, plus more later for rolling cookies
4 tablespoons dark molasses
1 large egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl, combine, and set mixture aside.

Put the cooled bacon fat, molasses, and sugar in a medium sized mixing bowl and stir until thoroughly combined. Add the egg and beat all until well-blended. Taste. Because you can. But don't sue me if you get sick and ate this raw egg yolk.

Chill the dough in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight. Form the dough into tablespoon and a half sized balls, roll in sugar, then place 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet. Press the balls flat with your fingers, then use the back side of a fork to indent.

Bake in the oven for about 10-12 minutes until dark brown. Let cool on baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a baking rack to finish cooling.

I'm Going to Italy: What Do I Bring Back and What Should I Not Miss?

2008-10-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

As of next Tuesday, I will be in Florence, Italy. I will be jet lagged and incomprehensible, but gosh darn it, I'll be there. It's my first time in this land of pecorino, prosciutto, and gelato, and I'm more excited than vampire in a blood bank. I've also heard thatthe people and art are nice too. After a four night stay in Florence, my mother and I (my traveling partner) will drive to Siena, where we will stay in a friend's apartment and take a cooking class with our friends mother. Then we'll return to Florence and see all the sights we haven't seen for four or five more days.

I've never been to Tuscany, or Italy at all for that matter, and would like to ask you, dear readers, what foods, candies, packaged goodies, should I bring back? And if you've been to this region and know of a place you swear I can't miss (i.e. a gelato shop that trumps all others), I'd love to hear about it in the comments! Along the same lines, if there is something that you saw or did in Italy that translated horribly across cultural lines, tell me!

I'll be blogging about our experiences either while I'm there, or shortly after my return, so keep tuned for photos, pictures of cheese, and winery visit discussions.

The Last Watermelon Pomegranate Salad

2008-10-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

Solemn in their infrequently visited cardboard bins, the remaining watermelons of the season watch the steady procession of the crimson fall persimmon and pomegranate beauties with wistful eyes. They know that their time has come, that the market owners will pray for the last dog days of summer to inspire grocery store visitors to pluck them from their dark fruit bins so that they can make room for the many incoming apples varieties that seem to multiply themselves by the dozen every year.

A customer claims her watermelon when the thermometer hits 85 degrees and has a slice or two then puts the fruit in the fridge and forgets about it for a couple days. It isn't until she places a half-eaten pomegranate next to the melon that she remembers last year she ate a lot more melon salads. She tells herself tonight she'll revisit the seasonal dish.

A stony Chablis, a Chardonnay grown in the shell-ridden soils of Chablis, France, which in former land times used to be underwater, gets placed in the fridge. Un-oaked, clean, and steely, the chardonnay was grown in a cooler region and although it develops tart apple and lemon flavors, the grapes that form the wine never get so ripe that their flavors would compete with the sweet and savory nature of the salad. Instead, the clean flavors will settle nicely with the sweet watermelon and pomegranate, salty ricotta salata, and herbs. She has a glass of the almost chilled wine while considering future flavors.

The Last Watermelon Salad

yellow seedless watermelon, cubed
ricotta salata
pomegranate seeds
basil or tarragon leaves
olive oil
salt and pepper

Chop watermelon into smaller cubes and place in medium sized bowl. Crumble some ricotta salata over the fruit. Tear enough tarragon or basil leaves so that the salad will be lightly flavored with the herb's fragrance. Add enough pomegranate sees to please your crunch factor. Drizzle salad with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Eat within a couple hours to preserve the watermelon's texture.

Foodbuzz Publisher Community Launches

2008-10-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

Some of you might be interested to learn about a foodie community that I belong to called Foodbuzz. It just formally launched it's publisher community program that unites over a thousand foodies, winos, and just pure drinkers from around the world on the interweb. Foodbuzz is a website where bloggers can check out other blogs, where foodies can drool over the latest featured boiled peanut or s'mores post, where cooks can find recipes, and where, if you have a free minute or two, you can go and just hang out online. There's a lot of cool stuff there, and a lot of my favorite bloggers are members of the community. My Foodbuzz profile is here . Browsing my friend list will give you a good idea of how the website connects people from Oakland to bloggers in Singapore and Germany. Thought you might like the website, and I'll be posting more soon!

Coq au Vin and Burgundy

2008-10-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Oh... coq au vin.

Immediately before cooking off four pounds of bacon for a private Burgundy dinner featuring coq au vin as the main star, I remembered that one of my favorite readers had requested that I post more about chicken and wine pairing. The timing was impeccable. I pulled the out camera that I just happened to have in my pocket, took a couple supple shots the bacon strips used for the coq, wiped the water smears from the recipe paper, and starting composing the post in my head while searing off chicken thighs. This and one or two additional future posts will focus on two of my favorite chicken and wine pairings. Today, it's coq au vin and Burgundy.

What to drink with chicken?

Chicken is like the tofu of the animal world. Unlike stronger meats like lamb or buffalo, it tastes like whatever you cook it with. So whenever anyone asks me what wine to pair with chicken, I ask how they're cooking it to get a better idea of what wine to set next to the juicy bird. Essentially, chicken can be consumed with any wine out there. Light wines, light chicken preparation. Dark wines, braise the chicken and throw in some bacon or cream to cushion the tannins. Sweet wines? Spicy chicken.

You all know how I feel about regional food and wine pairings, right? Very warmly. When we decided to have a wine dinner focusing on the Burgundian reds- Pinot Noir- I knew right away that I wanted to cook like the locals in the Burgundy region. They have, after all, been cooking and drinking their region's food and wine together for years. No wait, centuries. They just might have the pairing down by now.

Why Pinot Noir and coq au vin? Pinot Noir from Burgundy is quite the force. While Pinot Noirs from varying Burgundian appellations will vary in taste and are marked by different characteristics like excessive meatiness or delicate floral notes, all Burgundy will taste different from our Pinot here. The weather is cooler in this area in France than any area that the Pinot grape is grown in California, thereby the fruit doesn't have the chance to get as ripe (i.e. sweet) as they can and do here, and it maintains much more of its natural acidity that the fruit sugar would otherwise soothe.

A general rule is that Burgundies have enough acidity to scare the pants off our cute little Pinots in California. Being that acidity is one of the characteristics in wine that allows it to age well, Burgundies last a hell of a lot longer than our sweeter Pinots. They're actually meant to. Furthermore, it is this acidity that makes a Burgundy a better pairing with coq au vin than a California Pinot Noir.

The acidity in the Burgundy cuts the bacon and dark meat fat fat in the braised coq au vin dish. It's not that a Cali Pinot wouldn't taste good with coq (because it would), it's just that a Burgundy could highlight the dish's nuances better. But then, I'd really drink anything with coq au vin. I mean, you're eating coq au vin.

The Burgundies we were pouring at work with the coq where marked by meaty, dark fruit and orange zest characteristics. So when I was looking up recipes for coq au vin, one that caught my eye was one that was published on the Saveur website (sorry guys, I'm hooked). Well, two recipes on the website did. So I slightly adapted my favorite parts of the two to come up the recipe included below. The main differences were that I added orange zest to the coq to highlight the orange flavors in the wine. I also made sure to add a touch of cocoa powder, like some Burgundians do, toward the end of cooking, as it makes the sauce richer, thicker, and a better match for the meaty wine. Also, I used chicken thighs instead of a whole chicken because dark meat rocks and braises better than white. And it's easier to serve everybody at a catering gig the same thing so they don't ask you for a breast when you just promised the last one to their neighbor.

The wine we drank was fabulous. Imported by Joli Vin, the Burgundies that we poured with the coq was 2006 Domaine Rebourgeon-Mure 1er Cru "Santenots", from Volnay, Burgundy, and the 2006 Domaine Rebourgeon-Mure, 1er Cru "Les Vignes Franches" from Beaune, Burgundy.

Serves 4-6 people (1 or 2 chicken thighs each)
Note- chicken needs at least 4 hours to overnight to marinate

1.5 cups Burgundy or Cru Beajoulais (much more reasonably priced)
1 tsp black peppercorns
3 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
2 ribs celery, thinly sliced
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
1 small yellow onion, thinly sliced

3 lbs chicken thighs (approx. 6-7 chicken thighs)
3 tbsp. canola oil

4 sprigs flat-leaf parsley plus 1 tbsp. chopped leaves
1 bay leaves
4 sprigs thyme
1/4 lb. slab bacon, cut width-wise into 1/2 an inch
1 1/2 tbsp. flour
1 cup Chicken Stock
2 shallots, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
zest of one orange

1/3 lb. button mushrooms, quartered

1. Bring the wine, peppercorns, garlic, celery, carrots, and onion to a boil in a medium-sized sauce pan. Then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool. Once cooled, marinate chicken in liquid overnight or for at least four hours.

2. Heat oven to 325°. Tie parsley sprigs, bay leaves, and thyme together with butcher string and set aside. Remove chicken from marinade and pat dry with paper towels. Strain marinade and reserve liquid and solids separately.

3. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a wide pot over medium heat. Add bacon and cook until crisp. Using a slotted spoon, transfer bacon to a bowl. Pour off some of the fat. On medium high heat, brown chicken on each side ( 6–8 minutes) in the same pot and transfer to a plate once browned.

4. Now add the reserved vegetable marinade to the pan where you just finished browning the chicken and cook until soft, 10–12 minutes. Next, sprinkle flour over the vegetables and cook while stirring, for 1 minute. Now add reserved marinade liquid, bring to boil, and simmer for 1 minute. Add remaining stock, shallots, and bring to boil once more. Add bacon to pot, stir, add salt and pepper to taste and nestle chicken and herbs over veggies. Bake, covered, until tender, about 1.25-2 hours.

5. When chicken is almost finished cooking, heat remaining oil in a skillet over medium heat and cook the button mushrooms until soft and golden, around 5 minutes. Set aside.

6. After cooked, transfer chicken to a plate and cover with foil. Strain sauce. At this point you can choose to continue reducing the sauce on a low simmer for 10-30 minutes to thicken or just keep the sauce warm. I've done both.

7. Before serving, arrange chicken on platter; top with sauce, mushrooms, and some chopped parsley.

Do you have a favorite coq au vin recipe? What do you drink with it? Zinfandel, Pinot Noir, Martinis? Bourbon?

Rivoli's and Corso's Roscoe Skipper: Professional Pairings

2008-10-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

While my Coq au vin post is cooking, which, by the way, takes as long to write up as it does to make, I thought I'd introduce you to a wine friend of mine. Meet Roscoe Skipper, the wine director/owner of a top 100 San Francisco Chronicle Bay Area restaurant, Rivoli, and the new Tuscan style trattoria, Corso -both in Berkeley, California. Roscoe's been drinking and pouring wine at top restaurants around the country for years and if anyone has a mind prime to pick for food and wine pairing inspiration, it's Roscoe. I'm much obliged to include him in the Professional Pairings series, and am certain you'll take as much any from this interview as I have. Thank you Roscoe!

You've worked at some highly reputable restaurants in San Francisco, like Square One, Masa's, and other celebrated places around the country. Could you trace your path in food and wine for Vin de la Table readers, and briefly describe how your professional life led you to where you are now, a wine director and owner of two restaurants?

Well, I started as a bus boy for Shoney's Big Boy restaurants in 1971. I was a cook for years, but wanted to attend college, so I started
waiting tables. This is when I started getting into wine. In '86, I
started at Square One and Even Goldstein was the sommelier. We had
daily wine tastings and were the guinea pigs for the course he was to
teach for Seagrams about wine, so I learned a ton there. After that,
Masa's with Mike Bonnacorsi, Chaya Venice in LA with Greg Louie, with
a great eclectic wine list, another year at Masa's with sommelier
Burke Owens (where I had the greatest wine I ever had, '66 La Tache!),
then I opened Bizou with Joseph Graham. In each restaurant I got to
taste a lot of wine and learn. Also, I went to France and Italy a few
times, where wine is a part of life, not just a part of restaurants.
When we got the opportunity to open Rivoli, the wine list was the fun
part. But I learned the most about wine after my motorcycle accident
in 2001. Because I couldn't be at the restaurant for a couple of
years, I started intensively reading and writing about wine in order
to better educate myself and my staff; the whole Oxford Companion to
Wine, the Wine Atlas of the World, all of Clive Coates, Bastianich,
Belfrage. And then writing: I've got tasting notes and background
descriptions of wine regions and producers for probably 1000 different
wines.

If you could pinpoint a moment when you decided to be a sommelier, what would that be?

It had to be when we opened Rivoli. As much as I loved wine, I kind of didn't want to make it into "work." I didn't really like a lot of the seriousness around it so I never thought about working as a sommelier. But the wine list was the fun part of starting Rivoli, so that's when I started taking it seriously.

Many people are curious about how wine lists are constructed and wonder why certain genres of wines are particular to certain styles of restaurants. You have two restaurants, Rivoli's and Corso, in Berkeley. Could you explain how the wine lists differ and your process in selecting wines for each place? How does the food, service, and atmosphere in the restaurants affect the wine list, for example?

The wine list at Rivoli is meant to complement Wendy's food. I know everyone says that, but I had no space for a big wine list, so I really had to throw out everything that wasn't necessary. Rivoli was based on seasonal, local ingredients with French and Italian techniques. So, duh, California, French and Italian wines made sense. I've dabbled in other areas, Australia, Argentina and even Croatia, but I always end up with just the three areas. However, I feel that Germany and Austria make the finest white wines in the world so I represent them too. Rivoli is more of a special occasion place, so it makes sense to have special occasion wines, so I concentrate on bio-dynamic and organically raised wines from specific vineyards, though I do offer less expensive wines that show me something, a varietal flare, a sense of place or typicity for a good price. The wines should say they're from somewhere, just like our food does. And for the style of wines, I tend to offer more whites that are crisp and fruity, like Veltliners and Soaves and reds that are not overdone, too much oak, too extracted, too high in alcohol. Wines that are on the extremes aren't very friendly to Wendy's food.

With Corso, Wendy wanted to do a Florentine trattoria, and in Italy,
you just don't see wines from anywhere else, in fact you rarely see
wines from outside the region. My favorite trattoria in Florence
doesn't even offer Brunello for Christ's sake. So I thought it would
be fun to do an all Italian list, with an emphasis on Tuscany, though
all regions of Italy are represented. Here, the emphasis is on
different styles of Chianti Classico, modern vs. traditional, and I
usually use the lesser bottlings from good producers, as seems fitting
for a casual trattoria. For example, Lonardo is one of my favorite
producers in the Taurasi region of Campania, so for Rivoli I offer his
finest wine, the 2000 Taurasi. For Corso, I offer his 'second' wine,
made from the same vineyard, just the less good areas, the less good
barrels, less oak treatment, lower price, simply labeled Aglianico.

What have been the most surprising food and wine pairings you've encountered? Feel free to explore the good, bad, and the weird.

The good: California chardonnay and corn soup. The bad: foie gras and
Sauternes; really, you need a Loire Valley Chenin with some residual
sugar. The weird: Duckhorn sauvignon blanc and tomato soup. Don't
know why it works but it does.

What do you eat and drink together when not at work, or at the end of a long shift?

I'm comfortable enough in my masculinity to admit I drink rose. All
summer. And not just a little bit. In the winter, I tend to drink
Loire cabernet francs and nebbiolos. And Burgundy when I can afford
it.

Do you have other favorite pairings?

Where do I start? Of course the classics, goat cheese and Sancerre, oysters and muscadet, prime rib and Bordeaux, grilled chicken with lemon, thyme and garlic with chardonnay, charred rare rib eye with Barbaresco.

Lastly, now that you have the chance to speak to Vin de la Table readers interested in the holy combination of food and wine, would you care to share any parting pairing guidelines, wisdom, or suggest any experiments in the world of food and wine?

Wine is a part of our shared cultural heritage. As such, its history needs to be understood, so I urge everyone to read about wine. Some of what's written is pretty dry, but Matt Kramer, Clive Coates and the greatest of them all, Andrew Jefford are simply great writers and very engaging even when they get detailed. It's probably geeky, but everyone should own the World Atlas of Wine. I mean, who doesn't like maps? Oh, right, just me. And as I just put together a wine list for an Italian place, don't get too concerned about food and wine pairing: the Florentines drink everything with Chianti. Am I going to tell them they're wrong? And now I'll leave you with my favorite quote about wine:

―"A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine, except that on a
day without sunshine you can still get drunk"- Lee Entrekin

The Wine Writing of Lawrence Osborne and Jay McInerney

2008-09-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

Readers may have noticed my affection for wine writers Lawrence Osborne or Jay McInerney by glancing at the "my favorite wine and food books" bar on my blog, or through browsing the selection at the Visit Kirstin's Amazon Store link.

Although the number of fine writers writing about wine is very high, these two have something special. Their writing always strays from the norm in its engaging, approachable style and comedic flair. Sure, there's a little wine snobbery and namedropping here and there in their books, but unlike many other wine writers who can't seem to complete a paragraph without mentioning (gasp!) Petrus or the Rothschilds, McInerney has made it though an entire essay with the names he's dropped being Roger Dangerfield and Baywatch. Which brings our attention to comedy in wine. There's not enough of it. In general, wine isn't intended to be scary or overly exclusive, but bad writers can make it seem so. McInerney and Osborne's charm is often found in their acknowledgment of elitism in wine and in their exploration of the exclusive wine bottles and the craze behind them.

Here's an example of some of McInerney's work from "Bacchus and Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar," where he considers the allure of the word Champagne.

"When was the last time you said to your loved one, "Honey, I want to lick sparkling wine off your naked body" or, "Let's break out the Iron Horse?" Sometimes the substitution of the words Champagne or Cristal makes the declarations more plausible."

And when Osborne first meets Robert Mondavi in "The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World."

"Robert Mondavi came in as if propelled on wheels, soundless but swift. Cocooned in a dapper multicolored knit waistcoat, he cuts an elfin but worldly figure in his corporate HW office on Route 29. I thought him rather elegant in his suede-lined sports jacket and frosted pink shirt."

If you don't have books written by Osborne or McInerney, I would highly suggest buying them. Although no wine writer's essays should be used as bibles dictating what one should and shouldn't buy or taste, they can certainly be read for entertainment, general wine education and wine and writing inspiration. These guys are good.

The work of the aforementioned writers can also be found on the Men's Vogue website, gratis. Mens Vogue has for years been hiring some of the best writers to cover wine and food. Check them out. There are some great wineries that are featured via Vogue.

Lastly, within a month I will be doing a joint post with the awesome Chinese-home-cuisine focused Red Cook. Using his recipes, I'll be pairing wine to three courses of home-style Chinese food. Although interested in sampling some of the wines recently made in China for the event, I've been having a hard time finding good Chinese wine by my house so I went entirely Euro and South American with the wine, but in honor of the wine industry in China, here's a link to an article on Mens Vogue about the. nascent Chinese wine industry.

Coffee Break: A Brief Intermission

2008-09-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, before noon, I drink coffee instead of wine. Such a day was yesterday.

My husband was out of town, and I found myself batting my lashes at our Italian stovetop coffee maker. Shh..... When he's here, we normally use the big American coffee maker (well, he does, because I am physically incapable of making coffee in this contraption), because he wants at least 2 cups to boost his morning properly, and our size of Italian coffee maker only makes 2 cups at once. I know, the horror. Using the American ensures that he and I can enjoy more than one cup of coffee, each, without having to clean the Italian maker. Who can clean before their second cup of coffee?

So I decided to embrace the morning as my own, make coffee in my favorite coffee maker, and cook my first batch of steel-cut oatmeal. Damn that oatmeal is good. While I waited for the nutty, rich, grains to cook, which generally takes 30 minutes, I read Saveur magazine's latest issue, devoted entirely to breakfast. Get this issue. It's awesome.

In honor of my breakfast and a discussion shared among friends recently at Bay Wolf's 33rd Anniversary Double Duck Dinner regarding the proper way to make Italian maker coffee, I'm sharing my coffee and oatmeal methods. Feel free to share your methods too.

Italian stovetop coffee for one: Using the circular air vent within the coffee maker base as a marking point for a full base of water, fill the base halfway. Put the maker's coffee strainer on top. Fill the coffee strainer insert halfway to the lip loosely with medium to finely ground coffee.

I like fair-trade and Peet's blends myself. Screw on the top portion of the maker, put on flame or burner and bring to a boil so water will start begin percolating. Let bubble and percolate until all no water is remaining in lower part. Drink with half-and-half or milk.

Steel-cut oatmeal for one: Bring 3/4 cup water and 1/4 cup milk to boiling in a small saucepan. Add 1/4 cup oatmeal (I swear that this is all you need). Add a pinch of salt. Lower heat to simmer and cook oats for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Oats will should firm once finished. Top with a touch o' milk and fresh fruit. In winter, cook the oats with dried fruits such as dates, apricots and raisins. Eat while reading Saveur's breakfast issue.

Home Creamery Event: Making Cheese & Drinking Wine

2008-09-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

I walked into Pegasus book store on Solano Avenue, Berkeley, the other day, and lo and behold, guess what caught my dairy obsessed eye? Although I entered the store looking for Burgundian focused cookbooks, I left carrying The Home Creamery, by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley. Maybe it was the buttery-hued, soft, crumbly cheese and old-fashioned glass milk bottle filled with what I feel in my heart was a luscious batch of whole milk, topped with a thin layer of cream that were featured on the cover that made the final sale. Or, maybe it was because I knew that once I bought this book, I would have the power to eat all the cheeses and artisan butter I wanted without getting funny looks from the lady ringing up my dairy purchases at the grocery store. Either, way, I am ready to begin filling my refrigerator with fresh, soft cheeses, made, and soon to be eaten by me.

And I would like to invite you to join me.

But you have to make your own.

I would like to kick off a grand blogging event called Making Cheese and Drinking Wine (again, feel free to suggest a better name!), set to post on the last Friday of every month, starting October. The event would be open to the public. Every month, I'd pick a recipe for a cheese or dairy good from The Home Creamery book pictured above, and all participants (that's you!!!) would make the recipe. After making the recipe (here's the Vin de la Table hook), participants would pair it with a wine of their choice. There are no limitations. Say we're making mozzarella, for example. Jane Doe could focus entirely on pairing the fresh cheese she just made with her favorite wine, or she could make a fried mozzarella sandwich, then tell us about the wine sauce she dipped her creation in (Jane's a naughty girl).

The event would be posted on the last Friday of every month, on Vin de la Table. This means that sometime before the third Friday of every month (dates to come), active event participants would send me their info. Bloggers would shoot me an email with the link to their blog post featuring the dairy pairing, and non-bloggers could email me with a photo (if they wish) of their final concoctions and a short, sweet description declaring the success or failure of their homemade creamery attempt, along with their pairing, like what would be featured on the blog posts.

Financially, what would be required of people interested in this event would be buying the The Home Creamery, by Kathy Farfell-Kingsley. I bought mine for $16.95. Other equipment needed would be: a large stainless steel or enamel pot (both non-reactive materials), cheesecloth, thermometer, a steel ladle or skimmer, and a curd knife or cake spatula. On occasion, we'd need to acquire liquid rennet or citric acid from cheesemaking companies, the names of which are revealed in the book. To ensure that all had time to acquire the equipment, I'd reveal the monthly recipe a month before the post was due.

So, are you with me? I'd love to hear if this is something that would interest Vin de la Table readers. Would you wine and food lovers like to be involved? Please leave me a little note or two in the comment section at the end of the post to let me know if you'd be interested in playing this cheese and wine game. By the way, most cheeses and dairy goods in the book take less time to make than a really good lasagna.

What do you say?.....

Laura Catena: An Interview with the Luca and Catena Maven

2008-09-09T22:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since an interview was featured on Vin de la Table, dear readers, but I promise that this one was worth the wait. I'm happy to present to you my discussion with Laura Catena, the owner of Luca Wines, a small quantity, vineyard specific, highly esteemed winery in Mendoza, Argentina. The interview, conducted via email, provides an overview on Argentina's quiet but prominent wine history and her family's role in Argentina's emergence as a wine giant, as well as Catena's insights on the country's bright future, and the inspiration behind her own celebrated label.

I hope that you enjoy this interview as much as I did, and I encourage you to take your time with this one. We have much to learn about Laura Catena, her family, her country's wine history, and how one manages to raise three kids, run a winery, and still work full time as a doctor in the emergency room of a San Francisco hospital.

The focus of Vin de la Table is food and wine pairing, so of course we'll discuss this delicious venture later in the interview. To start, however, I like to begin interviews by introducing readers to the interviewee, their projects, their winery, and maybe even pieces of wine and wine culture particular to a region or people before delving into food and wine. Let's begin on that note.

BACKGROUND

Your family has a very long history of winemaking that stems back to at least the 1800's in Italy. Many people may not know that a large majority of Argentinean wine families have Italian roots. Could you briefly speak to the Italian influence on wine in Argentina? Is it true that your grandfather, Nicola Catena, planted the first Malbec vines in Argentina? What was his inspiration?

NICOLA CAME TO ARGENTINA IN 1898 WITH ALMOST NOTHING. HE FIRST WORKED IN VARIOUS JOBS IN SANTA FE PROVINCE WHERE HE HAD FAMILY, BUT HIS GOAL ALL ALONG WAS TO GET TO MENDOZA AND PLANT A VINEYARD. HE WAS A VINEYARD WORKER IN MARCHE, ITALY, THE YOUNGEST SON OF AN ITALIAN FAMILY. HE SAW THE NEW WORLD AS THE ONLY PLACE WHERE HE COULD OWN HIS OWN PIECE OF LAND AND DO SOMETHING IMPORTANT. IN 1902 HE HAD ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY A PIECE OF LAND AND PLANT A VINEYARD SO HE CHOSE MALBEC BECAUSE AT THAT TIME IT WAS CONSIDERED THE BEST GRAPE....IT WAS CALLED THE FRENCH GRAPE (LA UVA FRANCESA) LOCALLY, BECAUSE IT WAS THE VARIETAL THAT MOST PEOPLE THOUGHT COULD YIELD THE BEST WINE. ( MANY PEOPLE IGNORED MALBEC IN FAVOR OF CHEAPER MORE PRODUCTIVE VARIETALS LIKE CRIOLLA)

THE FIRST MALBEC VINES WERE BROUGHT TO MENDOZA BY A SCIENTIST, DR POUGET, WHO WAS COMMISSIONED BY THE ARGENTINE PRESIDENT TO BRING HIGH QUALITY VINES TO ARGENTINA. THESE ORIGINAL MALBEC VINES WERE BROUGHT TO ARGENTINA IN 1856.

I REALLY LOVE THE STORY ABOUT MY GREAT GRANDFATHER. ON A SAD NOTE, HE RETURNED TO ITALY AND SAILED BACK TO ARGENTINA WITH HIS ELDERLY PARENTS...THEY WERE VERY OLD AND DIED WITHIN A FEW MONTHS OF ARRIVING TO ARGENTINA. NICOLA WAS SO PROUD OF HIS NEWFOUND LAND AND FORTUNE THAT HE WANTED HIS PARENTS TO SEE IT.

MY THIRD CHILD (THE YOUNGEST) AND ONLY DAUGHTER IS NAMED NICOLA, AND SHE IS AS FEISTY AS CAN BE. I ALSO HAVE A WINE, A 100% PURE MALBEC NAMED NICO BY LUCA.

ABOUT THE ITALIAN INFLUIENCE, IT IS VERY SIMILAR TO CALIFORNIA WHERE MANY OF THE ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS CAME FROM WINE PRODUCING REGIONS IN ITALY AND HAD WINE "IN THEIR BLOOD"

NOW

Your father has been credited with cultivating Argentine winemaking to a level where it can now compete with other high-end winemaking in all countries. With the launch of your own label in 2000, what further contribution did and do you hope to make to the world of Argentinean wine?

MY FATHER IS A TRULLY AMAZING PERSON. HE HAS ALWAYS ENCOURAGED ME TO DO WHAT I AM MOST PASSIONATE ABOUT. I HAVE ASKED HIM WHY HE DIDN'T PUT MORE PRESSURE ON ME TO GO INTO THE WINE BUSINESS WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL. HE ANSWERED: YOU WOULDN'T BE WORKING WITH ME TODAY IF I HAD DONE THAT.

IN THE LATE NINETIES I WAS WORKING FOR CATENA A BIT, MOSTLY IN SALES AND WINEMAKING RESEARCH. I WAS LIVING IN CALIFORNIA AND WATCHING ALL THESE LITTLE WINE PROJECTS COME OUT WHICH WERE BUYING EXTREMELY HIGH QUALITY GRAPES FROM GROWERS. I ALSO SPENT SOME TIME IN FRANCE (I HAVE LIVED IN FRANCE AND AM FLUENT IN FRENCH) WITH OUR WINE PARTNERS AT CHATEAU LAFITE (WE HAVE A PARTNERSHIP THAT STARTED IN 1999 AND THE WINERY IS NAMED CARO) AND BECAME SORT OF "OBSESSED" WITH THE CONCEPT OF OLD VINES. BACK HOME IN MENDOZA, EVERY TIME I TASTED A WINE MADE FROM OLD VINES IT SEEMED TO HAVE SO MUCH MORE DEPTH AND CHARACTER. I BEGAN TO LOOK INTO OLD VINE VINEYARDS IN MENDOZA AND FOUND OUT THAT MOST WERE OWNED BY SMALL FAMILY GROWERS WHO WERE SELLING THEIR GRAPES IN BULK. MOST SERIOUS VITICULTURALISTS AND WINEMAKERS FELT THAT GROWERS COULD NOT BE PERSUADED TO DECREASE YIELDS AND IRRIGATION AND TO FARM FOR QUALITY. THAT DIDN'T MAKE SENSE TO ME, AND THAT IS HOW LUCA STARTED.

I PRESENTED THE IDEA TO MY FATHER AND HE WAS VERY ENCOURAGING...HE EVEN LENT ME HIS TOP PERSON, ALEJANDRO SEJANOVICH AS WINEMAKER. WHAT IS REALLY SWEET ABOUT MY FATHER IS THAT HE IS SO PROUD WHEN HE GOES TO A TOP RESTAURANT AND HE SEES LUCA OR TIKAL (MY BROTHER'S WINE) ON THE LIST AND NOT CATENA....I THINK HE WOULD ALMOST RATHER HAVE OUR WINES DO WELL THAN HIS OWN.

MY ROLE AT CATENA ZAPATA HAS ALSO GROWN OVER THE YEARS. I MAKE AND APPROVE ALL BLENDS FOR THE TOP WINES (CATENA, CATENA ALTA, NICOLAS CATENA ZAPATA) AND SPEND A GREAT DEAL OF TIME MANAGING OUR RESEARCH DEPARTMENT. MY GOAL IS TO DISCOVER NEW AREAS AND MAKE THE MOST OUT OF THE CATENA ZAPATA MALBEC CLONAL SELECTION. I DID A LOT OF RESEARCH IN COLLEGE AND MED SCHOOL AND I ENJOY DISCOVERING NEW THINGS. I ALSO FEEL SOME SORT OF PATRIOTISM, AS IF I HAVE A DUTY TO MY COUNTRY AND MY FAMILY TO DO THIS. ARGENTINA HAS GONE THROUGH SO MUCH ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL TURMOIL THAT WATCHING THE SUCCESS OF ARGENTINE WINE, PARTICULARLY MALBEC, MAKES ME REALLY PROUD OF BEING ARGENTINE AND DOING WHAT I AM DOING.

Most involved in wine worry about their vines getting hit by phylloxera- insects that attack grape vines and leave the roots vulnerable to fungus infections that often kill the plant. Scared of the havoc these insects wreak after the disastrous 1800's phylloxera epidemic that devastated French viticulture for years, the majority of people in the wine industry choose to graft their vines with phylloxera resistent clones instead of transporting vines directly from Europe, which could essentially be more inviting to these insects. Please tell me about the unusual selection process for your "Laborde Double Select" wine, and how thoughts of cloning, phylloxera, and old-vine plantings were involved the choice to make this unique wine. I'd also love to hear some about the vineyard specifics that led to some of the flavor profiles in this wine.

IN MENDOZA MOST VINES ARE OWN ROOTED, EXCEPT FOR CHARDONNAY AND A FEW OTHERS THAT ARE GRAFTED MOSTLY TO RESIST OTHER DISEASES SUCH AS NEMATODES. BECAUSE THE MENDOZA AIR IS VERY DRY AND THE SOILS ARE VERY SANDY, THE PHYLLOXERA LOUSE DOES NOT THRIVE, EXPECIALLY NOT IN THE FLYING FORM (THERE IS A LITTLE BIT OF PHYLOXERA AND THERE HAS BEEN FOR AT LEAST 2 DECADES). IT IS THE SOIL AND CLIMATE IN EUROPE AND CALIFORNIA THAT IS MORE INVITING. LET'S CROSS OUR FINGERS THAT WE NEVER HAVE A PROBLEM.

THE LABORDE DOUBLE SELECTION IS AN EXAMPLE OF A REALLY VISIONARY PERSON AHEAD OF HIS TIME. LUIS LABORDE WAS A RESEARCHER AT THE MENDOZA WINE INSTITUTE AND HE LOVED RHONE WINES. HE THOUGHT THAT SYRAH WOULD BE WELL SUITED TO MENDOZA AND HE WAS RIGHT. HE WENT TO FRANCE AND BROUGHT BACK SYRAH CLONES, THEN GREW THEM AND STUDIED THEM BETTER IN MENDOZA AND CREATED A UNIQUE SELECTION OF VINES. TO THIS DAY, I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIND A BETTER VINE SELECTION OF SYRAH IN MENDOZA. HIS SON IS A LOVELY PERSON AND CLOSE FRIEND AND VERY PROUD TO CONTINUE HIS FATHER'S TRADITION AND PASSION FOR HIGH QUALITY SYRAH. I HAVE SOME NICE VIDEO AND PHOTO FOOTAGE OF LUIS LABORDE, HIS WIFE AND THEIR DOGS. HIS WIFE JUST HAD THEIR FIRST CHILD A FEW DAYS AGO.

The Laborde son, in the vineyard with Laura.

What wine direction are you looking in new future, and if you had one overwhelming goal in wine, what would you say it is?

I WANT TO GET A LOT OLDER QUICKLY SO THAT THERE ARE MORE OLD VINES AROUND!...I AM SERIOUS. BESIDES THAT, I WANT TO CONTINUE TO MAKE PROFOUND WINES OUT OF MENDOZA AND REALLY SHOW THAT OUR WINES ARE ON PAR WITH THE BEST IN THE WORLD AT EVERY PRICE POINT.

Who inspires you in wine? In Argentina? Europe? The United States?

IN ARGENTINA MY FATHER AND ALL THE STAFF AT CATENA ZAPATA AND LUCA. WE REALLY ARE LIKE A FAMILY. IN EUROPE, GUIGAL, OUR PARTNERS AT CHATEAU LAFITE, THE BURGUNDIAN WINE CULTURE OF SMALL PARCELS AND EXTREMELY LOW YIELDS. IN THE US, PAUL HOBBS, AN OLD FRIEND AND SOMEONE THAT IS MAKING AN IMPACT ON WINE WORLD-WIDE WITH ALL HIS CONSULTING JOBS, PEOPLE LIKE BILL HARLAN, WHO HAVE A VISION AND ACCOMPLISH IT. PEOPLE WHO MAKE WINE TEND TO BE CHARISMATIC AND PASSIONATE, I LOVE THE CULTURE OF OUR INDUSTRY.

From the research I've done on you, I discovered that you are a wine consultant to your family's winery, an owner of your own winery, a mother of three, an ER doctor at UCSF, a graduate of both Harvard and Stanford, a really nice person, and perhaps I shouldn't mention this but I'm going to anyhow because photos have revealed thus, have an excellent fashion sense. I'm looking forward to coffee with you! What have I missed? What else are you doing?

I AM WORKING ON A BOOK FOR WINE LOVERS THAT VISIT MENDOZA. IT WILL INCLUDE MANY OF THE WINERIES MAKING TOP QUALITY WINES...ABOUT THE FASHION SENSE...THANKS BUT, I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT OF MYSELF AS MORE OF A GEEK, SO I AM REALLY FLATTERED. MY BROTHER IS THE FASHION KING IN THE FAMILY. I DO ALSO LOVE TO EXERCISE AND GO TO THE DAILEY METHOD IN SF REGULARLY AND JOG SEVERAL TIMES A WEEK. I ALSO LIKE TO PLAY SPORTS, SOCCER, TENNIS, PING PONG, GOLF AND JUST ABOUT ANYTHING WITH MY HUSBAND AND KIDS, AND I DON'T EVER WORRY IF I AM BAD AT THEM.

FOOD AND WINE PAIRING

Some winemakers focus on making great wines that pair well with food. Others focus entirely on making great wines, period. Would would you say your winemaker's focus is with Luca wines?

FOOD IS VERY IMPORTANT, SO I TRY TO MAKE MY WINES FOOD FRIENDLY. BUT I ALSO LIKE A BIT OF "FLASHINESS" IN A WINE, AND SOMETIMES A FLASHY WINE IS NOT AS GOOD WITH FOOD. BUT MY GOAL IS TO MAKE WINES THAT GO WELL WITH ALL KINDS OF FOODS. I AM PARTICULARLY PROUD OF MY SPICY (THAI OR INDIAN) FOOD PAIRINGS WITH LUCA MALBEC AND SYRAH.

I was able to try your "Laborde Double Select" and it had a very pretty bacon, dark berry and flinty taste that immediately made be want to eat it with foods grilled over charcol or wood and maybe even some aged sheep's cheeses. What would you pair with this wine?

I WOULD PAIR IT WITH PORK, WITH THAI OR INDIAN CURRIES, WITH VEGETABLES AND TOFU IN A SWEET AND SOUR KIND OF SAUCE, LAMB, ANYTHING WITH A BURNT FRUIT OR NUTTY SAUCE.

What do you eat with your wines at home? Do you think that this is similar to what people pair them with at restaurants?

I DRINK WINE EVERY NIGHT WITH DINNER, UNLESS I AM GOING TO WORK AT THE HOSPITAL. I DRINK A LOT OF WHITE WINE AT HOME AND MORE RED WHEN I GO OUT....I AM NOT SURE WHY. WE EAT A VERY DIVERSE DIET AT HOME, SOME REAL SIMPLE STUFF, BROCCOLY AND CHICKEN, LOTS OF RICE....I USUALLY EAT STEAK ONLY WHEN I AM IN ARGENTINA BECAUSE I AM VERY PARTICULAR ABOUT THE TASTE OF BEEF.

What are some of your favorite food and wine pairings, and some of your favorite wines with food?

MALBEC IS DEFINITELY A FAVORITE BECAUSE IT GOES WITH JUST ABOUT ANYTHING BECAUSE OF ITS SOFT SWEET TANNINS, MY FAVORITE MALBEC PAIRING IS PROBABLY MY HUSBAND'S PORK WITH APPLE SAUCE. CAB SAUV WITH STEAK IN BERENAISE SAUCE, GERMAN AND ALSACIAN WHITES WITH VIETNAMESE OR THAI FOOD, SYRAH WITH COQ AU VIN....I AM SURE I CAN COME UP WITH MORE, BUT IT'S MAKING ME HUNGRY!

In Europe, there is a strong sense of pairing wines with regional foods. Do people practice this in Argentina too? Any examples?

NOT THAT MUCH, BUT I DO HAVE A FEW FAVORITES. CHARDONNAY WITH HUMITA (CORN BAKED IN A CLAY OVEN WRAPPED IN THE CORN TUSK), CHORIZO (SAUSAGE) WITH MALBEC, TORRONTES WITH APPETIZERS.

Lastly, when you are in a restaurant in North America, what foods and wines are you most likely to order?

I AM VERY PARTIAL TO ITALIAN FOOD (MY SF FAVORITES ARE DELFINA AND A16) BECAUSE I GREW UP WITH IT IN ARGENTINA AND ASIAN FOOD WITH LOTS OF VEGETABLES (I LIVE RIGHT NEXT TO EOS AND ALSO LOVE THE SLANTED DOOR).

Thank you very much for your time Laura!

Slow Food Nation: First Conference

2008-08-31T19:54:00.000-07:00

The hallowed Cowgirl Creamery cheese station.

This past Sunday I volunteered at the Mecca for California foodies. Between 11am and 3pm, I could be found at the end of a receiving line at Slow Food Nation, holding a plate of Perbacco salame behind another volunteer carrying a tray of smoked Virginia Berkshire ham, trying not to drool in front of the guests.

Fatted Calf Mortadella.

It was an amazing event. The space, the sustainable design, the coffee booth, the cheese, the honey, the organic Iowa prosciutto, the number of working bathrooms without lines,.... sigh. Sure there were slight hangups here and there, but only enough to make attendees question whether it was Slow Food's fifth or sixth year of organizing hundreds employees, thousands of volunteers, attendees, bio-designers, farms, exhibits, and hundreds of food samples, not the first.

Just to give an idea of some treasures to be found at Slow Food Nation to readers who weren't able to make the conference because they slept in, had to work their day jobs in Ohio or Seattle, or were in the middle of a "No Reservations" episode marathon and couldn't get away, I'm sharing some photos. Some shots are of exhibits, and some are of employees and volunteers. People were given the choice of answering one of two questions: "What is one of your favorite food and wine/alcohol pairings, experienced at the event or elsewhere," or, "What has been one of your favorite parts of Slow Food Nation?"

Anyone curious about the ideology and Slow Food movement, read up here .

Marissa Guggiana, who organized the larger than life Slow Food charcuterie station, had her perfect event pairing in mind, "Well, I love pork and rosé together, like a super dry or sparkling rose with prosciutto. Prosciutto in particular is so great with rosé because it's so creamy and pure and there aren't a lot of different spices. It's just about the meat and the wine."

Cowgirl Creamery's all-star speaker line up. Cheese pedigree.

Michaela King of Bix addressed some of her favorite parts of the convention, "The cheese booth had an awesome cheese plate. Their Teleme was amazing, and they served a Fleure de Teche that was so good, and then they had a cheddar that tasted like Harvarti. Then, I loved the charcuterie station [although, let's be honest, it was how I placed the salame on the plate that stunned]. The La Quercia organic prosciutto from Iowa was fantastic, and the salames from Perbacco are, of course, always good. The Perbacco blood salami was great, and the Tricola was perfectly balanced."

Gary Monelli, who worked with me in the charcuterie station, said that his favorite pairing is when he eats charcuterie he makes himself at home. "I love salami, and I've been making a lot of coppa at home recently. We serve it with olives that we put up and tomatoes that we grow, and we eat them all together, with our daughter and our neighbors. Plus, my daughter was a wine sales representative, so we often had open half bottles of wine at home. I'm going to miss that last part" Monelli also advised anyone interested in making coppa at home to google "curing coppa."

Sam Edwards, a third generation ham-maker from Surry, Virgina, found time to speak briefly to his favorite Surry ham pairings and event highlights between slicing his Berkshire beauties and trying to keep children's fingers away from the unusual child magnet (the Italian meat slicer).

Edwards favorite pairing was his Berkshire smoked ham, with Bud light. Once in a while, he goes with Stella. Edwards had the following the say about the event, "it was a lot bigger and well-attended than I ever expected. It's amazing, quite an ocassion, and it looks like it's been done by about 99% volunteers."

Lee Coker, Ariana Kanwit, and Ashlee Cloud were chocolate volunteers. Ariana's favorite pairing was "a Pinot Noir and a really dark chocolate. My favorite here today is DeVries's Costa Rican chocolate, from Denver. Ashlee commented on her favorite part of the event, "I really like the attitude of everyone- they're really laid back. And, I like this chocolate. It's Amono's and it's from Venenzuela."

Michaela King and Colin Dewey of Bix explained Dewey's favorite pairings.
"You love Lambruscos and charcuterie," said King.
"I do," agreed Dewey.
"And you love Barolos and Barberescos with rustic, Italian cuisine...."
"Oh yeah, I really do. I love lamb or Italian style meats with a Barolo or Barberesco that's been opened for like 45 minutes."
"What if it was opened for 43 minutes," I asked, "would it still be as enjoyable?"
"No," explained Dewey, "You have to taste it the whole time. Watch the wine open up, change from an unsure adolescent to a blooming adult."

Said Nicole Gray, "I had a lot of favorite parts of the event. I loved the fish display, it was beautiful. I also loved the honey and the preserves area, but who doesn't love honey, right?"

Event attendees taking advantage of the freshly-laid grass and accompanying lawn chairs in the Honeybee and Preserves exhibit.

My favorite part of the event was the cheese. And the good deals on wine. And the charcuterie. And the seafood trio plate from Bix, A Coté and _____ restaurant. And finding deserted Slow Food Dough outside of the ladies bathroom.

Outside Lands Festival: Wine Rocks

2008-08-28T22:47:00.001-07:00

The owners of the company that I work for consulted the crafting of the first ever Wine Haven for the first ever Outside Lands Music Festival in San Franciso's Golden Gate Park last weekend. What is Outside Lands? It was three days filled with musicians such as Radiohead, Beck, Manu Chao, Wilco, Lyrics Born...., and a whole lot of sexy people.

What is a Wine Haven, you ask? Oh, there is so much to learn, so little time, my readers. Well, as of last weekend, a Wine Haven was a huge tent, filled with winemakers and representatives for twenty organic, family-owned and/or high-end wineries, pouring wine for some of the 150,000 people who attended the musical who wondered into The Haven. Served outside of The Haven tent were fresh and BBQed oysters from Hog Island, and charcuterie and sausages from Fatted Calf.

What a day. Wine, sausage, oysters, and rock and roll? A new generation has spawned, my friends, and I am glad for once, to be a part of it.

In exchange for me "working," I got a free to Sunday's festivities. I hope you enjoy the Wine Haven photos, and have a good weekend.

Augest West booth

With a flick of the wrist, these nimble-handed ones shucked enough oysters to meet festival needs and had time to light the barbie.

BBQ Hog Island Oysters

Dot paired Uvaggio and Cep Rosé to BBQ oysters. And fresh oysters. And grilled sausages.

Rusty and Dusty are from Turloc, CA, and left for the Jack Johnson show before I could ask them their favorite wine and food pairing.

Tomatoes & Barbera: A Relationship Forged in Italy

2008-08-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

As old and fabled of a pairing as bacon and eggs or Adam and Eve, Barbera and tomatoes hardly need an introduction.

But I feel like cooing, so here goes.

While tomatoes aren’t as extensively utilized in Piedmont cooking, the region where Barbera thrives, as they are in say in Bologna, Sicily, or Tuscany, you can be sure that they are often on the table together. This is when the magic happens.

Now, just like with other grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay, there are many ways to make the wine called Barbera. Some expressions are oakier, richer, and riper. In general, these are styles of Barbera that are good with food, but in my opinion are best generally utilized as as a cocktail wines.

The traditional style of Barbera, on the other hand, is fermented, lower-oak goodness that puckers lips and leaves one searching the room for something to cut the high acidity, like a slice of butter. This is the type of Barbera that we’re looking for. These are the Barberas that live for tomatoes.

Barbera is a high acidity Piedmontese grape with a juicy cherry, strawberry, and often tar-like touch. A tomato is a fruit-vegetable (hereafter referred to as a freg) with sweet overtones and a high acidity bite. This pairing is a classic case of matching like to like. Although it might sound somewhat asinine to pair a freg known for its acidity with a wine also known for the same (maybe it sounds as silly as the first time you use brown and white sugar in a cookie recipe, for example), it works amazingly well.

Case in point:
Zachary’s deep-dish spinach and mushroom pizza with Borgogno Barbera D’Alba.

Zachary’s deep-dish is known around the SF Bay Area and exists as a topic of conversation in Chicago for its crispy, buttery crust, that’s jam-packed with oozing layers of mozzarella and massive amounts of tomatoes. It’s so tomatolicious, in fact, that some pizza purists insist that it is more casserole than a true pizza. Whatever. It’s the best and only thing really worth ordering on their menu that inspires sure-bet bliss. And its better heated in the oven the next day.

My point is, anyhow, that it is the tomatoes that makes this pizza such a perfect match for the grape.

If a tomato ever seemed sweet to you, just wait until you try it with Barbera. This is when our freg friend transforms to tomato candy. The high acidity in the gape emphasizes all hints of sugar in the freg, but it doesn’t make the tomato too sweet so that the wine tastes metallic or sour. And the tomato returns the favor for the wine, twelve-fold. It transforms this tart little grape into a complete table pleasure.

But that’s just my opinion. Try it with an overlaoaded deep-dish near you.

Do you have any favorite tomato wines?

What Would You Pair With..... a Plum Tart?

2008-08-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

It is time for another session of What would you pair with.....?

This pairing party is honoring the above guest, a rustic plum tart.
Simple tart crust. Plums from a neighbors tree (I swear that I didn't steal them), set in a custard-like base of ripe plums and very little sugar.

What would you pair with this seasonal tart?

Blogger's Choice Award Nomination

2008-08-10T18:55:00.001-07:00

Hello dear readers! One of you were happy enough with my food and wine pairing escapades to nominate me for a blogger's Choice 2008 Award for Best Food Blog! Thank you, oh kind one. The nomination is especially cool because I've got a good idea of who nominated me and I'm very flattered, as I am familiar with their uber writing skills (yay!), and because getting nominations (and votes) is a great way to introduce new readers to Vin de la Table. Always trying to reach out to new winos, foodies and connoisseurs alike.

If you care to boost my readership and commend my wine swirling and eating skills (i.e. vote for me!!!!), click on the button on the left hand side of my blog.

Cheers, and thank you in advance!

Herbed Aioli Step by Step, Roasted Chicken Sandwich, and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

2008-08-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

Eating aioli has to be one of my favorite ways to consume luscious amounts of garlic and olive oil. Add basil, put that aioli on top of a toasted piece of whole grain bread, top it with heirloom tomatoes from your mom's garden, add some creamy avocado and a generous slice of yesterday's perfectly roasted chicken from Lola's in Berkeley , and you have a masterpiece. And an excuse to twist the cap on that New Zealand sauvie that's been looking at you every time you open the fridge.

Aioli is a traditional garlic and egg-based Provencal sauce, of the likes of a homemade garlic mayonnaise, but made by someone who bought a baguette early that morning and had a cheese course the night before.

Ranging in consistency that's similar to a creme anglaise when made the traditional way with a mortar and pestle to a smooth, thick, swarthy texture when made in a food processor or via whisk and bowl, aioli is served all over Europe and can be found in many bistro and fine dining establishments in the U.S. Where this sauce receives it's due respect is in the classic seasonal spring meal devoted entirely to it's presence in Provence, aptly named "Le Grand Aioli." At this meal, bowls of the garlic wonder are served with slightly cooked spring vegetables and boiled eggs for dipping.

I'm a lover of aioli, plain and simple, but where it really shines in my house is with chopped herbs. Toss some basil, tarragon, or chervil in the aioli at the end of the mixing, and you have what's possibly the best sauce for veggies and cushion for sandwiches around.

Why a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc with aioli?

New Zealand makes a Sauvignon Blanc known for being herbaceous, having hints of tropical fruit, and for having a mad mineral, lime streak. Choosing a New Zealand Sauvie for this dish is drawing on both wine pairing ideals of matching and contrasting.

We're matching the herbs in the aioli to the grassy, slightly herbaceous green nature of the wine, and in return, the wine thanks us by amplifying the fresh herbal flavors of the basil, tarragon, or chervil that we choose for the sauce. And if you have a fresh, young, green-tasting olive oil, the Sauvie matches wonders here too. As for contrasting, the mineral lime and the steely hint of guava in the wine cuts through the fat in the rich olive oil expertly like a squeeze of lemon in a cream sauce.

Some of my favorite New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs are those from Bird and Evans and Tate wineries. I drank the 2006 Evans and Tate Sauvignon Blanc from Margaret River with my sandwich. A great cheapie.

Add a sunny day, a sandwich to lather the aioli on and you've got a perfect seasonal meal.

Herbed Aioli Recipe: Step by Step Pictures

1 egg yolk, at room temperature
1 medium clove garlic, chopped
1 tsp dijion mustard
juice of small lemon

3/4 - 1 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 - 1/2 cup fresh, packed basil or your favorite herbs

Salt and pepper to taste

* Footnote for those without food processers are at the end of this recipe.

Place first three ingredients in a food processer.

Blend until throughly combined, about 5-10 seconds. Add lemon juice and blend an additional 10 seconds plus.

Now it's time for the extra virgin. I prefer a lighter, greener, less harsh extra virgin olive oil for the aioli because sometimes the more intense olive oils can overpower the garlic mayo. For those whom the flavor of only extra virgin olive oil is their aioli too strong, I'd suggest using a combination of canola and extra virgin olive oil to your taste.

To start, add the olive oil in a very thin stream, as thin or thinner of a stream than that pictured in above photo. Such a stream will ensure that the aioli won't break before finishing. After emulsification begins, you may add the oil faster. You'll know the emulsification is happening when your aioli looks like this:

If oil begins to bead or gather on aioli's surface while blending, stop pouring the oil for a moment and pulse mix until incorporated. After using 3/4 cup of olive oil, add some salt and taste the mix. Is it too tart? Add the full cup of oil. If the aoili tastes sufficently creamy to you, just add a tad more oil. Too much oil and the aioli won't set well.

Now add the chopped herbs (rough chop, packed well) and pulse until all is well combined. I used basil because it was availabe and delicious at my farmer's market, but I've also used varying combinations of tarragon and chervil, and the aioli equally rocked.

To finish, add salt and pepper to taste. I love tons of pepper in my baby.

For whiskers:
If you'd rather use a bowl and whisk because you're just that kind of cook, or because no food processor is available to you (just got mine recently), here are some helpful hints. First, finely chop the garlic and herbs- everything will blend easier. Second, in areas where the recipe suggests processing or pulsing, whisk isntead. Yes! Third, in the beginning of the aioli process, add the oil in as thin as a stream as possible until your aioli begins emulsifying. This applies to those who process too, but it is even more important that you mind this, whiskers, because the aioli has more chance of breaking when whisked. After coagulation begins, you may add the oil faster. If oil begins to bead or gather on aioli's surface while whisking and pouring, stop pouring for a moment and whisk until fully incorporated. Last, be nice to yourself and do the following: moisten a dish towell, twist it, and form the twisted towell into a circle pattern on your cutting board or countertop. Tie the ends together in necessary to make circle stay on you place the aioli bowl on top. The towell will hold the bowl in place so both hands are free- one to whisk and the other to pour. Much easier.

Avocado Monster: A Brief Intermission

2008-08-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

My husband has been on a gardening kick lately so that when he sees anything in our kitchen sprouting, he wants to put it underground and nurture it. Or anyhow, he wants to put in under soil, in a pot, on our balcony in east Oakland.

I'm very excited about this new venture, as I am always happy to eat the fruits or vegetables of a delicious, gainful passion.

In the past three months, we've had loqaut pits in our fridge, sprouting between sheets of moist paper towels, which although they took three months to sprout from the soil, are actually now reaching for the cloudy Bay Area sky. We've had cherry pits, which didn't work. At least I don't think anyhow that they are on our porch. Sometimes I don't get all the seedling info because I have shown a slight tendency towards treating plants perhaps not as well as he does. We also have English peas porchside that were once sold to me in a pod at the Oakland Temescal farmer's market. They are now at least three inches high, curling at the ends, and probably the cutest little vegetable I've ever seen. We also have tomatoes out there, but I'd rather not talk about them because they haven't been properly loved by the sun around here to reach their full potential. Very sad.

And there are others, but the latest vegetable excitement around here comes in the form of a pod. It's an avocado monster. As it requires one of the most amusing forms of support and care while it comes into avocado fruition, I thought I'd share the beginnings of our new plant with you. I've heard they take years and years. And years to grow, into a fruit-producing tree from the earth, so this might just be the most entertaining that this avocado is going to get for a while.

With it's paper clip arms barely keeping it submerged above water, it reminds me of a monster from Howard the Duck. But I bet that Howard couldn't win this battle. My husband has the pod's back and he's here to make sure that "it does it's business" in the light of my office's window sill.

Winemakers Interview: Bill Easton of Terre Rouge and Easton Wines

2008-08-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

It’s interview central here at Vin de la Table. Last week it was Ryan Williams of Ana Mandara, this week, it’s winemaker and owner of Terre Rouge and Easton wines, Bill Easton. Ah, but we are a blessed crowd. So many interviews, so little time.

One of the most notable winemakers in the Amador County, Sierra Foothills region of California (yes, they make wine there!), Bill Easton is a true wine professional. Not only is he experienced in the field, in the cellar, and in the tasting room, Easton owned his own wine shop, served as a European wine importer, and acts as a mentor to inspiring winemakers from across the globe. And he makes some damn tasty wines.

When I spoke to Easton he had just finished weeding, tuckering, suckering his vineyard, and setting up irrigation to battle with low rain yields in the fields.

We're familiar with each other because you were the first owner of the shop where I currently work. You owned the shop for seventeen years and made a name for it as a great place to go for small production California wine. When did you open Solano Cellars, and when you first opened the shop, did you think that someday you'd try your hand at winemaking?

I owned Solano from March 1978 to June 1994. I had been in the wine business since 1975, right after UC Berkeley. While I was at Solano, I also worked in Russian River Valley, at a winery, and I went back and forth between there and Berkeley. My heart was always in the production side, but the path I took was in retail, for a little capital accumulation. I started making home wine in 1980, and in 85,' I started the Terre Rouge label.

At that point, I didn't own a vineyard. I owned house in Fiddletown [small Amador County town], which is now my business office. I talked to local grower and convinced him to graft over vines to Grenache, Syrah , Mourvèdre, and Cinsualt. That was the beginning of the Terre Rouge project.

Later these were supplemented with historical sources- old plantings of Grenache that I suspect were used for home winemakers on east coast after World War II, that were eighty-five plus years old.

We later abandoned some of those vineyards because now we have better plantings. We experimented and now we are more sophisticated about vineyard sittings and terriors.

In what ways?

Well, we now know where some varieties are excellent. Light, sandy, loam soils are good for Grenache. Syrah likes volcanic soils and high elevation. And if you use different clones, you'll get a more different, varied syrah palate and flavors. Mourvèdre likes sandy soil. Basically, every site is going to give you a different grape expression.

What was the final push that lead you to owning your own vineyards?

I decided that I wanted to consolidate my life in the foothills. My wife Jane and I decided that we wanted to raise our son there. And I exhausted my interest in retail. I realized that my passion was the wine and terriors of Sierra Nevada.

Why Amador county? Why not Sonoma County?

It's the terrior. To start, the winery is in the Shenandoah Valley of California. This is where our Cabernet Sauvigon and Zinfandel are located, in granite-based sandy, loam soils. The winery business office is in Fiddletown. That's where we also have some Syrah and Viognier, where there are granite and volcanic soils like Côte Rotie. In these soils is where these grapes excel, as in the old world - France. Condrieu [a Viognier appellation in the Rhone Valley] is basically decomposed granite, for example. These are some of different terriors around us.

I was attracted to the foothills because they’re so many varied terriors and they are so similar to Rhone terriors [where many of the same grapes that Easton grows are centered]. That’s why Rhone winemakers like my wine so much. People complement me by saying that my wine taste like Rhone wines. They don’t have that overly fruity, high alcohol fruit like some in Central Coast or Washington. They’ve got a backbone. I think that you can grow wine more authentically like Rhone wines here than you can anywhere else in the United States.

Do you find the differences in lifestyle in Napa or parts of Sonoma affect the style of wine- the final product?

The kind of wine that I wanted to make is the number one thing; lifestyle is secondary. I really admire people like Josh Jensen at Calera, Paul Draper at Ridge, the Bennetts at Navarro, and Jim Clendenen [of Au Bon Climat] in Santa Barbara, with his mineral chardonnay. They are people who put the wine first. They put their passion for terrior before lifestyle.

Plus, around here it's quiet. Fiddletown is a really nice, quiet town. But there are also some great restaurants nearby, and we're close to cities like Sacramento and San Francisco. Living here is probably more similar to the more rural living around Howell mountain in Napa as opposed to living off Highway 29.

Who were your early influences when you started winemaking? Any of the people that you just mentioned?

Their inspiration was really in the way they approached their projects and terrior. As far as my mentors, I spent time in cellars in Europe. I spent a lot of time there in particular when I was buying wine for Solano Cellars. I went to France, Italy, Spain, where I spent a lot of time in cellars. I was also fortunate to tour with famous wine writers in Italy. I got to hang out, ask questions about philosophy and technique. I learned so much from these meetings and I've always been interested in winemaking in that way. I mean, even when I owned Solano Cellars, I subscribed to winemaker magazines.

When you starting winemaking, did any experiences from your wine shop/bistro days shape your winemaking style?

I try to make the best wine I can from the fruit I have to work with. I try to wine balanced wine that I like to drink. Two of my main things are that I make wine that appeal to my palate, wines that I want to take home and drink. I also try to make hedonistic wines, that after you have one glass, you want another. I tend not to make monolithic wines and don't focus on scores. My wines often make Parker's newsletter, and he's said good things about them, but I don't focusing on getting extreme scores.

Good friends of my family, Joanne, Felipe and Joseph Craig-Ferraz have a little house in Fiddletown. I found out a while ago that they have been renting out one of their rooms to burgeoning young winemakers who have come from different areas in Europe to learn from you.

I have a program that is my way of giving back to people who are passionate about wine. Or, it's also a program that allows people to find out if they are really passionate about wine, or passionate enough about it. From late August to November, people come from France. They often rent a room in that Fiddletown house, which is in an old brewery. It's kind of a French atmosphere, the interns like it.

How do these people find you?

They’re hooked up with me through winemaker friends. They make recommendations.

I've been to France, and even in Paris, there didn't seem to be as much exposure to smaller production California wine as there is here. If fact, Cali wine is hard to find there and pretty expensive. Most wine in shops was Gallo or Mondavi. That being, how did these Europeans find out about your winery? Do you travel to Europe on business?

There's not much a market for U.S. wines except at two or three wine shops, and at some restaurants in Paris, and in tourist areas. Most parts of France are still very regional with their wines. They drink the wines of the area with the region's food.

Something I am really looking forward to is going with ZAP next June to promote Zinfandel in France and other European places. We'd like to create more exposure.

How does it make you feel that people are coming from another country that has centuries more experience than our own in winemaking to work with you? Seems pretty flattering to me…..
What do they learn from you that they might not in, say, France?

[Laughs] They often come to learn English better. They come because people who want to be world class in wine these days, they want to have experience in California, not just their region. They go out to other places. They want to see how we are approaching wine, along with South Africa, Australia. They want to expand their knowledge of cellar and vineyard techniques everywhere.

FOOD AND WINE

We recently taught a food and wine class where we used your Terre Rouge de l''Ouest Syrah to show how a nicely fruited, well-balanced Syrah is an excellent wine to lean on when pairing wine to cuisines that most times aren't traditionally paired with wine. It was fantastic with Indian food and Moroccan chicken, for example. And, it was also showed well with a sharp cheddar- a cheese that can be finicky with red wine.
Is this news to you at all?

Syrah is such a luscious wine, but also it's spicy, gamey, with great garrigue. It likes spiced foods. One of best matches for Syrah is lamb. That's my top match, and it's great in a Moroccan style preparation.

What do you drink with your wine at home?

My wife is a chef, so we eat well. Last night, we had a Côtes-du-Rhône with leftover chicken sausages with fresh squash from Red Bluff. Another night, we made some pizza dough and topped it with tomatoes, pecorino and had a salad. We don't always drink our own wine. We drink lots of French, and Italian. Recently we had a Corbières with lentils and greens with jasmine rice and pine nuts, and a salad. We're well fed!

Jane is a really talented cook- she started the bistro at Solano Cellars after returning from Europe. She started it simply with quiche, meats, and fruit. Then before we knew it she was cooking cassoulet, and braised duck legs.

At there foods at winemaker dinners hosted at restaurants that you commonly see paired with your wine, or have you had exceptionally good pairings at any of these events latley?

One of the best dinners this year so far was one at Plymouth, CA, at Restaurant Taste.

I’ll leave you here, Vin de la Table readers, with the menu that Taste was kind enough to send me. Food and wine for thought. I hope that you enjoyed the interview.

2008 Seasonal Dinner Series featuring Terre Rouge and Easton Wines at Restaurant Taste – Plymouth, Ca, Sunday, June 1, 2008

Grilled Jumbo Prawn Bites, Lobster, red pepper essence

2007 Terre Rouge Vin Gris

Crispy Soft Shell Crab, creamy risotto, spring peas, spring onions, fava beans

2005 Terre Rouge Roussane
[earned 5 stars from Easton for best pairing]

Roasted Diamond H Ranch Quail stuffed with mushroom duxelles, fresh cherry compote, savory goat cheese danish

2005 Terre Rouge Tete-a-Tete

Grilled Cedar Springs Lamb, caramelized fennel and eggplant caviar, grilled local asparagus

2003 Easton Estate Zinfandel
2001 Terre Rouge Sentinel Oak Syrah Pyramid Block

Toasted Almond Tuile, apricot sorbet, toasted coconut, caramel

2004 Terre Rouge Muscat-a-Petit Grains

Next month’s winemaker interview.... Laura Cantena of Argentina’s Luca Wines.

Crab, Wine and Sake: Claws, Grapes and Rice

2008-07-24T02:01:00.000-07:00

Before the end of the hallowed dungeness crab season in the SF Bay Area, my husband and I put some sunscreen on, woke up at 5 in the morn', filled up our portable coffee mugs, and headed to the Pacifica pier. At least I heard that this is what we did. We cast our crab nets out in the expansive Pacifica bay and gave the local seal known for snatching crabs from people's nets the evil eye.

Although a dear friend of mine insists that a group of our friends and I fishing in a Clearlake trout farm where nearby "fisherman" started aiming at our finned buddies with bee-bee guns counted as true fishing, it did not. This was the first time I was successfully involved in plucking something from the water that ended up on my plate.

And I helped. I refilled our coffee.

I was very proud to take part in this crustacean encounter resulting in not one, or two, but three crabs! Three red crabs and one dungeness. From OUR net!

On the way home, with the fidgeting crabs tapping on the bucket wedged between my legs in the front passenger seat, we considered our dinner options. Crab fritters? Crab lasagna? Crab salad? Nah. We finally decided two simple preparations. The first was angel hair pasta, topped with chopped parsley, butter, and freshly cracked crustacean. The second was pure crab, dipped in a classic Vietnamese dipping sauce made of lime juice, sweet chili and fish sauce.

We just happened to an opened sample of wine and two samples sake from the shop at hand, so we decorated our crab adorned table with the three bottles.

What worked with what?

The wine was a Gascogne wine from Domaine Chiroulet in the southwest of France, made entirely of Ugni Blanc and Columbard. Bright, fresh, with hints of ripe grapefruit and lime, this crisp, mineral wine worked best with the Vietnamese dipping sauce. I thought that it would pair better with the buttery pasta, by cutting some of the richness of the butter and highlighting the sweet crab with its acidity, but it tasted so much better just with the crab dipped in the fresh dipping sauce. It matched the lime one-on-one and the ripe grapefruit qualities happily wrapped themselves around the chiles and touch of sugar.

And the buttery pasty? Sure it was great with the Gascogne white too, I must admit that it was better with the sakés. I know!

Now many of you were introduced to my husband, or at least his chile pepper chef pants, through the Prosecco and Peas post, but I'm guessing that even with this intro, most might not know that my husband is a sake lover who makes his own sake brew at home. Really good, Nigori-style sake. I like sake, but as the main man in my life is so much better suited to discuss the rice drinks with you than I am, I include his insights on the sake and crab pairings below. Enjoy. All accolades for our newest contributer may be left in the comment section of this blog, of course, adressed to me, as my ego is fragile.

Who Has Two Claws and Likes Sake?!

Chiyonosono: Shinriki (Sacred Power) Junmai Ginjo. Kumamoto Prefecture: SMV +2.5, Acidity 1.5.
Located in Yamaga City, which is known for many ancient burial sites, the area is also a well known hot spring resort location and is protected by the magnificent natural environs near Mt. Aso. The nose of this saké gives aromas of fresh-cut grass and hints of tropical fruits with cantaloupe being the frontrunner. The texture of this Ginjo is silky on the palate. A deep and rich yet mellow flavor, which is a little buttery and slightly sweet, with hints of mango and pear. The finish gives a little warmth from the alcohol, which is well appreciated after a hard day of crabbing. This saké paired well with the crab and Vietnamese dipping sauce.

Sudo Honke: Sato No Homare (Pride of the Village) Junmai Ginjo. Ibaraki Prefecture: SMV +3, Acidity 1.3.
This is the oldest active brewery in all of Japan, which was founded in 1147, based on the oldest records available. Mr. Sudo is the 55th generation of his family to brew sake and everything brewed here is junmai ginjo or junmai daiginjo, and almost all of it is unpasteurized. This saké’s appearance is clear with only a slight tinge of amber. It gives a light and fruity nose, laced with koji rice, strawberry, pear, violets and grape. This Ginjo is semi-dry and a little syrupy with refined and clear flavor, yet deep with a clean finish. This sake paired best with the dish of crab and buttery pasta.

Surprising Professional Pairings with Ryan Williams of Ana Mandara

2008-07-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

RYAN WILLIAMS C.S.

I'm pleased to announce the start of a Vin de la Table focused interview series of those professionally involved in the delicious art of food and wine pairing. Inspired by a friend Keith Stevenson, who, after a Vin de la Table post asking readers what they'd like to see more on this blog, sat down at the wine bar where I work and said, "Well, I was thinking,....."

His idea was that I should ask people intimately involved with matching food and wine in their profession, such as wine directors and vinophile chefs, about their most surprising, but excellent, food and wine pairing experience. Needless to say, I thought that it was a great idea and am happy to explore this venture. In addition to employing Stevenson's idea, I'll be throwing a few other questions in the mix to meet the interest of readers, and so we'll know a bit about the person and professional behind the answer.

I hereby announce that this day, July 17th, 2008, marks the first of a series, titled, "Surprising Professional Pairings."

Actually, I was hoping that we could work together to come up with a better title than the one that I sadly labored over. While effective, it's not... interesting. Ideas are very welcomed in the comment section of this post.

The series kicks off with a short interview with one of the sweetest men I've met in wine, Ryan Williams. Williams works as Assistant Sommelier and manager at Ana Mandara, one of the most awarded, inventive, and all-around favorite Vietnamese focused restaurants in San Francisco. If you'd ever been to San Francisco and seen the competition, you'd know that this is a title does not go without defending. William's is passionate about wine and is always seeking out new ways to deepen his already extensive pool of knowledge. Best of all, he helps to dispel the myth that sommeliers or wine directors are intimidating, unfriendly people. There are few people that I'd rather ask for help with a thick wine list.

Here is the man himself, Ryan Williams, C.S.

What led to your career in food and wine?

My love and passion for both. I have been cooking since the age of 9 and wine since I was 22. I am currently 42 so that's quite a bit of time. I really love everything about both and would cook for family, friends, and others till it became a request for functions and events. As far as wine after my first visit to Napa in the late 80's I fell in love. I met so many different winery workers who eventually became friends and I would arrange wine tours for friends and associates in limos with the breakfast and lunch being provided by my catering company and we would have a great time. When I realized there was a career path, especially in the wine arena, I began to pursue my passion and here I am.

You work at Ana Mandara, what is said to be one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in the U.S.
How did you end up there?
What positions do you fill at the restaurant?
What impassions you about Ana Mandara?

My pursuit of the hospitality industry initially was going to be in culinary arts. I visited several schools and one stood out. Professional Culinary Institute (PCI) in Campbell, CA had a wine program. It is the only one in the world where after completion, Court of Masters, one accreditation body for sommeliers, comes and administers the first two levels of exams and if passed declares you a certified sommelier. This was amazing so I signed up. It is taught by Master Sommelier David Glancy. After passing the course and both exams I became a certified sommelier. As an alum, we receive job announcements from David. One came across from Joanna Breslin, Wine Director of Ana Mandara Restaurant and third level, Advanced Sommelier, of a need for an Assistant. I found the website to be great and the wine list outstanding so I inquired to David.
He made the introduction to his friend Joanna, I got a series of interviews and am now a proud member of the Ana Mandara team.

I am a Manager/ Sommelier/ Assistant Wine Director. A mouthful.

What I love about Ana Mandara is the family environment, the great staff, both front and back of the house, the consistently phenomenal food,and the outstanding wine list, which stands on its own but is even more so outstanding for a Vietnamese Restaurant. Rarely do you find such variety, quantity, reasonably priced, and most of all excellent quality wines in restaurants with our cusine.

What are the two most surprising food and wine parings that you've experienced in your career?

The first would be truffle popcorn (Michael Minna) with a Domaine Leflaive Puligny Montrachet 1er Cru "Clavoillon" 1999. UNBELIEVABLE! I will give details later. Just thinking of it makes my mouth water.
The second was a ginger creme brulee (Ana Mandara) with Casta Diva Cosecha Miel, Muscat 2006. AMAZING and unexpected.

If you could share one bit of information about food and wine pairing with Vin de la Table readers, what would it be?

There are so many rules and practices such as high acid and/or sweet wine cuts spicy food, and the ancient red with meat, white with fish but my overall advice is drink what you like and like what you drink, then everyone is happy.

Thank you Ryan, for your generosity and time with this interview.

What Would You Pair With.....?"

2008-07-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

Today's "What Would You Pair With.....?" question concerns boquerones.

Boquerones are white Spanish anchovies, and these in particular have been marinated with white wine vinegar and olive oil, paired with Valtellina cheese, rustic bread, and lightly garnished with a piece of wilted basil.

Not particular to my picnics, the little fish are a staple at tapas bars all over Spain, and at the wine bar where I work.

Valtellina, is an aged, somewhat sharp and herbaceous mixed milk cheese (90% cow, 10% goat) from the hills of Italy, where happy cows make happy cheese.

The basil was wilted. By chance. But was fabulous with the boquerones and helped to break up the whiteness of the photo. If the basil is just too much for you with the cheese, fish and bread, take it off and go purist.

The question(s) of this post is:
What would you drink with this little snack? I tasted it with more than one wine, and was happy with many of the selections, but what are your ideas? White? Bubbles? Spritz? Red? Bonus question: Who and where would you like to nibble and sip your pairing....

Answers can be left in the comment link at the end of this blog.

Potato Chips and Sparkling Wine: K-I-S-S-I-N-G

2008-07-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

Word around town is that potato chips and sparkling wine have it for each other something fierce.

Theirs is a somewhat private relationship. There have been relatively few sightings of the potato crisps and bubbly beauty holding hands at public places, such as high end restaurants or Dean and Delucas. However, my people-in-good-standing have reported seeing them in dimly light eateries or behind closed doors. I've also received at least five anonymous texts about their appearance in the movie the "Seven Year Itch," where Marilyn Monroe, in high heels and a charmingly flimsy white dress, exposes the passion of the two lovebirds.

Why they are attracted to each other needs little explanation. With their naughty crunch, sprinkling of salt, and healthy douse of oil, chips are the the (insert your following star and vintage here) Benecio del Toro/George Clooney/Billy Joel of the food world. And although sparkling wines should be consumed at far more occasions and in far more vast quantities than they currently are today, as it is, they are still the beautiful, rare Uptown Charlize Theron/Juliette Binoche/Christie Brinkley treat. To put it in scientific terms, when the duo gets together, the creamy and high acidity sparkling bubbles lift the salt and fat molecules to a deliciously higher plane.

The Test:
At a recent event at the wine shop/wine bar where I work, I decided to put their love to the test. Are sparkling wine and potato chips a pairing made in a Sommelier's heaven, I asked an equal mix of wine representatives, our favorite customers, fellow employees, and an infant who only burped in response. Some people spoke to specific pairing possibilities, others branched out to cover varied sparkling topics. The chips were Kettle Lightly Salted Krinkle Cut Chips. The starring sparklings will be revealed in all of their glory with each researched response.

THE FINDINGS:

Wonderful wine bar friend Jason LeCount was happy to respond.
"The chip is savory and fatty, but still mild flavored, and the acidity in the champagne cuts through all that and more. It also seems that the salt in the chips is enhancing the flavors in the wine, like salt does to a properly salted dish."

Wine bar advocate Will Mariano liked the Sorelle Branca Prosecco 68 best with his chips.
"After it sat in my glass and opened up, I could taste the creaminess of the Prosecco. My downfull is buttery, creamy in white wines. With these chips at that sparkling, the flavors in the wine and food enhanced each other."

Fellow employee Matt Stevenson was eager to share his findings.
"Ah...good question, do sparklings and potato chips go well together? Well, I overheard Sparkling Wine Advocate Mike Werther talk about champagne and chips, so I think I can propagate upon our earlier discussion. The acidity in champagne matches really nicely with the saltiness in chips. I prefer grand cru blanc de blanc & plain old basic Lays. With a rose or darker saignee, you can do the black pepper Kettle chips. In Indian food, classic curries have been known to be fantastic pairings with your favorite Blanc de Noir. By the way, I've also heard that there is a direct correlation between IQs, overall happiness, and the amount of sparkling wine you consume."

Wine rep extraordinaire Tom Switzer shared his favorite pairings.
"My favorite thing to drink with our Sorelle Branca Prosecco is anchovies, with Frito Miso. I probably wouldn't put out chips to go with Champagne, but chips do go with everything. My favorite champagne pairing is smoked salmon with cavair or Brillecart brut with oysters."

Says chip and Champagne lover, Benny, ""I appreciate these two together because I think that it's a taste of elegance mingled with everyday flavor."

I unfortunately asked Tracy late in the night to participate in the research and by that time all chips were eaten by those NOT engaged in the investigation, so she hadn't enough time to properly evaluate the pairing. But her picture was still cute, so here is Tracy, one of our favorite customers.

Our wine shop manager, the skilled pourer Jason Lefler had this to say about his prefered pairing:
"My favorite sparkling that we sampled with the chips tonight was the Raventos Blanc Cava Reserve. It had sufficent fruit and umptiousness to not be too acidic with the chips. Because it had far less acid that other wines present, the pairing was quite pleasurable."

Wine rep Marc West-Teixeira, who was happy that his baby was born a couple days earlier so he was able to make it to our Bubbles Party, shared his thoughts too.
"The winner of the sparkling wine and chip pairing was the A. Margaine [Champagne Rose of Pinot Noir]. For me, nothing else clung together, either because the chips were too fatty, or something else got in the way of the match."

As for me, my favorites of the night was the Raventos Blanc Cava Reserve (both 2003 and 2005 were lip smacking), and the Lalliment Champagne. My reasons were similar Jason Lefler, so I'll just copy his well-phrased, completely spur of the moment response below. But overall, this research reinforced by chip and wine love, and reminded me that we are indeed lucky to be living in a world of wine that allows populist snacks to converge with luxurious bubbles.

Anyone tried Sparkling with Beer and Cheddar chips?

Spice Braised Meats: Because the Sun is Hiding

2008-06-28T10:25:00.001-07:00

Due to a seemingly endless trend of wildfires around Northern California this past week, the air is as smoky as a windowless room that's contained only Lou Reed and a carton(s) of cigarettes for three and a half days. The smoke is keeping the sun from shining, and the fog and the haze is blanketing the San Francisco Bay Area in a thick layer of pure asthma love.

Resulting from our sunless summer, the SF Bay Area is even cooler than normal. This has inspired me to put down my inhaler spray, halt my light cursing, and return to a post that I started in winter but never finished because we had an early heat wave.

Welcome back braising!

One of my favorite ways to prepare meat this winter was with a recipe featured in Saveur magazine's Chicago issue. It involved beautiful amounts of spices, citrus fruits, and aromatic wine. After I made it once the chefs way, I experimented with other meats, wines and herbs.

For example, after finding chicken thighs (ah.... dark meat) in our freezer one night that my mother-in-law donated to our poultry cause, I switched the meat base. I used the thighs for the dish instead of lamb, lessened the cooking time and worried a little less about creating a sauce and more about surrounding the chicken with lush flavors.

Another time I cooked pork butt. Which is actually pork shoulder, but who's ever been worried about the ramifications of misnaming a shoulder a butt.... The point of the matter is, any way I worked this recipe, the dish worked. Chef Bruce Sherman is a skilled man. I encourage you to play around sometime with this recipe too. The recipe is long, but the result is worth actually months of your time. Once you've mastered the basic idea, feel free to alter steps. I did.

The first time I made this recipe, I served the dish with the wine with which I used to cook the meat and pour in my glass during the cooking process. Then I opened an additional bottle of a different wine when the first ran out. The chef who created the recipe, Bruce Sherman, suggested using a dry Gewurztraminer in the braising liquid. Instead, I used a blended Alsatian wine called "Solis L"Exception" by Julien Meyer which contained 60 % Pinot Blanc, 35 % Sylvaner, and 5 % Muscat, but either wine suggestions will produce happy results. Gewurztraminer is a a lychee and rose scented grape, and often both Sylaner and Muscat evoke those scents as well as apricots, peaches, and other members of the floral families. As long as you stick with what is called an "aromatic wine", like a dry Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Viognier, Roussane or Sylanner, your braise should come out beautifully. The exotic aromatics in these wines love the flavors in the recipe such as Cardamon, star anise, and cinnamon. Don't the scents of cinnamon, apricot, rose and pear sound like they'd pair well together? Play some.

Once we finished (four people, I swear) the first bottle, I opened a bottle of Barberesco that I recalled exhibited aromas of citrus along with dark fruit and other Nebbiolo characteristics, but nearly any lightly oaked, earthy and spicy wine would have worked in the realm of red, such as a Cote du Rhone (Grenache, Syrah, Mouvedre). Even an aged Cabernet Sauvignon would have been lovely.

Would the ingredient list or description of the braised lamb of this recipe inspire you to open a particular bottle to sip with dinner? What about if you went with chicken instead?

Prosecco & Peas

2008-06-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

On none too rare of occasions, one will find a better wine pairing while sipping a bottle of wine that they forgot about in the fridge and shelling peas for steamed mussels, slicing cheese for pizza, or tearing basil leaves for a lasagna then one will ever create with hours of contemplation.

Sometimes this pisses me off. How dare something so simple bypass me when I was envisioning the magical mix of twenty ingredients?! But most time, I embrace the spirited nature of the universe that blesses the most basic of foods and the simpliest of wines with hearts that are so happy to meat each other.

Enter fresh shelled English peas, Drussian Prosecco, and my husband's chile pepper chef pants that his mother made. The peas, so sweet and green, were so excited to meet the likes of the peachy, lemony Prosecco that they simply exploded in my mouth. Prosecco is a sparkling wine from the Veneto region of Italy made from the grape it's named after. And the chile pants, well, they were so thrilled by the pairing that they had refused to get out of the picture. They wanted to be a part of the perfection.

We ate at least a handful of the fresh peas straight from the pod, and although I love them many ways, one of my favorite being lightly blanched, with butter and fresh thyme or mint, at the moment, nothing was better.

Any favorite pea pairings?

An Ode to Picnic Wines and a Note About Raccoons

2008-06-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you go on a picnic and it is as relaxing as walking through redwood forrest with a mojito in hand, and other times, wild animals attack. The later was reflective of the latest picnic I went on. But I still liked it. We still got to drink wine.

My mother, my Aunt Lin who was in town for the day, and we together went up to Tilden Park in Berkeley to enjoy a beautiful picnic spray in the lush green nature reserve. We spread our goods on the table, sliced some Fatted Calf Toscano salami, poured some wine into our plastic cups, and then we had a visitor. A crazy visitor.

Our little friend was a raccoon that could no longer hunt. He was a sad little raccoon, and demanded that we feed him. Instead of running away like another wild, friendly raccoon did when the women of the family (excepting myself, who stood with her mouth open and salami slice in hand) waved things at him and made a lot of noise, he came full force at our table, limping with a recently shortened tail. And then he came closer. Then he charged at my mother. That was when we submitted and threw him a third of our baguette. We aren't normally the family to feed wild beings, especially when there are signs around warning us of the danger, but after we relocated and he followed us with the same crazy look in its eyes, we realized that if we wanted to finish our picnic, were left with little choice. Later the raccoon was joined by a feral cat and a healthy raccoon, who also watched us. We did not feed them. We were able to enjoy our picnic regardless of the uninvited visitors, but I admittedly was frightened by how many times that he walk/limped aggressively towards my mother. Especially because two weeks ago, she was bit by a poisonous spider and had to be hooked up to a IV. I thought it would be such a shame if she had to return to the hospital night due to a raccoon attack. The hospital workers might have questioned the way she spent her leisure time.

Anyhow. It's picnic time.

Once again the season is upon us that requires the filling of straw baskets with luscious meats, cheeses, fresh salads, pie, leftover Girl Scout cookies that magically appeared in our cupboards, and at least two to five bottles of good wine. Those of you who treasure the good life or just enjoy the opportunity to wear your Hawaiian print culottes in public, get ready; it’s picnic season. Pack an extra baguette

Although picnics are somewhat casual events when compared to weddings or baptisms, there is no excuse to get lazy. Like the aforementioned events, picnics have rules too. They are:

Picnic Standards
1. Bring plenty of cheese, charcuterie and bread.
2. Pack plenty of wines that go with cheese, charcuterie and bread.
3. If you’re going to wear your culottes, call other event attendees to coordinate Hawaiian prints, and don’t wear socks unless they are exactly the same print as your partner’s.

An Exploration of Picnic Wines

Good picnic wines are not hard to come by. Essentially, not even wine that overwhelms the lighthearted picnic food will get in the way of you enjoying your day, because you are on a picnic! If you are, however, one of those people like me who like your wine to match your food even when drinking out of plastic cups, there are a couple wines that will match nearly any picnic food that you bring.

Two wines in particular that stand out as super picnic wines, and not just because they earned gold in the Picnic Olympics, are the 05 Stepahn Tissot Poulsard San Soufre, from Arbois, and the 07 Chateau Mourgues du Gres “Les Galets Dores,” a Grenache Blanc and Rousillion Rhône blend from Nîmes.

The Tissot Poulssard comes from Arbois, the charming French town that produces such classics as Morbier, Gruyere and Comté cheeses. It’s a round, raspberry, strawberry, earthy little wine with bright acidity that’s gentle to cheeses and cuts the fat in charcuterie. Some cheeses in particular I’d suggest with the Poulsard would be the Gruyere, Comté, fresh chevre, and Mt. Tam by Cowgirl Creamery.

Next is the Chateau Mourgues, a general picnic pleaser. This pretty, fresh wine will charm everyone from your wine snob cousin to your picky grandmother, pear, vanilla and white peach flavors pair wonderfully with grandma’s chicken salad and brilliantly with the expensive cheeses and French olives your sophisticated cousin brought.

Have a wonderful picnic and watch out for the contentious raccoons.

Chocolate & Wine: Dry Reds, Sweet Wine, or Milk?

2008-06-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

There's a great debate in the wine world concerning the pairing of chocolate and wine. It goes something like this: are they simply the best, most romantic duo ever, or are they the worst pairing cliche since Ross and Rachel?

At the request of Vin de la Table readers, I decided to put the question to test. It's a hard job, but someone gets a discount on wine and that someone's husband also works at a gourmet food shop where they sell Michele Cluizel chocolate. So the burden falls on my shoulders; the task falls on my table. Husband's input also included.

Before I divulge the results, however, it's important to note that the pairing question inherently needs clarification. Just to start, the chocolate and wine seeker must ask themselves:

When I seek to pair chocolate and wine, do I mean red wine? Do I mean dry red wine? Why? Am I imagining a chocolate dessert like cake or mousse with my wine, or do I really want a flavored chocolate truffle? With caramel or tarragon filling? Or, would I rather consume chocolate with a high percentages of cacao- 65% plus? Lastly, am I only to drink dry red wine, or can I indulge in that sweet or off-dry wine like Madeira or Sherry that I have lounging in my kitchen?

These are things to ask oneself before one's quest begins, because the answers dictate the chocolate and wine tasting results. Let me be your guide in this post.

We'll answer the questions together.

1. When I seek to pair chocolate and wine, do I mean red wine? Do I mean dry red wine?...... Why?

Good freaken question. Most times when people come into our wine shop on a chocolate quest, they request a Cabernet Sauvignon. I ask why. Is it because the pictures of chocolate and wine together feature a hazy, dimly lit, golden photo of a cab next to chocolate chunks? I think so. In my opinion, cab and cocoa is as good together as peanut butter in a dog's mouth. Everything just interferes with each other. The saliva, the chewing action, the sticky peanut butter. The heavy oak, the acidity, the fruit in the wine, all conflict with the chocolate. Yet this is the standard on which people base their wine/chocolate consumption. My advice- if you're going for a red wine, a dry red wine, go for a Petite Sirah, an almost-sweet Zinfandel, or a rich and rustic Tempranillo or Malbec, or chewy red from the Madiran region of France. They are heavy, full-bodied, have a hell of a lot of fruit, smoke, depth, and tannins. All of these blessed ingredients equate to a warm blanket that wraps around chocolate and makes it feel good inside. However, if you love chocolate and Cabernet Sauvignon, rock the two with all your heart and don't let me stop you from your loves.

2. Am I imagining a chocolate dessert like cake or mousse with my wine, or would I rather have a flavored chocolate truffle? With caramel or tarragon filling?

Yikes. If you are lusting after a composed chocolate dessert with your dry red wine, I'd advise you to look elsewhere. It will never treat you right. It is almost certain that the dish will be too sweet. Sugary desserts and red wine don't mix. However, if you are lusting and imagining a sweeter wine with your fourless chocolate torte, three cheers for you! Sweet and sweet? What a match!

3.Or, do I want to consume chocolate with high percentages of cacao- 65% plus, with my wine?

Good thinking. You do want to consume chocolate with high percentages of cacao, from 65%- 75% with your wine. This is best way to go if you are hoping to experience the magic of both subjects. 65% is about as low as you want to go because anything under that, you'd be introducing too much cream or sugar and would out-sweet the wine. Anything over 75%, you are matching tannins in chocolate to those in the wine. Not what you want to do unless you want to whip your tongue and palate into submission. Keep in mind, however, that there's plenty of give and take in the percentages. Play around. Play around a lot. This is an area where red wine, such as Petite Sirah, Malbec, Tempranillo, Zinfandel, and Madrian reds can shine with the wine. Here, the combo of the fine cacao and the wine bring out the fruit in each other. Cherries, berries, cassis.

4. Lastly, can I indulge in that sweet or off-dry wine, or fortified wine like Madeira or Sherry that I have lounging in my kitchen?

Oh my, I hope so. In all respect to chocolate and dry red wine fans together, I don't belong to the same fan club. While "enjoying" the two together, I find myself looking around the kitchen to see if I can find some milk for my chocolate. Or, I imagine the cheese I could be eating. It's sacrilegious, somewhere, I'm sure, but real nonetheless. The pairing isn't bad, per say, but I prefer other flavors in the chocolate besides the blaring fruit and acidity that the chocolate brings out. The wines that I really like with my cocoa are the sweeter types, like Madeira, certain versions of Sherry, Port, or late harvest Zinfandels. Sauterenes is a beautiful wine, but I'd rather have it with my fruit tart. Same goes for late-harvest Chardonnay.

Back to what I tasted. Out of the three wines pictured above that I tried, the best with chocolate was the Tempranillo. It was rich, tannic, fruity, and delicious, and was the perfect chocolate blanket. The Chianti was good, but didn't scream "chug me." The Mas des Brousses (Cab-Merlot blend) was just too acidic for the wine. Lovely with meat, not enticing with sugar.

What do you like to drink with your chocolate? I'd heard beer and peanut butter cups are delicious together.....

What Would You Pair With.....?"

2008-05-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

It is the return of the "weekly" question, "What would you pair with....?'

The food at hand today- cheese and chile tomales from Echo Park L.A. Meatless, yes, but lardless, unlikely.

So, dear readers, I'm wondering, what wine(s) would you consider pairing with this lush, mildly spiced, tender tomale, with a touch of fresh corn and tomato?

Straight Outta Chocolate

2008-05-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

Just like the Hip Hop group N.W.A, Straight Outta Chocolate Cakes is a musically inspired organization founded in Los Angeles with smooth sweet style and more skills than any of those cats who call themselves artists and play with dough on the East Coast. Headed by My Friend Kate of My Friend Kate's Tours, Straight Outta Chocolate specializes in the high art of juxtaposing music with chocolate.

For those of you who have never heard of Straight Outta Chocolate cakes, let me take you on a tour.

Kate and I went to culinary school together. She was enrolled in the pastry department and learned how to form gorgeous shapes with chocolate. I, on the other hand, completed the program that includes two weeks of butchery. Since culinary school, Kate has gone on to earn a degree in fashion design, and not only can she design as a result, damn, the girl can sew. If left alone in a fabric store for a week, Kate could create enough clothes to lavishly adorn all of the groupies for the band members featured on her cakes. That's a whole lot of clothes. When she's not designing cakes or clothes, she might be also found DJing or making amazing music with friends in the cooler joints around L.A. That is, if she's not working on other art. Or reading. Or cooking North African peanut stew or lemon pound cakes.

Kate does a lot. Having experienced some of her many talents, one might think that I wouldn't be surprised upon hearing she started her own cake baking company that highlighted her art skills and utilized her endless music knowledge (if we ever play music trivia, Kate's on my team). But I was! And moreover, I was so...... impressed. Not jealous because I could never create a face as smooth as that of Eazy-E's on her chocolate cake mind you, but rather, overcome with her chocolate and art skills.

In honor of Kate's skillz, this post is devoted to pairing past Straight Outta Chocolate Cakes with alcoholic beverages, or.... wine. Also included below are some videos of the musicians featured on the cakes. If you are in the L.A. area and wish to commission a cake, contact Kate at hifivalentine@yahoo.com. Enjoy!

First cake- featured at top.
Eazy-E Chocolate Cake: As suggested by a N.W.A song called Don't Drink That Wine, Eazy-E wasn't completely into the fermented grape juice. Knowing this, I would feel good about pairing this cake with Calvados, a drink made by distilling apple cider. An amazingly good Calvados from Bonny Doon.

Love, the cover of Forever Changes
Meyer lemon curd cake with whipped cream frosting. Although I know very little about Love's alcoholic preferences, lemon curd always pairs with with a sparkling Moscati D'Asti. It's floral peach tones pop with the tangy lemon curd. And Moscato, as I'm sure many of you know, pairs sexily with whipped cream frosting.

Johnny Rotten

Angel Food Cake with whipped cream icing and carmel crunch candy. This one's a tough one. If I were enjoying the cake, I'd sip some Niepoort Tawny 10 year port. Caramel in the port, caramel in the cake, enchanting in the glass and on the plate. But I'm compelled to ask, "What would Johnny Rotten drink with a cake with his face on it?" Not having any personal drinking experience with Johnny Rotten, I'd guess that he'd consume aged Scotch, over ice. Or a Kahlua and Cream.

T-Rex
Carrot Cake. The lead singer of T-Rex, clearly one of the best British folk-inspired rock bands of the 60's and 70's, rocks just as hard on this cake as they do in the video below. The appropriate match for this cake would be a Santa Julia late harvest Torentes. This wine oozes with pinapple and apple and manages to be sweet without being over the top, like carrot cake and that cute, voluptuous haired singer from T-Rex.

T-Vine Wine Burger Extravaganza (No burgers filmed during this sequence)

2008-05-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

We recently had an event with winemaker Greg Brown of T-Vine Vineyards, where we served his wines with Niman Ranch burgers. Great pairing for a heavily-fruited, intense red. Thought you might like to see some of the pictures of our BBQ party. I know everyone was really crossing their fingers, but the burgers were consumed to quickly for photography.

a) Brown with the sporty burger chef and my co-worker, Matt.

b) Below, one of our fine bar patrons and friends, Keith (on right), and his brother. We're a family place.

c) The winemaker and Vin de la Table author.

d) Two other fine bar patrons.

Wine Blogging Wednesday: a Gorgeous Riesling

2008-05-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

A brief intermission is taking place before I explore Straight Outta Chocolate cakes so I can play in the world of Wine Blogging Wednesday. The assignment: pick a Riesling from northern Europe, drink it out of a brown paper bag at night, and blog about it. Mission accomplished.

04 Jakob Schneider Riesling Kabinett, “Niederhäser Hermannsöhle Vyd," Nahe, Germany

Regardless of their bright, citrus zest acidity or bustling minerality, there are some Rieslings that make me think of Baked Alaska. But not Grandma’s Baked Alaska (bless her soul). An accomplished pastry chef’s take on the dish. When I was cooking in a fine dining establishment, for example, our resident pastry expert would place hand-made vanilla bean ice cream in a lengthwise sliced pineapple half that had been lovingly cored, top the whole thing with piped meringue, and go at it with a blow torch. Imagine that, sprinkled with lychee essence, meyer lemon zest, and kissed with petrol. With a snappy acidity. At this same restaurant, they served seared Hamachi with Yuzu-Miso sauce. That’s exactly what I would serve with this wine. Or fried oysters.

T-Vine Vineyards: An Interview with Winemaker Greg Brown

2008-05-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

I am very happy to add an interview with the winemaker/owner of T-Vine Cellars (pictured with flowing hair above) to the growing collection of winemaker Q & A’s on Vin de la Table. Most certainly one of the best of the two, this interview invites us into the wine world of Greg Brown, a talented and successful winemaker who only wishes the best for his fellow craftspeople, and who would be happy pairing baked beans with his finest T-Vine wines. In short, he’s a Vin de la Table interview dream.

Although T-Vine has a cult following for their berry-luscious Grenaches, purple Sryahs, decadent and fierce Petite Sirahs, jammy Zinfandels, brooding Cabernet Sauvignons, and occasional Merlots, winemaker Brown has little need to uncork his bottles to sell his wines.

His power to garner a following pre pouring has as much to do with his gracious and spirited nature as much as the fine reputation of his wines. Thankfully for those of us who have occasionally been swayed to buy on the basis of pure winemaker charisma, Brown does pop his corks for the public. And by god, his wines are terrific. They are concentrated, stunning, and in short, a California wine lover’s dream.

THE REBELLIOUS BROWN STORY

One day the corporate banker called Greg Brown was invited to a Cain Cellars wine crush, and his life changed overnight. Brown had already begun to feel in his heart (the one behind the breast pocket of his well-tailored Italian or American or British suit, below the ends of his slicked back hair, and far above the shined leather of his fine dress shoes) that banking was not his life calling.

That crush day, the grapes were so ripe with inspiration that almost immediately, Brown quit finance to “drag hoses at Cain Cellars for $7 an hour.” It was all wine from here on out.

After years as a cellar rat, Brown got the itch to try his own hand with wine. His grape of choice was Grenache, a grape indigenous to the Rhone Valley in France which Brown was crazy about.

At this point of inspiration seventeen years ago, few to none were making Grenache in the northern wine country. Most people hadn’t even heard of the grape. Tony Soter, Cain’s consulting winemaker at the time told Brown how funny he thought it that Brown wanted to play with this Rhone grape in a land where the favorite game was making Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Later of course, Soter loaned Brown his crushing facilities. Regardless of the raised eyebrows, the rebellious Brown knew exactly what to do. He made his first Grenache and put it in a Bordeaux bottle so that people would know that it was red wine.

In the millionaire’s game of winemaking, “with only $15,000 and true grit,” Brown worked hard, put his wine out there, helped build awareness for Grenache, and went on to wine hearts.

Proud of the manner in which T-Vine has become successful from the ground up, Brown sees his gumption and passion especially in the early years as crucial to his wine’s draw. Earning a following that loves his wines because of the contents of the bottle and for the inspiration behind them rather than for their ratings is important to Brown, who generally avoids press and ratings systems.

Unlike many winery representatives that actively send their wine to critics or wine ratings organizations, Brown prefers that T-Vine accolades come organically, or not at all. He hasn’t asked wine critic Robert Parker NOT to rate his wines, for example, but he hasn’t sent him sample bottles like so many others do either. Brown normally also avoids interviews, saying that "he could be having morning coffee for years with someone before they know I'm a winemaker.” In Napa, when wines are far too often used trophies, Brown prefers to utilize his as sources to inspire pleasure rather than fame.

INSPIRATION

On the back of his wine bottles, Brown inscribes quotes meant to share pieces of the T-Vine spirit and intention with its drinkers. With it’s main feature being a short newsletter, the T-Vine website stresses simplicity and serenity over marketing. While it's true that Brown's wines have no problems selling, it's clear that his point in life is not making money. Rather, It seems to be to exist in a space of inspiration and peace.

When I asked Brown why winemaking inspires in him more spirituality than other acts in life, he spoke of the act and the end result.

“Nothing else produced has the spirit of the person as infused in the product as wine. In wine, you can see personality, the traits of the person who made it, and if they were inspired, you can taste it. And there are so many metaphors in wine: the new growth in spring time, the pruning back, and these all conjure up thoughts of spirit and consciousness.”

Which brings us to Brown’s model of winemaking, which is invoked with spirituality but refuses to take itself too seriously. Comparing making wine to breathing, Brown states that “it’s extremely important, but no big deal.”

Brown thinks likewise about FOOD AND WINE.

One of the best memories he had, he says, with food and wine was one experienced "at the top of a slide in a French playground, straight out of a brown-bagged bottle with a baguette." While it hurt my cheese-freak heart to hear that Brown’s memory didn’t involve cheese, not even at the top, middle, or lower portion of the slide experience, it’s endearing to hear a winemaker say that his one of his favorite food and wine pairings required only love for the products involved. And a child’s recreation tool.

If there did happen to be cheese present during the playground adventure, I told him, his T-Vines Rhone Wines and Zinfandels in particular would have been good to have handy. At a recent Wine and Food Pairing class session at work, we served three different cheeses, and I was amazed to find that they paired perfectly with all of them. All were a bit funky, perhaps a little stand-offish- either salty and aged, washed cow’s milk or natural rind goat, but after the T-Vine wines strutted their stuff a bit, they were melting with simple pleasures of the pairing within minutes.

Brown was happy to hear his wine was a hit, but let it be known that he was for “rebellious wine drinking,” the sort that inspires blending wines at the dinner table rather than inflicting rules. Which may be why at an upcoming event with T-Vine at the wine shop where I work, we’re serving his wines with big, juicy burgers.

When not sipping T-Vine with America’s favorite sandwich, Greg prefers simple food with his wines and says that people should drink red with fish if they want to. Even though he loves French country or peasant style food such as roast lamb and vegetables with his wines, he’s also cool with “opening a can of Annies’ split pea soup and adding some garlic.”

Brown’s not afraid to admit his not-elitist preferences in the vineyard either.

In a time when it’s become fashionable to knock wines for being “fruit-bombs,” Brown freely admits that he likes his own wines laden with fruit. Why shouldn’t he, he asks.

Instead of picking by brix, Brown picks by intuition. He tastes the grapes like he would a peach. If they taste ripe, sweet, he’ll consider other properties such as mouthfeel and color. Although a some point during the winemaking process he might utilize scientific instruments, Brown relies more on what he’s learned by roaming the vineyards year after year and his own taste preferences than scientific measurements or what people profess is best at the moment.

Not that Brown would say anything negative about his fellow winemakers who might use such analysis systems or be otherwise influenced. He wouldn’t say anything bad about his fellow winemaker’s methods or wines period. He’s not ashamed for liking sweet fruit, canned soup or beans and he wouldn’t criticize other winemakers for staying true to their vision either.

“It’s what makes this country so great. They’re doing what they want and listening to their heart. There’s just too much press focusing on what’s wrong, and not enough focusing on what’s right. People have so many more mentors now instead of corporations leading them on- that’s terrific. They follow their vision. As far as I’m concerned, so much of the wine out there is 95% better than what I was making when I first started anyhow.”

He named one winemaker in particular, David Phinney of Orin Swift’s The Prisoner fame, as someone who really inspired him, because “he’s one of the sweetest guys you’ve ever met, his wines are terrific and really fun, and you can’t help but be happy for him and how successful he’s been.”

Another common theme in Brown’s life besides the showering of those around him with the positive energy he so values in others, is to not take oneself so seriously. With a healthy does of his naughty humor in mind, I will close this interview with a favorite joke of Brown’s.

"A blond and a brunette pass by a flower shop and the brunette looks in to see her boyfriend. "Oh," she groans, unhappy "My boyfriend is buying me flowers." "Why, what's wrong with that, don't you like flowers?" asks the blond. "Well," the brunette replies, "After he buys them, I spend at least a week with my ankles around my neck." "Oh. Why," the blond asks, "don't you own a vase?"

This vintage promises to be a good one for T-Vine.

King Island's Cloth Aged Cheddar: Cheese & Wine

2008-04-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I tried a cheese from Australia that so warmed my dairy obsessed heart that I've been aching to wax on about it on this blog. So it seems fitting that the first wine and food pairing topic on the reader's request list that I'll tackle is cheese. It feels like I'm cheating.

In time I'll cover hundreds of cheese and wine pairings (my tummy is growling already), but the focus of this post is King Island's Cloth-Aged cheddar, and the wine to sip while you nibble.

Why cloth age?

Cloth-aging is a technique utilized to supply some of the finest cheddars in the world with their subtle panache. Wrapping the cheddars with cloth rather than plastic or wax allows air to more freely circulate around the cheese. The result is a cheese that ages, or dries faster than their waxy cousins. The outcome is a drier cheddar, with crumbly verses a chunky texture.

In addition, most often the milk used for the cloth-aged guys is raw (not heated to the point of pasteurization), and throughout the six months to a year plus that the cheese is aged, the milk becomes more nutty and buttery. This, for me, is what defines a cloth-aged cheddar: a crumbly, buttery, nutty cheese that sometimes reflects the grass or herbs the cows are eating who produce the milk. The majority of cloth-aged do not have as sharp of a flavor as the wax or plastic-aged, and so being, it's much easier to taste the nuances in the milk.

I've tasted everything from grass to thyme in a cloth-aged cheddar before, and the King Island Cheddar shone no less brightly. Caramel, nutty, butterscotch and tangy, the King Island Cheddar even provided me with a flashback to a day when I was eating fried oysters. It was that sweet, opulent, briny, and even light mushroom character in the cheese that sang to me. Go figure?

But what made my first taste of this cheese even more exciting for me was that it was also the first time that I had a cheese from Australia that left me enamored. Now, I'm sure that there are fantastic cheeses in the country, but most of them either just aren't imported to the U.S., or they are hidden away in cellars of the Fromage Maffia, who are unwilling to share their joys. I firmly believe this because although I order cheese for the wine bar that I work at and worked in a gourmet cheese shop prior to this job, I've never taken note of say, more than three excellent Australian cheeses. There is no other way to explain this.

What to drink with cheddar
Cheddar's a picky cheese. It doesn't like to be paired with quiet or delicate varietals, or even big Pinot Noirs. In fact, it stomps it's feet and refused to behave and show it's best side unless paired with a riper wine. A "fruit-forward" wine -a.k.a- a wine whose grapes where picked when very ripe and relatively sweet so that the first thing that hits the nose when tasting the wine is FRUIT!!!!) is the best choice for a Cheddar.

Like a screaming child with a scraped knee needs a lollypop, this cheese requires a little sweetness to tame its sharp edges. California wines are normally the ripest, and our Zinfandels and Syrahs in particular are excellent at exhibiting full-fruit while not giving up any of the other more refined flavors inherit to the grapes.

Keeping this is mind, some wines that I've tasted with this Cheddar, and others, that paired fabulously, are the Terre Rouge "Les Cotes de L'Ouest" Syrah, by Bill Easton, and the T-Vine Zinfandel, made by Greg Brown (whose Vin de la Table interview I will be posting within a week or so!).

The Terre Rouge is an Sryah made in Amador County, CA that has a brooding, smoky, spicy earthy, peppery character. But it also has thick blasts of raspberry and blueberry fruit, which means that it is just lush enough to pair nicely with the cheddar's bite.

The T-Vine Zinfandel is an extracted, bold wine with oodles of fruit. It's intense, deep, very peppery, spiked with blackberries, cassis, and graced with a great acidity and big tannins that make it stand out from other super fruity Zins. In England, people often have chutney or extracurricular fruit spreads with their cheddars. This is what the T-Vine was to me- a thick, fruity enhancer to the cheddar that together with the cheese, popped in the mouth. P.S. I've tried T-Vine Sryah with cheeses of this kind, and it works just as well.

Some fantastic cloth-aged cheddars from the U.S and the U.K, just in case Australia isn't in your local cheese shop.:
Shelburne Farms Cloth Aged, Vermont
arr Valley Cave and Cloth Aged CheddarC, Wisconsin
Isle of Mull and Westcombes Cheddar, both by Neal's Yard Dairy, England.

Merry Edwards & Philippe's French Dip

2008-04-14T10:34:00.001-07:00

Los Angeles is a city to which I’ve been on a number of occasions, but not one that I’ve really enjoyed until taken on a local’s tour by my friend Kate, of My Friend Kate Tours. A town where many of the best restaurants and bars are barely marked or nearly windowless, LA aches for an introduction. Especially a culinary one.

Thanks to the tried and true experience of our friend, my husband and I ate the best tamales in Echo Park (true they were the only ones sampled, but their silky lard inspired texture, tender meat, and expert chile heat left convinced). Then, we were lead to Philippe’s restaurant, where we consumed French Dip sandwiches in their birthplace and had a beautiful imbibing experience.

According to Philippe’s website, the owner Philippe invented the French Dip sandwich, a sandwich whose bun is dipped in au jus, or meat juice drippings, when a customer’s bun was accidentally dropped in a meat pan and the customer was so enamored with the creation that he brought back his friends for more. And more. Inspired by his French heritage and the like last name of the customer who fell in love with his mistake, Philippe named his new delicious moneymaker the French Dip.

After I heard the story of the sandwich, the only question remaining in my mind was: Should I get a cup of the 10 cent coffee that Philippe’s still sells, or should I pair wine with my French Dip. Guess my answer.

I swore that I would expend any wine snobbery and order whatever the place sold for wine, just for the experience. If Philippe thought Charles Shaw or a white zin was the best paired with his meat-wiches, then so be it. I’m always willing to try someone else’s wine pairing and figured that if the offering was unpleasant, merely a sip would provide sufficient means for a post. Besides, one of my wine pairing pet peeves is that people always go for the tried and true beer and sandwich or BBQ or soul food match when any of these foods may actually taste better with wine. Although I love a good brew, I didn’t want to go there. If what they had didn’t work, I knew that I could come up with one back at home.

Then I arrived at the restaurant and my jaw dropped.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised to find the glories that I did on the menu. Philippe was a Frenchman. Did I really expect him to permit consumption of white zin in-house?

Not only did they have Spottswood, one of the best biodynamic/organic Napa Cabernet Sauvignons on the menu, they had Merry Edwards Pinot Noir. And more. Now, I don’t know if you know how wonderful Merry Edward’s wines are, or how hard they are to acquire (restaurant only, not available in wine shops), but I certainly do. After much work, I was able to buy them for our bar. We had to send them our wine bar food and wine menus, tell them of good intentions with their wine, promise to only pour them at the wine bar, and lastly, sign a contract saying that we would not sell their wines on the floor or buy them for personal consumption. It was so worth it.

Back at Philippe’s, I ordered the 2006 Merry Edwards Russian River Valley Pinot Noir with my French Dip, because it is one of my favorite wines, and because I’ve never had the honor of drinking this wine in a restaurant sans a white tablecloth. We got a pork and beef dip to share .

The Merry Edwards Pinot Noir is always a force to be reckoned with. Her Russian River version in particular, with its deep cherry, pomegranate and wild spice flavors and a backbone of bright acidity, is a Pinot Noir that can stand up to…. wow, almost anything.

There is an assumption out there that Pinot Noirs are always shy, delicate creatures. In actuality, and as demonstrated by such Pinots as Merry Edwards, Fort Ross, Cargasacchi, the Alfaro Family, many Pinot Noirs have the strength and grace to stand up to darker or lush cuts of meats and triple-crème cheeses as well as lighter fishes or poultry. They can be so well-structured, in fact that any of these Pinots will taste even better after sitting opened in their bottle for a day or two or three.

True to its reputation (spread by Vin de la Table) of being a Pinot Noir that’s remarkably easy to pair well with food, the Merry Edwards was fantastic with the French Dips. It could easily handle the sliced roast beef, but alas, I like it best with the pork. I’ve always preferred roast or pulled pork sandwiches (the aforementioned would taste awesome with a bigger Pinot Noir) to sliced roast beef, so call me partial, but the luscious fat bits remaining on the pork meat really shined with the wine.

And the sandwiches? Lord they were good. The idea of an entire sandwich dipped in meat juice never appealed wildly to me, but I’m an adventurer and wanted to test my sandwich boundaries in the dish’s birthplace. You can either have them dip the buns for you- which is good for beginners scared by soggy buns- or one can order a bowl with the juice to dip the buns themselves. Imagine a crispy bun, softened with au jus, and filled with supple meat. Exactly.

Needles to say, my food and wine experience in LA was one that I won’t forget. It was also one that inspired my husband and I to decided that in five or six years, if either of us were offered a fantastic job in that city, we might consider relocating to Hell-A. Just consider, mind you.

Coming soon: Cheddar and Wine, Straight Outta Chocolate, Chocolate and Wine... more winemaker interviews, and more and more.

Salads and Wine: A Dirty Rumor Exposed

2008-04-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

Thank you for all of your posting advice! I will attend to all your wine and food pairing interests in the coming months. In the meantime, keep the topic recommendations coming. I want to write about the wine and food pairing in which you're all interested. Now....

Someone, lets say it was one of the Hilton sisters because sometimes their all-night parties lead to crazy things, once spread the word that salads do not pair well with wines. I know, horrible. But even worse was that some of us, not knowing that one of the Hiltons recently called West Africa a country or that the same one occasionally forgets to put on her underpants, believed that there was a holy truth to this statement.

The horror.

Please allow me the honor of defalsifying the former accusation; Salads can be wonderful with wine.

The statement that salads can be hard to pair with wines does have some foundation. Vinaigrettes, after all can be pains to match, as the acidity levels in the vinegar can just make a wine feel funny. With reds especially, they tend to remind them of their former salad days when they were this close to becoming vinegar if they made a wrong decision in their fermenting path. And this embarrasses them. In addition, the acids in salad dressings, mixed with the tannins in darker red wines like Cabernet Sauvignon, can lay the grounds for a horrible, mouth-puckering situation. Take note, high acid foods + very tannic wines = often awkward.

However, with a little love, a salad can grow up to be a fine pairing for wine. Here are some hints:

1. Make a salad dressing with a light vinegar. Stay away from recipes insisting that you use all balsamic. Balsamic is generally too harsh for wines. If you need to use balsamic for some reason, mix it with a wine-themed vinegar, like mucat, or champagne to tame its bitter finish.

2. Use vinegars made from wine grapes or named after a wine growing regions or white grapes (a.k.a Champagne, cava, muscat). They are gentler on the palate, less acidic, and can easily snuggle up to their wine friends with a little olive-oil coaxing. Think match like with like.

3. Skip vinegar all together and use lemon juice or another citrus fruit for the acid. This creates a lighter, more subtle salad dressing. Plus, citrus fruit doesn’t feel like it’s in competition with wine, rather it aims at highlighting any citrus flavors found in the wine, or any other flavors that citrus can bring to the surface.

4. Drink Gruner Vetliner and other whites or rosés without oak with your salad. Wood and vinegar and letttuce, come on, does that even sound good?

5. If you are drinking reds with your salad, drink a higher acidity red with bright fruit, light tannins and very little oak (see # 4), like a Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley. Do not drink Cabernet Sauvignon with your salad. It will not taste good. It has too much oak and tannins to sweet talk a salad.

What do you drink with your salads?

Advise Me!!!

2008-04-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

So I have some ideas for future posts, like salad and wine pairing advice and more on CHEESEs (sigh), but what I really want to know is, what do you want me to write about?

What are some pairings that you want further explored?

Any questions you've been pondering about wine and food matches and losses?

Anything that you've wanted me to explore more that I've touched on before?

Any grapes out there that you've been aching to pair with a tasty morsel that I haven't even mentioned?

Cadbury Egg Cupcakes: Master Baker Event

2008-03-28T23:13:00.000-07:00

Master Baker Event

Easter candy was the theme for the Master Bakeshop blogging event this month. At first I cringed when I racked my brain and discovered that I've never made anything with easter candy in my life besides myself very sick, I reconsidered the assignment and realized that we didn't have to use Easter candy per se, but rather use it as inspiration. And with Cadbury Eggs in the running, what an inspiration.

ODE TO A CADBURY EGG

Even though I'm certain that Cadbury eggs have gotten considerably sweeter over the years, they are still one of my favorite sugar bombshells. In honor of the fearsome sweet and the Master Blogger Event, I have constructed my very own Cadbury egg. It is, like the original, really sweet.

The making of the Cada-Kirstin egg was a learning experience. The cupcakes were easy to make and I added chocolate chips at the end to add a crunch to an otherwise somewhat mushy dessert, which turned out to be a wise decision. The pudding I first made with milk instead of half and half. Not creamy enough. Made it again. The caramel, well, wow, I just messed up entirely on the first batch, scared myself and switched recipes to the more foolproof version (hello, that's me!) from the Tartine cookbook, and made the fresh recipe. Then, while taking a picture of the caramel, I flipped the whisk out of the pan near the sliding glass window where I was taking the picture in excellent light, and splattered the hot sugar liquid on the window, the hardwood floor, and on me. Later, on my knees with an SOS scrubbing pad in my hands, I cursed myself for caring about cleaning up the place when the manager can't even fix our leaky electric fan (yes, you read right) in our bathroom. So I learned.... to choose consistent recipes and not to get carried away taking pictures with caramel.

I paired the cupcakes with Dashe Late Harvest Zinfandel. The Cada-Kirstin eggs needed a juicy dessert wine that had some acidity, or the cupcakes would just taste flabby. And no one wants flabby cupcakes. The raspberry preserve flavors in the late Zin were delicious with the chocolate and brightened the whole Easter experience up. Cheers to Dashe, and here comes the Cada-Kirstin egg recipe:

Cupcake recipe is based off "The Old-Fashioned" Cupcake Recipe from the intensive Cupcake Bakeshop blog, the vanilla pudding recipe (link) was featured in the NY Times on Feb 21, 2007, and the caramel recipe (slightly shortened) is from the blessed Tartine Bakery Cookbook, which is a complete godsend of a book.

OLD FASHIONED CUPCAKE RECIPE
350 degrees, 8 cupcakes

¾ stick butter
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup flour
½ tsp baking soda
¼ salt
2/3 cup cocoa powdered
¾ cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup dark chocolate chips (my addition, optional)

1. Beat butter until softened. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. 
2. Add eggs, one at a time, beating 30 seconds after each addition. 
3. Measure the flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder into a medium sized bowl and whisk to combine.
 4. Measure the milk and vanilla into a measuring container. 
5. Add about a third of the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar and beat to combine. Add about a half of the milk/vanilla and beat to combine. Continue adding, alternating between dry and wet and finishing with the dry.  Add chocolate chips.
6. Scoop batter into cupcake cups about 3/4’s full. Bake at 350 degrees for about 25-30 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Note:Use high-quality cocoa powder.

NEW YORK TIMES VANILLA PUDDING
4 servings

Time: 20 minutes, plus chilling

2 1/2 cups half-and-half or whole milk
2/3 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1 vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (optional).

1. Put 2 cups of half-and-half or milk, sugar and salt in a small or medium saucepot over medium-low heat. If using a vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise and scrape seeds into milk or half-and-half using small sharp knife, then add pod. Cook just until mixture begins to steam.
2. Combine cornstarch and remaining milk or half-and-half in a bowl and blend; there should be no lumps. Fish pod from pot and discard. Add cornstarch mixture; cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture starts to thicken and barely reaches a boil, about 5 minutes. Immediately reduce heat to very low and stir for 5 minutes or so until thick. Stir in butter and vanilla extract, if using.
3. Pour mixture into a 1-quart dish or 4 to 6 small ramekins or bowls. Put plastic wrap directly on the pudding to prevent formation of a skin, or do not cover if you like skin. Refrigerate until chilled, and serve within a day, with whipped cream if you like. Whisk to remove lumps if needed.

CARAMEL
1 1/2 cups

2/3 cup heavy cream
1/4 vanilla bean
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp light corn syrup
3/4 tsp. lemon juice
4 tbsp unsalted butter

1. Pour cream in a small heavy saucepan. Split vanilla bean and empty 1/4 of seeds into cream. Over medium-high heat, Bring to just under a boil, then reduce heat to low.
2. Ina medium, heavy saucepan, combine sugar, water, salt and cornsyrup and bring to boil over medium heat. Stir to disolve sugar. Once bubbling, cook without stirring until mixture turns an amber color. Remove promptly from heat. Tartine suggest taking the pan off the stove between 5-8 minutes. I left it on longer than 5 min and overcooked the caramel. Another reason to become more familiar with your electric stove (gasp).
3. The cream will stop the sugar from cooking any longer. Slowly add cream to the sugar mix, very carefully as the mixture will bubble wildly. When mixture stops bubbling, then whisk until smooth. Add lemon juice, whisk, and leave to cool for around 8-10 minutes.
4. Cut butter into chunks and add to caramel one at a time, whisking after each piece until dissolved. Whisk caramel periodically as cooling. Caramel will keep covered in fridge for up to a month.

Wine and Aioli Recipe: To Hold us Over

2008-03-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

I hope that all will forgive me for posting photo of hens and chickens succulents bursting their first spring blooms instead of my herbed aioli, around which the post centers. My aioli is shy and does not photograph well, whilst the pretty little plants did.

March is one of those months when vendors at the farmer’s market appear so bored with their produce offering that they can’t look at the potatoes or parsnips while bagging and they post signs saying “ripe strawberries here soon, we promise.”

And I feel their pain. However, while I’m waiting for the cute little favas and delicate green beans to be released in the markets, I have something that I do every March to tide myself over. I make a delicious batch of herbed aioli (garlic mayonnaise) and feature the very dip-worthy veggies of late winter and early spring on my dinner table. Then I invite friends over and politely suggest what wine they bring (see below) to bring out the bright aioli flavors.

Quick notes: Although I thoroughly respect those who use a mortar and pestle to make their aioli, I have neither have the patience or the virtue required to partake such an arduous task. I use a food processor or have my husband whisk in the oil by hand. Also notable is that I use raw eggs in the aioli. I always do this and have not yet had a problem, but I use the absolute freshest eggs available, and buy from a reputable company.

Herbed Aioli:
Pulse one room temperature egg yolk in a food processor until yolk is broken. Add two teaspoons fresh lemon juice, ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard, two cloves crushed garlic and pulse for three seconds. Begin to add two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a very slow stream. By the end of this recipe, you will have used a full cup of olive oil. After the first two tablespoons are thoroughly blended in the food processor mixture, continue adding the remainder of the cup of olive oil, pausing after every ounce or so to make sure that the oil is thoroughly incorporated in the mixture before adding more. After mixture is emulsified, add half a bunch each of roughly chopped fresh tarragon and chervil leaves, salt, and freshly ground pepper to taste.

What to dip: steamed artichokes, blanched asparagus and broccoli spears, fresh radish and fennel slices, hard-boiled egg slices, and even seared and sliced chicken breast (if vegetarians don’t protest). Or basically anything else you favor that won’t fall apart in the aioli.

With the fresh vegetables and lush olive oil goodness served on aioli night, a racy, high mineral wine with bright acidity is the way to go. In the realm of whites, I’m all for a lime and guava laced New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc like the 06 Blick from Marlborough. Another white that would pair nicely with aioli and veggies would be the Domaine de Peyreficade Picpoul de Pinet, whose snappy green apple, lime, and juicy stone fruit flavors of the grape keeps it as light and fresh as an aioli dinner. Then, becauseaioli is after all, a spring thing, I’d choose the 07 peach, and raspberry scented Copain Primtemps Grenache and Pinot Nor Rosé. That’s about as dark as I like it paired with a spring aioli dinner, but as I know some of you are red-centered, may I suggest the Wild Hog Pinot Noir or Scurati Nero D’Avola. They both have the perfect combination of juicy red fruits and acidity to fare well with aioli and fresh veggies.

Signing off, with three cheers in honor of garlic mayo

Korean BBQ and Beer: Miz Dot Joo, Drinking Against the Wine Pairing Grain

2008-03-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

I am happy to introduce Vin de la Table's first guest blogger, Miz Dorothy Joo!

When Dorothy's not selling tons of wine at the wine shop where we work or finishing her masters of psychology, she can be found either a) dancing, or b) writing. Luckily for us, her batteries to her walkman died and she stopped dancing in time to grace us with a lovely analysis of pairing beverages with Korean Food on Vin de la Table. And she should know. She knows some Korean people.

Thank you Dorothy

Dorothy Joo

GUEST BLOGGER ☺

What’s the perfect wine for Korean barbeque and its lesser known accompaniment, Naeng Myun (buckwheat noodles in cold broth)?
The answer: BEER.

Although Kirstin and I briefly deliberated on a possible wine pairing, in the rush to get out of the wine bar after an unusually busy Sunday, we plumb forgot.
Thank goodness for Oriental Brewery. An Un-PC name, but a perfectly PC beverage. Not only is the label, red, white and blue, Oriental Brewery was bought by InBev five years ago, the same company that produces good old Budweiser. Get a taste of the Orient, straight from Fairfield, California. Don’t worry, its probably made in a factory full of orientals.
The second bottle we tried was Korea’s own Hite beer, known for being made with 100% rockbed water. I’m not sure what this means exactly, except it tasted…clean? Regardless, both of these beverages served us well throughout the meal.

Now about the food…
Jason and Matt have joined us, and together we sip politely on the roasted barley tea, but are ready to pounce as soon as the bahn chahn (small dishes) arrives. Different types of kimchee, seasoned bean sprouts, and fishcakes are the usual suspects, but since bbq is on the way, we are also given Sahm (lettuce and spiced green onions to accompany the meat).

Out of nowhere, a man in black brings us a tray of bright orange spiral coals under a wire tray. Jason makes an Osha joke, Matt checks his bionic man meter and it’s go time.
Immediately our faces turn red from the heat. The air vent above us turns on, and we need to raise our voices to talk. A bead of sweat trickles down Jason’s rosy cheek as he compliments the waitress on her faux Burberry vest. A sip of cold beer hits the spot. Always refreshing, never filling.

[Note here Dot's handiness with blue arrows and descriptors. I think that someone has guest blogged before.]

In addition to the barbeque and naeng myun, we order dolsot bibim bap, and kimchee dolsot bibim bap. Although not the optimal choice for people watching carbs, these hot bowls of mixed rice, veggies and meat are packed full of flavor and heat. Dolsot means rock bowl, so the rice at the bottom gets perfectly crunchy, never burned.

During all the action of mixing, grilling, picking, and drooling, the cold bottles of Hite and O.B. cool us down. I recall someone saying “Oh no, where’s my beer?” at least once. I snap photos amidst the frenzy, most of them slightly off focus due to the smoking grill.

After exactly 17 minutes the meat has been demolished and Matt picks at a bone. We have eaten like champs, but we have three minutes before we realize we’re full.
The Burberry vest comes back, but we refrain ourselves from ordering more meat. I think Matt cries a little inside.
Kirstin and I look at each other through the smoke and know that our hard earned tip monies are well spent. Although this may not be a particularly informative post, the moral of the story is that Orientals really love Burberry.

Selbach-Oster Rieslings: An Interview with Johannes Selbach

2008-03-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

Johannes Selbach, right
(Photo courtesy of the Selbach-Oster website)

At a recent trade wine tasting for the Vienna Wine Company in San Francisco, I had the good fortune of meeting Johannes Selbach. Meeting the man of the husband-wife duo who runs the highly celebrated Selbach-Oster family winery in Mosel, Germany was especially elating for a couple of reasons. First of all, when I met him, he was pouring his (twelve, by the time I got to the table) Rieslings, from both of the 06 and 07 vintages, which are amazing examples of Germany's main grape. I've been taken with the wines of Selbach-Oster since I first had a sip of this bottled nectar, and being able to taste so many of them side by side was, frankly, slightly overwhelming and a mind-blowing Riesling experience. Secondly, the experience was standout because I was lucky enough to secure an interview for Vin de la Table with this very busy man. Not only does Johannes run his own winery, he acts as a negociant and broker/importer of German Riesling and at any given time can be found in a different part of the world representing and pouring his wines.

Well, I sent him some questions that reflected my curiosity about his wines, the future of Riesling, and food and Riesling pairings, and his answers pretty much floored me. To my straightforward questions, Johanne Selbach provided some of the most poetic, clear, and compelling responses that a man as busy as himself has ever taken the time to give.

That said, I'm very happy to say that this interview with Johannes Selbach of Selbach Oster kicks off the first of many forthcoming interviews with winemakers and winery owners at Vin de la Table. What a start!

Like this one, future interviews will touch upon winemaking, wine as nature, wine as a drink, wine as a commodity in the global economy, histories of wine, and wine as an accompaniment to food on the table.

My questions are in bold, and his responses follow

Although more people in the U.S. are developing tastes for German Rieslings, some still insist that they "don't drink sweet wines." How would you respond to a statement like this? What are these people missing?

The word "insist" hints of stubbornness and that is too bad because it precludes giving anything but what they think they know a try. With that attitude we'd all still be eating maccaroni & cheese or sausages with kraut and would never have discovered the intricacies of Asian cuisine or the delight of "raw fish", sashimi or sushi.

First, what is the definition of "sweet" ? Is a soda pop, sweetened with corn syrup or a diet pop sweetened with aspartame or another sweetener sweet ?? Most likely everyone would agree that such a beverage is sweet, very sweet.
Is a September apple, plucked ripe from the tree sweet, ... or a peach in July, ... or a vine ripened tomato from the garden in August ? The answer will also be yes. Is there a difference between sweetness in root beer and in vine ripened fruit ? I believe even the most stubborn " I don't drink sweet wines" blockhead would agree.
At the same time that people insist they don't like "Riesling" they reflect on their experiences with artficially sweetened beverages ( or food ) and forget that the quality of an "un-dry" wine with varying degrees of residual sugar, as long as it is balanced, has nothing to do with that feared thickly sweet, cloying sensation.

Myself, often confronted with this rather silly ( because it shows people haven't tried many Rieslings, leave alone good ones ) prejudice, usually ask them two questions:
One, whether they eat fruit.
Two, if they do, whether they prefer their strawberries green and their peaches hard or rather red and juicy.
I cringe when I imagine that these people think the poor, usually cheap most likely sweetened wines they had ( be they Rieslings or blends ) are "it".
Riesling, like no other grape, is capable of showing the full spectrum of dryness/sweetness from bone dry to very sweet and everything inbetween. Fine Rieslings, like no other grape, can weave the wine's natural sweetness, derived from ripe fruit ( not added ), into the multitude of aromatic expressions this delicately aromatic grape offers ( depending on where grown, how cropped, when and how picked ) and pack it into an always noticeable, sometimes vibrant, sometimes juicy acidity that leaves the mouth salivating in the finish even after it has tasted a touch of sweetness upfront.
That's a long, complex sentence and doesnt come close to describing the sensation a fine, balanced fruity Riesling leaves on the palate.
Pity for those who think they know it all and who, after possibly a bad experience with a cheap specimen, don't give their tastebuds another chance....
When it comes to Riesling, balance is the key. And a well balanced Riesling has almost always won determined Rielsing avoiders over into the Riesling camp as believers. You watch....

Long answer to a short question !

THE RIESLING GRAPE AND SELBACH-OSTER

Your family has been making Riesling since 1661 and are said to be traditionalists. Have there been many advances in winemaking within the past 20-30 years that you have incorporated within your practices, or have you found that the way your family crafted high-end Rieslings for centuries is the way you will continue making your wine indefinitely?

Some but no radical changes. Most notable changes have occurred with the canopy management, certainly the reduction of yields and the sanity of vines and fruit. Less is more is a simple formula and it works well, also concerning our "input".
The overall vineyard work itself has become a bit more labour intensive, with more attention paid to smaller details. Everything has become "greener", geared towards a more organic approach though with the reality of viticulture on very steep slopes in a narrow river valley we are still "conventional".

The Riesling Grape is considered one of the finest grapes in the world, but demands a fair amount of attention from the winemaker. What are just a couple of the hardships Selbach-Oster experiences trying to cultivate Riesling that you believe people working with other grapes may not encounter?
Sorry but I beg to differ: The winemaking part is the less important part as there is not so much "making" in the cellar necessary but the quality of Riesling is rather determined in the vineyard. For obvious reasons, the place, the soil, the mezzo- and microclimate are of the utmost importance but apart from those, the differences are huge when comparing viticultural practices throughout the year and, now comes the most important part, the harvest.
For me, the vineyard work has to be planned and executed with a certain quality and type of Riesling in mind. Then, of course, Nature has to cooperate but it all culminates in the harvest. How to harvest ( when to pick, where to pick, what to pick and how to pick ) is immensely important. How one handles the chosen fruit and how one processes fruit and juice are of equal importance. Of course one needs to know what's needed in the cellar but the simple formula applies : The better the raw ingredient, i.e. fruit, the better ( potentially ) the end result, the wine.
Inbetween one has plenty of opportunity to screw this up but if gently pressed juice from top quality grapes runs into the barrel, most of the groundwork for delicious Riesling has already been laid. No need to spend sleepless nights over the choice of forest for the oak or how it's been dried and which toast the barrels need. No need to worry about whether or not or when to induce a malolactic fermentation. The fruit is "it" and the purer, the better.
Hardships occur when the weather doesn't want to play in tune. Hardships also occur when we gamble for 100% and overshoot the "perfect" day for picking a certain vineyard when the grapes have reached heir optimum.

It's said that Riesling truly expresses the terrior where its planted. You have many vineyards from which your grapes come. Which vineyards most expresses their terrior in the final product?

I firmly believe that Riesling truly expresses the terroir and have had ample opportunity to put this to the test.
However, caution is to be exercised: "Terroir" has become a buzzword and that horse has almost been ridden to death.
If there is too much "winemaking", forget abut terroir because many manmade interventions from aroma-inducing enzymes to the choice of yeast or new oak can override the terroir - and so does too much of a usually good thing - botrytis.
Overcropping, over- and underripeness each override much if not all of the terroir.
Where we make wines, in the heart of the Mosel, the vines thrive in a mineral rich, relatively soft and crumbly soil that is very old and dates back to the Devonian age, some 450 to 500 million years ago: Blue Devonian Slate. It's the silt from the ancient single ocean that surrounded the single continent, Pangea. The weight of the ocean compressed layer after layer of silt, forming a deposit that looks like a thin wafer, rich in minerals and with water trapped in the molecules ( which gives our slate such a smooth feel when you crumble it with your hands ). When the continents divided and tectonic plates drifted and collided, the former sea bottom was lifted and pushed, twisted and turned until it surfaced in our area where it formed a mountain range through which eventually the Mosel river cut. The roots can force their way down, courtesy of the relative softness of the rock and it's being cracked, twisted and turned, so we have rootsystems in our old vineyards where it is not uncommon to find 10 meter ( 32 feet ) deep roots. With roots deep in the mineral rich soil and with dry farming, with low yields plus a hands-off approach in the cellar, the potential for wines to show their "terroir" is excellent.

From my own tasting experience in our cellar I can say that the differences between the villages, from Bernkastel down to Graach, then Wehlen and finally Zeltingen are indeed noticeable. From amongst those, I find the different expressions of the Schlossberg in Zeltingen and the twin Sonnenuhr vineyards in Wehlen and Zeltingen ( with minor differences between the two siblings ) the most exciting. Zeltinger Schlossberg probably comes in with the most expressive "fingerprint" of minerality with some "crunch".

How do you feel about oak in Riesling?

Large casks of old oak - wonderful, they permit the wines to exhale some of their fementation aromas and also permit a tiny bit of oxidation, something that the "nouveau" winemakers have rediscovered and now artificially induce in their stainless steel tanks ( microboullage ).
New oak only once in a while and only for lending some exotic to a blend but this has to be done very skillfully or else the otherwise subtle and delicate Riesling carries way to much makeup and smells of foreign perfume...and becomes hard to recognize ( and enjoy).

Some readers may not be familiar with the superior aging abilities of German Riesling. Why are they such excellent wines to age? What is the oldest Riesling you've tried and do you have some set aside for younger family members or friends? How long do you plan to age them?

High quality German Riesling can indeed age for a very long time and often baffles even experts with it's relative freshness and added complexity it develops over time. Here, "don't like sweet" drinkers listen up, the wines with residual sugar greatly outperform their dry counterparts. Why ? Because sugar is a preservative just as acidity is. It's the combination of good acidity, relatively low pH, usually moderate alcohol and a varying degree of residual sugar which make for a winning combination for longevity.
The fact that the grapes in the northern German wine regions ( that Riesling calls home ) mature over a long time in a moderately warm climate, rather than a hot and arrid one, make for a unique concentration and diversity of flavours, always healthy acidity and, at the same time comparatively lower than average alcohol levels.
The oldest Riesling I have been privileged to enjoy was an 1864 Schloss Vollrads which the late Count Matuschka Greiffenclau opened and shared with a number of colleagues in the summer of 1986.
We have some old bottles, certainly from all family members' birth years set aside, though no serious quantities as we adhere to my late father's advice that fine wines are made to be enjoyed while both we and the wines are alive, rather than to be locked away from their destiny ( that is to be consumed and to give pleasure and stimulation of the senses ).
Having said that, I hope I'll live the day to drink the best bottles and the big question - always - is to find the "right" opportunity.
Seems I am on a good path to find more and more "right " opportunities.

FOOD AND WINE PAIRING:

Due to the success of your winery, you have had the opportunity to travel all over the world, talking about, pouring, and enjoying your wines with people of other countries. At the wine tasting where I met you, I heard that you and the other winemakers at the event would be enjoying a dinner later at a celebrated San Francisco restaurant. With what different foods do people pair your wines in various countries?
France, Germany, United States, Spain, Italy, China, for example...

With almost everything they eat. Riesling, contrary to widespread belief, is an immensely versatile companion at the table. Ask any chef in a top notch restaurant and you'll be surprised how often Riesling comes up when food friendly wine or the wine of choice is mentioned. The question is not whether Riesling but rather which Riesling with a certain kind of food !
Many people still confine Riesling to the ( very wide ) spectrum of Asian cuisine. Because the yin of fruit and yang of acidity marry so well with the multitude of flavours and preparations of Asian or Fusion cuisine this is understandable but the choices are many more. I dare say almost everything but a thick, bloody steak or leg of lamb & Co. works with a Riesling but you have to have some selection.
Think American traditionals from turkey with all the trimmings to crabcakes to simple pleasures like summer greens with a mild vinaigrette or just sweet corn on the cob and I can think Riesling from left to right.
Go to Italy and think of sweet, vine ripened tomatoes ( which always come with a nice dose of...acidity ) and think the unthinkable...Riesling. Fettucini Alfredo with that creamy Alfredo sauce that certainly has a touch of richness and sweetness...Riesling and when you eat Gorgonzola or melt it over meat or fruit, think Riesling again...
It is not just duck liver or goose liver for sweet Rieslings but also rustic, flavourful patés and, of course, aromatic cheeses, particularly ones with a soft, washed or cured rind ( ... ever tried ripe Epoisses with mature Riesling Spaetlese ? ) and the whole range of blue cheeeses from Stilton to Roquefort. Fruits and dishes prepared with fruit, redcutions sauces, caramelizd things, you name it...Riesling works.

What has put Riesling back on th food map are several things:
One, it's delicacy and relatively low alcohol ( compared to most other wines ) and the fact it is unoaked and with a crisp finish let the food live that's served with it. No competition but live and let live - if not complementing each other. That is why chefs and sommeliers and "foodies" love Riesling.
Two, it's diversity: Most kinds of food and even preparation styles find a matching Riesling and that can range from austere and pure and dry to flamboyantly exotic, rich and sweet.
Three: The much better availability of high quality Riesling . Today's consumer has much better access to more choices of quality Riesling than 10 or 20 years ago.

But, beware of cheap Riesling. It can be as one dimensional and flavourless as a "middle of the road" Pinot Grigio.

What is the worst Riesling pairing that you've experienced, perhaps because someone was so smitten with your wines, they believed they would fair perfectly with everything?

My biggest fear in wine dinners where the pastry chef doesn't know Riesling or thinks ( like many) that riesling is syrupy sweet: Elegant, regular Riesling Auslese with it's traditionally moderate level of residual sugar put against opulent, super sweet desserts ....

With what foods do you eat with your Rieslings at home, and are these typical Riesling pairings in Germany?

Almost everything and that explicitly includes roast red meat where we use aged Riesling ( at least a dozen years old ) .
Same here as said before: The rack of lamb or he thick steak grilled rare usually come with matching reds.

WINE AND RIESLING ABROAD

Who do you count among your favorite winemakers in Germany? In the U.S? France?

Germany: Helmut Doennhoff, Hans-Guenter Schwarz
France: a plethora of Burgundians, too many to single one out and I can't afford DRC...
US: Warren Winiarski for his ability to make lasting, impressive Cabernets at 13% vol and below .
Paul Draper for his Zins but more so Monte Bello Cabs for their "terroir" and relatively moderate alcohol.
Steven Kistler and Mark Bixler for big but balanced and very long lived single vineyard Chardonnays.
Larry Turley and Ehren Jordan for always puzzling me with delicious, aromatic alcohol bombs, big but still elegant Zins, that belie their analyses and don't tasted the slightest bit alcoholic nor hot but rather fascinating.

PS: I must confess I have been bitten by the Zin bug and I believe this is the truly unique "American" wine.

At least in the U.S, Austria has been receiving much attention lately for their Rieslings. What are your thoughts on their Riesling style?

Very fine examples of big, aromatic, dry Rieslings that carry their high alcohol well. The best in the league of the "heavy hitters" from warmer climates.

Are there Rieslings in the U.S. that you particularly like or dislike? Any thoughts on the Rieslings from the Fingerlake regions or from Washington?

I greatly dislike the abundance of simple, cheap domestic ( and imported ) Rieslings, semi-industrially made made from overcropped vines planted in unsuited terrain and too hot a climate with no finger to point into one particular region. The sweet cheap ones are the worst since they ruin the image for the entire category!
However, I do want to point a finger to a region whose Rieslings I have been following since the early eighties and that is the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. Great potential there, never understood why they weren't known by a larger crowd.
I believe there is also still unexploited potential for Rielsing on the West Coast, in cooler areas. If the valley floors are too hot, there are higher altitudes or the proximity to the ocean. It will take a few more years and some more people with a vision and a will ( and the stamina to hold on for several years - - after all it didn't happen in just two generations over here !) .

YOUR RIESLING AND WINEMAKING

The typical Riesling style in Germany has residual sugar. At the tasting, one of the ten or twelve Rieslings I tried of yours was dry. How long has Selbach-Oster been making a dry Riesling, and what inspired you to do this?

We have been making dry Riesings for as long as I can remember and that's the answer I got from my father, too. Speaking of my father, who was one of the true grand old men of the Mosel with an immense wealth of knowledge and even more experience, far beyond the valley, he, like his father, firmly believed in the regional and single site typicity of the wines and also of maintaining a consistent style rather than going with the "Zeitgeist", hence they made the whole range, from dry to sweet, depending on what the individual vintages yielded. So the question dry versus sweet ( or instead of sweet ) never was an issue here and dry wines coexisted with sweet wines for as long as I can think.
Dry wines, trocken by definition of the German Wine Law, however, have never accounted for 50% or more at Selbach-Oster. Roughly a third of our production qualifies as dry wines today.
What he and I always considered "typical" Mosel and I still prefer as our house style, are Rieslings that offer ripe but not overrripe fruit ( the French would say "à point" ) with an infusion of (slaty) minerality and a similarily present, invigorating and balancing acidity, where the wine pleases with a blend of fruits and stones, a refreshing touch of acidtiy but never lets sweetness nor acidity become obvious or take over the palate. None of the ingredients should dominate: ...inner tension...balance ... pleasure. The ideal reflex is "swallow"... and ..."more!" .
That unique sensation of a wine drawing one's attention and being fruity but not sweet is most easy to experience in very good Kabinett from a ripe but not overripe vintage.

I overhead someone asking you about Boony Doon Rieslings at a tasting. What is your involvement with the company, and what inspired you to work with them?

Both Randall and I are nuts about Riesling. In 1996 Randall and I started, after he visited and on his initiative, blending Mosel Riesling ( occasionally from yet another German region, like the Nahe ) with his California and Washington components to make an even better "Pacific Rim Riesling". It worked!
Randall is a man with a vision and it was he who forecasted the coming out of Riesling a long time before that happened. We also published the "Riesling Manifesto" together with André Ostertag from Domaine Ostertag in Alsace in 1999 and stuck our head out and our bodies in straightjackets in the "Riesling Asylum" in Bordeaux during Viexpo in 1999.

GERMAN WINES

Which German wines do you hope will receive more attention abroad in the future, and why? Do you think red German varietials such as St. Laurent or Lemberger could develop a large fan base in the U.S, for example?

My focus and hope is on Riesling, Riesling and Riesling. That's where Germany is unique and where I dare say we ( the northern German regions ) lead the rest of the world. German reds may get a little more attention in the future because the quality is still making progress but for quality I believe this to be Spaetburgunder/Pinot Noir.

Why do you think that you don't see more German Pinot Noir in U.S. wine shops? Where do you see them, besides Germany?

I believe you don't see more German Pinot Noir in US wine shops because
a) most of them, certainly the majority of the top tier, are bought and consumed in Germany
b) prices for the high end Pinots Noirs from Germany reach Burgundian levels and whilst a German wine lover is willing to spend that money, an American would ( understandably ) think twice .

If touring the wine areas of Germany for the first time, what major areas or wineries would you suggest people visit?

Major areas to visit first: Mosel, Rheingau. Mittelrhein as cradles of Riesling with the added benefit of a breathtakingly beautiful landscape but the remainder of the German wine regions is definitely also pretty and worth a visit.

Winery visits are difficult as the system here works much different from what you know in California. Most wineries are small, family operated businesses who do not give tours and who don't have a hospitality person or a tasting room where one can pop in for a tasting or tours. When the family is in the vineyard or in the cellar or on tour, nobody will be available to answer the door, leave alone do a tasting or a tour. There are producers who are set up to receive guests, offer tastes and sell wines and they advertise with signs "Weinverkauf - Probe " ( Wine Tasting - Sales ). The better, more desirable estates, however, are solely by appointment and, due to the fact most are small shops, run by the family, they are hard to get in.
Always try to make an appointment in advance to avoid disappointment.

Many restaurants, wine bars and little shops, however offer the opportunity to taste a selection of the village's or vicinity's wines.
In Zeltingen we have the Weinbar "Ratsschaenke", near the church and marketplace which not only serves a great number of Selbach-Oster wines but wines from top estates from all over Germany, incl. a selection of Pinots Noirs, The Ratsschaenke also serves tapas and local delicacies that complemet the wines and offers three very comfortable guest rooms in their recently renovated 1550ies walls. Contact: www.ratsschaenke-zeltingen.de ( hosts: Andrea & Willi Settelmeier ph +49 6532-954273 ).

If people wanted to read more about German wines, is there a book that you'd suggest they read?

The English journalist Stuart Piggot has written a couple of nice books on Rieslings with special emphasis on German Rieslings which are higly recommendable. Then you have the German Wine Atlas by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson and certainly the yearly catalogues written by the venerable Mr. Terry Theise are certainly worth seeking out. Those are not available in book stores but rather through Michael Skurnik Wines ( www.skurnikwines.com ).

Chateau D'Oupia Minervois: my Comfortable Safety Blanket & Cheese

2008-03-03T23:13:00.000-08:00

MASTER BAKERS,
Click here.

As you may have guessed from my last post, I'm getting quite a thrill from blogging events. Or at least, the last one (my first) was really fun. Now I'm trying another event, one that is more wine focused.

Joel at Wine Life Today is heading a group called Wine Blogging Wednesdays, and he shouted on the top of a mountain that this week's theme would be comfort wines. What is your comfort wine, he asked. We'll, as I'm really excited to be part of a wine or food group of a fun caliber that will have me, I decided to answer. Of course, I'll also pair it with a food.

Chateau D'Oupia is my wine blanket. I don't know how many other bloggers will also call their favorite comfort wine their blanket, so I'll also phrase it another way to further explicate.

Chateau D'Oupia's Minervois blend is both my mac and cheese and hot cocoa on a cold winter's night after a long day trying to ski the bunny hill but failing because I keep running into snow banks since I haven't yet learned a successful snow plow.

Made of Carignon, Syrah and Grenache, the Oupia is just the seductive wine that I want after a long day's pretending that I don't care that my family skies the diamond hills without me. Then again, the Oupia is just the sort of wine I want, anytime.

The comforting blanket mainly lies in the wine's straightforward yet charming flavors. Dark berries, pepper, minerals, slightly sanguine and sometimes even meaty, the Oupia is the wine that I want to sip after trying to explain the varying nuances of three different Barbarescos to a customer. Gosh, I don't know, they're all different, but this one is better. It is a wine that needs very little explanation. Its just amazingly good, and it is even better two days after opening. Thereby I know that if my husband doesn't get to it, there will be a mighty fine tasting glass waiting for me at home. That's comfort.

The best part, however, is that the tasty comfort that is Oupia is a great food wine. Nice acidity, a touch o' tannin, and a slightly meaty character that absolutely loves..... cheese. Almost as much as I do.

In fact, the Oupia is the best red wine I've ever had with cheese. Most reds like to play in the danger zone with cheese- will they pair well, will they not- but Oupia is relatively safe. It loves funky sheep's cheeses just as well as fresh chevres and Mt. Tam.

It's also amazing with fresh pastas served with Brussels sprouts with garlic and bacon (last nights dinner), or lasagna (yeah, Oupia's acidity take on the tomatoes), mac and cheese, or BBQ potato chips. Really.

What's comfort in a bottle not beginning with Southern? I say Chateau d'Oupia's Languedoc, Minervois basic red blend.

Thank you winemaker winemaker Andre Iche, for introducing us to your fabulous, sincere wines. You'll also be missed.

Cinnamon: Master Baker Group

2008-03-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

Although I'm a trained, practicing cook and had the fortune of learning the ins and outs of baking with very fine pastry chefs while in culinary school, baking is not my thang. In other words, yeast and everything that the different genres of yeast involve, give me butterflies in my stomach. I feel like I'm about to take a final exam at UC Berkeley for a class that I never signed up for when I tear upon a package of dry active yest. In addition, when it comes to the step in a baking recipe when something needs to be measured, I develop a slight case of hives. Truly. I have an itchy feeling on my leg right now and I clearly attribute it to the fact that I've been measuring flour and sugar a lot recently, and it scares me. Unlke baking and pastry, once one is accustomed to certain cooking techniques- searing, sauteeing, blanching, braising- they don't have to measure much, and I've always appreciated this.

Truth be said, if a baking recipe requires me to weigh from four to five ingredients, put them in a bowl, stir, and lick the spoon, I'm good to go. If I can add chocolate chips to the recipe, man, I rock.

But I need practice, and I'd like to be better.

It is for these reasons and because I'd like to become a bigger part of a blogging community that I joined the Master Baker group. Master Baker blogging is a group that bakes whatever a pretty lady tells them. Basically, a glorious baker at Master Baker picks an ingredient. Anyone interested in joing the blog group cooks a dessert with that ingredient. Any dessert, any time before the event ends. Sounded awesome to me. And then, I thought, I'd pick a wine to pair with the dessert. Delicous.

This post is my first entry for Master Bakers. Ingredient: Cinnamon. Rules: Few (i.e, I don't know them yet).

My Cinnaminoliscios Dessert: CINNAMON ORANGE ZEST GELATO/ PISTACHIO PILLOW COOKIE SANDWICH

Note to readers-
*The Gelato Recipe is based off a Saveur Silician Recipe featured in "Saveur Cooks Italian".
*The recipe for the cookies comes from the "Farmhouse Cookbook," by Susan Herrmann Loomis. This is one of my favorites, simple and straightforward cookbooks. However, I would suggest using the original recipe and not my adaption if interested it having an excellent cookie without sweet gelato sandwiched between. My adaption used less sugar, brown sugar instead of white, and pistachios instead of walnuts. They were meant to mellow out the sweet, decadent gelato.
All altered ingredients are marked with a *.

Farmhouse Pillow Cookies:

20 cookies, 350 preheat

2 1/4 cup AP flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly (really) grated nutmeg
1 stick unsalted butter- room temp.
1 cup brown sugar *
1 lg egg
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg, mixed with water for a glaze
1/2 cup or so shelled, chopped pistachios *

1. Sift dry ingredients on wax paper, set aside.

2. Cream butter and sugar in large bowl. Add egg, beat well. Add sour cream, vanilla, and mix. Stir in flour mixture - but just until incorporated. If over beat, the cookies will be tough.

3. Sprinkle flour onto a work surface and over dough. Divide dough into half and roll out dough until 3/8 inch thick. Use a cookie cutter (3-inch) or a glass to cut cookies. Place on Silopat.

4. Brush cookies with glaze, then top with nuts. Bake no more than 15 minutes, cookies are ready with they spring back when touched. They'll be cake like when finished.

Cinnamon, Orange Zest and Cardamon Gelato

4 cups whole milk
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch
2 tsp cinnamon *
2 sticks cinnamon *
the zest of one orange*
5 cardamon seeds *
2 star anise seeds *

1. Heat 3 cups of milk and all ingredients marked with a * in medium, heavy bottom sauce pan until milk starts to bubble around pan's edges.

2. While milk is heating, mix cornstarch with two tablespoons of milk in a small bowl. Once completely blended so there are no remaining lumps of cornstarch, add sugar and remaining cup of milk.

3. After milk has bubbled, take milk off heat and combine with the cornstarch mixture.

4. After mixed off heat, return to low heat so gelato base only bubbles occasionally around edges and heat for 8-10 minutes., stirring frequently. Mixture will thicken slightly.

5. Let cool, pour gelato base into a bowl and cover with plastic. Chill overnight to fully incorporate flavors

6. After chilled overnight, pour mix into ice cream maker and follow manufacturer's directions

WINE PAIRING:
Although full-flavored, this is a light dessert. Absolutely no cream, few eggs, and fluffy in composition and texture. Due to the airy light nature of the cinnamon creation, I decided to keep the dessert wine also light so it wouldn't compete with the bright and airy flavors in the dish.

After some thought, I chose the Raymond-Laffont Sauternes. A Semillion-based wine, the Raymond-Laffont has apple, apricot, orange zest and even slight mint flavors. I knew that this wouldn't drag the fluffy dessert down like a Madeira or Port would. And it didn't. The flavors in the wine and dessert highlighted each other harmoniously. Orange zest to orange zest, and apricot to star anise. Sigh... Who said ice-cream sandwiches don't like dessert wine? Oh, ..... no one?

This is what I chose, but I'd like to know what YOU would bake with cinnamon as the star....

Cassoulet & Tannat: A Match Made in Southwestern France

2008-02-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

Every year the wine shop/wine bar I work holds a dinner called "Cassoulet Night" that focuses on the Southwestern French dish of the same name. Although the title of the event leaves room for excitement, it is highly anticipated by hungry neighbors of the wine shop who start inquiring in September/October if we know what day Cassoulet will be served in February. Their fury, by the way, has only confirmed my long held belief that those craving the rich lushness of duck confit are a gastronomic force to be reckoned with. Our neighbors in particular start recalling the scent of slow-cooked duck in August and can't let go of the fevor until they sink their teeth once more into the sultry poultry in our cassoulet dish in February.

Normally a colleague and I split the cooking workload of our Supper Clubs. I'll sear the meat one Supper Club, and my co-cook will roast the pork loin the next. He'll (Matt) will cook the lentils for the salad one club, and I'll reduce the orange for the vinaigerette for the following first course. Yet the Cassoulet Supper Club is different.

I don't have the patience to cook the luscious cassoulet for 65 people.

Matt, however, does. He's a pretty patient guy who, when not making cassoulet, spends time running after his very active five year-old. Because of my lack of cassoulet stamina, what happens is that Matt cooks every step of the cassoulet for 65 people (I'm sorry, Matt), and I make the salad and the dessert. If you've every attempted to make cassoulet before, you know that I'm getting off easy. Three cheers to Matt.

Here's what he does to make this large batch of cassoulet: He cures the Liberty Farms duck legs weeks ahead of the event. Two to three days after curing, he renders duck fat and confits the duck on low heat in an oven for about five hours plus. Nearly a week later, he soaks cassoulet beans overnight. Then he refreshes the water, brings them to a boil, and drains them. Then, he cooks the beans again with seared hamhocks (in pot picture, above), bacon, and salt pork. At some other point he also purrees roasted garlic with herbs and other delicousness and adds it to the bean mix. On the side, he cooks sausages- those pictured above are the Toulouse variety from Fatted Calf. Before serving the cassoulet, he mixes all of the aforementioned food stuffs together, tops them with crispy breadcrumbs, and bakes the cassoulet until a supple crust develops over all the ingredients.

Personally, I'd pass out after hitting the thirty-person mark with Cassoulet making.

So after preparing the simple salad and flourless chocolate cake dessert, (see the amount of butter above used for 3 -or was it 2- of these gauteau au chocolates) my focus is to test the meal with wine. To figure out which wines will pair best with our courses. Matt and I normally do this together, but as he spends more time slaving away over a stove for this event than I do, I devote more time to thinking about wine pairing. Or maybe I just spend more time testing wines.

Anyhow, for Cassoulet Nights, we decided that to go with regional wine from Southwestern France. Something that the healthy French country folk- you know, the ones who eat duck confit and foie gras with dark red wine all the time who have lower counts of heart disease and cancer than Americans- would drink with cassoulet.

A grape that is dearly loved in Southwestern France, and at our shop, is Tannat. It's commonly used in the dark reds in the lower regions of France and Basque regions of Spain and is one the burliest wine grape in the world (yah, I'm talking to you, Petite Sirah), and it is oh so lovely with cassoulet. This rich, rich, rich dish dish can handle a rough, burly wine with big tannins. Something like this country grape of France.

We decided to go with two wines from Charles Neal- a great importer of le vin Francais. Both from Domaine Laffont, of the Madiran region. One wine, called Hecate was all Tannat. The second wine was a blend of Tannat and Cabernet Franc- just in case we had some wimps in the audience who were scared of the big bad grape. Most weren't worried about the potency- the Hecate was the best seller.

Because these were such big wines, we decanted them two hours before the event. This really helped to soften the tannins and oxygenate the wines so the dark cassis fruit could be released from the dark Tannat shell.

The pairing was pretty fabulous. My fav was the Hecate, because as my favorite saying goes, once you go pure Tannat, you can't go back. The strong Hecate broke down the fat molecules in the duck fat and reconstructed them so the protons were alligned with the bacon's neutrons and the breadcrumbs crisp glutonns, and really, it was just magic all the way.

Lastly, the Tannat grape is, to my surprise, also THE grape of Uruguay as well as Basque and Southwestern French lands. Apparently it does magnificently in Uruguayan soils, and I think that we all will be seeing a lot more of the deep grape from South America, at reasonable costs. If you're interested in a little history, insight of the grape down South, check out this video clip.

Cheers to Tannat, Cassoulet, Vin de la Table readers and participants, and for Supper Clubs at wine bars.

Potato Gratin: What would you pair with.....?

2008-02-24T12:17:00.001-08:00

This post marks the beginning of a weekly trend, at Vin de la Table titled, "What would you pair with ......?"

Each week I'll post a picture of a food that I'd love to hear how you, my dear readers, would pair with wine. I've changed the blog format so that any reader, not just those with gmail accounts, may leave their wine pairing choice under the comment selection.

Rules: None. If the picture is of an food only in it's basic form, feel free to mentally prepare the food any way you wish to make your perfect pairing. Add garlic. Add fish sauce. Add Fontina if you like. If you think that the food is best in the form in the photo I attached, it's okay to mentally plate the dish as is and choose a wine.

Any wine any time.
You have any wine, from two-buck-Chuck to a Cheval Blanc at your disposal, and you may sip the wine with your glorious dish in any preferred place. Give me details!

Further craziness: Every once in a while, I might throw in a non food item- a song, an object, another type of noun that you may pair with the juice.

This week, the food that ya'll can play with is Potato Gratin. Pair alone, as part of an entree course, or as a dessert topped with ice cream, if you are that sort of person.

Have fun! Looking forward to hearing your wine pairings!

Madeira: A British Love Affair. Part II

2008-02-14T17:42:00.000-08:00

In case you don't want to scroll down to catch up on the first post of Madeira: A British Love Affair, you can find the first part here.
And it starts.... now. Pst... click here

Welcome to my Madeira world.

PART TWO

Before I divulge the amazing nature of this special import, I wanted to include a little background on Madeira. Since many in the states are more familiar with this Portuguese wine as a cheap deglazing liquid rather than a glorious sipping experience, a brief overview might fair us all well.

A PRIMER:

Like many European wines, the beverage called "Madeira" is named in honor of the place from which it comes. Located around 500 miles from the mainland, the Madeira Island is a warm place fantastic for growing the uber-fragrant Verdelho, Bual, Sercial, Malvasia, and Tinta Negra Mole grapes used for this dessert wine.

Unlike other common European wines, three things happen to Madeira during its maturation that make it unusual.

FORTIFICATION:
First, before the grapes finish fermenting, brandy is added to the fermenting mix. Needless to say, brandy is added to the grapes around the same in the process that grandma adds her flair to her morning coffee. This slows fermentation and stops yeasts from eating the developing sugar in the fruit. Then (how Madeira making primarily differs from Port production), the resulting liquid is transferred to one of two places so it can be cooked. That's right, cooked.

COOKING:
If the grape liquid is being used for lower quality Madeira, it is taken to buildings called “estufas” (stoves), where the barreled wine will be left in the artificially heated buildings for 3-5 months. If the Madeira-in-training is going to be used for high quality wine, it is transported to winery attics, where the exposure to moderate and gradual heat over 20 years will nurture delicate caramel flavors.

OXIDATION;
Lastly, a space is left in the top of Madeira barrels so that air will oxidize (a.k.a, mellow out) the wine over the aging process. To my knowledge, this is only done in Madeira, with a French white wine in Jura, and white some whites in Spain. But I have a lot to learn.

WHY?
Where in the world is Carmen San Diego, you ask? Good question. Madeira is made in this fashion because it replicates the effects of early sea voyage on the wine when commerce was ocean-based. It originally took months to transport Madeira in the “basement” of ships, where it was so hot that the wine was cooked by default. Luckily, the heat led to favorable caramel flavors and longer-lasting wines. Around the 17th century, Madeira exporters decided to add brandy to the wine to further extend the wine’s longevity for sea voyages to places like Africa and India, and later to South America, suggests Karen MacNeil in The Wine Bible.

This is where I’m assuming the British love for Madeira was further honed. Most of the places to which the Madeira was being shipped were original British colonial lands- mainly in Africa, India, South America. Madeira was also quite popular in America for quite a while. It was the libation of choice to celebrate the signing of our Declaration of Independence, and was further favored in warm areas of the U.S. like the South because it is nearly imperishable, even in Southern humidity. It has since fallen out of true fashion in America (no way it could get into a party with Stella Macartney), but has remained popular in England- at least with all Brits who read hard-cover books in their home libraries, where it is legally required that they consume the drink.

DRINKING THE MADEIRA:

I had never had a fine aged Madeira before, and was overjoyed to discover that it is quite simply, miraculous.
The flavors in the forty-six year old wine ranged from coffee to chocolate to cinnamon, then orange zest and dark cherries that had been soaked in fine bourbon (the ones that go in your favorite top-notch Manhattans). But it didn't stop there. It continued to evoke dried apricots and rich caramel. Why more people don’t make Madeira flavored truffles with essence of caramelized orange zest, I just don’t know.

After taking a few sips and whiffs of our pleasurable drink, I suggested to my husband Chim Chim (CC) that the caramelized scent the Madeira was evoking made me think of cooking meat. In culinary school, we were taught the glories of the “Millard Reaction.” This is when a food’s sugars (think rib-eye or carrots) are heated to the point where they began to caramelize. Sometimes the sugars harden, like the surface of a seared steak, or sometimes they just turn even sweeter, like the browned bits of sautéed carrots. CC's response was “the Madeira reminds me of orange zest on a nice crispy steak.” Exactly. Like when you walk home and there's a steak cooking in the cast-iron and a cinnamon, chocolate apricot cake in the oven topped with orange zest. That's got to be like every night, right?

When drinking such sexy wine, CC and I decided that the desserts that we consumed it should be just as provocative. So we brought out our stash of Michel Cluizel “Les 1ers Crus de Plantation Chocolates,” cognac truffles a friend made, and stollen that we had from Christmas.

To start, the Michel Cluizel chocolate was superb with the Madeira. Michel Cluizel is a Parisian chocolatier who makes chocolates from single-origin cocao plantations. Like fine winemakers believe a wine should express the earth in which the grapes grow, Cluizel states that by tasting his chocolates, one is also experiencing the differences in soil, climate, and geography where the cocoa was grown. We tried his dark chocolates from Saint Dominique, Venezuela, Sao Tomé, New Guinea and Madagascar. Our favorite chocolate with the Madeira was called “Maralumi,” from Papua New Guinea. It was the very darkest and had the most intense pure cocoa flavor. The others were gorgeous, of course, but their extracurricular flavors, such as seasame, coffee, and smoke, required more attention than we could offer while fawning over the Madeira.

Like the other Michel Cluizel chocolates that had longer stories to tell than we had time to listen, the cognac truffles were a bit too much for our golden Madeira. Dark, genache-laden, rich and deliciously boozy, the truffles overpowered the Madeira. So we downed a couple when the drink wasn’t looking and put the rest of the box away.

Finally we embraced the stolen. Now if any of you have Germanic roots, you may have tried this earthly delight, if not, oh my lord, you should. It’s a dense, bread-like cake blessed with rum-soaked golden raisins, thin slices of citron and candied orange zest, and best of all, often studded with marzipan then topped with powdered sugar. It’s not too sweet, because the dough itself has only a bit of sugar within, and, we found out, it pairs perfectly with Madeira. Bet you guessed this already when you heard of it’s filling, right? Sound like the flavors in Madeira, doesn’t it? The candied citrus highlighted the orange zest and caramel notes in the wine, and the almond paste (marzipan) brought the coffee and chocolate Madeira scents into fruitition.

What a night. If you haven’t had enough of hearing about the Madeira pairings, I have just one to add. We have a bit left and plan to sip it with Redwood Hill Camellia cheese very soon. It’s a tender, extremely subtle little goat cheese that is completely mellow and buttery due to its downy-white bloomy rind. We had the Camellia with some young V.Sattui Madeira a year or so ago, and if its even half as good as it was with that, we’ll be knocked out for days.