Benito vs. the Cocktail: The Salty Pamplemousse

Sometimes when I crave things that are odd or outside the mainstream, people think it's an affectation or that I'm deliberately trying to be weird. Quite the contrary--there are a million flavors out there and only so many meals you get in your life. And typically anything odd that I try is beloved by hundreds of thousands of people somewhere. I think in the American diet from WWII to the present we abandoned a lot of things for various reasons: tea and coffee are bitter, so mask the bitterness with sugar and cream and other flavors. Organ meats are weird and the things we used to have to eat during hard times, so we must shun them and only eat the muscles. Fish somehow shouldn't smell like fish, and thus we praise the flavorless white fillets where the only flavor comes from the fried batter encasing. Processed cheese is deliberately engineered to remove any texture or aroma or flavor of "real" cheese. Wine should never be earthy, it must always be big and fruity. And so on and so forth.

The following cocktail was made in praise of bitterness, namely in the form of grapefruit juice. No sugar or other sweeteners, just the tart bitter joy of a half glass first thing in the morning. And while I had a half gallon in the fridge and some free time on a Sunday afternoon, it was time to use the ingredients lying around the kitchen to make a new cocktail.

Mixing two different cocktail recipes together is generally a bad idea. A Michelada Margarita is a recipe for disaster. A Rob Roy Wine Spritzer would... I don't even want to contemplate the flavor. But I put a few things together in my head with this one, and was very happy with the result.

Benito's Salty Pamplemousse Cocktail
2 oz. Gin
2 oz. Unsweetened Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice
Tonic Water
Dash of Fee Bros. Grapefruit Bitters
Kosher Salt

Start with moistening the rim of the glass with water and dip into a dish of the salt of your choice. Pink Himalayan would be an attractive and decadent choice for a trendy bar. The rest is easily mixed in the glass with ice. Combine the Gin and Juice and Bitters (the name of my upcoming rap album under my stage name "Ice Tongs" featuring "The Boston Shaker"). Stir carefully with a bar spoon so as not to dislodge the salt, and top off with tonic water. Serve immediately.

This is the accidental cross between a Salty Dog (vodka + grapefruit juice) and a Gin & Tonic (er, gin + tonic water). The idea was to boost the bitterness of the former with the quinine of the tonic water and botanicals of the gin. The sugar in the tonic water would mediate things a bit, the effervescence of the tonic water would make it a little more fun, and the bitters would add that little touch to make it special, like good bitters always do. As for the salt, if you've never had salted fresh grapefruit it's one of the greatest things in the world. I detest salt on margaritas but here it's divine.

The flavors all work quite well together, and I am sure that the ratios could be tweaked a bit to perfect it. But I found one to be just right on this bright, sunny, warm day during this preternatural winter we're experiencing. As always, if you try one of my original concoctions, please let me know what you think in the comments or by e-mail.

Steel

Recently I was staring at my old baking sheet and marveled at its smooth, nonstick surface. It's not due to a Teflon coating or an anodized finish. Rather, food doesn't stick to it because it's been in continuous use for 40 years.

It's an Ekco, perhaps from 1972 as best Mom can recall. A sheet of steel that was probably stamped out in a Rust Belt factory just like thousands of others. It has a brother--a round sheet that's pretty battered and beaten but can still cook a pizza. When I was a kid this baking sheet was used to make biscuits and cinnamon rolls and cookies and lots of other baked goods. Since it was handed down to me in the mid-90s, I've used it for those purposes as well as a million other things. Yesterday it was used to heat up frozen crab legs dusted with a little Old Bay seasoning.

It was difficult to get a good shot of the cooking surface, since you're looking at black on black. So I took it outside and first snapped a shot of the bottom. Not quite as seasoned, but there's nothing shiny or gray. A little rust here and there.

Despite four decades of use the baking sheet isn't warped or bent, and it doesn't have any holes from rust or damage. It won't last forever, but it's certainly performed far beyond what anyone could have imagined.

When you're photographing something that is dark, it helps to go with brighter light, and you can't get a lot brighter than the sun on a clear day. In this picture you can see some of the patterns in the patina, but more significantly the nonstick coating that has built up over the years allowed me to see my own reflection. A white t-shirt, a big SLR camera over my face, and the blue sky behind me.

This pan and a few bowls and other items are remnants from my parents' wedding in 1972 and early years together before I came along in 1976. Sunday they celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. As I gaze into my reflection in this otherwise unremarkable piece of metal, I know that I'm in the pan and the pan is in me. The food cooked on it allowed me to grow up and build bone and muscle, and every meal meant a few iron atoms that strayed from the pan to the food to my bloodstream. Likewise, I've burned myself on the pan many times, adding my own contribution to the patina of the lip and edges.

There's a lot of enthusiasm about that which is new and exciting and sparkly, but there's also a great deal to be said for that which is still going strong after so many years and shows no signs of stopping.

Turbiana (Trebbiano di Lugana) - Veneto, Italy

It isn't often the case that I end up more confused after researching a grape than I was when I started, but that's almost what has happened in researching today's grape, Turbiana. The confusion that I had to sort through in order to figure out just what Turbiana actually is has steeled my resolve to provide citations in any blog post where I refer to published results.  In the past, I've tried to provide links whenever the articles are freely available online, and when they aren't, I've tried to either provide a citation or give enough information so that an interested reader can pursue the article themselves, but from now on, any research that I consult, I will be sure to cite.

It all started today when Nick over at the Spirited Gourmet sent me an email letting me know he had just gotten a wine made from the Turbiana grape in his shop.  By chance, I had recently had a different wine made from the Turbiana grape and was working my way through my notes to post about it.  Nick's email spurred me on, so I started to do some digging.  The Oxford Companion to Wine had no listing for Turbiana, but, in the entry on Lugana, did mention that Trebbiano di Lugana, the former name for Turbiana, was the same as Trebbiano di Soave, which is similar to Verdicchio.  When you search for Turbiana in Wikipedia, it automatically redirects you to the entry on Verdicchio.  The VIVC takes you directly to the entry on Verdicchio when you search for Turbiana as well.  Once you get past those three frontline sources, though, all hell starts to break loose.

As mentioned above, Turbiana was traditionally known as Trebbiano di Lugana and was thought to be just another member of the vast and varied Trebbiano family.  Several websites that I found point to "DNA research" that proves that what was known as Trebbiano di Lugana is actually genetically distinct from the Trebbiano family and is now known as Turbiana.  Other sites imply that Turbiana and Trebbiano di Lugana still coexist and are actually two distinct grapes.  Yet another site maintains that Trebbiano di Lugana is merely the local name for Trebbiano di Soave and that "recent research" has found that this grape, now called Turbiana, is not related to Trebbiano Veronese, whatever that is, and, further, is not related to Verdicchio.  The winery's website still refers to the grape as Trebbiano di Lugana with no mention of Turbiana at all.

What nearly all of the sites (except for the winery's) are trying to get at is that Turbiana is an independent grape variety that sciences has recently freed from the Trebbiano family.  Nearly every site linked above refers vaguely to "research" but none of them give a direct citation. I've noticed that The Oxford Companion to Wine does this constantly, which drives me a little bit crazy.  When I see a reference to "DNA research" and I know the person making the reference isn't a scientist or geneticist themselves, I always like to try to find the paper myself to be sure that the paper is actually saying the things that the writer is attributing to it.  It took a few hours of really creative googling, but I believe that the paper that is being referred to is actually this one from 2001.  In that paper, the researchers perform microsatellite analysis on 7 different Trebbiano subvarieties and 17 other grape varieties that look similar to Trebbiano.  What they found was that there was a lot of genetic diversity among the samples that they tested, but the samples that were the most similar were Trebbiano di Soave and Verdicchio (which, it turns out, are the same grape [additional source]) and Trebbiano di Soave and Trebbiano di Lugana.  The researchers are clear that Trebbiano di Soave and Verdicchio are synonyms, but it is a little less clear what the relationship is between Trebbiano di Soave and Trebbiano di Lugana.  The two grapes were 97% similar in the sections of their genetic code that the scientists tested for, but the only conclusions that the researchers draw is that the grapes are "genetically similar."

The more interesting thing that the study found is that the various members of the Trebbiano family are genetically dissimilar enough from one another for the researchers to conclude that they probably do not share a common ancestor.  Which not only means that they are all different grapes, but, further, that they probably aren't even related to one another!  The experiment examined Trebbiano Toscano, Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, Trebbiano Spoletino, Trebbiano di Spagna and Trebiano Romagnolo in addition to Trebbiano di Soave and Trebiano di Lugana and found that only the latter two were similar enough to be considered related.  So even though all of the grapes above are considered under the same banner of "Trebbiano," and, though they certainly have many of the same kinds of physical characteristics, genetically speaking, they're as different as they can be.

At this point, it's reasonable to ask why they all have the same name if they aren't related to one another.  Most theories about the origin of the name Trebbiano posit some geographical origin like the name of an ancient town in Tuscany or the Trebbia river in  Liguria.  That kind of origin story makes sense only if all of the grapes known as Trebbiano are the same grape or if they all can be traced back to a common ancestor located in that geographical area.  Since we know that isn't the case, the researchers conclude that the name probably comes from the word "draibio" which means "vigorous shoot" in Frankonian.  I don't know about the details (it has something to do with Charlemagne, I think) since the paper that they cite for that theory is in German, but the crux of the matter is that name Trebbiano comes from a description of how the vine grows rather than a location, which would explain the genetic diversity of the multitude of grapes with that name.

The story doesn't quite end there, though.  Another research group in Verona did another type of genetic experiment on Trebbiano di Lugana, Trebbiano di Soave and Verdicchio (among others), and found that those three grapes were essentially the same.  So, essentially, Turbiana is Trebbiano di Lugana which is the same as Trebbiano di Soave, both of which are different from Trebbiano Toscano or any other kind of Trebbiano, but which are the same as Verdicchio.  The slight differences in the DNA of Trebbiano di Lugana and Trebbiano di Soave found in the previous study are here attributed to slight differences in the soil and microclimate where the grapes are found, which, it turns out, can cause slight changes in a vine's genetic expression.

I was able to find a bottle of the 2009 Ottella "Lugana," which is grown near Lake Garda in the Veneto region of Italy.  In the glass the wine had a medium silvery lemon color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with lemony citrus, white peach and a kind of clean, stony river water sort of smell.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of white peach and lemon peel with that same stony kind of minerality on the finish.  It was a little flat and could have used a bit more acidity.  The nose was more enjoyable than the palate was, but it was still and pretty good wine for around $15.  It wasn't all that complex or deep, but it was crisp and refreshing and sometimes that's just the sort of thing you need.  I prefer Verdicchio from the Marche, but this is an interesting wine with a really crazy story you can tell to your friends while drinking it.  Or you can just enjoy it.

Cupcake Wines

I have tried a few Cupcake wines in the past. I was reminded of the brand recently when my mother was getting ready to host a big baby shower for my cousin. She asked my advice for wines to get for the occasion, and I wasn't terribly helpful--I spend so little time in retail shops in town that I can't really recommend something specific that's here in town. Usually I direct someone to a trusted shop in their neighborhood and put them in the hands of our city's best retailers.

Mom said, "Have you heard of Cupcake wines? I've heard they're good for parties." I think this might be the first time that Mom had asked me about a specific wine label, and I pointed out that it's not just a single location, but rather a brand that gets wine from all over the globe and labels it. Nothing wrong with that, and there are many companies doing the same thing. But from anecdotal evidence I've heard that the Cupcake wines are popular at baby showers, bridal showers, and other such hen parties. And I say that not to condemn the wines from a male perspective--each bottle must be judged on its own merits. But I'm always a fan of making wine less intimidating and easier to pronounce for the average American consumer. You don't need to be able to read the Greek alphabet or have a working knowledge of German to ask for these wines. And if we want a robust American wine market, we need brands like this.

NV Cupcake Prosecco
Prosecco D.O.C., Italy
100% Glera (Prosecco)
$14, 11.2% abv.

Crisp and refreshing with big bubbles and a splash of lemony acidity. Not the most complex Prosecco I've ever had, but it's a serviceable midday sparkling wine for casual lunches. I served it with sweet potato soup that I made for Julia, one of her favorites.

2009 Cupcake Red Velvet
California
47% Zinfandel, 29% Merlot, 19% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Petite Sirah
$14, 13.5% abv.

A very interesting yet distinctively Californian blend. I love creative red mixes but this one goes in the sweeter direction. Great berry flavors and low tannins, and better cold than at room temperature. For me, I'd serve this as a dessert wine (it's really not that sweet, just my preference for drier wines). But if you're just dipping your toe in the red wine pool, this might be a good non-threatening way to start. Served with thin pork chops and roasted peppers, a rerun of this memorable meal.

Note: These wines were received as samples.

Terret (Gris or Blanc) - Vin de Pays d'Oc (Languedoc), France

Weird Blend Wednesday is only a few weeks old but I am already in a position where I need to put it off for a week or two.  The post I was planning to write actually will rely on two other posts that I haven't written yet so rather than jump the gun, I'm calling an audible and will be talking about an unusual, inexpensive little wine that I found while I was visiting my mother in South Carolina over the Christmas holidays.

While scouring the shelves in the local wine shop, I found this bottle that said it was made from the Terret grape.  Sounds simple enough, but things are never quite that easy around here.  Terret is actually a small family grapes, much like the Pinot family, with (at least) three members.  The Terret family has been around southern France for a long time and is marked by the frequency and ease with which it mutates.  The three main members of the family are differentiated by the color of the skin of the berries, but some authorities have reported that the grape is so genetically unstable, there are some vines that have all three berry colors within the same cluster.

There is the red-skinned Terret Noir, which is perhaps best known as one of the official Chateauneuf-du-Pape grapes.  In the early 19th Century it was very widely planted in southern France, but by 2007 total plantings throughout the country stood at under 200 hectares total.  There is also Terret Gris which, as you might expect, is the pink-skinned version of the grape.  Terret Gris is grown primarily in the Languedoc region of France and is officially allowed in the Corbières, Minervois and Coteaux du Languedoc AOCs.  By the numbers, Terret Gris is the most commonly planted member of the family, covering about 2,500 hectares, but those numbers (and most official registers and statistics), for whatever reason, lump both Terret Gris and Terret Blanc together.  Terret Blanc is the most unusual of the three and most sources indicate that it is a white-skinned mutation, meaning it is probably the newest member of the Terret family, though it isn't clear whether it mutated from the Noir or the Gris version.  The heyday for the light-berried members of the Terret family was the 1980's when, taken together, Terret Gris and Terret Blanc were the ninth most planted grape in France, covering almost 5,000 hectares of land.

We would all like to believe that quality revolutions are inherently good things, but they can leave some innocent bystanders in their wake.  The quality revolution going on now in the Languedoc has been very good for many of the winemakers and for many consumers as wines from this region are increasingly sought after both for their high quality and their relatively affordable prices.  This revolution started to happen when producers in the Languedoc began to pull up high-volume, low-quality vines and replace them with the international varieties that are well known to virtually all wine consumers.  Vines like Terret, which are capable of making very interesting wines, are now also being pulled up and replaced with the recognizable international varieties to meet the new demand for wines from this region.  The problem with Terret isn't that it makes bad wines.  No, the problem with Terret is that it is called Terret and, like it not, most consumers are only interested in buying wines made from grapes that they have heard of.  Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay based wines will almost always outsell wines made from grapes like Terret, but, hopefully, there will also be some producers who are dedicated to preserving these unusual little vinous outposts for the more adventurous among us as well.

I was able to find a bottle of the 2010 Marc Roman Terret for the paltry sum of $7.  As this post from another blog tells us, this wine was bottled by the Cellier Jean d’Alibert, a cooperative located in the Minervois region of the Languedoc.  There is no indication given as to whether the wine itself is made from Terret Gris or Terret Blanc, though if I were a gambling man, I'd put money on Terret Gris.  Given the large amount of space dedicated to his name on the label for this wine, you might be inclined to wonder just who Marc Roman is.  Frankly, I have no idea.  The importer's website says: "Marc Roman is the 'nickname' of our winemaker who lives among the vineyards of Southern France near Montpellier. 'Roman' hails to the Roman history of the vineyards in this part of France, still evident today in the many frescoes and ruins that can be found in the vineyards."  The Marc Roman "winery" or whatever it is only makes two wines: this white Terret and a red made from Malbec grapes.

In the glass, this wine was a pale silvery gold color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with ripe pear and melon fruits.  It was pretty one-dimensional with the pear stealing the show, but that's somewhat understandable at this price point.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with medium acidity.  There were flavors of ripe pear, ripe apple, green melon and a touch of lemony citrus.  In my notebook I wrote "pears, pears & more pears," which lines up pretty well with my memory of the wine as well.  It represents a tremendous value at only $7 a bottle and will probably appeal most to fans of Pinot Grigio or other light, refreshing wines with a lot of up-front fruits.

Musings on the Manhattan

As long time readers should know, though I enjoy inventing new cocktails and having fun with mixology, at heart I adore the classics. My two favorites are the Martini and Manhattan, and which one I prefer at any given moment depends a lot on mood and atmosphere and the ingredients at hand.

A bad but serviceable Martini can be made in pretty dire circumstances: a clear liquor, a shaker of ice, and a brined vegetable or strip of citrus peel, and you can achieve something bracing but able to perform the work at hand. I prefer a Martini as an aperitif, something strong but bracing and crisp that gets you ready for four courses and half a dozen different wines.

The Manhattan is different. It requires a higher degree of civilization. Whiskey/Whisky can be found everywhere, but bitters and Sweet Red Vermouth are a must, and so many bad variations are made in bars that it's often a losing proposition to order one in the first place. I once ordered said cocktail in a bar that shall not be named, and the bartender said, "Manhattan. Got it. Crown Royal and Dr. Pepper. Give me one second." And I said, "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Good day, sir!" I swear that the silk ribbon on my top hat positively wilted at that egregious faux pas.

Your worst Martini might have ruined rotgut vodka that spent a few hours in steel tubing, but a bad Manhattan ruins years of barrel aging in oak. Keep these things in mind when you're mixing drinks.

When I'm in the mood for a Manhattan, it's normally with the company of other guys and as a prelude to a dinner of hearty red wines and lots of rare red meat. To do it properly, you need control over your own ingredients. Better, older whiskey will make for a better Manhattan, and quality bitters are essential.

Here I lined up the various components I assembled after a long, hard day at work, and a desire for something relaxing but dignified:

• Cocktail Shaker with Ice and a Long Spoon
  
• One Shot of Gallo Red Vermouth (in place of my beloved Noilly Prat)
  
• Two shots of Michter's US*1 Single Barrel Straight Rye Whiskey
  
• Two dashes of Fee Bros. Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters
  
• A Cherry That's Been Soaking in Bourbon for Weeks

The end result was amazing, rich and spicy and with layers and layers of complexity. Even the cherry, the weakest part of the whole cocktail, was delightful upon consumption. When you have the opportunity, take the time to craft the very model of a modern major Manhattan, and enjoy the warmth and relaxation that flows from the glass.

糜

When I was a kid and couldn't drive, and Memphis was a somewhat less metropolitan city than it is now, I did get to try a lot of interesting foreign foods via my father's adventurous palate. But at other times I had to try and make them myself using cookbooks, ingredients available at the nearby grocery store, and my own limited skills. Sometimes I made something delicious, often I had so little concept of what the final product was even supposed to look like that I ended up with a big plate of failure.

For the past few years, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, which remind me a lot of my early fascination with Public Radio and some of the more obscure shows that would air at odd hours. I like a lot of the comedy-themed podcasts, but one directly related to this blog is The Sporkful hosted by Dan Pashman and Mark Garrison. The two guys debate about food in various ways, sometimes going into strange minutiae like the best strategies employed at a buffet. I enjoy listening to the show, but it hasn't really inspired me to try something new or different--they tend to focus on foods that are not too far outside of the mainstream. However, the show has a handful of snappy slogans, including two that have generated some inspiration, or at least direction with my food consumption, production, and writing: "we're obsessively compulsive about eating more awesomely™" and "eat more, eat better, and eat more better™".

In this new year, perhaps our final if the Mayans are correct, I'm trying to be a little more adventurous. Not just in weird ingredients, because I've done a lot of that, but challenging my cooking techniques and approaches to food. With that in mind, today I decided to tackle something that I'd heard of, but had never eaten, and did my best to make it authentic. Congee, or juk, or 糜, or whatever you call it, is rice porridge. Normally when you make rice you use a 2 parts water/1 part rice mix, but with this you start with 8:1 and can go as high as 16:1. You end up with a thick, gelatinous, milky white porridge that serves as a base for all kinds of things.

I decided to use a few scraps from the refrigerator, which is traditional (this is a common breakfast dish of leftovers as well as a hangover cure, not to mention the fact that the rice porridge is supposed to be very easy to digest for anyone that is ill). I used shredded pork, bok choy, fried shallot rings, and a raw egg. I let the egg sit for a while, and then I added soy sauce and Srirarcha and mixed everything together. Even though this was my first time eating the dish, it was surprisingly comforting and mellow, not odd or exotic in the least. Salty and savory and smooth and crunchy all at the same time, not quite a soup and not quite a stir fry, but its own unique texture and sensation. If there were some way to prepare this quickly I think it would be the perfect backpacking food. I would have killed for something exactly like this after scaling a 10,000 ft.+ peak in the Rockies.

Like phở, I think a great strength of congee is the customization and economical use of leftovers. Next time I make this, I think I'll do it for a group and use chicken broth instead of water, and lay out a few extra ingredients like shredded chicken or tofu or other vegetables. It's always exciting to discover a new food, and even better when you can easily make it yourself and find great variations in the future.

Prieto Picudo - Castilla Y León, Spain

Prieto Picudo is not a very interesting grape. I know that's not the best way to get you interested in reading more about it, but as far as I can tell, it's the honest truth. The Wikipedia page for it is not only not informative and very short, but it was almost certainly written by either the winery whose bottle is shown in the picture or by some other kind of PR organization with a pretty shaky grasp on the English language. The entry in the Oxford Companion to Wine isn't much better (though, as you might expect, their English is impeccable). They tell us that the grape is grown on about 5,000 hectares of land around the city of León in northwestern Spain. Further, the grape is "unusual," "musky," and "light in color but very distinctive." It is permitted for use in the Tierra de León, Valles de Benavente, Valtiendas DO regions, but a good deal of the production is bottled under the Vino de la Tierra Castilla y León heading, which is essentially the Spanish equivalent to a Vin de Pays in France or an IGT in Italy. Why much of the wine is relegated to this lower quality rung is a question that isn't explored or answered.

Aside from that, there isn't much to say. A comment left on the VINEgeek site informs us that the word Prieto means "dark," referring to the fact that it is a dark-skinned grape, and Picudo means "peaked," which refers to the sharp taper at the bottom of the bunches. The always excellent Catavino adds that the grape is thought to be native to the León region of Spain and there are at least two clonal variants of Prieto Picudo: one with oval-shaped berries and one with round berries with the latter type being preferred for wine-making. Interestingly, that post from Catavino is from 2005 and the writer there seems pretty excited about the possibilities for Prieto Picudo given the wines that he tasted. In 2010, a different writer for Catavino was much less enthusiastic, saying in reference to six different Prieto Picudo based wines that he had recently tried: "To just about anyone, they were awful." To be clear, he wasn't slamming Prieto Picudo as a varietal, as he does say later in the pieces that he has had some good examples. His concern is more with the wineries, or at least the wineries represented in this particular tasting, and their improper treatment of the grape once it leaves the vine. Without knowing exactly which wines he tasted and exactly what their sin was, it's hard to come a judgement of one's own, though.

And that's about it. There is a shocking lack of up-to-date books on Spanish wine, and the only older book that I have (the 1999 edition of Julian Jeffs' The Wines of Spain) doesn't make any mention of Prieto Picudo at all. I've only seen wines made from the grape in one wine shop in the Boston area (Marty's in Newton) within the last year, but, weirdly, they had two different examples. The one that I bought was the 2006 Dominio Dostares "Estay" from Castilla Y León, and I paid about $16 for it.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep purple ruby color that was nearly opaque at the core.  The nose was moderately aromatic with red cherry, strawberry and red berry fruit along with some baking spice, chocolate and smoke.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity and low tannins.  There were flavors of red cherries and both stewed and fresh, brambly red berry fruit (as an aside, the tasting note "red berry fruit" makes me a little uncomfortable as I try to be as precise as I can, but sometimes I just have a vague sense of fruit that is red and berryish which doesn't announce its presence in a more assertive way, so "red berry fruit" it is).  There was also a touch of baking spice and a kind of cedar-y woodiness as well.  As it opened up, it picked up something that I've never really been able to put a name to, but which is always unwelcome in my glass.  The closest I can come to describing it is that it tastes kind of like the strawberry flavor of those awful candies that Life Savers makes called Creme Savers.  In my notes I write "strawberries and cream," but it's that artificial kind of cream that those candies had (or, similarly, like the artificial cream flavor in Cream Soda soft drinks).  I've picked it up in red wines made from a variety of grapes, so I'm guessing it's something that happens during the winemaking process, but when it shows up, it's a total deal-breaker for me.  This wine wasn't the worst offender that I've ever tasted, but that flavor was there.  I'm willing to try another example of wine made from this grape from another producer, but I probably won't go out of my way to seek one out or pick one up. 

T

For Christmas, Julia got me an assortment of gitfts including some looseleaf tea and a strainer from Teavana. Here you're looking at the Celestial Temple blend, a Chinese high-elevation mix of black tea leaves.

I am not a tea expert or a snob. While I appreciate using a tea ball or other device like this strainer for using looseleaf, 99% of my tea consumption in my lifetime has been via bags. At work I mostly use bags of green tea, herbal tea, or Earl Grey depending on my mood and the season. I often head to the coffee maker and hear a yelp of "It's not ready yet" when I'm just siphoning off some hot water from the release valve on top of the machine. That's what the spigot is for, people.

In fact, for the past week I've had a little seasonal sinus trouble, and a gentle green tea with the perfect amount of dried orange peel made the start to each day so much happier.

At right you see a double dose of the Celestial Temple in the Teavana strainer, resting in a Pyrex measuring cup. Normally you just use a mug for a single serving, but I wanted to capture the color of the tea while it was steeping. The tea is rich and aromatic, with notes of flowers and honey. It's nice because you get a full-bodied brew and the requisite caffeine kick but with great complexity and interesting aromas that will be fun for the wine enthusiast.

I do have to mention that growing up in Memphis, tea was one of my earliest beverages and one of the first things I learned how to make. Though always in the iced form. Brew four bags in a half gallon of water for five minutes, remove bags, add a quarter cup of sugar, let cool, pour into pitcher and cover. The alternative was reserved for holidays: essentially an Arnold Palmer called "Payne Tea" after my Mom's maiden name. We would squeeze lemons and make pulpy gallons of this beverage and, to this day, none of us have ever suffered from scurvy.

High school got me into hot tea, partially as an extension of Anglophilia but also as a desire to try as many different culinary traditions as possible. Celestial Seasonings was widespread at the time and I had a blast working my way through their boxes of teabags. A night with the South American "Morning Thunder"/yerba mate was a transcendental experience of listening to trance radio and not sleeping for 36 hours. But these days, I approach tea in a much different way. I don't add milk or sweeteners or anything else. Just the leaves, in water slightly lower than boiling, and sip at the temperature that makes me the happiest. Sure, I get some weird stares occasionally and people wonder why I'm looking at my watch for a few minutes before I drink something, but the ritual and the swirling of the colors in the water always make me happy, whether at work, or sitting in an airport, or crouched on top of a mountain where it's taken forever to get the water up to temperature. As you sip the tannic liquid you can reflect upon centuries of British tradition and more centuries of Chinese/Indian agriculture, or you can simply accept the caffeine hit, let your belly get happy from the warmth, and be glad about the whole process... until the mug goes cold and it's time to start over.

Weird Blend Wednesday - Nielluccio, Sciacarello, Syrah and Grenache - Corse Calvi, Corsica, France

Nielluccio Grapes

Hello and welcome to the third installment of the Weird Blend Wednesday series!  Things have been a little tame around here lately as many of the grapes and wines that I've written about have been pretty straightforward, lacking any real mystery or controversy.  I hope to shake things up a little bit today and talk about one uncontroversial grape, Sciacarello, and one that's a little more interesting, Nielluccio.

For many years, there was controversy and disagreement surrounding the Nielluccio grape, with the main point of contention centered around questions concerning its origins.  One camp held that the grape was indigenous to the island of Corsica, while the other held that the grape was imported there from the Italian mainland during the time that it was under the control of the Genoese.  Oz Clarke is purportedly a proponent of the former position (in his Grapes and Wines which was published several years back, so his position may have changed) while Jancis Robinson is a proponent of the latter, having recently switched over from the indigenous camp.  In the beginning, both camps were arguing under the assumption that Nielluccio was a distinct grape variety that could not be found anywhere else.  Later on, it was determined that Nielluccio was ampelographically identical to the Sangiovese grape, and many began to speculate that the grapes were either very closely related or, possibly, even identical (or clonally variant at least).  To read the Wikipedia entry on Nielluccio, one would think that the debate is still raging and the answer is still to be determined.  It is not.

A research group from Bologna, Italy, published a study in 2005 which compared the DNA of 39 registered Sangiovese clones as well as 34 "biotypes" of Sangiovese to the acknowledged "reference standard" of Sangiovese to see if there were any differences.  The 39 clones all came back as identical both to one another and to the reference standard, while of the 34 biotypes, all but six were identical as well.  Nielluccio was not one of the six, meaning that it is genetically identical to Sangiovese.  Of the preceding argumentative positions regarding Niellucio, this finding really only completely discredits the one that holds that Nielluccio is indigenous to Corsica, since we know Sangiovese is not ultimately a Corsican grape.  The theory that the Genoans brought it over at some point during their rule of the island is still a possibility, though, and is currently the most widely accepted explanation of Nielluccio's presence on Corsica, where, as of the year 2000, it was planted on about 1600 hectares of land, representing about 14% of the total plantings within Corsica.

Sciacarello Grapes

Sciacarello is a bit more straightforward.  It is thought to be the same grape as the Mammolo that is grown in Tuscany and used as a minor player in both the Chianti and the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano blends.  The Italian name Mammolo comes from the grape's purported aromatic similarity to violets, called mammole in Italian.  It is generally regarded as the more interesting red Corsican specialty grape, but is only planted on a few hundred hectares of land throughout Corsica.  There are a handful of varietal examples, but I haven't been able to find any to date.

I was unsure whether I would write about this wine or not since it is mostly comprised of relatively common grapes, but the fact that the wine was from Corsica was what finally swayed me.  Corsican wine isn't incredibly rare, but it isn't exactly common either.  Corsica itself is the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean, which, while it belongs politically to the French, is much closer to Italy both geographically and culturally.  It is less than 7 miles north of Sardinia and 56 miles west of Tuscany, but is about 105 miles away from the Provençal coast of France.  It was controlled by the Republic of Genoa for over 500 years, from the mid-13th Century until well into the 18th Century.  The Genoans enacted strict rules on viticulture and viniculture and would not allow the Corsicans to ship their wine to any port outside of Genoa.  The Corsicans struggled for their independence, and in 1755 proclaimed themselves sovereign as The Corsican Republic with the publication of the Corsican Constitution.  The Genoans didn't really want to deal with this kind of trouble so in 1764 they secretly sold the island to France.  The French slowly began to build up their presence on the island until 1768 when the Genoans openly announced that they were ceding the island to the French in perpetuity with no possibility of retraction.  The Corsicans revolted at the news but were ultimately defeated and the island was officially annexed onto France in 1770.  Napoleon was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, in August of 1769, and one wonders how much differently history may have played out if Napoleon's home had not been transferred to France when it was.

The wine history of Corsica goes back thousands of years.  It is thought that there may have been some indigenous vines on Corsica, but when the Phoenicians settled the island, they certainly brought many of their own vines from their other territories.  Corsica came under Islamic rule around the 7th and 8th Centuries AD, and since the Islamic religion forbids the consumption of alcohol, the winemaking industry on the island suffered badly.  It rebounded significantly under Genoan rule, becoming famous throughout the European world, but was still limited by the Genoans strict control over the entire industry.  The Genoans definitely had the largest impact on the wine culture of the island, as can be seen in the wealth of Italian grapes that are still cultivated all over Corsica today.  The government sought to expand the Corsican economy in the 19th Century by focusing on winemaking, but the plan was derailed severely with the onset of Phylloxera.  When vines were finally replanted, many of them were planted to productive but bland French grapes like Carignan and Cinsaut and Corsica became a significant contributor to the European wine lake.  The EU vine-pull subsidies of the 1980's were very successful in Corsica, eliminating about 7000 hectares of low-quality vines and putting the focus more on higher quality grapes like Nielluccio, Sciacarello, Vermentino and some of the international varieties.

The wine that I picked up was from the Calvi sub-region of the island, located in the extreme northwest corner near the town of Calvi (just north of Ajaccio, where Napoleon's family made wine).  The soils here are predominantly schist with some granite.  The island is generally warm and sunny with regular rainfall, but very little rain during August and September, which usually creates ideal conditions for harvest.  The AOC rules stipulate that to qualify for the Corse Calvi designation, the finished wine must be made up of at least 50% Nielluccio, Sciacarello and/or Grenache together, while Barbarossa, Carignan, Cinsaut, Mourvedre, Syrah and Vermentino combined cannot account for more than 50% of the total blend with the further restriction that Vermentino and Carignan cannot make up more than 20% of the blend.

I picked up a bottle of the 2007 Domaine Maestracci "E Prove" Corse Calvi wine from my friends at the Spirited Gourmet for about $17.  The wine manager there told me the wine was about 1/3 Nielluccio, 1/3 Grenache, 1/6 Syrah and 1/6 Sciacarello.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep purple-ruby color.  The nose was moderately aromatic with dusky black cherry and black plum fruits with some wet leather and cocoa powder.  It was a very nice and appealing mixture of fruit and earth.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acid and some fairly serious tannins.  There were flavors of bright red and black cherry fruit with some blackberry, smoke, leather and tobacco.  Right after opening the fruits are predominantly red, but as the wine opens up they shift over to a darker, more brooding kind of character.  The whole way through, though, the wine is marked by an excellent balance between its vibrant fruit and duskier earthy flavors all held together with a solid vein of acidity and tannic skeleton.  The wine is enjoyable enough to drink on its own but it really does need food to truly show its stuff.  Any red meat would be fine, while the acid means that it could stand up to fattier meats or sauces as well as tomato-based sauces.  The wine is versatile enough where you really don't have to over-think the pairing and at only $17, you can buy a few bottles to have on hand anytime.

Craggy Range Wines

When I received the wines of Craggy Range from New Zealand, I experienced that momentary thrill that I get whenever something has taken a very long trip from the farm to the table. Yes, I know that with that statement, millions of locavores suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I like the eating local thing when the season's good and the region's good. When it comes to drinking local, I like our local beers but otherwise everything else is coming on a truck or a plane or a boat from a very long way away. The green tea leaves that gently stained the water in my teacup this morning like an artist's brush resting in a jar of mineral spirits came from somewhere in China. Everyone gripping a Starbuck's cup is holding onto something that came from Colombia or Kenya or Indonesia or elsewhere.

There are heated arguments over shipping costs and packaging costs and lots of other factors, but at the end of the day I am that six year old boy staring at the globe while lying on the floor, checking out all of these interesting places on the bottom of the sphere. Why is New Zealand a separate country from Australia? What does New Guinea have to do with New Zealand or New York or New Jersey? Why do all the pictures of New Zealand in National Geographic look a lot more like Ireland or Scotland instead of the South Pacific? As a child, I had to seek out these answers, and today, the luxury goods of the islands are delivered to my doorstep. What a wondrous time to be alive.

2011 Craggy Range Kidnapper's Vineyard Chardonnay
Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
100% Chardonnay
$20, 13% abv.
Very interesting for a Chardonnay. Lots of green apple and pear, balanced acidity, slightly tart. Fascinating and ultimately delicious with some grilled shrimp with lime. The name of the Vineyard comes from Cape Kidnappers in Hawkes Bay, where Captain Cook's crew got into an altercation with the locals and they tried to nab a Tahitian servant from the H.M.S. Endeavour. A bit ironic that they named the cape after that event when later, Cook would die after attempting to hold Hawaiian King Kalaniʻōpuʻu hostage.

2010 Craggy Range Te Kahu Gimblett Gravels Vineyard
Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
80% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Franc, 8% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Malbec
$20, 13.5% abv.
When this first arrived I was thinking that it was a Pinot Noir and let it rest in the cellar next to other representatives of that grape. And then when I served it, I knew it was something much different. While mellow and mild, this has definite structure and the balance of black cherry and leather and chocolate is incredible. Highly recommended and a great bargain, not to mention showing that New Zealand has an opportunity to do some Bordeaux or Meritage blends that can stand out.

I hesitate to quote directly from press releases or company websites, but to explain the name of this wine I could not add anything to the following: "Te kahu means 'the cloak' in Te Reo Maori and refers to the mist that envelops our Giants Winery in the Tuki Tuki Valley. Legend has it that this mist was used to protect a mythical Maori maiden from the sun as she visited her lover Te Mata."

Another two wines, another two stories, and that little globe of cardboard with raised mountain features continues to spin at the slow rate of once per day, in a dance around the sun 365.25 times a year...


Note: These wines were received as samples.

Noiret - Finger Lakes, New York

Today's post will be short and sweet because, well, there just isn't a whole lot to say about today's grape.  It's called Noiret and it was released to the public for cultivation only in 2006.  It was created and tested by two Cornell professors named Bruce Reisch and Thomas Henick-Kling at Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y.  The original cross (between Steuben and NY65.0467.08) was made in 1973 and first planted in 1975.  They started testing the grape for its winemaking abilities back in 1980 but final approval for commercial sale didn't happen until 2006.  I don't think that the process for all hybrids and crosses takes quite that much time in general, but that does give you some idea of how arduous a task it can be to create new species of grapes.

The grape's family tree is unbelievably complex, but it is also more or less fully mapped out here.  There are a number of familiar faces there as well as a lot of strings of numbers that probably won't mean anything to you unless you are yourself a grape breeder.  They are basically grapes that have been bred at a breeding station but have not been released commercially.  They have various characteristics that are useful for breeding, such as particular disease resistances or weather hardiness, but also have some other flaw that would prohibit their planting on a commercial scale.  Noiret looks to have a very interesting mix of vinifera grapes, hybrid grapes and breeding specimens throughout its family tree.

Like most grapes that are bred at these breeding stations, Noiret was specially bred to have certain characteristics.  It was certainly bred to have some degree of cold hardiness, and it is considered moderately hardy (meaning that the vines will likely survive in conditions between -5 and -15 degrees Fahrenheit).  The only major disease problem listed for Noiret is a moderate susceptibility to downy mildew of the fruit and leaves, meaning that the grower would need to take care in conditions that are conducive to the spread of those fungi.  It has a fairly late bud-break which means that spring frosts aren't really a concern.  The big selling points for the grape are that it is able to impart a deep color to its wines and, best of all, it doesn't have any of the foxiness that can plague some hybrids.

There are some table wines being made from the Noiret grape, but when I was in the Finger Lakes region a few months ago, the only wine I was able to find was a Port-style wine from Red Newt Winery on Seneca Lake.  It's from the 2007 vintage, which I guess either means that they are using very young Noiret grapes for this wine or they have access to vines that may have been planted prior to 2006.  In any case, the blend is 73% Noiret, 20% Syrah and 7% Cabernet Franc and a 500 mL bottle set me back about $24 at the winery.  In the glass the wine was a deep purple ruby color with a very narrow purple rim.  The nose was moderately aromatic with raspberry and blackberry fruits, both fresh and dried, along with some chocolate and raspberry liqueur.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity, no tannins, a touch of sweetness and an obviously high alcohol content.  There were flavors of cocoa powder, dried blackberry and black cherry, stewed raspberries, espresso and bittersweet chocolate.  There was also a very distinctive raspberry liqueur flavor that was really dominating the palate.  I found the alcohol a little awkward, mostly because the body really wasn't fleshy enough to prop up the Port alcohol levels.  Overall I found it very enjoyable, though, and enjoyed my bottle with some homemade chocolate-raspberry clafoutis, which it turned out was an excellent pairing.  I hope to be able to track down a table wine made from the grape before too long and will report back when I'm able.

2008 Biltmore Estate Château Reserve Blanc de Blancs

Over the past couple of years I've tried several wines from the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. Recently I was contacted by a PR firm offering various wines from the Biltmore, and looking back over my notes, I saw that pretty much the only thing I hadn't tried was bubbly from North Carolina itself instead of California. A couple of weeks later, this bottle showed up at the house.

Now, it's not purely from the Tar Heel State, but it's close enough, and I was impressed. I was also impressed with the bottle of sparkling wine that Joe brought from Georgia, and of course most in the know are familiar with the delightful Gruet bubbles of New Mexico. And on top of that, I was pleasantly surprised by my recent encounter with the fizzy Moscato of Moldova. If you know what you're doing, good sparkling wine can be made in a lot of interesting places.

I still haven't forgotten my encounter with Belarus, though. Shudder

2008 North Carolina Blanc de Blancs Chateau Reserve
Méthode Champenoise
100% Chardonnay: 88% North Carolina, 12% California
$35, 12.4% abv.

The nose is light with a faint tropical fruit note. It's crisp and clean with a touch of lemony acidity. Decent bubbles with a short finish. I served this with a salad before a dinner of roasted pork, and I ended up sipping on it throughout the entire meal. A good complement with food and generally a fun wine to imbibe. It's not often that I enjoy vintage sparklers and I'm curious as to how this one will develop over the next few years.

Note: This wine was received as a sample.

Marechal Foch - Finger Lakes, New York

I'll confess that I have a bit of a soft spot for hybrid grapes.  That's not the kind of admission that you can make in certain company, as the common consensus on hybrid grapes and the wine produced from them is that they are mostly forgettable curiosities made in places where people probably shouldn't bother trying to grow grapes at all.  But that's part of their charm for me.  I love that they allow people in unpleasant (or sometimes downright hostile) climates to grow grapes and make wine.  Sure, you can argue that these wines aren't ever going to blow your mind, but you can also say that about 99% of the wine being made today anyway.  Not every wine has to be  amazing, after all, and if a wine can't be amazing, then I'd prefer that it at least be interesting.  What I like about the hybrids is that even when the wine itself isn't all that interesting (and let's be honest, a lot of it really isn't), there's still a story behind it and how it came into existence.  I realize that that kind of thing may excite me more than most, but I've learned to live with it.

Marechal Foch belongs to a group of grapes that are informally referred to as the French Hybrids. We've taken a look at a few of these hybrids and I've written fairly extensively about their history in my post on the Chambourcin grape, which interested readers are invited to peruse at their leisure.  For those who are fanatical about the proper placement of diacritical marks, I do realize that the grape's proper French spelling is technically Maréchal Foch, but since the French have decided that they're too good for hybrid grapes, I've decided that the Americanized spelling is good enough for me.

Maréchal is the French word for "marshal" and the grape is named for a French general named Ferdinand Foch who was named Maréchal de France in 1918.  Foch was also the Allied Supreme Commander in charge of all French, British and American armies in France during World War I.  He was heavily involved in creating the armistice treaty that ended that war, though he was prescient enough to say at the time "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."  Foch himself didn't have anything to do with the creation of the grape that now bears his name. It was created in Alsace which, those of you who are up on your geography know, is located right on the border between France and Germany.  Alsace has gone back and forth between the two countries several times.  It was annexed by Germany in 1871 but France got it back after World War I (and later lost it prior to WWII, regaining it again after that war).  The grape's creator, Eugene Kuhlmann, named it for the great French general as an homage.

Unusually for a hybrid grape, Marechal Foch's parentage isn't precisely known.  Most hybrids are created in laboratory type conditions, so there is usually a lot of documentation for them, but, perhaps because of the precarious location of Alsace through World War II, the documentation for Marechal Foch isn't complete.  Some believe that it is a product of a grape called Goldriesling (itself a cross between Riesling and Courtillier Musqué) and an unidentified vine that was itself a crossing between a v. riparia and a v. rupestris vine.  Others believe that it is the offspring of Pinot Noir and a hybrid called Oberlin 595.  Whatever the case, the grape was commercially introduced in France in 1920 and in the US in 1951, having come over from Canada.  The vine yields small bunches of small grapes which are apparently virtually irresistible to birds.  It is grown to some extent in the Loire Valley, though those grapes cannot legally be used for any commercial wine production.  It does bud early and ripen fairly late, which you would think would make it unpopular in colder regions, but it is grown fairly successfully in Canada and in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

I picked up two wines made from the Marechal Foch grape while traveling in the Finger Lakes a few months back.  The first wine that I picked up was from the Prejean Winery on the western shore of Seneca Lake.  I bought their 2008 vintage Marechal Foch for about $12.  In the glass the wine was an inky, opaque black color with a very narrow purple rim.  The nose was moderately aromatic with juicy blackberry and blueberry fruit along with some smoky charcoal and chocolate and a touch of something meaty and savory.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid and very low tannins.  There were flavors of tart cherry, cranberry and blackberry fruit with a touch of smoke and bittersweet chocolate.  The wine was really tart which was surprising given how rich and dark the nose was.  I've noticed with quite a few of these hybrid grape wines that I find their aromatics very appealing, but ultimately find the wines themselves to be sour and a little thin.  This wine definitely followed that pattern.  I have in my notes that this was "all treble and no bass" and that seems like a pretty succinct summary of it.  Even at a paltry $12, there isn't a lot in this wine to recommend it.

The second wine that I picked up was from Atwater Estates on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake.  I bought their 2008 Maréchal Foch, French spelling and all, at the winery for about $24.  In the glass the wine was a deep, inky purple ruby color.  The nose was nicely aromatic with blackberry, black plum and black cherry fruit. There was a distinct meaty, gamy aroma that was really interesting.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid and soft tannins.  There were cherry and black plum fruit flavors with smoky, leather undertones.  There was a slightly tart, slightly bitter cherry pit kind of finish to it.  This wine was much deeper and darker than the Prejean and much more balanced overall.  The plush fruits were nicely balanced by the smoky, leathery earthy components.  The bitter finish was a bit too noticeable for my tastes, but overall I really enjoyed this wine.  It's a little expensive for what it is, but it was the best varietal Marechal Foch that I had while I was in the Finger Lakes.  This winery's tasting room is also a pleasure to visit and the pourer was funny and engaging.  It's definitely one of those places and those wines that I'll definitely revisit when I come back to that region.

Benito vs. the Cocktail: The Admiral Benbow

The Admiral Benbow Inn. It's a place where Jim Hawkins stayed in Treasure Island, and it shares a name with this cocktail I'll get to in a moment. But for anyone from Memphis, there's a far different association.

There are good hotels, affordable but clean motels, and places that are a little sketchy but sometimes the only option when there's a big convention in town or you just need a few hours of shuteye before getting back on I-40 heading toward one of the coasts. There are the places that show up on the news for various criminal activity, and then there's the Admiral Benbow. By the 1980s it was a haven for all sorts of weird, sad crime. If you had a friend who called in tears and needed a ride home at two in the morning, it wouldn't be too much of a surprise to find him at the Admiral Benbow, missing his car, wallet, and most of his pride.

It was the site of the 1986 Memphis Trousers Affair, in which former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was found in the lobby wearing nothing but a towel, and confused as to where his pants were.

This is an older and somewhat obscure cocktail, but it contains classic ingredients and proportions. You're supposed to use Plymouth Gin, but in tribute to the Inn I went a little downmarket with a regular domestic gin.

The Admiral Benbow Cocktail
2 oz. Plymouth Gin
½ oz. Fresh Squeezed Lime Juice
1 oz. Dry White Vermouth
Garnish with Citrus Peel and Maraschino Cherry

Combine everything but the garnish in a cocktail mixer with ice. I tried one shaken and one stirred, and found that I preferred the cloudy appearance of the shaken version. Reminded me a bit of some bad motels I've stayed in across the country where you get a glass of water from the tap and it has to settle for a few minutes before it's no longer cloudy.

The cocktail has a nice balance of elements, though the lime juice covers up most of the vermouth. Sort of a very tart martini, and while it won't be in the main rotation, I think I'll come back to it every once in a while. The stories alone are worth it.

Weird Blend Wednesday - Petit Rouge, Cornalin, Mayolet & Vien de Nus, Valle d'Aosta, Italy

Mayolet Grapes

Hello, everyone and welcome back to Weird Blend Wednesday.  Today's wine is a fun little field blend from the Valle d'Aosta that is made up of several different grapes that are specialties of the region.  I think.  See, this wine is sold as a vino da tavola, or, this close to the French/Italian border, a vin de table, which means that the only thing that the bottle can say is whether the wine is white or red, who made it and the name that the producer has decided to give to the bottling, if any (in this case, the wine is called Cuvé de la Côte).  No vintage, geographical indication (other than the country of origin) or grape make-up is permitted on the bottle at all, which isn't usually a problem in this day and age since many producers just put that kind of stuff online and let the consumers find it themselves.  For this wine, though, the only information available is from the distributor (the great Louis/Dressner) who only offers that the wine "is a field blend from a parcel of particularly old vines."  There's really no telling exactly what is in this bottle, and it's possible that the winemaker may not even know, if the parcel is old enough.  The guys at the Wine Bottega, where I picked this bottle up, said that it was most likely a blend of the four grapes mentioned above, and so that's what I'm going with.

Vien de Nus Grapes

We've already taken a good, long look at two of the four alleged grapes in this blend.  Petit Rouge is the savage little grape that forms the base of the wines from the Enfer d'Arvier and Torrette sub-regions within the Valle d'Aosta.  Cornalin is the confusing little grape that is a different thing depending on where you find yourself.  If you're in Italy, you're probably talking about Cornalin d'Aoste, which is usually called Humagne Rouge in Switzerland.  If you're in Switzerland, Cornalin refers to a different grape, known as Cornalin du Valais, which is actually one of the parents for Cornalin d'Aoste.  It's a long, tangled story that you can peruse at your leisure via the link above.

The other two grapes are Mayolet and Vien de Nus.  Mayolet is certainly the more common of the two grapes and can occasionally be found in varietal form, while Vien de Nus is pretty much a blending grape.  Mayolet is referenced in writings dating back to the 18th Century and is thought to be indigenous to the Valle d'Aosta.  Recent DNA testing has shown that Mayolet is one of the parents of Cornalin du Valais (Petit Rouge is the other), which means that both Petit Rouge and Mayolet are the grandparents of Cornalin d'Aoste (Vouillamoz, J., Maigre, D., Meredith, C.P. (2003) Microsatellite analysis of ancient alpine grape cultivars: pedigree reconstruction of Vitis vinifera L. "Cornalin du Valais." Theoretical and Applied Genetics, (107) 448-454).  This wine, then, is kind of like a little family reunion in a bottle where Vien de Nus plays the role of a longtime neighbor who is like an honorary uncle, even though he isn't really related by blood to anyone there.  Vien de Nus also has a long history in the Valle d'Aoste and is thought to be native to the region, but if there is any genetic link between it and the other three grapes in this wine, I haven't been able to find it.

The wine that I was able to try was made by Franco Noussan who lives in the village of St. Christophe in the hills above the town of Aoste.  His bio on Louis/Dressner's site says that he works at the local university, which it turns out is the Institut Agricole Régional, the local agricultural school where the Cornalin and Prëmetta I wrote about earlier came from.  His winery is essentially an extension of his garage which he dug into the hillsides around his house.  He has several parcels scattered around St. Christophe including one with vines over 70 years old, which is where I presume the grapes for this wine came from.  Altogether he farms about 5.5 hectares of land which he works without herbicides.  He hand harvests all of his grapes and uses only indigenous yeasts in his fermentation.  He has been making wine for his family and friends for many years but has only been offering them commercially since 2005.

I picked up my NV bottle of the Noussan Cuvé de la Côte from my friends at the Wine Bottega for about $25.  In the glass, the wine was a medium purple ruby color.  The nose was very aromatic with black cherry, black plum and wild raspberry fruits with a touch of smoke.  There was something wild and savage to the nose that was very interesting and deeply compelling.  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acid and medium tannins.  There were flavors of black cherry, dried cherry, wild raspberry and blackberry fruit with smoke, char and a little bit of funk.  It was wild and complex but really nicely balanced as well.  There was a good mixture of red and black fruits with nice charred, smoky undertones to it that was all held up with a lively vein of acidity.  I really felt like the wine over-delivered in terms of complexity and depth for the price, especially since wines from the Valle d'Aoste tend to be fairly expensive because of their limited production.  It would go well with all kinds of food but I think something with duck or sausage would be great as the bright acidity here would just cut through the fat and match well with meat that's a little funky.

Benito vs. Homemade Pasta

On a Sunday morning, Benito woke up tired and weary, and resigned himself to a meagre lunch of spaghetti and marinara. Granted, the marinara was homemade from good canned San Marzanos, and he planned to amp it up with the pork rillettes in the freezer, but a half hour of thawing and ten minutes of boiling were all that were required for said meal. And then he looked in the pantry, and saw that he had only orzo and stelline, tiny pastas better suited to soups. But he did have eggs and flour, as well as a manual pasta roller.

He'd made pasta with varying results in the pursuit of delicious ravioli, but felt it was time to crack the knuckles and attempt a proper noodle. First, the dough. Simple 1 egg per 100g of flour (about one cup). He used two of each and after some vigorous kneading, had a little dough ball that needed resting. He pulled off a bit and ran it through the rollers to produce the taglierini at right. Not a perfect batch, but a decent proof of concept. Those noodles were tossed aside while waiting for the dough to rest and develop properly.

He mused on the whole eggs vs. egg yolks debate, but elected to keep it simple with whole eggs. Besides, there was no lemon pie in desperate need of meringue.

His manual stainless-steel pasta machine has nine levels of thinness, a nice square number. Some skip levels but he always works through the process methodically, two passes per setting. In the past it's involved sweaty brows and sore arms, but on this Sabbath he fell into a rhythm and took pleasure in the work, much like the feeling of accomplishment after mowing a yard or painting a house. (Rather not like taking shingles off a roof one hot Memphis summer, which left Benito with a pair of jeans full of holes from all the exposed nails.)

The moment of truth is when you get to the seventh level of thinness and think, "Maybe it would be better to make lasagna." But he persevered, and continued with the rolling, only occasionally dropping the handle to the ground where it clattered like a 11mm wrench falling through the engine of a car only to lodge in some obscure nook. Fortunately the space under the kitchen table is less complex and does not require a telescoping wand with a strong rare-earth magnet on the tip.

Another decision point. The pasta machine has two sets of rollers, one for the wider tagliatelle and one for thinner taglierini. He decided to try a sheet of pasta to see how the tagliatelle looked. And they were perfect. Picture perfect and delicate and even fitting within the 6mm specifications set by the EU.

Taking the story of Solomon and the baby far too literally, he split the dough in half and processed half into wide noodles and half into thin spaghetti-like noodles.

Time to let everything dry, a step that doesn't show up a lot in cooking unless you're making jerky or dried green beans or other survival fare. One can of course cook fresh pasta right away, but he realized that he couldn't eat all of it in one setting (even with two dinner companions), and that it might be good enough to hang out for a few days in the freezer.

There are different ways to dry pasta: on spindly wooden pasta trees (not the other kind of pasta tree), on sheets or towels, in adorable twirled nests, or made in a dry climate more like Albuquerque than Memphis where the noodles will quickly dry themselves on the trip out of the machine.

The next decision point: which to use with his carefully made sauce and pork rillettes? The sauce was already simmering away, awaking from its winter hibernation with wakeup shots of red wine, balsamic vinegar, and a few other dashes of magic. He turned to the internet, where Facebook users had been following the progress, and ultimately went with the advice of the German reader. After all, Nudeln mit Schinken is delicious and the Germans know their pork. Plus, he was still a little concerned that the tiny noodles might fall apart.

The end result was divine, with the sauce warmed in a skillet, combined with the freshly boiled pasta and a little pasta water until everything came together perfectly. He grated a little Romano cheese on top, finding the unique tang of sheep's milk to be a good fit for this dish.

As for the wine, he had an extra bottle of that 2004 Il Borro in the cellar, and felt that what had began as such a simple dinner deserved a really fantastic wine. Everything came together so perfectly, like magic, and Julia and The Roommate were equally enthused about the meal.

The next day, it was time for Benito to try some of the leftover sauce with the thinner noodles, the taglierini. They performed admirably but between the two he felt that the wider noodles provided a better dining experience, allowing better sensation of the flavor and texture of the homemade product.

Later, as he collected photos and began reminiscing over a regional favorite, BBQ spaghetti, served at locations like Leonard's Pit Barbecue and too many church potluck dinners to mention. And he reflected on how a long and laborious process had brought him right back to a dish of his childhood. And while he thought that his was more refined and the pasta better presented, he thought back on both, and smiled.