Chicken with Yoghurt and aji amarillo

La Finca Mendoza, Argentina Chardonnay 2009; 12.5%; Whole Foods, $3.99; September, 2009.

Out of the just opened bottle, this chardonnay was tasty and fruity, definitely tasted like a real chardonnay. I do not think that I would want to drink much of it by itself, but then I didn’t buy it for that, and I wouldn’t then probably want it for food. It had only gone through the normal fermentation.

Chicken thighs and legs marinated all day in a mix of yoghurt, aji amarillo, rosemary, thyme. Salt, and pepper, then roasted over charcoal. The drippings from the chicken added a slight smokiness as the charcoal blazed. When it came off the grill it was very flavorful and juicy. The fruitiness of the wine combined well with the chicken, cutting through the chicken fat, and underscoring the flavors in the chicken.

The green beans were grilled with the chicken in olive oil, garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper, and also picked up some of the smokiness from the chicken drippings on the charcoal. The wine was a little sharper with the green beans, picking up on their beaniness. The contrasts and changes in the wine were a pleasure, especially in such an inexpensive wine.
While the wine was fruity and a little lighter than other chards, it had body of its own and stood up well to the demands of a meal with strong, open flavors. I would like this chard again.

Tavel and Chicken, A wonderful Meal!

Chateau de Trinquevedel Tavel 2008; 13.5%; Cowgirl Creamery, F St., Washington, D.C., $15.95

The nicely chilled Tavel was very tasty out of the bottle. It can stand up to heavier dishes than we had this evening. It can also stand up to being sipped by itself, especially in the hot days of August. It is refreshing and tastes of lovely fruit, slightly tangy on the tongue. This wine was a little more expensive than I normally have, but it is a Tavel, and I am making an exception. It is still fairly cheap.

Our chicken was marinating in miso, soy sauce, and orange juice. Amazingly, NO GARLIC! I don’t think that we have had a chicken, and much else, ever, with no garlic (once, we actually had too much garlic! We were astounded!). It was grilled over charcoal, and became slightly blackened. But, it was wonderfully tender and flavorful. Really, how chicken should taste. This half chicken was from Lotte Plaza and the second half of a whole. We had frozen it. It thawed in its marinade.

We had potatoes, cut in half and grilled/baked. They were a nice compliment to the chicken.

This meal was just yummy. We sat down and just ate. There was no chatter, in fact we didn’t even think to talk about the wine until dinner was nearly consumed. But, the wine by then was mostly gone. It just was an excellent component to a wonderful meal. The chicken tasted more chickeny with the wine and the wine refreshed us in every sip/gulp.
This wine is a must in the warm summer. It will give you a smile.

A Wonderful Spanish Rose

Don Salvador Rosado 2007, Monsatrell, Alicante, Spain, 12%; Whole Foods, $5.99.

I am not following my usual procedure and ideological leanings this time by discussing this wine by itself, rather than with the meal we had with it. Truthfully, neither Brigette nor I can remember what meal we ate, meaning I did not make my usual notes. Normally I would just not then talk about the wine, but this time I am making an exception. This wine is good.

Roses as good, well-made wines began in the South of France. The French have been enjoying these wonderful wines as summer fare for decades, at least. The wines are dry, crisp, fruity, and served chilled. Other than the wines from Tavel, dry, French roses were found only in France. You see, the French drank it all. There was not enough to export. But the word leaked, and demand for these tasty wines grew enough that the French could no longer horde them. Tavel wines were always hard to find. They still are. But you can find other French roses everywhere, notably ones from Provence. Once they started shipping roses regularly, the demand continued to grow and other people noticed. Now many countries are shipping Roses. Personally, I think the best outside of France come from Spain and Portugal. The French wines are typically the most consistently good. But you can find good ones from the Iberian Penitsula, too. Most of these wines are inexpensive.

The Don Salvador is a very good rose. It is dry and fruity. It is a darker pink than some. I have found that the darker color does tend to translate into more flavor, and it is true for this wine. It is light enough to be good with delicate summer fish dishes. It also has enough flavor to stand up to salmon or most any chicken concoction. Or, if you just want to sit and enjoy the day, put it in an ice bucket and sip away. It will refresh you and give winey pleasure with every sip or gulp.

Cheap Wine is for Many Occasions

Brigette and I have a nice schedule set up, as far as domestic wonder-eating is concerned. She works late during the middle of the week, and we each fend for ourselves (enough said about that!). Friday (sometimes), Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, however, often offer several straight days of great food. Sometimes we find that we will have a nice, light lunch in the late afternoon, as well as the dinner. On those days, if the meal is nice enough, and the shrimp we can get (fresh and very cheap) will make the afternoon special. We find that water, cokes, or whatever (she does not like beer) just won’t do. Our inclination, year round, is a nice sparkling wine, a light one like the Albero or a Prosecco. Well. Three dinners and a lunch with wine. Four bottles in three days on a normal week. (We will not discuss human livers at this juncture.)

I don’t know about you, but 4 bottles a week can get pricy, even if we were making great money. Say an average of $30 each, $120 a week, say 42 weeks a year, is….. over $5,000 a year. Can’t happen.

So, what to do? Give up wine, or at least reduce it to one bottle a week? That means the other great meals we (meaning Brigette) makes have drinks that do not add to the experience? Our meals are really not expensive, for all of the taste and pleasure. Rarely do we spend more than $10 for our food.
Of course the answer is easy. There is a lot of really decent, even good, wine available for less than $10 a bottle. Maybe the percentage of failures increases at that price level, but only a little. There are several good wines for between $5 and $10. People who make good wines, say from a country with a long history in wine like Italy, Spain, even France, do not forget how to make a wine with basic soundness. The wine may not have the complexity and finesse of more expensive wines. They are solidly made, and will work well with well-made, tasty food. The after tasting these wines, perhaps you will be more demanding of the $20 to $40 wines you buy.

A Cotes-du-Rhone to enjoy

Delas Saint-Esprit Cotes-du-Rhone, 2007
75% Syrah, 25% Granche; 13.5%; Costco, $8.99; July, 2009.

Delas is a Northern Rhone house, making a Southern standard.
This is a popular style, very tasty
Usually more Granche, but this one is mostly Syrah. (Sorry for the label. The center didn't want to come free.)

Fresh out of the just opened bottle the wine was a little closed, but you could tell that there was very nice fruit and that it would open up. It had nice mouth feel. I was looking forward to more.

The meal was a flank steak, marinated for a full day in miso, beer, which just happened to be Japanesse beer, Kirin Ichiban, which is good, garlic, and ginger. This array provided a very rich, creamy topping to the flank steak. Brigette cooks flank steak to perfection. Unfortunately, I did not get a good fire, and the steak did not cook fast enough, was consequently left on too long, and was a little tough. It was still flavorful. It would have been much better a little rarer.

The wine complimented the steak very well. The basic steak flavor, which this meat had was emphasized by the Delas, and supported Brigette’s marinade. A Cotes-du-Rhone is not the driest wine, in that it has plenty of fruit. The wine was of course very nice with the potatoes and bread.

One nice thing about a Cote-du-Rhone is that even though it is probably the least of the Rhone Valley wine types, it still has the depth of a good wine. It tends to be cheaper, too, by a lot. There are many good shippers. Delas seems to be one of them. In my reference books, Delas used to be called Delas Freres. I have probably drunk 20 different Cotes-du-Rhones and have found one or two that I would not buy again. They can be very good, which means, whenever I come across one that I do not know, I will buy it.

This wine would benefit from a couple years of aging. It would be a little more complex and a little less fruity. It is certainly good now.

Great, Cheap Rose from Spain

Don Salvador Rosado 2007, Monsatrell, Alicante, Spain, 12%; Whole Foods, $5.99.

I am not following my usual procedure and ideological leanings this time by discussing this wine by itself, rather than with the meal we had with it. Truthfully, neither Brigette nor I can remember what meal we ate, meaning I did not make my usual notes. Normally I would just not then talk about the wine, but this time I am making an exception. This wine is good.

Roses as good, well-made wines began in the South of France. The French have been enjoying these wonderful wines as summer fare for decades, at least. The wines are dry, crisp, fruity, and served chilled. Other than the wines from Tavel, dry, French roses were found only in France. You see, the French drank it all. There was not enough to export. But the word leaked, and demand for these tasty wines grew enough that the French could no longer horde them. Tavel wines were always hard to find. They still are. But you can find other French roses everywhere, notably ones from Provence. Once they started shipping roses regularly, the demand continued to grow and other people noticed. Now many countries are shipping Roses. Personally, I think the best outside of France come from Spain and Portugal. The French wines are typically the most consistently good. But you can find good ones from the Iberian Penitsula, too. Most of these wines are inexpensive.
The Don Salvador is a very good rose. It is dry and fruity. It is a darker pink than some. I have found that the darker color does tend to translate into more flavor, and it is true for this wine. It is light enough to be good with delicate summer fish dishes. It also has enough flavor to stand up to salmon or most any chicken concoction. Or, if you just want to sit and enjoy the day, put it in an ice bucket and sip away. It will refresh you and give winey pleasure with every sip or gulp.

Okay. I stopped, for a while. Actually, I had a lot of notes, covering months, but I stopped publishing. I had a conceptual problem.

I ran up against my own concern that I my tasting apparatus was not good enough to be a wine blogger. I mean, I was thinking that I needed to be able to sprout “I taste hints of chocolate and tobacco.” I have rarely tasted anything of the kind. I don’t think many people have.

I did recall that I read one woman wine writer talk about her own struggles with tasting descriptions. She advised that anyone wanting to describe wines needed to arrive at their own language. She also noted that a wine taster need to taste many wines to realize the differences. I must admit that I am not tasting that many wines. I also wondered if having your own “language” really made it possible to communicate your experience to other people. Do you, I mean you, the reader sitting there now, know what tasting hints of tobacco means. My experiences with tobacco were moderately negative.

Another function of a good palate is taste memory. I seem to have a taste memory for wines, but I do not have a lot of confidence in it. I should. It does work. But, again, I do notget a lot of exposure in a short period of time.

On the other hand, I taste to drink (hence, in a limited way, the title of my blog). I am recording my experiences of the inexpensive, cheep, wines I find, as they work with food. I am drinking the stuff with food and noting the experience. That is the context of the blog. It does not matter how the wine tastes by itself. The first sip might have all kinds of nice things going on, but conflict with the meal, any meal, and thus it really fails as a wine. Wine is food.

So that is the bottom line. I am talking about wine as food, not some snack item. I am not going to try to discuss a wine by itself.

I think that this is what most people really want. Probably many people may think that the sip and spit tasters have some great insight into wine that is greater than their own, and then they may wonder why they are having trouble when it comes to enjoying wine with their meals. I suggest that your paragon of wine knowledge become the good restaurant sommelier, who will talk about a wine and how it works with your selected entree. Wine is food. Anyone who is not talking about wine in that context does not seem to get it, as far as I am concerned.

Yet, hopefully without shooting myself in the foot, I do have some wine idols of my own, who are not discussing wine as I am suggesting. And, they use numbers, you know, “this wine is an 87”! I guess my excuse is that their breath of knowledge across the ocean of wine in our world (a very good thing), gives me some idea of what to avoid. I look to these writers to shield me from wines that are poorly made and uninteresting. I do not get too excited by the “90” points divide. I am primarily concerned in avoiding the bad ones.

I also throw out any relation between price and quality, especially in the $5 to $50 range, and especially wines from California. There are a lot of wonderful wines below $10. My suggestion, get to know those wines, and then, as you buy higher priced wines, compare them to your $5 wines. If the higher priced wine is not that much better, don’t buy it again, and tell the world. You can start here.

So my conclusion is that my original purpose is solid and I was worrying about something that is inconsequential. Anyone who thinks that wine is only the first couple sips is anyone who is in the same world as I am, or better, is just out of touch with what wine really is.

With that off my chest and resolved, I shall go back to making entries here.

Cortese Piemonte Bricco Dei Tati 2007, Shrimp in Garlic and Olive Oil

Cortese Piemonte Bricco Dei Tati 2007, Trader Joes; November, 2008.

Color is a very pale yellow green. My nose showed a light, greenish, but no real character. Initial taste showed a little, weak fruit, and no finish.

Yet, with our salad, the wine sprung up and asserted itself. This was a simple salad of tomatoes and greens. The dressing spiced it up, consisting of sliced garlic, sherry and white wine vinegars, shallots, and olive oil from Andalucía. The sliced garlic added a tanginess that the Cortese stood up to and complimented. This is the point of this blog. A wine is not what you taste by itself. It is what it does for your meal. The tanginess of the garlic brought out the similar tanginess in the wine and they underscored and complimented each other.

Our main course was shrimp quickly cooked in hot olive oil with garlic and paprika. This is a take off of a favorite dish of ours called gambas al aijllo, a tapa I loved in Andalucía. We have this dish often. Brigette likes to vary the ingredients some. The basics always include olive oil, garlic, and a pepper of some spicy sort, which this dish included. Unfortunately, this time she sort of slipped with the paprika package. It was paprika gone wild! A bit much. Even then the wine cut through the excess and gave us a lovely respite from the dark red/olive oil mixture our shrimp were submerged in. I think that the wine would have been very good with this dish even without the overabundance of paprika. The wine was delightful and turned the dinner around, especially now that the paprika bonanza was not such a big deal.

On the other hand, the wine was a little bitter with (French) bread and butter.

The Cortese is a real food wine, and combines well with fish. It would also do well with moderately spicy dishes. It handles strong flavors. It has a distinctive flavor that is not citrus, so it is not high in acid. If you want to sip, this is not the wine. If you want something that goes well with a spicy dish, this is a good choice.

Santa Barbara Landing Chardonnay 2006, Pork Roast with Turnips and Squash

Santa Barbara Landing Santa Barbara Chardonnay 2006; Trader Joes, $4.99; November, 2008.

According to the back label, this wine was specially bottled for Trader Joes. For this price, neither of us expected much, especially from a California chardonnay.

When we first sniffed, Brigette says that it smelled like pineapple gummy bears. It turns out that she likes pineapple gummy bears, so this comment is kind of good, maybe. It was the good, German, imported pineapple gummy bears, she said. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to taste the wine. I thought that the wine did not smell as fruity and crisp as I expected, being a cheap chard. It did smell chardy. We both raised our eyebrows when we tasted, because, still, it was not what we expected. This very cheap chard had gone through malolactic fermentation. There was little acidity, but decent fruit. There was flavor and a little complexity. It had a long finish with a little pineapple.

We had a pork roast, cooked with vegetables on the stove. The dish included turnips, peeled white acorn squash, leeks cut thinly, a spoonful of sufrito, olive oil, sea salt, and a cup of our wine. It was a very balanced dish, with no dominate flavor, but each one was there if you went for it. The leeks were very subtle and had absorbed the wine and sofrito flavors.

I am sorry that this has become a sort of theme of my writings, but this pork roast was again almost flavorless. It had no marbling. So the poor pig was bred that way. Bred to be lean and tasteless.

The wine went well with the dinner. Of course, it picked up well with its own flavoring, especially in the leeks. But with each of the bigger vegetables it added. With the squash the wine cut its acidity and was creamy and flavorful. With the turnip the wine was sharper. The pork made the wine taste sweeter.

On the whole, we were impressed that a $5 wine could deliver as this wine has. If I want a very cheap chard that is not acidic, I would vote for this one.

Cellering Wine

HOW TO CELLER WINE

Every article, wine storage salesman, vintner, etc., will tell you that the best way to store wine is in a cool, dark, moist location. It is true. Cool, dark, and moist is the best. If you can do it, do it. No question.

What if you can’t? What if you do not have a spot that is always cool, or moist? Dark isn’t hard, but that is probably the least important of the three (given the colored bottles most wine comes in these days). The most important is coolness, and then that might translate into a temperature that is steady, at least. So what if you do not have a spot that is a fairly steady temperature and maybe not moist, do you not put aside wine?

Well, no. It means that you won’t have the absolute best results. Might you have results you’ll be happy with? My experience is, yes. Store wine, especially red wine. My experience is that white does not put up with less than ideal conditions as well as reds. Reds can put up with a lot.

I have stored wine in a closet, a small closet, small enough that when I got three cases it was full across the bottom. When you opened the closet there was wine. I eventually had about 300 bottles in it, and the entire room smelled of wine. Wow! It had the same climate control I had, air conditioning and heat. It was in Dallas. This situation lasted about four years. Then they got moved a few times. For about four years I did have ideal storage space. They never got overheated. Some of those bottles I kept for over twenty years and they tasted great.

Speaking of taste, aged wines do not taste like young wines. For the red, the tannins disapate (probably the wrong word), the wine becomes smoother, fruit lessens, flavors become more complex and deepen, aftertaste lengthens. It is a tasting experience that few wine lovers allow themselves. It is worth the wait, even for cheap wines.

The wines that I kept for so many years were petite Bordeaux, which were made for aging. I also held for a long time some Oregon pinot noir, which did very well.

I would suggest that the cheaper reds should be drunk after only a few years, some as little as one. But even then, they will improve, and give you a nice reward for your patience.

Putting aside a few bottles on a regular basis over the years and letting them mature is going to more enjoyable than not doing it just because you do not have ideal storage. Treat yourself. Enjoy aged wine. Age cheap wine, age mid-priced wine. Well, if you can afford expensive wine, buy yourself a wine storage unit. Age some red wine. You’ll be very happy.

French Rabbit Merlot, Lamb Shanks with Herbs de Provence

French Rabbit Merlot Vin de Pays D’oc, France; $8.92, Harris Teeter; in a “Tetre-Prisma” container. (The wine is French, the company is American.) (I did not pick this wine. Someone, who will remain nameless, and who is suseptable to “cute, fluffy bunnies”, choose this wine.)

Well, the dinner was excellent. However, our bottle, er, paper package, of wine was already way too open, well, sour and bland when we first tasted. It did not get better. It got worse. It was as if the wine had actually been open for a couple days, and we were getting the dregs. Some red wines generally will benefit from some aging, even cheap ones. This wine wouldn’t. The color was ok, but there was some sentiment to watch out for.

Brigette picked lamb shanks for our dinner, which she first browned in olive oil, garlic, and seasoning. She then cooked it on the stove top in a covered pan with herbs de Provence, butter, garlic, and a bit of the wine. The shanks came out tender and lamb tasty.

Our vegetables were sliced turnips, white onion, a cubanelle pepper, garlic salt and pepper drizzled with olive oil, and roasted.

The sourness of the wine did not help the dinner. Both the vegetables and the lamb were very good, and went well together, but the wine seemed to try to divide it up.

We did finish the, er, “Tetre-Prisma” container full. It was not over the edge of “drinkable”. We have opened wines that we didn’t drink after the first taste, so we have our limits. Maybe you could say that in the pursuit of knowledge, we wanted to know what would happen with this wine during the course of the meal. It wasn’t pretty, or tasty. The person “who shall remain nameless” also got a pinot noir in a “Tetre-Prisma” from French Rabbit. We will “drink” it next week.

Estola La Mancha, Strip Steak

Estola, La Mancha D.O., Villarrobledo, Enbotellado en Origen por Bldegas Ayuso, S.L., Reserva 2004; Whole Foods, $5.99; October, 2008.

Dinner was a strip steak, grilled on stove, the grilling pan was first heated very high then turned off and the steak cooked on the residual heat, consequently the steak was not over cooked and was as tender as that cut could be. The steak was topped with Italian Seasoning (thank you Costco) and seasoned. (Sorry, no pics of dinner.)

With the steak we had a Hubbard Squash, roasted with olive oil and “essence of celiberty chief” (Emeril’s Original Essence). This was a meal that cost less than $6 total (plus wine), but was tasty, and experimental for us as we had not had this squash before. (The Washington Post has convinced us we are in a depression!) Also, there was NO GARLIC! Once every two or three years we have a meal with no garlic. This was one.

The wine was cheap in price and quality. It was drinkable, just, tasted harsh, cheap. The color was okay, being a rich red. It did not smell particularly interesting. Brigette says cheap. The first taste was weak and undistinguished. I thought that it had some flavor, but Brigette’s first sips were all accompanied by grimaces. She is afraid that she will be considered a wino because she continued to drink, but of course, we are dedicated to our calling as your honest, dedicated reporters. She soldiered on.

With the meal, the Estola was okay with the steak, meaning that it was much better than water, it did not detract from the steak, it stood up to the juices and seasoning of the steak, it was sort of pleasant, but washed out.

Estola did nothing for the squash. The Hubbard squash did not have much flavor, but was sweet enough that it did not go well with the wine. As sweet as the squash was, you would probably want to match it with a fish and a bright white wine. Visually, the squash was very nice, with a rich orange flesh and a dusty blue outside.

When we paired the wine with bread and butter it disappeared. I never feel bad when I determine that a wine should be stricken from the list of potential purchases. It is hard enough to pick one from those I know are good, let alone form the ones I don’t know, and want to. So by striking a wine from the list, it makes it so much easier in the future.

Louis Jadot Macon-Villages 2007, Red Snapper with Garlic and Leeks

Louis Jadot Macon-Villages Chardonnay 2007; $11.47 (on sale), Harris Teeter; November, 2008. Brigette picked this wine.

This was an excellent evening of wine and food. The color of the Jadot was a nice, clear pale yellow-green and smelled of citrus and a definite chardonnay. The first sip had lots of fruit, citrus and tang. Brigette tasted a little sweetness in it. She seems to be much more attuned to sweetness than I.

Brigette’s dinner consisted of red snapper slowly cooked in the oven drizzled with olive oil, seasonings with a light bit of garlic, covered with thinly sliced leeks and the greens off of celery root. During cooking the kitchen smelled of celery, which was nice. We did not eat the celery greens, but they helped keep in the moisture, since the snapper was not covered. The leek on top of the fish added a little flavor, but also some crunch, which gave the fish an interesting texture. The fish has a strong flavor. With the fish, the wine lost its sweetness and underscored the fish’s strong taste. They combined nicely.

We had grilled mixed vegetables, including turnip, potato, celery root, and leek. The vegetables were first tossed in a mixture of olive oil, garlic, crushed red peppers, Italian seasoning, and salt and pepper. They were then roasted in the oven at a low temperature. The leek sort of caramelized and grew crispy, again adding some crunch to the vegetables.

The meal was very compatible taste wise, although visually, it kind of clashed. The vegetables were fallish and a darker brown. The fish was bright and green with the leek.

The vegetables tastes were subtle yet different from each other. The wine helped bring that out, being different with each one, especially bringing out the light sweetness of the turnip.

This cheap, white burgundy was a complex wine, with crisp, excellent flavors, that was a contributing, equal component to this meal.

Condesa de Sarabella Viura, Chicken with leeks and carrots

Condesa de Sarabella, Calatayud, Spain Viura 2007; October, 2008; Trader Joes, $4.99.

Last week we had the Granacha from this vineyard. This wine is made from viura which is found mostly in the Calatayud are of Spain. It is a very pale color with a slight nose, and is very fresh and fruity on the tongue.

Our meal was chicken breast on the bone covered with rosemary and thyme in olive oil in a covered pan cooked slowly. It came out a slightly dry. Brigette called it even mushy (She is very critical of her cooking. I doubt that many would have thought the chicken dry.). Fortunately, she had surrounded the chicken with longish, thinly sliced leeks and carrots, plus onions, garlic, the olive oil, and a single Scotch Bonnet chili pepper . I usually do not like cooked carrots, but these were good. When eaten together, the dish was excellent.

The wine elevated the chicken by itself and made it taste more chickeny. As with most supermarket meat, it didn’t have much flavor (sometimes we shop at a local chain called “Giant”.). The wine helped. The first bite of vegetables I had included part of the chili pepper, which was hot (this original heat stayed with me the entire meal!). All of this heat flattened out the wine for a time, but it came back.

The meal cost less than $8 without the wine. We eat very well, often for very little (it wouldn’t have cost that much more if we had gone to a better source for the meat). This cheap wine upped the level of the meal’s style, and taste.

Aging Wine (Even cheap wine!)

AGING WINE


The image that I expect many people have of aging wine is of racks of dusty bottles in a dark, moist sub basement that have sat there for years, maybe decades. These bottles cost the world.

In fact, aging is merely a process in which the wine’s different components interact and result in a wine that tastes different. Time gives these wines the chance to become something which the drinker finds much better. Of course, at a certain point, the processes in the bottle leads to less desirable results.

The time frame for this process differs depending upon the quality and type of wine that was in the bottle at the beginning. Some wines can use decades. Some wines reach their limit in a few years. Some wines should not be aged. My subject here are cheap wines. Why am I talking about aging?

In the seventies, the Washington Post had a wine columnist who suggested that aging the really cheap reds, jug wines, would be beneficial. He wrote about putting a jug wine in a dark corner of his basement and opening it a year latter. He claimed that it was a much better wine. What he had to say certainly applies to almost any red.

I learned the benefit of ageing when I opened a German reisling that I had inadvertently not touched for about 10 years. It had a amazing golden color, spicy, strong nose, and a flavor that was very different than a younger wine. I am not sure that it was bad. But it was very different. I figured that it had just gone over the hill.

So, a few years latter, I devised a new strategy. In stead of just buying a bottle to drink that night or soon, I would buy two or three, drink one, and leave the others for the future. Mostly, these were Bordeaux petite chateau wines, and as this was in the mid 80’s, the prices were $8 to $18. I also bought a few Oregon pinot noirs, a couple vintage champagne, and a few whites. When I moved in 1990, I took over 300 bottles with me. They are all gone now. I did not continue the practice.

Part of the joy of wine is the experimentation, the adventure, the potential new experience. Ageing wine is part of the potential. I bought a case of one petite chateau (Chateau Potensac, 1985, $8.04 each, case price!) for the purpose of opening a bottle every year to see it change. I think that when you begin drinking wines that are aged even a year or two, you will find your enjoyment increasing.

This is my suggestion. I am aiming this primarily at red wines, because I think that it makes more of a difference for a red to be aged. Buy a couple of bottles of a cheaper wine (or even your favorite), drink one and put the other(s) in the coolest spot in your abode (I will talk soon about how to store the wines.). Leave it for at least a year, and try it again. See what you think. Do this as often as you can. Maybe even leave some for longer than a year. Go crazy.

Condesa de Sarabella Garnacha, Grilled Steak with rosemary

Condesa de Sarabella, Calatayud, Spain Garnacha 2007; Trader Joes, $4.99; October, 2008.

Our meal centered on a strip steak, grilled on stove, pan was first heated very high then turned off and the steak grilled on the residual heat, consequently the steak was not over cooked and was as tender as that cut could be; covered with olive oil, rosemary, pepper, grains of paridise, salt.



Our vegitable consisted of golden nugget squash and cauliflower roasted with olive oil and “essence of celebrity cheff” (Emeril’s Original Essence – I bought this at a time when I thought spice mixes were a good idea. This is not Brigette’s fault. She is using it to just get rid it, I think. It isn’t really harmful, although it has a lot of salt.).





Granted that this is not a fantastic meal, it cost less than $5, $10 with the wine, it was satisfying. The steak was tasty.





Okay, the wine. It’s color was a little light, lighter than a similar wine from France, but still definitely a red. The first taste was open and fruity. This wine does not have a lot of tannins, so there was little change during the dinner. It went well with the steak and did not overpower the mild vegetables. It is a simple wine, but so was the meal, and they went together well. If you would like a nice, very cheap, red wine that you can drink happily immediately, this is a good choice.

Tres Ojos, Old Vines Garnacha, Lamb chops

Tres Ojos, Old Vines Garnacha, Calatayud, Spain, 2006; Whole Foods, $7.99; October, 2008.

I read that Garnacha has thin skins so the color out of the bottle tends to be lighter than you would expect. This wines color was a deep, lovely purple. Sniffing produced nothing more to me than a pleasant red wine. On first sip, it was not very tannic. Brigette claimed it was fruit juice with alchoal, meaning it had no bitter undertones and little complexity. After careful questioning, I gleamed that she wasn’t being negative about the wine, really.

Our dinner (sorry, we totally forgot the camera on this one.) began with a tomato and onion salad with a vinagarette made with pare infused balsamic vinegar, Spanish olive oil, garlic, and thinly sliced onion. The wine had set for at least a half-hour by then and was beginning to open up nicely. Dinner consisted of lamb chops, covered in some olive oil, garlic, salt, and herbs de Provence on an outside grill. Our vegetable, this period of the squash, was Red Curry Squash, quartered, seasoned and grilled.

The squash had its own flavor, rich, buttery, and itself, with which the wine was a smooth enhanser. With the lamb, the wine tasted a little sharper, and did not disappear. The wine was uncluttered with the bitterness of young, tannic reds. It was not as soft as a Tuscan wine. It had lots of flavor to meet the lamb head on.

Very tasty. It is a keeper. I am not sure how it would age, since it is low on tannins. At the price, it would be easy and interesting to find out. That is the nice thing about good, cheap wines. They easily allow experimentation.

Cellier du Rhone Cotes du Rhone, Rose 2007

Cellier du Rhone Cotes du Rhone, Rose 2007; Trader Joes, $5.99; October, 2008.

France has made pink, dry wines for centuries. They were hard to find in the United States until the late 80’s. You could find a Tavel occasionally, but that was all. Why? The French drank them all! They are young, fresh wines, drunk chilled, mostly in the summer, and goes well with the food of Provence. They are good anytime. Now these Roses have become something of a fad. The French in the south are making enough to export a wide variety and their popularity has grown. You also see dry roses from Spain, Portugal, and other countries. Even (surprise, surprise) California has gotten on the band wagon. Bonny Doon makes a good pink based on the same grapes used in the south of France. This wine, the Cellier du Rhone, comes from just north of Tavel.

Drank it with a salad with tomatoes, ricotta salata, dressing of olive oil, garlic, shallots, pair infused white balsamic vinegar and seasoning.

Fresh from the bottle, the rose smelled like a summer day, fresh and fruity. Brigette said it smelled like a pear. The color was light, almost as light as the Quinta do Carqueijal we didn’t like very much recently. This wine had lots more flavor. It wasn’t a stronger Rose, not like the Tavel (It is hard to find a cheap Tavel. It is also hard to find a bad one.). It held its own. You wanted that next sip. It went well with dressing, light in color, nicely fruity. It met the garlic head on, and brought out the taste of the tomatoes, which were some of the most flavorful tomatoes we have had this year (from Wegman’s, the vine ripened with the vine still attached). The wine held up well, after the salad, it was good by itself and remained fresh, no cloying. Some light wines will wilt by themselves after a meal. This one stayed delicious.

We have tasted better roses this summer, and some that were not as good. It was good enough that I would happily buy this Cotes du Rhone rose again.

Quinta do Carqueijal Rose 2007 and Mussels in Garlic

Quinta do Carqueijal, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, and Touriga Nacional, Douro, Portugal, Rose, Seara d’Ordens, 2007, 12.5%, Whole Foods, $10; September, 2008.

Brigette and I are in the Whole Foods wine section looking for something to have with a mussel dinner. We have come upon a couple pink wines, the dry, fruity kind made popular by Tavel and Provence. Everyone is now making these wines, and why not. Anyway, we are looking at a $8 wine from Spain and this $10 from Portugal. I am holding them up to the light, noticing the Spanish one is much pinker and the one I would choose, when the Wegman’s wine clerk pipes up and says that he would pick the Portuguese. It is, he says, delicious and better than the cheaper, Spanish rose. Okay, I mean, I don’t know these wines and he says that he’s drunk them both. Besides, it is always good to find how much you can trust these people.

The mussels are cooked like you would do a gambas al ajillo, the Spanish tapas, which we love, and play with the ingredients. It has olive oil, lots of garlic, saffron (which got lost), peppers, and onion. It was a wonderful dish.

The wine held up well, adding a nice, tasty grace note to the dinner. As I have said, the color was fairly light. I find that the deeper the pink, the more flavorful the wine, and this was no exception. We have had other, better pinks this summer, even from Portugal, the Paco de Teixeiro Rose (also from Whole Foods) was a good choice.

The nose in this wine was okay, and tasted fine, but unexceptional. With the food it was okay. But, I am left wondering how much better the Spanish wine would have been. I have learned that the Whole Foods guy’s idea of delicious is equal to my okay. With so many good pinks available at cheap prices, next time I would choose a different wine.

Château Beausejour Bordeaux 2006, Duck Brest with Berries and Necterine

Château Beausejour Bordeaux 2006; Trader Joes, $9.49; October 2008.

When first opened it was very tight, as closed as I have tasted, but it opened up very nicely. It kept opening up over the next hour. The wine was open at least 40 minutes before we were ready to begin eating.

The two course dinner consisted of duck breast and roasted squash found at Wegman’s. The duck was first slowly cooked with the skin side down to cook out the fat (which has many uses!) and crisped up the skin. Brigette had scored the skin side and seasoned it before placing it skin side down in the pan. It is important to keep some of the fat on the meat, since duck fat adds significantly to the taste. The sauce consisted of duck fat, berries (frozen, unfortunately), shallots, garlic, Thai chili (everything needs Thai chili, Brigette says), and a fresh necterine. The sauce was cooked down until syrup. The duck was put back in and cooked until medium rare.

There was no sign indicating which the squash we selected. We are just learning about squash. We cut it mostly in half, sprinkled it with olive oil and seasoning and roasted it, probably a little long. The squash proved to be the real surprise. It was creamy, buttery, and had a delicate, sweet taste.

The Bordeaux was a little tart with the squash, underscoring the squash’s sweetness. The wine and squash did not clash so much as to add a tang to the meal. With the duck the wine was a good balance, and as the meal progressed, as we ate more, it became more and more mellow and blended with the duck and sauce. Duck is fairly meaty and not delicate. It does well with a solid red. It was odd, the duck’s sauce was sweeter than the squash, but the wine did not seem as tart with it. As I suggested elsewhere, we tried the wine with each part of the meal separately. As cheap as it was, being Bordeaux, it was complex enough to be a fine companion with this wonderful meal.

2 Oz vs the Whole Bottle

One of my personal wine concepts is that I regard any wine tasting done without food to be unhelpful. Well, I guess that there are some who would want wine that they just sip. I do not have much to say to that person. I think that if the person enjoys the experience, they should go for it. Get your pleasure as you choose. I would mention that the wine that holds up by itself over a period of time may be too strong to go well with food. To that person I would suggest that they may need both sipping wine and eating wine, assuming that they want to taste the food. I am not opposed to drinking a still wine by itself. I am just suggesting that if it has the flavor to carry itself for several glasses, there will be few foods that it will work well with.So you have a wine that you are going to drink with dinner. You open it, look at it, sniff it, and then sip and drink, what ever your tasting process is. Now these steps bring you a certain result and pleasure. I enjoy this process. It is the introduction to the wine and gives you some ideas. Maybe the wine is red and needs to develop some before dinner, a process interesting to watch.

Yet, the first couple of ounces of a wine really tell you little. It is the food that will actually be the test. From my own experience and what I have read, wines that seem similar because of their initial tasting characteristics may not taste the same with food. There is a lot you can tell from the initial solo tasting, but you may not know what is going to happen next.

I have tasted wines that seemed fine and then ruined the dinner that I would have expected them to enhance. I have tasted wines that were tasteless, bland, or ugly that did, in fact, make the dinner memorable.

But, there is more.

You might argue that a good wine will not taste bad with a meal and that its quality assures you of enjoyment. I will not disagree, at least not strongly. Yet, this isn’t the point. I think that many stop tasting the wine after the initial sips, or approach the wine as an entirely separate part of the meal. It isn’t.

What I want to draw your attention to is something that I have rarely seen mentioned. It is instructive and fun to carefully (this is part of the fun of wine, don’t get too serious) taste your wine with different parts of your meal in isolation. I mean, if you are eating a meat dish, taste the wine with the meat by itself, with the sauce, with the meat and sauce, with the vegetables (perhaps with each vegetable separately), with bread alone. See how the wine changes. See how different tastes are highlighted or underscored. One wonderful thing about this is that it helps you train your sense of taste. Experiencing these taste differences also gives greater depth to your meal. It also shows why having wine with your meal makes so much sense! Praise those wonderful people who figured this all out millennia ago! Pay attention to your taste buds for each set of combinations. Enjoy all that the wine can bring to your meal.

Wine is so much more than that first couple of ounces. I wonder why that is all we see written about? There are some who say that they are talking about food and wine, but all I see tends to be wine, with food as an after thought. (Many food writers, especially in the US act as if wine does not exist.) But it is the pairing that is magic.

Incanto, Raboso Rosato

Incanto, Raboso Rosato, Rose, Veneto (Indicazione Geografica Tipica), Italy, vino frizzante, 11.5%, Trader Joes, about $8; September, 2008. This is a sparkling wine from Veneto in Italy. It is not corked as you would normally expect, having a fairly solid metal cap over the lip of the bottle which you need either strong fingernails or a metal tool to remove. Then you remove the normal wine cork (real cork). The color is a pleasing, light pink, and the nose is lightly fruity, Brigette says unripe nectarines. The wine seems to enliven the taste buds on the middle and back of my tongue. It is kind of puzzling to feel only the alcohol taste on the rest of it. So Incanto is rather thin, though mostly pleasant. I say mostly because of the alcohol taste, leaving a slightly bitter after taste. We drank it with a salad of iceberg lettuce, nuts, tomatoes, covered by a creamy dressing of blue cheese, with lots of chunks. The wine disappeared. So, it needs to be eaten with something very light. In that respect, I can’t give a “with food” review. But, on the basis of its taste, which I expect a sparkling wine to have some ability to stand on its own, I doubt that I will buy this one again. Of course, we finished the bottle.

Roncier Burgundy; Pork Loin with Herbs de Provence and Roasted Squash

Roncier, Pinot Noir, Tramier & Fils, Negociants, France, non-vintage; 12.5%; $9.99 Whole Foods; September, 2008.

By all accounts, some of the best wine in the world is Burgundy. The red stuff. This wine has been grown for literally centuries, in the area that has been found to best produce it. That area, unfortunately, is very small. It also produces the best when the quantities grown are intentionally limited. The number of bottles available is relatively very small. Finding Burgundy at this price is difficult to comprehend. So, how come? A negociant is a bottler, not a grower. He buys wine from growers and does his own thing.

The story on Tramier is that he buys wine left over from other bottlers. Say that you are the wine maker at a major house, and you determine the blend you want, say 40% from one plot, 33% from another, and so on. But the plots in question do not produce in the same percentages that you want to blend, so you have wine left over. You sell it to Tramier. Tramier also has a wine maker, who makes do with what he can find. Yet, he also has a repetition to maintain, even at $10 a bottle. He cannot look for real consistency from batch, but he can make it drinkable.

The bottle I had was. The color is a deep, dark red with brown overtones. Do not worry about the brown, unless a wine is completely brown. It is then vinegar. Many aged, wonderful wines may have brown tones to them. The nose is good, definitely red and inviting. It is particularly useful to taste the wine when first opened. At first the Roncier tasted very flat. After a good half-hour, the wine opened up enourmously.

We had the Roncier with a salad of romaine lettuce, tomato, onion, and a mustard vinaigrette, roasted squash with olive oil and Herbs de Provence, and a tender, mouthwatering pork loin, butterflied and grilled (on our stove), with olive oil, seasoning, and Herbs de Provence. The wine went well with the meal, including t he salad. It blended with the squash surprisingly nicely, although the tannins were more noticeable, and it highlighted the squashiness. It kind of stood beside the pork, but softer and more gracefully. I can’t say that it added much to the port, but it held its own, and did not detract. Sometimes that is all you can ask of a cheap wine. I was happy to have it with the meal. Brigette regarded the meal as a test, not having prepared the squash or the pork that way before. The meal was good enough to have had with a very good pinot. But I am happy with the wine as it was.