Theatre of Wine (Tufnell Park)

Yesterday, my husband and I decided to have a little stroll around our new neighborhood in London, which is lovely and residential.  While looking for a pub I wanted to try, we ran across an awesome shop called Theatre of Wine.  It was a lovely day (almost hit 60F in London yesterday, with sunshine and everything!), and the shop had their door open, welcoming us in.  So, obviously, J and I took the opportunity to look around.  Jason was sitting at the table with some wine and glasses and immediately said hello and offered us a taste, which we took, of a Spanish white (a grape variety called Godello).  It had a lovely aftertaste for me, but was a bit too similar to Chardonnay.  J loved it, and I totally have forgotten everything else relevant, including vineyard, year, etc.  Jason let us have a good browse around, and I was impressed with the range and prices of the bottles they offered.  Jason told us a bit about the shop, who they supply for (some of our favorite restaurants!) and their passion for small producers, and he gave us a list of their evening tasting schedule (I’m in trouble!).  

J and I ended up purchasing a bottle of white, which we’ll be drinking on Sunday, and I’ll let you know how it goes then.  For now, I just wanted to give a shout out to Theatre of Wine and perhaps warn them they’ll be seeing a lot of me and J.  Also, if you are around London, check out their shops in Greenwich or Tufnell Park, you won’t regret it.  

What I drank last night (OK, last week)

Without boring you with details, there has been a barrage of change in my life over the past 3 weeks, so my apologies on not updating you about wine.  I’m back to it now, and shall continue on with this resolution of mine!

My lovely husband, J, took me on an amazing Valentine’s Day dinner to a restaurant called The Chancery in London.  As we like to do, we ordered the tasting menu (regular for him, vegetarian for me) with the wine pairing.  When I go to restaurants with nice wine lists (and tasting menus), I love getting suggestions from the sommeliers and staff.  Mostly, I have never tasted the wine (or remembered), and it is interesting to see what they believe to be the best tasting.  Some times, they cannot be trusted (I once asked what the difference in two very differently priced glasses of champagne were and the waiter actually said to me “don’t know, it all tastes exactly the same”.  For that alone, I ordered the less expensive glass, which was very good, but who knows if the more costly one could have been better.  I felt he should have tried to sell me on it regardless; make something up!  I probably will trust you!).

Anyway, here was the lowdown of our meal:

An amuse bouche (which was delicious!), an almond soup to go with our champange which was an Ernest Rapeneau, Sélection N.V. Brut .  I really enjoyed this champagne.  It retailed for £8 a glass and with a quick google search I discovered it averages about £18 per bottle.  Disregarding the restaurant mark-up, I think it’s definitely a nice bottle to have in the fridge for a special occasion.  Which leads to a lovely quote by Ray Isle, executive food editor at Food and Wine, “Bottles of Champagne are like umbrellas: The day you don’t have one on you is always the day that you absolutely, positively need one.”  Keeping this in mind, I now have “bubbly” on the list for every super market trip.  I can’t guarantee it will always be champagne, but we’ll see how it goes!

Anyway, to the rest of the pairs!  (I’ve listed the dishes as they were listed on the menu)

Course 1: 

For me: Ducks egg (slow cooked ducks egg, confit king oyster mushroom, button mushroom duxelle and burnt toast veloute)

For J: Cod Cheeks (red wine glazed cod cheers and beer battered pallet with leeks, garlic mayonnaise and cornichons)

Wine Pairing: Domaine De La Mirande Picpoul De Pinet 2011 Coteaux du Languedoc which did not really go with my dish, and I didn’t really like as a wine either.

Course 2:

For me: Jersalem Artichoke Soup (walnuts, quince jam and sorrel)

For J: Foie Gras (Jerusalem artichoke soup, parfait, walnuts, quince jam and sorrel)

Wine Pairing: Theodorus Riesling Jahrgang 2008.  This wine was well paired with our dish, and was well-paired with both of our dishes (as they were essentially the same).  I think having the fat of the fois gras probably made the wine go even better with J’s dish than mine, but I did enjoy this wine.

Course 3:

For me: Broccoli (warm salad of purple sprouting broccoli, goats curd and almonds)

For J: Cornish lobster salad (purple sprouting broccoli, ginger, black sesame and lobster vinaigrette)

Wine Pair: Rose Del Drago 2011.  Now, I tend not to like Rose because they are too sweet, but I was pleasantly surprised by this pairing because it almost worked like a nice dressing to a salad, if that makes sense?, where it complimented the dish with a new flavor that it was almost “missing”.  Not that the dish was incomplete, because it wasn’t, but it gave it that extra something.

Course 4:

For me: Clay Baked Jerusalem artichoke (smoked Jerusalem artichoke, burnt lettuce, glazed radishes)

For J: Suffolk Venison (glazed beetroot tart fine, salt baked Cheltenham beetroot, juniper and bitter chocolate)

Wine Pair: Steenburg Merlot 2009 Which I image went with the meat dish MUCH better than with my artichoke.  That said, this artichoke was my favorite dish despite the fact the wine was much too heavy for it.

Course 5:

For us both: blood orange cheesecake (brillat savarin cheesecake with blood orange, pomegranate, and Turkish Delight ice cream).

Wine Pair: Chateau Dereszla 2006 Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos.  A Hungarian wine, which turned out to be my favorite of the night.  It was a delightful surprise which complemented the cheesecake beautifully.  Altogether this pairing and dish was my overall favorite.  It was beautifully done, and I don’t like turkish delight and I am not usually cheesecake’s biggest fan either.  I could have eaten and drank this all day.  Because of that, here’s a lowdown on the wine:

According to wine-searcher.com “Tokaj is one of the most famous wine villages in the world. It is the home of the botrytized dessert wine which bears its name, the yard stick against which so many of the world’s sweet wines are measured. The Tokaj region and its wine are held in such esteem in Hungary (and around the wine world) that the Hungarian national anthem thanks God that‘Tokaj szőlővesszein nektárt csepegtettél.’ (‘In the vineyards of Tokaj you dripped sweet nectar.’)”.  I LOVE THIS PIECE OF INFORMATION.

Course 6:

For us both: Baked Pear (slow baked pear with chestnut financier and beurre noisette ice cream)

Wine Pair: Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc Late Harvest South Africa.  This wine was also delicious, and this dish was clever.  It didn’t beat the cheesecake, but it was a lovely wine to finish the meal with, not too sweet, but again, gave the dessert that extra oomph (like a drizzle of a sauce or something).

We ended with some cappuccinos and a piece of fudge (I also like to order coffee at the end of my meal because the chef almost always sends out some petit fours, and I love the surprise of what it is.  Also, the coffee here was yummy.

Overall: The Chancery is a 3 Rosette restaurant on a lovely street in London.  Because it is not yet Michelin-starred, the prices are incredibly reasonable for the tasting menu (6 courses for £48.50) and when you add the flight of wines to match it is £70 per person.  Because this blog is about wine, not restaurant reviews, I will not be giving my full opinion other than to say that the food here was worth every single penny.  The food was well-rounded, surprising, delicious, well-presented, clever, and well-priced.  I tip my hat to head chef Simon Christey-French.  Well done, sir!

A small side note to restaurants from a food and drink loving vegetarian: Most restaurants pair their wines to match their tasting menu, which is always for carnivores.  While I love doing wine pairings even though I know that most of my vegetarian dishes will not match with the wine chosen for my meat-eating partner, I do appreciate a sommelier that takes the time to find wine to go with my dishes as well (so I would receive I different wine to the carnivore in the circumstances our dishes are different).  I would like to give props to the restaurant Texture for doing that, giving my meal there a consistent ranking in my Top 3 meals of my life (and as cliche as it may be, this ranks them with the other 2 in my Top 3, Noma and Per Se).

Mostly though, food and wine pairing is a magical science that I really hope to become good at eventually!

What I Drank Last Night (Valentine’s Day)

On Valentine’s Day, I, along with two of my cousins, M and S, went over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house!  She cooked us a lovely meal of roast chicken, pasta with pumpkin cream sauce, salad, and olive garlic bread.  Grandma loves Merlot, so after some pina colada martini cocktails, we were on to that!  Because of the cocktails, I admit there were few tasting notes from this particular tasting! 

We drank Markham Vineyards Merlot, 2007, Napa Valley

It was lovely with our dessert, strawberry pudding with chocolate sauce.  S tasted cherry, black raspberry, coffee beans, and smelled a spice, perhaps pepper.  M smelled coffee.  I got cherry (and it had a dark cherry color).  Grandma tasted grapes, dark chocolate, and coffee beans.  Together, we all agreed that it was a bit peppery, strawberry hints (perhaps from our pudding?), black raspberry, and vanilla (with a question mark).

The true tasting notes from Markham Vineyards is “dark ruby hues and black raspberry”, “sweet espresso”, and it is an “intriguing blend”.  We weren’t far off, and I did enjoy (my first?) Merlot!  

More soon!

What I Drank Last Night: Cabernet Sauvignon

Last night I met up with some fabulous people: one, a graphic designer, and the other, a PR maven.  Our creative juices were flowing as we sipped on a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon I had brought over.  They were both a little skeptical when I waltzed into the room (full disclosure: I didn’t really waltz, I couldn’t get the door open and one of them had to rescue me. Embarrassing!) saying, “I brought wine! But it comes at a price!” (Just call me Rumpelstiltskin).  Regardless, they agreed to drink with me for the sake of understanding wine (for the sake of art!).  Here are our findings:

California wine: Dry Creek 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon (80% cab sauv, 11% merlot, 5% cabernet Franc, 2% Petit Verdot, 2% Malbec).  14.5% alcohol.  Retails for about $25 a bottle. (Oh yes, and 90 points from Wine Enthusiast)

Smell: resident PR guru, Maria, began us off with a brilliantly described smell “like alcohol… and tastes like grapes” (Then there’s me- “no! don’t drink it yet!  You’re ruining it!”  “I didn’t taste it yet!” she replied.  I gave her a squinty glare; suspicions aroused.  The technique (etiquette?) of wine tasting is important, isn’t it?!  Or should we just forget it, and taste already!).  Stefan, the graphic designer, started big and went for it: “spice, not sure what, nutty, maybe woody?”  My sniff- cherry and oak.

“Shouldn’t we look at the color?” Stefan asked.  “I was told you look at the color from where the wine meets me the glass, up at the top, where it begins to cusp.  Have you heard that?”  No, no I hadn’t.  Has anyone? I had heard you should have good light and a white piece of paper (maybe just a light background, probably a wall would do).  A quick google search brought me an awesome picture (and introduced me to a cool blog called Wine Folly which has some really great posts- I’ll need to check out more of it!) with nice new phrases: “rim variation”- hmmm, the cusp Stefan was talking about?-  The “opacity”- my white paper?  Apparently Stefan and I are already a bit snooty with our wine skills :-)) Unfortunately, here was our discovery (we needed Wine Folly last night!):

Color: very dark.  *sigh* I know you’re as disappointed as we were with ourselves!

Taste: Maria started us off well again, “tastes like grapes; seriously this time, I tasted it”, then she winked and laughed, and told us what was really going on on her tongue: “definitely wood, it’s very dry. And Cherries, my goodness, cherries!”.  The three of us agreed that this wine had a great aftertaste (“lingering finish” Stefan says.  He’s snootier than I am, I say this with love).  We also all agreed on the “Cherry beginning”, and then I ruined everything by saying “this is weird, but I feel like this wine would go really well with peanut butter- maybe if it was a jelly.”  That comment almost got me kicked out of my own club.  Whoops!  The tannins were noticeable; the wine was dry, but almost silky at the same time.

We all agreed that we would drink this wine again (no real variance in opinion with this wine or the three of us, so our palettes must be similar).  Stefan did say that he thought it was a “situational wine” because it was a bit heavier than he wanted for just a drinking wine, but I suppose that is the point of Cabernet Sauvignons, no?  Pair with red meat and all that?  It was tasty though, and we’d all drink it again!

Just as we finished the bottle and were relishing the final notes of the lingering finish on our tongues, Stefan turns, contemplative, sucks his tongue against his teeth, “cranberries.  Definitely.  Cranberry.”

Maria looks at him, “yes, straight out of a cranberry bog, that wine.”

Turns out Stef wasn’t that off.  Here’s the description of the wine from Dry Creek: “At first swirl, deep aroma of raspberry, sage and dried floral elements come forward.  On the palette, these aromas combine with black cherry and chocolate creating a mouthful of silky, well-integrated tannins.  With some airing, the wine fleshes out even more providing dimension, depth, and length.  The finish lingers on for more than minute with fine tannins that are very elegant and structured.  Truly a blockbuster wine from an incredible vintage!”

The best part of the entire tasting session we had was when Maria exclaimed, “this is so fun!  I want to be a sommelier now!”.  It got us chatting about qualifications (there are too many to handle), how many true master sommeliers there are in the USA (“five” is what we concluded, but if someone has a real statistic, let me know), and how long it would take us if we decided to become masters.  Far too long, probably, because while it’s pretty obvious to me already that wine does not all taste the same, I also recognize that I would have not the first clue of differences between Cabernet Sauvignons from different vineyards (or probably different countries).  Or if I was served the Dry Creek again tonight without knowing it was the same bottle I had last night, would I remember it?  I can’t say that I would.  Thinking back on the wine now, I can describe it, because it was the last bottle I drank… but I couldn’t describe to you the Lyeth I had a week or so ago except that I really enjoyed it.  This is going to be a problem.  I think the next research will have to be “how to remember what wine you drank”.  I have a feeling it will be like “how to remember names”- drink it in a specific situation so that your other senses can help you recall the flavor.  Maybe I won’t research it, maybe I’ll just try that technique and see how we go.  I don’t think I’ll ever forget the flavor of the Pina Colada I had on my honeymoon, but I could not, for my life, tell you what wine we drank at dinner any of the nights… does that mean the wine didn’t stand out?  Or does it mean I associate Pina Coladas on the beach with my honeymoon and not eating dinner?  Add this to the list of things to learn about wine (or neuroscience… or psychology… I don’t know yet).

Well, this post got off topic quickly.  Thanks for the drink, Stefan and Maria, more to come from you two, I suspect!

“What Wine Newbies Should Know”

Being the well-educated researcher that I am (I say this with love towards my research degrees), today I did my favorite kind of research: the quick google-your-exact-question kind.  My exact question for the magical, know-all, google was this: What is the first thing to know when drinking wine? I chose the second link that google gave me (the first was 4 steps: wine tasting from askmen.  That didn’t appeal to me), an article from Wine Spectator from a series called “Drinking Out Loud”.  The title of the article was “What Should Wine Newbies Know?” by a man named Matt Kramer.  Kramer has contributed regularly to Wine Spectator since 1985, but that’s his whole bio.  He does seem to know what he’s talking about… I also like that he opens with “Being American is an asset” (for B.T.: USA! USA! USA!) because “we know what it’s like not to know.”  Beautiful.

In any case, he had four main points in this article: 1) The Big Lie of wine is “if you like it, it’s good.”, 2) if you want to know what “good” is, you’re going to have to make comparisons, 3) deduct two points from any score over 90 and add three points to any score over 80, and 4) smaller is usually better– but not always.

I want to focus today on “If you want to know what ‘good’ is, you’re going to have to make comparisons.”  I love this as a main tip to something that could be titled The Beginner’s Guide to Wine.  Like any good research or experiment model, you need some form of reference.  What’s cool about “newbie wine tasting” is that your frame of reference is allowed to be small, and you don’t have to have much, or any, background knowledge.  Drinking a glass of wine is like reading a poem.  For many, the first poem that they read is terrible: it makes no sense, it’s metaphorical or allegorical, it breaks all language rules, and half the time it doesn’t rhyme.  But you sit in class, take notes from what the teacher says, and look up the words you haven’t seen before.  Line by line, the beauty in the poem emerges and it begins to make sense to you, albeit, sometimes slowly.  You don’t have to like the poem to begin to understand it, and, sometimes, you like the poem without understanding it at all!

Drinking wine, for me, is like that poem.  My first glass, I hated.  I despised, but I persevered (Thanks, Dad!), and slowly, with “research” (ahem, drinking) came new knowledge.  My first sip of wine made no sense to me, much like my first poem, but with a little guidance, a bit of slowing down to “read” the wine, and continued attempt at at various glasses, I began to understand wine a bit better.  Individual glasses of wine began to stand out (like the Lyeth Chronology), and so I wanted to know a bit more- much like with poems.  When one first reads Sylvia Plath, one can feel pain within the language, but then, when one begins to research her life… everything takes on a whole new meaning.  And better still, as one experiences pain in his/her own life, (think “Ariel” for example), the poem can be extracted from author intent and delivered straight to reader interpretation.  Forever, my favorite wine just may well be Lamarca Prosecco.  Yes, it’s brilliant, and yes, the price is right, but more- it’s my Grandma’s favorite and was served at her 80th birthday party, it was the wine served for the Toast at my wedding, the glass we toasted upon closing on our first apartment, and it’s a bottle that is a staple of Dad’s wine cellar (meaning it has appeared at pretty much every family event since we found it).  I don’t need to know much more about prosecco or sparkling to call it my favorite- it just is- because I’ve given it life with my “drinker’s interpretation”.  What would I recommend it for?  Celebration!  Every day enjoyment!  Special Occasion!  No Occasion!  I just love it, but only just now have I realized I know nothing more about it than that (this will be remedied this year).

Alright, this post went on awhile and may have sounded a little preachy towards the end there, but the point is this: drinking is like poetry.  One of the comments below Kramer’s article said it best: “After 10-20 years drinking wine, you look back and you acknowledge that what you’re drinking now is not the same as before.  Your palate and your nose improves and you start noticing what at the beginning you dont paid attention.”  Hasn’t your idea of poetry (OK, or literature in general, I appreciate not everyone is keen on poems!) not changed?  Your crushes? (What was that line from the movie Fever Pitch with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore… something like: “there isn’t anything I’ve wanted for years because when I was 7 I wanted to marry Scott Baio, and if I still did I would think that my life went terribly wrong.”  There is truth to this).  Maybe in college we drank boxed wine and liked it, and maybe we still do… or maybe we just haven’t compared it to anything else yet.  Get ready, palette, you have a year lifetime of comparing left.

What I Drank Last Night

The winter pond was beautiful: two inches of snow covered thick, black ice.  We strapped on our skates and glided out into the open air.  I couldn’t remember the last time the ice was just so smooth.  We raced back and forth across the lake, faster, faster, until our lungs burned with icicles.  We twirled, we jumped, we tried to figure out why we couldn’t spin well with our left foot in the lead, and could lefties perhaps have trouble with a right lead?  We lifted, we laughed, we flew… and then I flew.  Literally.  The snow had covered up a re-frozen ice-fishing hole, and the bumpy ripples of ice caught the toe pick of my right skate.  I was in the air a good four seconds, and before I knew what happened, I was on the ice, sliding towards open water.

Don’t worry, I didn’t fall in, but I couldn’t stand up either.  My left knee was all sorts of black and blue within minutes, and I had a goose-egg size bump on the top.  My dad thought it may even be broken (it wasn’t), but now, four days later, I’m limping and cursing like a sailor (still!).  The good news?  Instead of painkillers, I’ve been on the wine!  (OK, no one take this the wrong way: I’m drinking responsibly.  I’m just saying I’d rather have a glass of wine than painkillers, and mixing wine and painkillers seemed like a sure way to torture my stomach.  All in all, I must not be that bad if I can hold out till cocktail hour with this knee pain!).

So last night was a Kings Ridge Pinot Noir 2009 from Oregon.  Retails for under $20.

Color: very light red, It could almost be mistaken for Rose.  OK, not really, but it was a lot lighter than I was anticipating.

Nose (see how technical I’m getting now!): almost a hint of smoke?, cherries, strawberries?, sugar? smells sweet like Neapolitan ice cream- you know that fake chocolate/strawberry smell I’m talking about?

Taste: sweetish- like an unripe plum where it’s confusingly sweet and sour at the same time.  Weird to say, but maybe tangerines?  Watermelon?  Tobacco, maybe leather?  Basically, I have no idea.

As you can see, my nose, palette, and eyes had no idea where to start (or end) with this one.  Overall, I didn’t love it, but maybe it’s because I couldn’t really figure it out.  I felt like even with a bit of swishing across my tongue, the flavor concentrated in the back of my mouth.  (Like the wine missed the side and front, like when you do a shot and you just want it down your throat… the problem was, I didn’t want this!).  Wine Spectator and International Wine Cellar (July/August 2011) both gave it 87 points out of 100.  International Wine Cellar had this to say about it: “Light red.  Red berries and cherry on the nose, complicated by notes of woodsmoke and herbs.  Light-bodied and dry, offering taut red fruit flavors that could be more filled in.  Finishes on a smoky note, with good tangy cut and a slightly tart edge.  A solid value for Oregon pinot.”

I mean, I guess that’s sort of what I found with this wine?  For me, though, it’s not something I would drink again.  It tasted less expensive than it was (and it wasn’t that expensive), and I found the after taste a bit unpleasant.

So, this wasn’t really a positive review, and it does support the fact that wine does not all taste the same, because I will be remembering this one, and not in a good way.  Perhaps the “all wine tastes the same” is more “good wine is interchangeable, but you’ll remember the one you don’t like”.  I’ll work on that slogan.

PS- my knee isn’t that bad, so don’t panic too much about my limping 🙂

What I Drank Last Night

Welcome to February!  Where did the time go?  So I managed to forget to drink wine between my last post and this.  Oops.  Somehow the week just got away from me.  That said, I did pick up two more books on wine, but these are of a different vein.  One is called The Wild Vine by Todd Kilman.  Apparently it is the story of “a forgotten grape and the untold story of American wine”.  The second is called In Search of Bacchus: Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism by George M. Taber.  Now that sounds like a book I wish I had thought to write!  So, I’m excited to read both!

In other news, I drank wine last night 🙂  It was Lyeth Chronology 2009 Grand Reserve from Sonoma.  The front of the bottle said Cabernet Sauvignon, the back informed me that it was, in fact, 87% cab sauv and 13% Malbec… is that allowed?  Why isn’t it a “red blend” like in French wines (yeah, French wine week didn’t turn out so well, eh? I think I need French wine month… or year!  Turns out we have more California wines in our Cellar, and since I’ll be moving to the UK soon, I’ll stick with those wines for now.  French wines may be cheaper in England!).   Back to it.

Lyeth Chronology 2009 Grand Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. 14.5% alcohol.  Retails about $34.

Looks: dark red, very pretty (nice notes there, eh? Not as descriptive as I’d like, but hey ho).

Smells: black cherry, raspberry, chocolate, it’s deep

Taste: Black cherry, tree bark?, plum, oak, black currant

Drinking Time: Watching the Big Bang Theory and having a glass of wine- is there a better Thursday Night?

Wine Spectator rated this particular wine a 91/100.  That’s pretty good.  I really enjoyed this wine.  It was smooth, but bright, very enjoyable.  This is going to sound so cheesy, but each sip gave me that feeling when one receives a smile from a stranger, like a little jostle of electricity, enough of a kindness that if one is having a terrible day, it changes the day around, and if one is already having a great day, it just makes the day that much happier.  If that’s not a cheerful review of a wine, I don’t know what is.

Back to Wine Spectator: Here is their quote.  Rated as Outstanding: a wine of superior character and style. “A little soft and herbal, in the way of certain Sonoma Cabernets, but incredibly rich, offering a heady array of flavors. Blackberries, blueberries, chocolate, sweet red licorice, pepper and toasty oak all mingle and make the wine rewardingly delicious. Seems best now and for the next few years.” June 2012 (Yes! I picked up on the chocolate, oak, and blackberries… You caught me… I said black cherries and black currants, but that’s pretty close, right?)

Here is what the winery says: “The red fruit aromatics of this wine are complemented by hints of spice and perfume on the nose. Enticing flavors of brown sugar and crème brulée accent a soft mid-palate while structured tannins and a long finish make this balanced wine perfect to serve with filet mignon.”  (OK, so I’m not sure about the filet mignon being a vegetarian and all, and I definitely didn’t get brown sugar OR creme brulee from the palette… uh-oh).

But my favorite review is this from Wired for Wine: “Suit up wine lovers; you do NOT want to miss this “rewardingly delicious” showstopper.”  I think that’s a pretty fair analysis: I love the “suit up” aspect.  This wine may have deserved more than my sweatpants and the couch, but l damn well enjoyed it.  It almost makes me regret not having a glass of wine since exactly 8 days previous!

But that shall all change because there is drinking to be done tonight… I am either going to be celebrating something fabulous or commiserating not getting the fabulous thing… Either way, I feel I’m in for a treat if I can find another wine as lovely as Chronology.  (Sad side note, apparently only 584 dozen were made of this particular bottle… assuming “dozen” means bottle?… That’s only 7008 bottles of this wine…. and since we drank one last night, that’s only 7007 left in the world!  That’s sad news for anyone who has not yet gotten to drink it.  So far in this year of wine, this wine is my favorite.  How’s that for praise?)

So, from where I’m sitting it’s looking like not all wine does taste the same.  I can’t really pinpoint why that is yet (probably something to do with why not all soda tastes the same, but you know where I’m going with this?).  More investigating/research (*cough*drinking*cough*) is, obviously, necessary.

What I Drank Last Night: French 2

“Vibrant, Generous, Alluring”.  This is how the Moet and Chandon website describes their classic Imperial Champagne, which is (almost) what I drank last night.  At the suggestion of my tasting partner, my younger brother (K), I will format these posts with a bit more clarity: smell/taste/look, and then all the “words”.  So, without adieu:

Moet & Chandon White Star Champagne Epernay, France non-vintage.  12% alcohol.  It’s not cheap, but for Champagne I suppose not-that-expensive, retailing at $49.99

Looks: dark yellow, small, fast moving bubbles

Smells: “not much of a nose” (Dad), “sugar and grape juice” (Mom), “apricot and flowers” (me), and, my favorite, K: It smells like “alcohol”.  Nice.

Taste: (All me here) Granny Smith Apples, pears?, apricot… and Kevin: “What do apricots taste like? I know what dried apricots taste like and this is sort of like that, but not really.” So I’m going with apricots must be in there somewhere!

K’s overall description of the wine itself is this: “It’s better when it’s less bubbly.  It’s stereotypical champagne with a slight taste of apricots”.

Winemaker’s notes from wine.com: “White Star is a balanced blend of three wine varieties, revealing a harmonious succession of sensations, a soft maturity, and elegant lines. Soft and mature aroma of white fruits, like peaches and pears, and hints of nuts.”* (see note below)

Hmmm, between our notes and the winemaker’s… “stereotypical champagne” seems reasonable- so “all wine tastes the same” category.  What makes it “stereotypical”?

Let’s start with location.  Champagne is the northernmost winemaking region in France with 43, 680 acres of vineyards (C.W.C page 195).  Because of it’s northern location, the grapes are picked with a higher acidity, which helps give champagne it’s distinctive taste.  There are three types of grapes that can be used when making Champagne: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay.  Interesting to note is that only sparkling wines that come from the region of Champagne may be “Champagne”.  According to Complete Wine Course, “Some American producers have borrowed the name “Champagne” to put on the label of their sparkling wines.  These cannot and should not be compared with Champagne from France” (page 195).  So, right away, I’m back to the “all wines taste the same” and my scale is leaning towards… no.  If all wine tasted the same, should American sparkling be compared to French sparkling on an even playing field?  But, in that same vein, American sparkling may be distinctive from French sparkling, but what’s stopping one champagne from tasting just like the next? They are from the same region and made of the same 3 grapes!  That will have to be a lesson for another day as I only had the one bottle of Champagne and no comparison.

So what’s good about Champagne? It’s acidity: the acidity in Champagne stimulates the palate before you eat.  More importantly, Champagne seems to be a “woman’s drink”, and women seem to deserve much of Champagne’s international credit.  Madame de Pompadour said that Champagne was “the only drink that left a woman still beautiful after drinking it.”  And Madame de Parabere said that Champagne was “the only wine to give brilliance to the eyes without flushing the face.”  And my favorite… Madame Lilly Bollinger when asked by a London reporter when she drank Champagne, “I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad.  Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone.  When I have company I consider it obligatory.  I trifle with it when I’m not hungry and drink it when I am.  Otherwise I never touch it– unless I’m thirsty.”

According to Complete Wine Course, Moet is a “medium” wine, and Moet & Chandon was the number one champagne house in shipment to the USA in 2010.  This sparkling wine, price wise and by numbers sold, does seem to be a wine that falls under the category “all wine tastes the same”.  It’s drinkable, but leaves nothing to be desired.  I did not taste the wine and immediately want another sip, in fact, had someone filled my glass with something else, there is a chance I wouldn’t have noticed I was drinking something different.  What I found incredibly interesting about the White Star Moet itself is that in every one of my cocktail recipe books, the champagne called for in each recipe was the Moet White Star.  This leads me to believe that the wine can either hold its own against various flavors, or instead lend itself to these other flavors found in cocktails.

There was SO much more in my reading about Champagne than will really fit into this blog post (the different grapes, the variation of technique, what does vintage mean?, styles, etc. etc.), so I have a feeling this year will probably include a lot more bubbly- mostly because I like it, but also because it intrigues me.  Why does Champagne served at weddings always taste so terrible?  How did a bottle of Dom Perignon change Champagne?  Why is Champagne that much better than its Italian cousin Prosecco, or American Sparkling wine, for that matter?  In fact, is it better?   Is Rose Champagne any good or is it just a “sweet, girly drink”? Vintage vs. non-vintage vs. Prestige?  The list goes on.  What I’ve discovered so far is that Moet isn’t my favorite, but I wouldn’t say no if someone offered me a glass.  I’ve also learned that Champagne and sparkling wines may require a month of research on their own, not just a glass during my “French Wine Week”.  And it’s Thursday already!

Before I go, I will let you in on a tiny secret.  The family went out to dinner last night (after our Champagne tasting), and we drank a Pinot Noir from Oregon.  More on that later.

*Note Below regarding the wine.com review.  The reviews from White Star drinkers say that White Star is no longer being produced under that name, and Moet Imperial does not taste the same.  I couldn’t find White Star on the Moet website, so I’m not sure if I just drank the last bottle of Moet White Star on the planet (assuming we don’t have a few more bottles somewhere our cellar) because that review was from 2010.  Also, wine.com says that they are sold of out that vintage, and who knows how long that’s been!  If anyone has ideas or thoughts, comment below!

What I Drank Last Night: French Wine 1

On Sunday, Mom and I cracked open a bottle of Chateau du Retout haut-medoc 2009, the first French wine of 2013!  It was labeled a “red bordeaux wine”, which I knew from my research yesterday that it could be anything Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, or Malbec… and it was a mix of three grapes: 53% Cabernet Sauvignon 28% Merlot, and 19% Petit Verdot.  The wine is 14% alcohol, and retails for about $17.95.

So where to begin?  We opened the wine just before dinner of homemade pizza.  I think I probably made the cardinal sin of mixing wines in the fact that the pizza sauce had a California Pinot Noir in it.  Oops.  But back to France…

The wine smelled sharp- like berries, plums maybe, and oak/wood.  It smelled (and I quote myself here) “yummy”.  Mom spelled black cherry, dark plum, and dirt.  It tasted heavy: the tannins’ raced right to the back of your tongue, zingy!  It was really heavy.  I had trouble writing down tasting notes on this one: it was a blend of flavors I don’t recognize.  I want to say citrus? Would it go well with guacamole?  Did I just want to eat guacamole?  Mom said it had a “real earthy taste… a thick taste.  Really dry maybe?  It gets right to the middle of my tongue.”  Honestly, I don’t really know what that means.  “Thick” isn’t something I automatically comprehend when it comes to liquid.  I mean, maybe if it was a smoothy, but a red wine?  I’ll have to keep that in mind.

I had made dark chocolate brownies the day before, and while we waited for our pizza to bake, mom cut a piece of the brownie and handed it to me, “try it with this,” she said.  I took a bite… and was surprised how perfectly the chocolate complemented the wine.  The slight sweetness of the bitter chocolate cut right into the acidity of the wine and made the wine super smooth.  That “thick” feeling was gone.

A quick google search brought me to the Chateau du Retout website, where there was a review of the 2009 bottle we were drinking:

“Pure and racy, with a bright anise and violet frame to the fine-grained and well-integrated core of plum, red currant, fig and cherry fruit. Pretty flashes of iron and bitter cherry stretch out through the finish. This has a precision that sets is apart from the pack. Best from 2013 through 2021”. Score: 91 –JM

James Molesworth, In the March 31, 2011 Issuewww.winespectator.com

So perhaps we drank the wine a bit young, and perhaps I didn’t pull all that I could have from the wine, but I can say this much.  Of the three I’ve discussed so far this month, this one comes out on top.  French wine week is going well so far!

Wine for Dummies

OK, so, this is the internet… I can’t lie to you guys… since my last post I have had no wine.  I drank… beer.  Specifically, Hoegaarden (my favorite!) and Blue Moon.  Both, while delicious, I later regretted because how can pubs in NYC charge $8 a pint! I should have had the $15 glass of wine!  Either way, I haven’t had wine to my lips in a week or so.  I did borrow a few wine books from my father, so I’m not out of the game yet!

The first is called French Wine for Dummies.  It’s one of those books in the “for dummies” collection, and it’s by Ed McCarthy who is a “certified wine educator” and Mary Ewing-Mulligan who is a “master of Wine” and author of Wine for Dummies.  Know that I am armed with this “wine dummies” knowledge, I have decided to drink French wine this week, and see how it goes.

What I like about this Wine Dummies book is that the introduction starts by saying “French wines are a vast and confusing field– especially for people who don’t speak French, who are accustomed to seeing wine named after grape varieties (which most French wines aren’t), and who live an ocean away from the regions where French wines grow” (page 1).  Well, this sounds just like me!  Wasn’t I just saying in my last post about “Burgundy” vs. “Pinot Noir”, etc.?!  Turns out I may have been on to something.

I decided to consider French wine this week because, as it happens, “France produces more wine than any other country– except when Italy does” (page 15).  On average, France makes about 1.5 billion… yes, billion, gallons of wine each year, which is about 30% of all the wine produced in the entire world each year.  (It produces two times as much as California).  France has all sorts of wine- red, white, pink, and (my favorite!) bubbly- so I’ll have lots of options to choose from this week.  Looking over a list of regions of France vs. wine they have, I recognize a fair bit of the French areas.  I’m not sure for what reason I recognize them, but I do know that if I am in a restaurant and looking over a wine list where I recognize no names, I tend to choose a wine from a region I have heard of.  For example, I am a fan of Sauvignon Blancs, and, generally, my favorites are from New Zealand insomuch that when I drink a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, I tend not to dislike it.  So, if I don’t see a vineyard I know, I’ll pick a white from New Zealand.

Looking over the table of French regions, a few pop out  first and foremost: Alsace (but that could also be that there is a dog breed called Alsatian… sooo….), Rhone Valley, Bordeaux, Champagne, and Burgundy.  There are also some regions I have never heard of (as ignorant as this may make me sound, but I never claimed my French geography to be that great!): Lunguedoc, Beaujolais, and Loire Valley (though this one in particular I feel like I’ve hear it in passing, but unless associated with wine, I probably wouldn’t have gone “ah yes, French wine”).  There are loads of grape varieties and each is found in particular regions of France (some overlap).  For example, Chenin Blanc (a white wine) is mainly associated with the Loire Valley (hmmm, perhaps why I have heard of it), Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Blanc are all associated mainly with Alsace.  The same with red wines, Cabernet Sauvignon is mainly associated with Bordeaux, Southwest France, and Languedoc.  Malbec is associated with Southwest France and Bordeaux. Merlot is associated with Bordeaux, Southwest France, and Languedoc.

And then there are grape varieties I have never heard of which include: Cabernet Franc, Carignan, Cinsault, Gamay, and Mourvedre (all red wines), and Marsanne (a white wine).  This list is not all encompassing of wine varieties of France, but a start in figuring out how to separate whites from reds and grapes from location.

Here’s a cheeky little tip from the Wine Dummies book: “Wine lovers often use a shorthand in talking about French grapes: “Bordeaux Varieties” (generally used in reference to red varieties): Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet France, principally; Malbec and Petit Verdot are two minor red varieties of Bordeaux, “Red Rhone varieties”: syrah, grenache, sinsault, and mourvedre, “White Rhone varieties”: marsanne, roussanne, Grenache Blanc, and Voignier.  The wines of Bordeaux, the South of France, and the Rhone Valley (the larger, Southern Rhone, at least) are blends, made from several grape varieties in varying proportions.  When winemakers from other parts of the world use these varieties together, they sometimes describe their wines as being “Bordeaux blends” or “Rhone blends”, a more convenient lingo than naming all the varieties used.

Twenty days into 2013, and I have yet to taste a sip of wine from the largest wine-producing country (when it’s not Italy) in the world!  Unacceptable start to this year-of-wine experiment.  I hope to gain this week, a better knowledge of this vast field of French wine, including a more demonstrable consideration of my initial question “does all wine taste the same”.  Perhaps some blind tastings are in order this week… Dad, get your wine cellar ready 🙂