Errazuriz “Wild Ferment” Chardonnay 2007
Grape: Chardonnay
Region: Chile, Casablanca Valley
Winemaker: Errazuriz
Price: $20
One of my favorite songs by Mississippi John Hurt is an irreverently cute little ditty called “Funky Butt” that could be a modern hit as a dirty rap song, I think. It’s about what you’d think it’s about, and it features the line “open the window, let the funk go out,” which I can’t believe George Clinton never named an album after.
So what could this possibly have to do with wine? I thought of it in relation to the concept of wild fermentation, which, in essence, turns the phrase on its head:
Open the window, let the funk come in. read more…
I recently invited my chef friend (who cooks at Duplex in Minneapolis) over for some summer evening grilling and a glass or two of wine. I had bought a dozen giant white shrimp, a bottle of Spanish white wine, a baguette and some asparagus with no real idea how I would cook them, aside from a vague desire to use Spanish pimentón, or smoked paprika. I invited the right guy over, because while I bought the ingredients, he took over the kitchen prep, grilling, and plating, turning a mere meal into a thing of tasty beauty.
In the meantime, I came up with an idea for cocktails — albariño martinis — that is either an abomination or a creative breakthrough. (I’ll let you decide.) To explain the inspiration, I swear I taste a bit of green olive at the end of a mouthful of Martin Codax albariño — a brininess or salinity that I’ve noted in other albariños. While in Galicia in northwestern Spain, I heard it more eloquently described as a lingering taste of the sea spray carried off the estuaries by the ocean breeze and onto the vineyards. Or something like that. read more…
Luccarreli Salice Salentino 2008
Winemaker: Terre di Sava
Region: Apuila (or Puglia)
Grape: Negroamaro, Malvasia Nera
Alcohol content: 13%
Price: $12
I googled “Salice Salentino” and found this article by Alan Boehmer, who asks rhetorically if this is “the world’s greatest value wine?” He certainly thinks so, and while I think the pool of candidates is too full to crown any one, my taste this 2008 offering tells me it’s very near the top of the list. read more…
Before our trip to Portugal and northwestern Spain, I knew there was port — you know, the sweet, plummy dessert wine — and that there was a town it was named for, and that the town was not called “Port,” but “Porto” (but not Oporto, in Portuguese, I didn’t know that).
I knew very little about the Douro River until we walked the three blocks downhill from the Hotel da Bolsa to the riverside into the heart of the UNESCO world heritage site, where the stacks of old-world apartments overlook the water like an urban cliff-face — where old women in house dresses stood watching from French balconies hung with laundry, like they’d lived there their whole lives and were amused, if not befuddled, to see it had become the most prime real estate in town. Which was probably true. read more…
‘La Cueille’ Vin du Bugey-Cerdon
Grape: Gamay
Region: France, Savoie
Winemaker: Patrick Bottex
Price: $20
Translated as “the pick” from French, ‘La Cueille’ is the name of a sweet, spritzer-like rosé from the Savoy region in Eastern France. I bet this is a wine that could please a wide range of folks, from wine enthusiasts to white zinfandel fans to my mother, who gets red-faced and giggly after half a wine cooler. read more…
Finca Las Moras Malbec 2008
Grape: Malbec
Region: Argentina, San Juan, Tulum Valley
Winemaker: Finca Las Moras
Price: $3.99 ($39.99/case) on sale, average $6
I don’t recommend polishing off a whole bottle of wine (even over the course of a long evening — not unheard of, I know) any more than I condone eating the four extra pieces of bacon left over from a meal preparation. That said, in the following instance, I have no regrets.
read more…
Before I get into a few of our favorite sparkling wines and timely champagne recommendations from the New York Times, let me share a tasting trick that is sure to impress this New Year’s Eve.
Of all the complicated practices employed in the rating of wine, perhaps the most arcane is the BSI scale, used to measure the quality of sparkling wines.
Standing for “bubbles per square inch” (what other indicator would that acronym represent?), BSI is simply a count of the concentration of bubbles in your bubbly — the more and the smaller, the better. And while the proven practice goes back hundreds of years, it’s an easy test anyone can perform to impress the guests at a wedding, the sommelier at an expensive restaurant, or, of course, your New Year’s Eve guests. read more…
Casa Solar Tempranillo 2007
Grape: Tempranillo (Tinta Roriz)
Region: Spain
Winemaker: Cosecheros y Criadores
Price: $16 (3 liter box)
Casa Solar is the red wine that was served at our wedding, which should tell you something. Either I’m a terminal fool when it comes to wines palatable for grand occasions, or (my preference): this wine, despite the price, passes the taste test. read more…
Evel Branco, white Douro win
Evel Branco
Grapes: malvazia fina, conzelinho, gouveio, moscatel
Region: Portugal, Douro
Winemaker: Real Companhia Velha
Price: $12.99
We were seated at the small sidewalk table outside the tiny, family-run restaurant next to the grill, where the cook was flipping the fish and sausages that would soon be our lunch. We were drinking white table wine from the small pitcher brought by the server, trying to decipher the chalkboard menu, before we heard our first non-Portuguese words.
We’d gotten this far (me, my wife, her brother and his wife) through an exchange of smiles and hand gestures, but luckily, a man at the next table noticed our complete lack of Portuguese and helped us order two seafood dishes. Then, like a gracious guide, he turned to the table wine.
Don’t even drink that, he told us; he would order us a better bottle of the local white. “That’s wine without grapes,” he said. read more…
I’ve tasted a few grüners recently — the Austrian whites that seem to be the “in” wine this summer (UPDATE: in a follow-up to his July tasting of grüners, Eric Asimov noted that grüners were the “next big thing” five years ago. I’ll let you know what this summer’s hot white was in 2014) but until the Berger we packed into our cooler for the 5-hour drive to Ely, MN, I hadn’t found one that came in a fat, 1-liter bottle topped off with a beercap.
It was my kind of wine bottle. read more…
