Oregon Sparkling Wine

Once a year, I get together with a few girlfriends who are otherwise scattered across the country leading busy lives in different states. These are not outrageous lets-go-dancing-all-night or lets-go-to-vegas weekends.
The Husband has actually started referring to these all-female getaways as "Girls Gone Mild" weekends, ever since he realized (happily, I think) the wildest thing that usually happens is we stumble upon a sea sponge on the beach.

For my girlfriends and I, the weekend is solely about hunkering down, blocking out our regular lives and focusing on the things we really love most: eating, drinking and talking. Since what we talk about is not for public consumption and what we eat is mostly cheese and chocolate (this year, Seastack from Mt. Townsend Creamery and truffles from Fran's Chocolates) I'm going to expand on what we drank: J.Albin sparkling wine from Oregon.

Oregon sparkling wine gets better and better every year - if you've tasted any of the sparkling wines from Argyle Winery you know what I'm talking about. J. Albin is a smaller venture (no website, even) and a little harder to find, but it's out there and incredibly tasty. By now we all know Oregon produces some great Pinot Noir - well, J. Albin's sparkling wine is blanc de noir, meaning it's made with Pinot Noir grapes. In this economy, a bottle of sparkling wine from Oregon might be considered special occasion stuff (prices start around $25/bottle) but it's worth the splurge and still less than Champagne from France. If you buy Champagne frequently or once in blue moon and tend to be drawn to bottles with a bright orange label, for the love of god, put the bottle down and buy sparkling wine that is not only tastier, but will teach you a little bit about what the great winemakers in Oregon are up to.

Move Over White Wine

The scenario is always the same. I'm intrigued by a recipe , I start to read it and imagine making it, and then I come to the ingredient that is always the kiss of death: 1/2 cup white wine. Aargh. When you're only an occasional white wine drinker and the other person in the house won't even touch the stuff, it seems like such a waste of wine and money to buy a bottle for 1/2 cup. I can't just stop making recipes that call for white wine, so I knew I had to find a solution. And like so many problems in life, I found the answer in a bottle of Champagne. Well, not Champagne exactly, but sparkling wine. An eight dollar bottle from Washington State's Domaine St. Michelle to be specific. Brut sparkling wines have the same crisp, dry taste as white wine, so why not use bubbly in a recipe instead of white wine? A dry Prosecco from Italy or Cava from Spain will work just as well and can often be found for around $10 or less. Buy a Champagne stopper to cork the bottle and your bubbly will last in the fridge for another 1-2 days. Cooking is all about improvising and making a recipe your own. And if you're someone who doesn't always love being in the kitchen, a glass of bubbly always makes it much more fun.

Half the Bottle, Twice the Fun

More is not always better.

With every birthday I celebrate (as I did last week) this bit of wisdom seems wiser and wiser. This is not to say I follow this advice religiously. Sometimes more of whatever it is you desire is pretty damn great. But recently when I’ve been in wine stores, I find myself drawn to the half-bottle section. Some nights, I don’t really want, or need, to open a full bottle of wine. Maybe because it’s a Tuesday night and I have to be up early the next day; Maybe because The Husband now insists (ahem) on only drinking martinis; Or maybe I just want to try a new wine but not invest in a full bottle.

It’s taken me a long time to take half-bottles seriously. They seemed like a waste of money and a waste of time. But I used to also think this about well-made shoes (money) and flossing (time). I’ve seen the error of my thinking with shoes and flossing (never buy cheap shoes; floss regularly) and I’ve seen it now with wine, too. Half-bottles (for those of us lacking slightly in restraint) are perfect portion control.

Half-bottles are exactly that: 375mL (two generous glasses of wine) to a full-bottle’s 750mL. Half-bottles are half the price, give or take a few dollars sometimes. Shopping the half-bottle shelves does limit your choices somewhat, but look around; some wine stores have a much larger selection than others. Reds, whites and bubblies from all types of grapes, all types of regions, and all prices ranges ($6.00 up into the hundreds) are out there.

Whether you’re eating at home or in a restaurant, half-bottles are also a great way to pair wine with food. Open a bottle of white for the first course (perhaps with a seafood appetizer?) and then a red for the second (steak and potatoes?). In this case, when you’re able to enjoy two wines at one meal, less really is more.

Horseradish Bloody Mary

The way I view the world, today is called "Nacho Sunday" not "Super Bowl Sunday." Watching the game (who are the teams again?) is simply an excuse to eat. I'm not really into the half-time show or the commercials either. But I am definitely into the nachos. Nothing fancy - just chips and cheese garnished with jalepenos, chopped tomatoes and beans. Some guac and salsa on the side. This day is also one of the few times in the year when I indulge in one of the few cocktails that is acceptable to drink for breakfast: The Bloody Mary. I like mine on the spicy side with the earthy flavor of fresh horseradish. You can buy horseradish root at almost any grocery store. I serve the Bloody Marys in a pitcher and let people add their own vodka. Pepper vodka is great, although regular vodka works just fine too. Serve with a celery stalk or pickled asparagus and a wedge of lemon.

Horseradish Bloody Mary
64 oz tomato juice (two large jars)
3 Tbsp grated horseradish root
1 Tbsp Tobasco sauce
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 tsp worcestershire sauce or soy sauce
5 grinds black pepper
1 grind or shake of salt

Beware the Stacks!

It’s that time of year again, when we all find ourselves running into wine stores for a bottle on the way to a party. Inevitably, stacked on the ends of the aisle are ginormous displays, cases stacked on cases of wines. The signs promise red wine bursting with some luscious red fruit or another and white wine with what they swear is pleasing acidity. Unless the wine on display is one you have tasted before and like, my holiday advice to you is this: Step away from the stacks. In most wine stores, my friends, the really good wine is in the aisles, never stacked on the ends. Wine stacked on the end is what the employees are supposed to sell because it makes money for the store. If the employees are truly wine lovers, however, what they want to sell you is the non-descript bottle somewhere on the shelf that they drank the other night and thought was fantastic. Here is a short list of a few affordable wines I’ve tasted recently (none of them stacked at my place of employment) and enjoyed:
Artazuri Garnacha, Navarra Spain, $10-13:A great balance of cherry fruit with tannins that are soft enough to be enticing but dry enough to keep the wine from being fruity.
Araucano Pinot Noir, Chile, $12-15: A good, affordable Pinot is hard to find. I brought this one to Thanksgiving dinner and my family lapped it up. Lots of fruit with a little spice. Made by the French brothers Jacques & Francois Lurton who make wine in five different countries.
Domaine du Bel Air “Jour de Soif” Cabernet Franc, Loire Valley $13-16: Organically farmed, this light-bodied red hints at jammy fruit then quickly turns minerally and musty. A nice English Cheddar, or better yet a French sheep's milk cheese, would be a great pairing.
Domaine du Salvard Sauvignon Blanc & Chardonnay blend,Cheverny France, $12-15: Tangy, minerally and light. An elegant looking and tasting bottle.
Trapiche Malbec, Argentina, $7-10: Rich fruit with a little kick to it. Trapiche also makes a Cabernet and a Chardonnay, but I haven’t tried them yet.
Cuvee Jean Philippe Brut, Blanquet de Limoux, $11-13: If you’re like me and love Champagne but can only afford those expensive bottles once or twice a year, Jean Philippe will become your new best friend. The sparkling wine is from the somewhat obscure appellation of Limoux in southern France and made with the even more obscure grape, Mauzac, with a little Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc blended in. The people in Limoux (Limouxians?) claim to have started putting wines through a second fermentation in the bottle to create bubbles long before the region of Champagne ever started doing it. Who knows if this is true - all I know for sure is this bubbly is cheap and good, with a rich texture and yeasty,green apple flavor.

Red Wine Headaches

Whenever I get a headache from drinking wine, I have no one to blame but myself. The equation is simple:
One or two (or three) glasses too many = pounding head.

For me, avoiding the headache is simply a matter of self-control. Not so, however, for countless unlucky wine lovers who seem to get a headache just by looking at a bottle of wine. Red wine takes all the blame, but why?
Many consumers mistakenly place the blame on sulfites. Sulfur dioxide is a naturally occurring substance in wine, produced during fermentation. Most winemakers also add additional sulfites to prevent oxidation, which affects wine’s flavor and stability. There is no such thing as sulfite free wine, but there is a growing market for wine with no additional sulfites added. I haven’t tried too many, but one I can recommend is Casa Barranca’s Arts and Crafts Red. What you’ll get from a bottle of Arts and Crafts Red is a delicious wine, but not one that will cure your headache woes. Unless you are an asthmatic or have a severe allergy to sulfites, there are really no studies out there linking sulfites with headaches.
When I was in culinary school the wine instructor blamed headaches on histamines, and said a sure way to avoid a headache was by popping an anti-histamine like Benadryl before you went to bed after a night of drinking. Many foods contain more histamine than wine, but alcohol can exacerbate the effects of histamine in the system.The Oxford Companion to Wine,a hefty 800-page wine bible, also brings up the matter of histamines, although wisely points out (unlike my wine instructor) that taking an anti-histamine is not recommended when you’re drinking, so you’re better off drinking wines with low histamines levels. Histamines are found in the skins of grapes. Red wine contains more histamines because in order to color the juice red, the wine must soak with the dark colored grape skins.
The Oxford Companion also blames phenolics, which “liberate the chemical messenger 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin) which plays a part in the initiation of migraine.” Phenolics are chemical compounds found in the juice and pulp of grapes, and in much higher levels in grape stems, seeds and skins. For red wine, it’s a double phenolic whammy: phenolics are more abundant in dark-skinned grapes to start with, and then the wine picks up even more phenolics when the juice is soaking with the dark grape skins to add color. While the phenols may give you a headache, they are also the reason red wine is so heart healthy and packed with antioxidants.
This week, a study was released by a group of chemists who have nominated “several culprits for ‘red wine headache,’ including biogenic amines like tyramine and histamine.” Their studies are not entirely conclusive, but they warn headache sufferers to stay away from pretty much everything that makes my life worth living: wine, sake, chocolate, cheese, olives, nuts and cured meats. All of these things contain high levels of amines.
But there is hope. Kind of. The chemists have created a device that can determine amine levels in about five minutes. The device currently only works with liquids (so you can’t test that wedge of cheese) and is about the size of a briefcase. A smaller, hand-held version is being developed, and researchers say you could “take it to a restaurant and test your favorite wines.” But I can tell you that no server in their right mind will open a bottle of wine so a diner can test out their hand-held amine detector. And if the wine has too many amines, what are you going to do, send it back? Perhaps more realistically, the scientists also say the device could be used to test wine before it is bottled, and the amine level could be listed on the label.
Ultimately, I don’t know how useful this study is. But I do love that food and wine has become a topic of discussion in the otherwise dull-sounding “Journal of Analytical Chemistry,” where this study was published. And I don’t think headache sufferers should despair. There’s an exciting and delicious world of low-amine beer and white wine out there just waiting to be discovered!

Location, Location, Location

This week at work I tasted three Napa Valley Cabernets, all three costing between $20.00 - $30.00, and all three were wines that I did not feel the least bit bad about spewing into the spit bucket.
If I got on a plane, I could be in Napa Valley in just over an hour. The French wine I am drinking right now is half the cost and twice as good. How, I ask, is it possible for a guy in France to grow grapes, harvest them, turn them into wine, buy a bottle, buy a label to put on the bottle, buy a cork to seal the bottle, ship it across the world, and then still have that bottle show up on a shelf at a retail cost of $16.00? Why can’t our friends up in Napa do that?
Real estate, baby.
Livin’ in Napa ain’t cheap, whether you’re a person or a grape.That guy in France is probably pulling his grapes from a vineyard that is sitting on land that was paid off a hundred years ago or so. His land is less costly to own, therefore his grapes are less costly to grow, therefore you can buy his wine for $16.00. Not so for a winemaker in Napa.
It’s a simple and obvious fact that the cost of grapes is one of the things that affects the cost of wine, but one that consumers often forget about in the wine aisle. Sometimes you are paying for an address, and that’s it. Drinking those Napa Cabs this week was like living in Manhattan in a crappy little shoebox studio apartment. Sure, you live in Manhattan. But some guy living in the far outskirts of Brooklyn probably has a much nicer apartment, for a quarter of the rent. When you’re apartment or house shopping, it pays to venture into lesser known neighborhoods; likewise, when you’re shopping for wine, the real bargains are usually from regions that are a little less hyped up. The $16.00 wine I'm drinking tonight is French, but is it from from Bordeaux or Burgundy? Nope, it’s from the much lesser known region of Anjou.
In the states, that same theory applies. In my opinion, if you venture out of Napa Valley, the odds of finding a wine that is both affordable and delicious go up. According to my buddies at Wine Press Northwest,Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in the Napa Valley cost upwards of $2,266 per ton. Roughly speaking, one ton of grapes makes around 700-750 bottles of wine. That puts the cost of the juice itself at less than $4.00. But then factor in labor and rent and supplies and the general cost of doing business in an area like the Napa Valley, and charging $20.00 for a bottle of wine doesn't put a lot of money back in the winemaker's pocket. Winemakers in regions like Napa simply have to charge more for their wine to survive. In comparison, if a winemaker in Washington State wants to buy Cabernet grapes, Wine Press says it will cost them only about $1,261 per ton. In Sonoma County, Pinot Noir grapes cost $2,507 per ton. In Oregon, on average, it costs around $2,130. Now, Pinot Noir grapes from Washington State cost a measly $910 per ton, but this doesn't mean you should run out and stock up on Washington Pinots (if you’re actually able to find any). Washington has a hard time growing a good Pinot grape, so buying a bottle of Washington Pinot is likely to be more of a mistake than a bargain. Like all purchases, educate yourself first and if a deal seems too good to be true, it usually is.
Continue to buy Napa Valley wines: there are some truly delicious wines made in Northern California that don’t cost an arm and a leg.(Joel Gott is one to check out) But in comparison, wines from the Northwest often give you more for your dollar. This might not be the case for much longer. So get in, while the gettin’s good.

Milking It

I have to admit the first time I bought Straus Family Creamery half and half, it was the cute factor that got me. Who can resist a tiny glass milk bottle with a picture of a little cow on the front? Pouring cream into my coffee from a bottle like this one just makes me feel good, and it also makes me feel nostalgic; for what, I don’t know, since I’ve never lived on a farm and grew up in an era when the Milk Man left plastic jugs that didn’t have the satisfying clink of glass bottles. But charm isn’t the only thing glass bottles have going for them. Glass is easier on the environment than plastic or paper cartons. The bottles can be recycled, or, if you buy a brand like Straus, return it to the store and it will be returned to the creamery, sterilized, and re-used. Glass does not impart any flavor into the milk, like a plastic bottle might, and glass stays cold longer than a paper carton does, which keeps your milk colder and fresher when it’s traveling between the store and your home (or sitting out on the counter). It is true that light causes a chemical reaction in milk that diminishes some flavor and nutrients, but I’ve decided to file this information in the “life’s too short to be worried about everything” category. Maybe milk in glass bottles loses a few vitamins, but I like to think that the milk from Straus Creamery (a family-owned company with completely organic practices) has more nutrients to begin with; if it loses a few, its still healthier than most of the milk out there from god-only-knows-where. Parents who are buying glass bottles for themselves are also buying glass baby bottles for the wee ones. Increased sales in glass baby bottles can be traced to alarming (but still potentially unfounded) fears that hard plastic baby bottles release the chemical bisphenol into milk. It wasn’t this complicated in the good ol’ days. My Mom remembers being a kid on the farm and squirting milk directly from the cow into her mouth. She swears that no cream she’s had since has been as good. As much as I love Straus Family Creamery’s half and half, I have to say that my Mom probably has a point.

Chilling Out

The thing about drinking wine is there are too many rules. Drink red with this and white with that, age this wine, serve that wine in only this specific glass; its enough to take all the fun out of it. The other night, feeling rather rebellious and more importantly, extremely hot and sweaty from a day of 100 degree heat, I put a bottle of red wine in the refrigerator for an hour before opening it. And you know what? It was delicious! This wasn’t an expensive bottle – I wouldn’t recommend putting a $40.00 Pinot Noir from Oregon in the fridge – but for my $7.00 Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon, it was the perfect solution. I didn’t feel like drinking white yet I wanted something refreshing, and since in your own home there aren’t any wine police that will come rushing out when you break a wine “rule,” why not chill a red a little? After all, there are some reds, like French Beaujolais,, that do have a tradition of being chilled which proves that even the French aren’t entirely opposed to the idea. In fact, Americans are often accused of serving red wine too warm and white wine too cold. Keeping a bottle of white submerged in a bucket of ice or stored indefinitely in your fridge can kill any delicate nuances of flavor. Serving red wine at room temperature, as is common practice, means serving it at a temperature that is below 68 degrees. I guarantee you, my house the other night was well above 68 degrees, so that poor bottle needed some time in the fridge. A co-worker I once had at a wine store swore that the best thing to do with a cheap, red party wine was to put a slight chill on it. The reason? You know how you’re always being told to bring cheese up to room temperature before eating it so the flavor will be more pronounced? Well, the opposite of this theory can be applied to wine. That $7.00 Cabernet I bought is a decent wine and one I drink often, but not every flavor in it is absolutely amazing. In this case, I don’t mind if some of the wine’s flavor is toned down a bit, and chilling it does just that. If you try chilling a red at your next dinner party, be prepared for people to start whispering and throwing disapproving glances your way. They’ll try to make you feel like your doing something wrong, but don’t listen to them. They obviously have no idea how to live outside the rules and have a little fun.

Kombucha

I am always suspicious of anything that comes out of Beverly Hills, especially if the word "miracle" is attached to it. How can it be, then, that my drink of choice this summer is both?

I can't vouch for any claims the product makes of miracle cures, but I can vouch that Synergy Organic and Raw Kombucha is the most refreshing beverage I've had in a long time.

Like many things Hollywood claims as theirs (anyone see the movie The Departed?) Kombucha originated somewhere else, as far back as 250 BC in China. Kombucha is a Western word used to describe a fermented tea. Among other numerous health claims, it contains probiotic cultures, the same type of good bacteria and yeast found in yogurt that can do wonders for the digestive system. When you drink Synergy's Kombucha, there will be a few soft chunks of yeast still floating around.
If you've been avoiding soda because it tastes like the equivalent of sucking on a dozen sugar cubes, then this drink might be for you. The flavor is much more acidic than sweet, almost vinegar-like, but in a good way. It's very fizzy, to the point where drinking it too fast can give you that brain-freeze feeling (again, in a good way). Some people claim they feel "mild euphoria, relaxation, and an overall sense of physical and mental well-being" after a few sips, which is probably attributed to the fact that Kombucha has trace amounts of alcohol (from .5%-1.7%). "Mild euphoria" is pushing it a little, but while drinking Synergy Kombucha I have experienced that same calming feeling you get after you've had a long day and then come home and have a few sips of wine. Mainly I like it because it tastes better than any bottled juice, sports drink, or soda I've tasted. Almost every store I walk into these days seems to have the slim, glass bottles of Synergy Kombucha next to the chilled water and soda. Get out there and buy a bottle before all the kids are doing it and you'll be too embarrassed to be seen drinking the stuff. I have this weird feeling that when Lindsay Lohan makes it out of rehab she won't be carrying her trademark water bottle anymore, she'll be holding a bottle of Synergy Kombucha.

Gin and Cheese

Let me first be clear that gin and cheese have nothing in common except for being two of my favorite things. I don't recommend pairing them together but if, for example, you were at a cheese and wine tasting and then later that afternoon needed something to refresh your palate, well, gin might be just the thing.
It all began this past Saturday at the Seattle Cheese Festival, a yearly gathering of cheese geeks at Pike Place Market. At the festival, cheesemakers from all over the Pacific Northwest sample and sell their products and seminars are offered throughout the day. I attended a seminar that paired six Pacific Northwest artisan cheeses with four different northwest wines and discussed the best cheese and wine combinations. At the very beginning of the seminar, one of the instructors said something that summed up my own personal cheese and wine pairing philosophy: "If you like the cheese, and you like the wine, you'll probably like the pairing."

As someone who has at various times made her living suggesting cheese and wine pairings to people, I'm going to let you all in on a little secret: there are very, very few cheese and wine combinations that are so gastly they will ruin your night. At a cheese and wine tasting seminar people take a bite of cheese and a little sip of wine and furrow their brow and think very hard about all the flavors in their mouth. In real life, people don't eat that studiously. Since cheese and wine are such natural companions, most any combination you put together will taste pretty darn good. So what I found most enjoyable about the tasting at the Cheese Fest was not the pairing of the wines and cheeses, but the opportunity to taste cheeses that are difficult or completely impossible to find outside of Washington or Oregon. I can't refer you to stores across the country where all of you can taste these cheeses because most artisanal cheesemakers only make enough cheese to sell to a handful of local stores and restaurants. This, I think, is actually a great thing. It's exciting to witness the growth of regional foods and wines that have to be enjoyed in the place they are made. I also love that artisanal cheesemakers are committed to making small batches of their products by hand, rather than opening a huge factory so their cheese can be sold all over the country. If, however, you are ever in Seattle, you must stop at either DeLaurenti Market or Beecher's Cheese in Pike Place Market, which both offer a large selection of northwest cheeses.
The Seattle Cheese Festival is the type of event that inevitably leads to palate exhaustion. Too much wine and cheese can leave a girl parched, which leads to the gin... A friend I was staying with in Seattle served a thirst-quenching, refreshing cocktail that I highly recommend for summer sipping. If it wasn't raining so hard outside, we most definitely would have enjoyed our Basil Lavender cocktails sitting out on the deck. The base of the cocktail is Dry Soda, a lightly sweetened and subtly flavored soda available in lavender, rhubarb, lemongrass and kumquat. The company that makes Dry Soda is based in Seattle and currently sells their soda in the Pacific NW and California. We muddled minced basil leaves with gin, squeezed in some Meyer lemon, added ice and finished it off with the lavender soda. Any of the sophisticated Dry Soda flavors would pair well with either vodka or gin, and their low sugar content are a welcome change from syrupy-sweet mixers.

Coffee Snobbery

Admittedly, years of working in gourmet foods stores have given me somewhat of a particular palate. Still, I’ve never really considered myself a food snob. I enjoy a grocery store chunk of jalapeño Monterey Jack Cheese paired with a cheap beer, I still crave the hotdish my mom made out of ground hamburger and tater tots, and I’m certainly not above buying $5.00 olive oil at Trader Joes. But there is one area where I have to confess to full-fledged snobbery.
My name is Jenny and I am addicted to coffee.
Being that I still consider Seattle my hometown, this isn’t a big surprise. Some rumors about Seattle are not true (it really doesn’t rain everyday) and some are (people do wear fleece and running shoes to nice restaurants). And the rumor about the coffee? Completely true. Of all the cities I’ve lived in it is by far the easiest location to find a really good cup of coffee or a perfectly made espresso. For better or worse, this snobbery has been passed on to The Husband who has embarked on a personal mission to teach all baristas he encounters that a latte and a cappuccino are not the same thing. When we visit (or move to) a new city, the first mission is always staking out a good coffee joint. When we moved to Manhattan I thought the biggest challenge would be mastering the subway system. Contrer, Mon Frere. Turns out, finding a good cup o’ Joe in the big city is much, much harder. (so far, Think Coffee and The Tasting Room win) Thankfully, an influx of Pacific Northwest-trained baristas on the east coast have lifted the bar, especially in Brooklyn where The Husband finally found his perfect cappuccino (try St. Helen Cafe, or Gimme). On a recent visit to Chicago, I finally had the chance to visit Intelligentsia coffee shop, which also has a location in Los Angeles. I’d heard about Intelligentsia’s commitment to high quality coffee and espresso and to their growers around the world. They form personal relationships with their coffee bean growers and pay them at least 25% above the fair trading price for beans. What most astonished me about my visit, however, was when I was buying beans and the barista asked me what qualities I like in coffee, I stuttered and said, “Uh, I like it strong?” Me, who can think of hundreds of words to describe flavors in cheese and wine and who has been drinking two cups of coffee a day for most of my adult life, could not articulate the characteristics I love in a measly little coffee bean. The barista then said to me, “Strong isn’t actually a flavor” and I was officially humbled. He threw some words at me – fruity, smoky, chocolately – and somehow I still could not translate these words into tastes that came out of a cup of coffee. Did smoky mean that bad burnt flavor that Starbucks sometimes has? And fruity…have I ever tasted fruitiness in my morning cup? Chocolate…that sounded good, I guess.
I left with a pound of beans he recommended and a vow to start attending some of the Cupping seminars I’ve seen advertised at coffee shops like Peets and Victrola in Seattle. Cupping coffee is pretty much the same thing as wine tasting. It involves sniffing, slurping, comparing, and committing to memory what your senses have experienced. At this point, I may know how to taste when Pinot Noir is from Burgundy and when it’s from Santa Barbara, but I have no clue how tell if coffee is from Guatemala or Kenya. Since I am completely committed to being the coffee snob that I thought I was, hopefully this is something my palate will be able to pick up after some Cupping sessions. After that, the only remaining coffee mystery will be figuring out why coffee shops in New York don’t let you put your own milk in your coffee….

Pinot Blanc

It’s official. Spring is finally muscling its way in. I know this not because tiny buds are finally visible on the trees, not because I want to burn the sweater that five months ago I adored, and not because there was a brilliant blue swath of sky that mesmerized me on my walk home. I know that spring is here because I suddenly had an overwhelming desire for white wine.
Since starting this blog, I’ve given myself license to fulfill any craving I have at any time and I can’t recommend it enough. Sometimes I let the craving simmer and grow for a few days, but tonight I was all about instant gratification. I detoured into my neighborhood wine shop and left with a bottle of 2005 Kuentz-Bas Pinot Blanc from Alsace. What I didn’t realize until I got home was the name of the importer on the back, Kermit Lynch. I wasn’t surprised - I don’t know who Kermit is, but the guy’s got a good palate (and a great name). Over the years I have found that many of the moderately-priced French wines I enjoy have been imported by his company.
There are many great Pinot Blanc’s from regions in Italy, Germany, Austria, New Zealand and Oregon, but Pinot Blanc is especially known for being grown in Alsace, a region of France bordering mostly Germany and a little bit of Switzerland. Pinot Blanc from Alsace comes in the long, thin, green glass bottle that strikes fear in the heart of many wine buyers.
Repeat after me: tall thin bottle and green glass does not equal sweet wine.
It’s been said that Pinot Blanc can taste like Chardonnay, but frankly, I don’t buy it. To me, Pinot Blanc has a lot more acidity. It makes the back of your mouth sweat. And, it makes the perfect companion for the acidic tang of a fresh goat cheese. The flavor of Pinot Blanc leans towards apples and pears and a little apricot. There is a slight bitterness on the finish – it reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom would make apple pies. She’d peel green apples and I would sit in the kitchen and eat all the discarded peels that had a little bit of fleshy apple still attached to the tart and slightly bitter peel.
The texture is a little fuller-bodied than say, a Sauvignon Blanc. The texture of Sauvignon Blanc is like drinking non-fat milk; The texture of Pinot Blanc is like drinking 2%.
But enough wine lessons for the evening. Happy Spring, everyone.

White Bordeaux

You know how in movies women always fall for the inaccessible and dark, brooding man who is slightly standoffish and layered with complexities? And the decent looking (but not striking) friend who is available and friendly and fun struggles the whole movie to get attention? During these movies I usually want to root for the friend. He’s fun! And nice! But like in love, these qualities can be more of a burden than an asset for a wine. Be honest - when you hear the word Bordeaux is your first thought ever of white wine? Dry white wine from Bordeaux is made predominately with Sauvignon Blanc and in a style that many California SB producers have imitated: grassy, zingy, citrusy. A little bit of juice from Semillon and Muscadelle grapes is blended in to add richness and aromatics and sometimes a little fruitiness. Very expensive, complex and age-worthy dry whites from Bordeaux are out there, and maybe one day I’ll have enough money to buy them, but right now I’m enjoying the nice, fun bottles that are usually around $12. These wines are very light, making them perfect for lunch (does anyone really drink wine with lunch? If so, god bless you) or perfect for a warm night at the Hollywood bowl. If you have trouble conjuring up what the 2006 Chateau Lamothe de Haux Bordeaux Blanc tastes like just based on words (youthful, lively, grassy, citrusy), then instead, visualize yourself laying under a lemon tree in a patch of lush, bright green, spring grass next to a gurgling brook. For me, that is inexpensive white Bordeaux.

Viña Borgia 2005

My first sip of this wine immediately created the visual of frozen raspberries that had defrosted in a bowl, bright red juice pooling around tart berries. A raspberry plucked from the vine in the middle of summer is plump and juicy and ripe – that is not this wine. This is the raspberry that has let go of its sweetness and become a lean, tart berry. When I took a sniff, at first I thought the wine had a floral bouquet…then I realized I was smelling my hand lotion (that, my friends, is why professional tasters ban perfume and lotion). The bouquet is actually quite subtle, some bright red berries with a hint of cinnamon. The finish is very dry. And that’s about it – for $7.00 I don’t expect more complexity than that, and considering that this same wine would probably cost me a few dollars more for only l glass at a restaurant, I completely feel like I got my money’s worth. I suggest a chunk of cheese and/or cured meat to round out the rough edges. I find that most less expensive wines are not meant to be drunk without food. Like people, wine craves a companion. I also like the sexy label, as so many of the newer Spanish wines have. If you look on the back of the bottle you will see in small letters “Jorge Ordoñez Selection.” Ol’ Jorge does a fine job of bringing inexpensive ($6-$12) Spanish wines to the market. While they may not knock your socks off, many are as drinkable as higher priced domestic wines.