Liquid : Grapes

Meat Your New Drinking Buddy

Thor Iverson — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:12:00 GMT

Steak. Grill. Fire. The next word in this sequence is “Man,” isn’t it? In some ancient Cro-Magnon family, I’m sure there was someone poking a mastodon filet with a stick as the meat carbonized over a roaring (albeit newly invented) fire. That someone was a guy, of course. Hey, the tradition had to start somewhere …

But what was he drinking, you ask? It’s probably best that we not speculate. Instead, let’s talk modern times, in which any given evening will find men hunched over their $1500 eight-heating-zone grills, tweaking their roaring fire with a twist of a dial, then poking their free-range organic wagyu beef with a heat-resistant doohickey they picked up at Williams-Sonoma. Hey, it’s just like the cavemen, right? Man. Fire. Grunt.

Anyway, here’s what our modern pyromaniacal carnivore is drinking: zinfandel. No, not the sweet pink stuff. The real zinfandel. Boisterous, powerful, laden with alcohol, it’s the self-proclaimed life of the party … a guy’s wine for a guy’s slab-o’-cow. And here’s a great one from its best practitioner: the Ridge Zinfandel East Bench from the Dry Creek Valley. It goes well with mastodon, too. Pick up a bottle ($28.80-$37.99) at Kappy’s Fine Wine & Spirits (10 Revere Beach Parkway, Medford, 781.395.8888) or BLM Wine + Spirits (1354 Commonwealth Avenue, Allston, 617.734.7700).

Not to denigrate anyone who likes “white” zinfandel … though you’d think someone would have pointed out that lurid pink isn’t quite the same thing as white … but zin has always done better in its ruddiest form. It was what European immigrants grew as they sought their fortunes in California’s hills, valleys, and mountains a century or so ago because it was incredibly versatile. It could be their crisp Chianti, their Sicilian fruit bomb, albeit a fun and fruity one.

Then there was Prohibition, and wine nearly faced extinction. But zinfandel, at least in grape form, didn’t, because it was planted on random slopes and in hidden pockets that tax inspectors couldn’t quite reach. As a result, there are more than a few zinfandel vineyards in California that passed their hundredth birthday a good while ago, and the region thus possesses some of the oldest continuously producing vines in the world. Yes, here, not in Greece or Italy. Take that, Old World!

So there’s one for the home team. Here’s another. Almost all our wine styles were, originally, borrowed from someone else — our cabernet sauvignon/merlot blends from Bordeaux, our pinot noir and chardonnay from Burgundy, and so forth. Styles have morphed and matured a lot since those days, but one grape has always been our own. (Yes, of course I mean zinfandel. Haven’t you been paying attention?) Sure, it originally came from somewhere around Croatia, and true, it’s planted in Italy (where it’s called primitivo), but we’re the ones who’ve made world-class stuff out of it. Zinfandel is the one truly original American wine, and it deserves its place in a pantheon of Uncle Sammishness alongside Southern barbecue, baseball, and reality shows involving Bret Michaels.

Incidentally, the grape’s still a chameleon. There’s “white” zin, yes, but dry pink versions exist as well. It can be done in a structured, ageable way, but also as a massive explosion of fruit … one to guzzle by the gallon the same night it’s carried home from the shop. There are boring mass-market bottlings and crazy experiments. (The latest of the latter is the Dashe “l’Enfant Terrible,” made in contravention of just about every American winemaking norm and yet unmistakably zin; you might have to head to the other coast to find this one.)

Barring a plane ride, what’s worth buying? The old rules — stick to producers whose names begin with “R” — are useless. There is one exception: Ridge still makes two beautifully ageable zins (Geyserville and Lytton Springs) that, in good years, are capable of developing for over a decade, though unfortunately their other bottlings are a lot more hit-and-miss than they used to be. Another star is Dashe, whose winemaker used to work at Ridge and whose non-iconoclast zins (especially the Todd Brothers Ranch) are as classic and muscular as one could ever want. Then there’s the for-the-cellar Storybook Mountain, the brambly and wild Sierra Vista, the polished but appealing Easton, the supremely elegant and surprisingly long-lasting Nalle, the bargain-priced Graziano, the crisp and Italianate Montevina, the powerful and peppery throwback Tulocay … the list could go on and on.

So what’s the deal with zin, meat, and fire? Unlike most fruit-explosion wines, zin retains a good bit of structure, so while it has the power to stand up to smoke and char, there’s also enough acid to slash through the luscious fat within. The only drawback? High alcohol. Zin gets very sweet on the vine, which can mean alcohol levels that can look more like those of port than wine. One solution is to give the wine a very slight chill, which tames the burn.

As for the overcooked mastodon on the Weber? Zin won’t help with that. You should have been paying attention to the grill, not this article.

Sibling Rivalry

Thor Iverson — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Younger brothers (or sisters) are mostly known for their ability to provoke annoyance. But who knew they were a bargain, too?

No, I'm not suggesting buying and selling them. I’m talking wine. Here's an example: the Pegasus Bay Riesling ($28.99) is a terrific, ageable wine from one of New Zealand’s best producers. The price is a bargain given the quality, but there’s a cheaper alternative to be had in the Main Divide Riesling ($18.99), at about two-thirds of the cost. Both are available at Cambridge Wine & Spirits (202 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge, 617.864.7171.) Yet they’re made by the same people.

What’s the difference? The grapes. The Pegasus Bay is sourced from vineyards owned by the winery, while the Main Divide is made from purchased fruit. Other wineries might divide their bottlings between older vines and younger vines, or between a post-harvest selection of the “best” and the “rest.” This doesn't mean that the cheaper bottle is a lesser wine, necessarily ... just that it’s made in a less expensive fashion.

But why the name change? It’s simple, really: while you might admit that you have younger siblings, that doesn’t always mean that you want everyone to know who they are.

The search for little brothers isn’t the only way this relationship works. Sometimes, interest flows in the other direction: you’ll taste a wine you like and then realize that there’s a “big brother” out there. For instance, the Wild Earth “Blind Trail” Pinot Noir (which I've written about before) from New Zealand’s Central Otago has been kicking around local shelves for a while. And it’s a fine, bargain-priced wine from a grape that’s not often associated with the word “bargain.” But the regular Wild Earth Pinot Noir is even better: richer, rounder, bigger, and more complete, if you’ll pardon the lapse into winespeak. Is it worth the extra $10? I think so, but taste and decide for yourself.

“Second” wines, as the lower-priced bottlings are often called, can also be made specifically for export markets ... something you’ll notice browsing any selection of US wines in a foreign supermarket. We get them too. Neil Ellis, in South Africa, makes two fine region-designated sauvignon blancs from Groenekloof and Elgin, but for about half their cost, there’s also a bottle called Sincerely. That one’s targeted directly at our voracious appetite for inexpensive sauvignon blanc, a hunger that used to be filled by New Zealand but is now easy pickings for South Africa because their currency is in the tank. Undercutting the competition sounds cutthroat — and it is — but it’s so, so satisfying for the parsimonious consumer.

And then there are the full houses. Not quite Eight is Enough, maybe, but a large enough family of wines to crowd the table at dinnertime.

Ken Forrester (another South African producer — I seem to be stuck in the southern hemisphere today) has one of the tastier little brothers out there, one that makes its status explicit in its name: the “Petit” Chenin Blanc. Here’s a grape that, despite many attempts, hasn’t done much of interest anywhere except in France’s Loire Valley, but for whatever reason, South Africa has found its number. The “Petit” is as much fruity, sunny fun as one could ever want, especially for under a ten-spot. Moving just up the scale into the mid-teens, Ken Forrester’s regular Chenin Blanc from the Stellenbosch region is no less appealing in its youth, but it ages into something a lot more akin to the justifiably famous chenins of the Loire Valley (Vouvray and Montlouis, especially). Then there’s a style nearly unique to South Africa — a dense, modern, oaked version — called “The FMC” that sells at a rather dramatic premium (around $50). It’s a clear bid for world-class status, and though it’s an extremely well-made wine, one’s reaction to it will very much depend on whether or not one thinks chenin blanc and new wood belong together. Finally, there’s the ultra-sweet “T” Noble Late Harvest, which sells for the same price as “The FMC” but comes in a bottle half the size. It’s a rather incredible wine, though you won’t want much at a single sitting, and diabetics will want to sprint in the other direction.

Be the wine

Thor Iverson — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:38:00 GMT

It’s fun being a spectator, but you have to be in the game to be a real player. Wine doesn’t offer too many opportunities to do that, and so most people stick to drinking the stuff. Which isn’t too bad, except that it’s a little like football being all about tailgating, rather than what happens on the field.

Sure, you can get in on the money side of things: working in a store or restaurant, schlepping boxes around for a distributor, and so forth. But — to torture the analogy a little longer — that’s manning the concession stand or riding a desk in the front office. The actual game is the one played with the grapes. And that means making wine.

Ever wonder what that’s like? Boston University is offering you a chance to find out. You’ll visit Turtle Creek Winery in Lincoln four times over the growing/winemaking season, getting your hands on everything from a just-sprouting vine to a freshly filled bottle. The seminar starts on May 2, runs through the end of September, and costs $150. Visit www.bu.edu/foodandwine/seminars/tastings_demos.html for more details. For once, it’s OK to drink the homework.

For more on wine, check out Thor’s blog at www.stuffboston.com.

Radical Radikon

Thor Iverson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:33:00 GMT

Sometimes, we crave the comfort of the familiar — a well-loved book that’s been nearly dog-eared to death, the favorite T-shirt that’s been rendered super-soft by years of wear, that nostalgia-inducing song that has somehow found its way onto every one of your iPod playlists. At other times though, only the shock of the new will do. Some players in the wine world evidently agree, as a rising number of producers seem dead set on defying convention with every cask.

A bunch of them are in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy, and their wines have the look and taste of ... well, who knows? Think dense, almost opaque whites that aren’t particularly white, or white wines with the sort of bitterness that’s always been the near-exclusive domain of reds. They’ll grab your attention and make you wonder — sometimes out loud — just what the hell it is you’re tasting.

One of the best among this growing fraternity of weirdness is Radikon, whose Jakot, Ribolla Gialla, and Oslavje bottlings are brilliant and impossible to ignore. They stand out in another way, too: the winemaker believes the standard 750 milliliters is too stingy for a single evening’s consumption, so he’s upped his standard bottle to a full liter. We think we’re in love.

Radikon wines are available at The Wine Bottega (341 Hanover Street, Boston, 617.227.6607).

Wine on a dime

Thor Iverson — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:39:00 GMT

Is cheap ever chic? If so, this would be the season. Alcohol has long been fairly recession-proof (who doesn’t need strong drink in hard times?), but not this go-around. Wineries, stores, restaurants... they’re all feeling the pinch.

And so, most likely, are you. But if you’re interested in keeping that pinch at a fun, foreplay-ish level, rather than affixing industrial-strength C-clamps to your unmentionables, it’s time to make the acquaintance of the close-out bin: the Filene’s Basement of wine retail. Yes, sometimes it’s a dumping ground for the lousiest of the lousy, but not always. And these days, with consumers’ per-bottle spending plummeting, stores need to unload some of their pricy-but-stationary inventory to make room for lower-end stuff. The result? Good wines at giveaway prices.

Or, one can take the concept and turn it into an entire store, as they’ve done at Bin Ends (236 Wood Road, Braintree, 781.817.1212, www.binendswine.com). Which makes us wonder: what do they do with close-out wine? Pay people to take it out of the store?

For more on wine, check out Thor’s blog at www.stuffboston.com.

Put The Zing Back Into Spring

Thor Iverson — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:35:00 GMT

It’s spring in New Zealand. (What? No it’s not! Can’t you read a map?) No, I insist. A young country — geologically and historically — New Zealand’s wine scene reflects its people: open, friendly, and uncomplicated. It’s a tiny place, but its mark on the world of wine has been outsized for a while now. It all started with sauvignon blanc from Marlborough, with a flavor like grassy, zingy, fermented chile pepper that pinned your ears back when you tasted it. Then it was pinot noir, especially from the Central Otego — a region that, not long ago, was mostly fruit farms and desolate, rocky slopes. These days, residents can hardly stumble out of bed without stepping on newly planted vines.

Meanwhile, Marlborough “savvier” (as the locals call it) has changed. The classic style still exists, to be sure, but there’s a new swagger and sophistication to the best bottles, and few are better than the Dog Point Sauvignon Blanc, which hints at that old-school intensity of flavor while adding an intriguingly sandy texture and complexity to the mix. You don’t have to travel to another hemisphere to have a taste; pick up a bottle ($22.99) at Martignetti Liquors (1650 Soldiers Field Road, Brighton, 617.782.3700) or Cambridge Wine & Spirits (202 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge, 617.864.7171).

Challenge Accepted

Thor Iverson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:07:00 GMT

Some people delight in the unfamiliar and are immune to the comfort of the common. When that set of people intersects with an interest in wine, there can be problems. Because, to be honest, most restaurant wine lists just aren’t that interesting. The same names, the same grapes, the same prices...yawn. It’s all just too tedious.

There are the exceptions: a well-aged bottle at a good price, wedged into a lineup of the tried-and-true, or the sudden appearance of a memory-laden bottle, tasted years ago in an Italian seaside town, now pouring in a North End trattoria. But for the truly adventurous, it’s the walk on the winy wild side: discovering an obscurity that has, for some reason, become a passion — or is it a fetish? — for whoever’s written the wine list.

At Erbaluce (69 Church Street, Boston), Charles Draghi’s Italianate haven of eccentric traditionalism in Bay Village, that passion — given the neighborhood, we probably shouldn’t call it a fetish — expresses itself via Valtellina, an eccentrically traditionalist wine from Lombardy that you’ll almost never see on a restaurant’s list. At Erbaluce, there are eight of ’em. That’s right, eight. Want to drink on the edge? Here’s your chance.

Valtellina is made from nebbiolo, a grape much better known in northwestern Italy’s Piedmont region, where it’s responsible for Barolo, Barbaresco, and other wines of a decidedly elevated reputation. Just to the east of the Piedmont is Lombardy, whose presence on the international wine stage is…well, mention the region to the average wine drinker and they’re just as likely to assume you’re talking about the trophy that goes to the winner of the Super Bowl.

To be sure, Valtellina’s not the easiest wine to love. It’s blessed with nebbiolo’s signature floral aromatics — most people say roses, though it’s a little more complicated than that — and a healthy dollop of tannin, which can be a little shocking in this modern era of smoothed-out wine. To this is also added an often sharp acidity, another quality that’s been leeched from many New World–style wines and which engenders reactions ranging from surprise to shock in some. As a result, Valtellina is a wine that not only rewards aging, but needs it. Unfortunately, the economics of restaurant wine programs means that aged Valtellina is usually out of the question. Erbaluce confounds this trend with a 1996 from Nino Negri and a 2000 from Nera, but the other six bottles are on the younger side, and thus benefit from a little culinary assistance to wrestle them into form. Acidic ingredients, animal flesh, certain hard cheeses, and mushrooms can do the trick.

Word salad time: there’s Valtellina, and then there’s Valtellina Superiore. Despite the suggestive grandiosity of the latter name, all it really means is that the wine’s been held longer in the cellar, in oak (not usually new), with a theoretical extension of the wine’s potential longevity. There are also some regional subdivisions, each with their own site-derived qualities. Two names you’ll see are Sassella and Grumello; there’s also one with the wonderful name Inferno. Seriously.

And then there’s sforzato. In addition to being an enjoyably silly word to say out loud (especially coupled with Inferno), its presence on a label indicates a sort of Barry Bonds–ification of the wine. Not, it must be noted, through the euphemistic wonders of creams and clears, but by allowing some of the nebbiolo grapes to dry on the vine. This concentrates flavors and lowers the juice-to-other-stuff ratio, which makes an already aggressive wine even more powerful. If Valtellina divides opinions, sforzato can engender open hostilities. Some love the bite and chew it brings, others find the results a difficult slog, but few shrug with indifference. (Just to complicate matters, some producers spell the word “sfursat,” which I assume is local dialect, but is much less fun to say.)

Does what appears above seem like an oddly ambivalent sort of enthusiasm for a wine I’m encouraging people to try? Sure, I suppose. As I wrote before, Valtellina’s not for everyone. And even for its fans (I count myself among that number), the wine’s no pushover, and can be a difficult companion under the best of circumstances. But that very refusal to conform is an essential part of its appeal.

Furthermore, it takes a restaurant like Erbaluce, with a decided point of view in its cuisine, to bring out the best in a similarly opinionated wine. For while Valtellina needs and rewards aging, it’s almost completely at sea without food, no matter its vintage. In other words, this is no easy cocktail sipper. And while it’s a wine of its place and its traditions, it’s no staid dining companion either. It will challenge every sip, daring you to follow where it chooses to lead.

Hmm. That sounds sort of dominatrix-y. Maybe it is a fetish.

Sweet Dreams 2.10.09

Thor Iverson — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:29:00 GMT

“Sweet,” usually it’s a compliment, unless it’s delivered by a date who’s just about to explain that, despite you being “a really nice person,” he or she is not sufficiently attracted to invite you up for an epilogue. And yet, when it comes to wine, label something “sweet” and people suddenly seem to lose their thirst.

That’s a shame, for several reasons. One is that an awful lot of the most popular wines in this country are ... well, they’re not dry, though their producers don’t exactly go out of their way to tell you this. “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the cabernet go down,” as a drunken Julie Andrews once sang. The jokes just write themselves, don’t they?

Another is that great sweet wines are severely underrated. One of the best is Maculan Torcolato, from the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. It tastes like honey made from succulent stone fruit and baking spices, and its concentrated intensity lingers for what seems like hours. It’s one of the finest ways to end an evening, whether or not there’s someone else in the room.

Vine trails

Thor Iverson — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:49:00 GMT

Last issue I told a story involving serial killers’ caves, 10 centuries of cobwebs, spitting, and mistresses. And yet, when I sat down in front of the computer I had intended to write a column about wine travel. Apparently, I’m not the master of narrative focus.

Let’s try again.

“I’m going to wine country,” people say to me, just before they ask me to do a whole bunch of work gratis. They’re about to ask which wineries they should visit, and if I could recommend some interesting wines — hey, isn’t that what I get paid for? “That’s great,” I’m tempted to reply, “and when you come back, I’d like you do a few dozen hours of free legal work.”

Actually, though, the burden has decreased. Because when Americans say “wine country,” all too often they mean the Napa Valley, and I send them the thing I wrote u for the last 100 people who asked. (It probably needs some editing by now.)

Hey, did I just take a swipe at Napa? Yeah, sorta. There’s plenty of great wine in Napa (most of which is over $50 a bottle), lovely places to stay (if you book eight months in advance with an AmEx Centurion card), legendary restaurants (if you’re willing to mortgage your firstborn), walkable villages (if you consider Manhattan a ghost town), and ... well, you see? I’m doing it again.

Sure, I’m exaggerating, but the reason Napa’s so damned expensive and crowded is because everybody goes there. The wineries have adapted. Some, along the major tourist routes (the ones where traffic moves at a stately five miles per hour on busy weekends), have giant parking lots that can handle a few dozen buses and still look empty, incredibly lavish tasting rooms with all manner of logoladen doodads, and proportionally lavish up-front fees to taste a few basic wines. Others tier their pricing, so the supermarket stuff can be had for a 10 spot, while the wines people actually want to taste might cost $20 for each tiny pour. Still others’ doors are nailed shut to all but the incredibly well-connected. It’s not hard to see why: faced with the prospect of serving thousands of dollars of free wine each day to increasingly tipsy customers who might get them sued, what other choices do they have?

Seriously, don’t let me talk you out of going to Napa. With the right preparation and a fat enough bankroll, it’s an enjoyable place. Instead, let me try to talk you into going ... well, anywhere else.

First, ask yourself why you want to go where the wine is. Is it just something to do on a trip otherwise occupied with beaches, museums, or parachute bungee jumping? Then choose carefully, because many wine regions are rather short on non-agricultural activities. Pick this kind of destination based on everything but the wine, because even in the most mediocre regions there’s usually a standout winery or two, while it’s hard to make rows of pesticide-spraying tractors look like a room full of Picassos. Or is wine your — pardon the pun — raisin d’être? Then you’ve got some work to do.

What sort of wine do you like? If it’s crisp, minerally riesling, don’t go to Paso Robles. And if it’s big, rich shiraz, don’t haul your glass to the Wachau. You can throw caution to the wind and send yourself on a voyage of discovery — sometimes, they’re the most memorable — but if you hate everything you taste, you’re not going to have much fun

In the event that you don’t have a wine-writing acquaintance who can be cajoled into working for free (oddly, beer is a popular bribe), you’ll now have to figure out what’s possible. A cluster of wineries, a nearby place to stay, maybe some worthwhile eateries: those are the essential ingredients. And New World wine regions have this tourism thing under control. Most wineries have Web sites, and most wine regions have some sort of group marketing effort that produces helpful guides, lists of restaurants and accommodations, and, most importantly, maps. Do not underestimate their value. Some wine regions are well signed, but many aren’t, and most are a twisty maze of often-unpaved country lanes that can get you lost in Jethro’s (or Pierre’s) back 40 pretty quickly. Online, search for “Sonoma wine,” “Central Otago wine,” and so forth.

Packaged tours — the kind where someone else drives you around (welcome if you don’t intend to expectorate) — are much more common in the New World, and the regional guides will help you find them. In the Old World, it’s a very rare wine region where you won’t have to rent a car and do your own driving, in which case spitting is absolutely essential.

Old World regions are rarely that organized. If you’re searching, try the word for “wine” in the target region’s language, or translations of “producer” and “wine route.” Usually, the most you’ll find is a list of producers — though if this list includes addresses and phone numbers, it’s worth its weight in euros. You’ll have to consult reference books (better wine shops will have them) and beg advice from retailers, restaurateurs, and — gulp — wine writers. Also, there’s a terrific series called Touring in Wine Country that’s essential if you’re planning a trip to any of the dozen or so regions the books cover, though some of them are getting a little dated.

Whether New World or Old, you’ll soon find some barriers to your visitation rights. Some wineries have open tasting rooms with set hours (though of course “set” means one thing in California and a very different thing in, say, Italy), some are only open by appointment, and some don’t want to see anyone at all. How you react to this depends on what sort of wine touring you wish to do. If you’re just into sniffing and sipping as many wines as possible, stick to wineries with staffed tasting facilities. But if you’re interested in learning something, or you have your heart set on specific wineries that aren’t open to the public, you’ll need to make some appointments.

If you feel up to it — and in the Old World, this also means linguistically — just give the winery a call. Express your enthusiasm for their wine, but be flexible; most producers are pleased to welcome the interested, but have incredibly busy schedules around which to work. Don’t take it personally if they won’t see you, as sometimes it’s just not possible.

Or, you can escalate the request. Retailers can sometimes help in this regard, as can distributors and importers. With each step, you get closer to a position of personal trust with the winemaker, and you increase your chances of a positive reception. The best of all sources of introduction is another winemaker, and if you ask at the end of a tasting, you’ll frequently witness a quick phone call on your behalf, or at least an enthusiastic recommendation.

When you’re finally on the road, be polite. If you’re going to be late for an appointment, call; this might be met with laughter in Sicily, but a German will not be amused if she doesn’t hear from you. Ask where to spit before you take your first sip. Don’t harangue them about what a great tasting you had last year at Château Famous; they might hate the winemaker there. But don’t be afraid to converse, either. Your reactions will likely determine how the tasting progresses; enthusiasm often leads to uncorkings of the rare stuff, or trips into the cellar for older vintages. If the appointment was especially difficult to get, consider bringing a gift; a good wine that’s unavailable to them is usually welcome. And unless you really hate the wines or paid a fee to taste, it’s polite to buy something at the end. (If they’ll let you. Many small wineries won’t.)

Finally, a word on what to expect. The more famed and modern a winery, the more likely you’ll be tasting in a special-purpose room, with sparkly glasses and a random employee pouring the wine. The more traditional or less known a winery, the more likely you’ll be tasting in a shed or a rough-hewn barn, from dubiously-cleaned glasses, spitting into a floor drain, but receiving your pours and your information directly from the winemaker. Some people greatly prefer one experience or the other, and it’s best to know beforehand.

Oh, one more thing. Even if a wine writer helped you out, it’s usually best not to mention his name. The guy over at Château Famous may be unlikable, but winemakers have set their dogs after wine writers they don’t like. No amount of free beer is worth that.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Deliverance

Thor Iverson — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:41:00 GMT

Danger on the wine trail

I expected to be arrested. Or fired at. Or set upon by dogs. I was driving down a semi-rural road at a speed that would have been mocked by passing toddlers, stopping every few dozen meters to peer at mailboxes, gates, and doorways. A few shouted imprecations came from behind closed shutters and I hurried along, unable to understand the words but quite clear on their meaning.

The early days of my life of crime? Not quite. I was in Bourgueil, a peaceful wine-growing area in France’s Loire Valley, and I was looking for a winery. All I had was an appointment, an address, and a partially understood conversation with the suspicious woman at the village tabac that finally set me on the right road after a few fruitless circlings of the village. There was, as is the case at so many of France’s best family wineries, no sign. Nor were there any familiar trappings of a winery — barrels, tanks, vine sprayers.

Just as I was about to give up and turn around, I finally found what I was looking for: the name of the proprietor etched into the side of a twisted, accident-victim mailbox.

Tentatively — one doesn’t want to run afoul of the ubiquitous French sense of privacy or their dogs’ noisy and occasionally biting sense of territoriality— I drove through the open gate into a dusty courtyard. A man with deeply wine-stained hands emerged from a nearby shed, frowning pointedly at the notebook in my left hand. “Monsieur Iverson?” This was the place.

We hopped in his ancient truck and headed (at knuckle-whitening speed) a few miles out of town, into a hidden grotto beneath a gently-sloped vineyard. In a series of uninviting 10th-century caves straight out of some Appalachian horror film rested the majority of his wine production: wire cages holding yet-to-be-labeled bottles in one, a few dozen boxes waiting for shipment in another, and in the dank tunnel into which we cautiously stepped — there was no light— a few dozen barrels that were far outstripped, in both mass and volume, by the thousand-year growth of cobwebs and mold that lined the ceiling and the walls. There was a chill that set my teeth to chattering. This place was creepy.

The winemaker drew a few tastes from a nearby cask, pouring them into dubiously-scrubbed glasses retrieved from a rough-hewn wooden table strewn with hammers, chisels, and more filthy glasses. I sniffed — gingerly, then with more gusto. The wine was unbelievably good, even over the persistent aromatic drone of the cave itself, and we shared a shy but silly grin at the sheer joy of it. I asked where I could spit; he shrugged and directed a thin arc of expectorate at the floor. I followed suit. And then there was another wine, and another, and another, each better than the last. A few dozen sniffs, swirls, and spits later, having worked our way through most of the barrels in the cave, we were back outside, continuing our tasting on the hood of his truck. The glasses left little red circles in the rusted green paint. And the conversation grew more passionate, moving away from technical details to history, philosophy, and unrepeatable asides about his quantity-minded neighbors. Soon, he was following each taste with a retreat into yet another cave, retrieving older vintages from his private stock.

We were no longer spitting. My afternoon plans were already lost, and these were the sorts of wines one swallows. Instead, I was listening to him earnestly explain how one old bottle was “his wife” — loyal and true, the product of many years of love and comfortable familiarity — while another was “his mistress”: a passionate and elusive partner full of mystery and unplumbed excitement. (At this point, it may be clear why I’m not naming the winery.) Later, back at his house, he let me buy a few bottles of the younger wines but sent me away with two extra gifts: one bottle of each of the women in his life.

“Ah, but wait,” he warned. “Don’t drink them together. The wife and the mistress can never be allowed to meet.”

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Wines Without Borders

Thor Iverson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:46:00 GMT

When it comes to certain regions and cuisines, versatile vino is key

“Drink the wines of a region with the foods of that region.” It’s advice I’d been given in the newbie days of my oenophilia, and it had stuck with me. But here, in a restaurant in Oslo, it wasn’t so useful. The reindeer — thankfully absent a glowing red nose — on my plate had only three local alcoholic companions: mass-market beer, plus a pair of fiery aquavits. The beer might have been okay, but there was a 20-page wine list in front of me. Surely I could do better.

In most cases, regional drinking works pretty well. In some wine regions you don’t even have a choice, as that’s all there is. But these days, the usual problem is actually an excess of choices, and so this handy rule of thumb helps wrestle the choices down to a manageable number.

But what about when the rule fails? Like in Norway, where there’s no regional wine. Or in California, where there most definitely is wine, but a given restaurant might have French, Asian, Mexican, and Italian elements all on the same menu. Or right here in Boston, where the best of our sea-sourced goodies don’t have a traditional crushed-grape partner, and many of the local wines are more aspirational than good.

For situations like these, it’s useful to have a set of “go-to” wines or wine styles; reliable, but more importantly versatile, partners to a whole range of ingredients and cuisines. Wines that won’t dominate the conversation, but won’t sit quietly in the corner, either — and won’t mind too much if some enthusiastic chef tosses a huitlacoche-encrusted (don’t ask) curve ball at your plate.

It might be better to start with wines to avoid. Cabernet sauvignon, for sure. Merlot. (And thus, Bordeaux, usually a blend of the two.) Most chardonnay. Most Burgundy, red or white. Syrah. Gewürztraminer. New Zealand sauvignon blanc. Pinot grigio. Even my much-beloved dry riesling. These wines, while often excellent in the right situations, fail the above tests for various reasons — too particular, too big, too delicate, too forceful — and will often be ill-tempered companions if you try to send them on a blind date with the wrong dish.

You might also notice that I’ve just eliminated about 90 percent of most restaurants’ wine lists. Sorry about that.

So what should you look for? Acidity. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, acid “cuts through” heavy, rich, and high- fat dishes, but is absolutely crucial for acidic foods. Also, a medium or light body, as broad-shouldered bruisers don’t treat delicate food very well. If you know your wine geography, you’ll know that this means cooler climates. But if you don’t — and who likes a wine and a cartography geek? — here are a few ideas. Not, I should mention, all from cool climates. (Hey, if wines can be complex and inscrutable, so can wine writers.)

Corbières, in Southern France, can sometimes be a little funky. But the Laboucarié “Domaine de Fontsainte” 2005 Corbières is clean, refreshing, and — surprisingly — tart with red berries. You’ll want to guzzle it, and I won’t discourage you. On the other hand, the Chaussard “Nana, vins et cie” 2006 Coteaux du Loir, enchantingly labeled “You are so beautiful,” is a Loire Valley chameleon that will alternately perplex and delight you. Red fruit, tense and nervous, gets a little snap of Sichuan peppercorn ... but that’s the wine by itself. Bring just about any food to it, and it changes. And then it changes again. It’s brilliant madness.

Want something with a bit more force? The Graziano 2004 Zinfandel from Mendocino in California is a bit of a throwback to an almost-forgotten style of zin: fruity and zingy, with a definite lash of acidity. It’s for drinking now.

On the pale side, the Brokenwood 2005 Semillon from Australia’s Hunter Valley is not only a delicious, grass-and- fruit-skin glass of sunshine, but a good candidate for stumping your wine snob friends. Why? Because it’s only 10.5 percent alcohol and it’s from Australia, where many wines would be twice that if they could. Now that you’ve stumped the experts, move on to something that will impress them: Bellotti “Cascina degli Ulivi” 2006 Gavi from the Piedmont in northwestern Italy. Gavi’s usually pretty innocuous, but this is anything but. It’s full of spices — Penzeys could market this stuff — dusted on fresh, ripe pear, but for all the attention-grabbing as a solo act, it slides effortlessly into a dual role as a partner for food.

So given all this ... what did I drink with that Norwegian reindeer? A red from the volcanic slopes of Mt. Etna, in Sicily. You know, the traditional partner to Scandinavian cuisine. And no, it wasn’t called Donner or Blitzen.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com

Can't buy my love

Thor Iverson — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:49:00 GMT

The mystery of great wines that aren't on the shelves

The Rhys 2006 Pinot Noir Swan Terrace, from the Santa Cruz Mountains, is as delicious a New World pinot as I’ve ever tasted. It tastes like tiny wild berries on a rocky promontory and smells like the deep forest, with beautiful balance and a long finish. It’s a really gorgeous wine.

And you can’t buy it here.

Just up the road from Rhys, Bob and Jim Varner are also making terrific wines. Their chardonnays, in particular, are masterful expressions of restraint; the usual California recipe of anonymous citrus fruit, butterscotch, and toast is nowhere to be found. In their place are a strong core of minerality, acidity, and purity. These are wines built to age.

Now, those you can buy here. Theoretically. But you’ll probably never see them on store shelves.

Is there some sort of oenophiles’ black market of which you’re not aware? No, not exactly. But there is a big world of high􀀐quality wine that moves almost entirely through the shadows, as far as everyday consumers are concerned. Most of these producers simply don’t have enough wine to populate retailers’ shelves, which means they can’t interest distributors (who, thanks to ever􀀐 escalating consolidation, are less and less enthused about the work necessary to promote microscopic wineries).

So what’s one of these small producers to do? Well, one solution is to find a similarly small specialist importer or distributor. These have sprung up almost everywhere in reaction to the behemoth alternatives, and there are quite a few in Massachusetts. While they’ll never have enough wine to break into the mass􀀐market racks at your local Keg Korner, they’ll instead cultivate a few sympathetic restaurants and equally􀀐 specialized retailers who will get the entirety of their stock. From a consumer standpoint, this is great if you happen to patronize those restaurants or live near that one shop in, say, Millis. But if not, how do you acquire the wine?

First, find out who, if anyone, carries the wine in your state. The easiest way is to contact the producer, and sometimes this information will be on their Web site, though the smallest producers often don’t even bother to create one. Admittedly, this can be difficult if the producer is in, say, Slovenia and you don’t share a language. This will lead you to an importer or distributor, depending on where the wine’s from, and the distributor knows who they’ve sold the bottles to. A caveat, however: big distributors aren’t always thrilled to receive calls like this, while one􀀐person operations might require some persistence to reach. Patience and politeness, in both cases, pay off.

Alternatively (and you’ll need to do this eventually, anyway), cultivate the acquaintance of a specialist wine retailer — the one with shelves full of wines you’ve never heard of, rather than all those cheap Aussies with cute animals on the labels. They can order pretty much any wine that’s available in the state, and they’re usually quite happy to do so ... or, at least, tell you why they can’t. They also have ways to find out who carries a wine, if you’re stumped.

But that only works for wines that are actually sold in Massachusetts, like Varner. What about Rhys?

Many small producers in the US and elsewhere in the New World (though not so much in the Old) sell most or all of their wine via a mailing list, whereby wines are purchased directly from the winery and shipped directly to the consumer.

At least, this is what happens if you live in a state other than Massachusetts. The politics of it are too involved for this space (and on this subject I’m prone to wax vituperative, anyway), but it basically comes down to this: distributors don’t much like having their business circumvented by direct sales, and thanks to the ...willing cooperation of state government and the ... helpful acquiescence of shipping companies, it’s not. At least, not legally.

Now — and this does not constitute advice — I’ve heard rumors that there are people who receive shipments of wine anyway. Not that I know any of these people, or condone their lawbreaking, or fail to brush my teeth after every meal and help old ladies across the street. Anyway, the rumor is that some people have wine shipped to nearby states whose laws are not quite so draconian (which states those are will differ from producer to producer), sometimes even going as far as setting up a mailing address at the offices of those very same shipping companies that won’t bring wine into Massachusetts. But again, let me stress: I absolutely do not know anyone who does this. Because that would be wrong.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Label Chaser

Thor Iverson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:00:00 GMT

The truth isn't in the bottle.

One of the most useful college lessons is that an awful lot of what you thought you knew was wrong. Sometimes, it’s just an everyday loss of innocence — the discovery that the world is a lot more complex than you’d thought back in high school — but sometimes, it’s a dawning realization that you’ve been — gasp! — lied to by people you’d trusted.

Of course, there’s also the sort of lying intended to separate people from their innocence … but that’s Jeannie’s column, not mine.

Wine, too, has its shades of gray, its misleads, and its outright lies. Take wine labels. You probably think you know what’s in a bottle of 2005 pinot noir from the Russian River Valley, right? Guess again.

In the United States — different countries have different rules, and some states have stricter standards than others — if there’s a single grape variety listed on the label, the wine only has to be 75 percent that variety. The rest could, in theory, be anything — even a grape of a different color. Similarly, only three quarters of the grapes have to come from the identified geographic location. And the vintage isn’t sacred, either; up to 15 percent of the wine could be from a different year. In other words, the abovementioned wine could be 25 percent zinfandel, 25 percent Temecula, and 15 percent unsold leftovers from the 2003 vintage.

Does any of this really matter? In one sense, no; of course, the primary concern is whether or not the wine’s any good. But these sorts of legal misleads and omissions lead to a pair of problems. The first is that not knowing what’s actually in the bottle makes it harder to make informed choices about what you’re drinking. For example, a bottle of pinot noir mixed with zinfandel, which is a wildly differenttasting grape, is going to taste nothing like a bottle of pinot noir blended with the much more compatible gamay. As for geography, it not only matters whether the grapes come from the cooler Russian River Valley versus the hot, pinot noir–unfriendly Central Valley, it’s a little annoying to pay a Napa Valley premium for a wine that might be, at least partially, from lowcost Lodi.

The second issue is that while this sort of labeling simplifies wineries’ marketing challenges, it leads the unwary consumer into incorrect conclusions. (See,alcohol really does cause bad decisionmaking.) For instance, some people claim that they like cabernet sauvignon but dislike merlot. The fact is, most wines identified as one are blended (often up to the maximum) with the other, which hides the individual grapes’ deficiencies and — at least usually — makes for a better wine. Some grapes can stand tall on their own, but the majority of them can’t. They need help. And even worse, people who fall in love with what they think are singlevariety wines too often conclude that blends (either identified or, in the Old World fashion, “hidden” behind the name of a place) are inferior, when in fact they’ve actually been drinking them all along.

Or consider alcohol. To simplify the US wine law on this issue — and, yes, of course there’s a law — there’s a 1.5 percent leeway in either direction for wines under 14 percent alcohol, and a 1 percent leeway for wines over 14 percent. Thus, a wine labeled 12.5 percent alcohol could actually be 14 percent and viceversa. Though some people are very sensitive to such shifts, for most casual drinkers, that relatively small change isn’t such a big deal. But what if the “leeway” is much bigger than that? The only way to know the actual alcohol level of a wine is to run a lab test, something the government doesn’t have the time or resources to do for every bottle that roams these shores. Yet a rather large number of wines — some of them domestic, many of them foreign — seem to carry exactly the same alcohol, year after year. That’s … unlikely. Again, what’s most important is how the wine tastes, but knowing whether a bottle is 11 percent alcohol or (secretly) 17.5 percent before deciding to split it over lunch can make the difference between an active or a very drowsy afternoon. That’s just the legal stuff, though. Things can get more interesting. For a few decades and until recently, many California wines made from what people thought was roussanne — a white grape best known in its Rhône Valley incarnation — were actually made from viognier, though no one knew it at the time. That was just an error, not deliberate fraud, but the latter happens as well. Like a chardonnay that happens to be about half muscat, or a sauvignon blanc made from more grapes than the winery had access to, or a Tuscan wine made from alreadyfermented wine trucked in from Sicily in the dead of the night. Or an open bottle of cassis liqueur that — oops! — accidentally tips into the barrel of wine. Just like it did last year. And the year before.

On second thought, I take that first paragraph back. Cassis in the syrah, Everclear in the prom punch … wine isn’t like college, it’s like high school. Lord help us.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Screw it

Thor Iverson — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:49:00 GMT

Wine openers with a twist

“Does anyone have a corkscrew?” Ask this at any random gathering and you’ll likely be handed a medieval instrument of cork torture, the winged auger. Here’s how it works: you angle the “wings” upward, push the screw into the cork, and attempt to twist the too-tiny handle. You’ll have to push down, too, because the dull point of the auger won’t penetrate the cork without significant pressure. Finally, after the application of sufficient force, the auger descends — its passage completely shredding the interior of the cork — until it plunges through the other side and deposits a shower of cork crumbs onto the surface of the wine. You then clasp the neck of the bottle and the bottom of the corkscrew in one hand, while squeezing the winged levers together with the other. Given a new wine, this extracts the cork about a quarter of the way, after which you must tug and wiggle and twist and grunt until the mangled cork pops out of the bottle, a few teaspoons of wine chasing its release and landing on the nearest stain-prone surface (usually, your shirt). Or, the cork breaks, necessitating an 45-degree-angled approach for the second attempt (since the center of the cork is now completely stripped, and thus useless). If the wine’s old, the initial attempt at extraction causes the auger to rip back through the gaping wound opened by its entry, leaving a ragged cork still in the bottle, though one newly equipped with a tiny hole through which you can pour wine infused with a hail of cork dust.

(In case the previous paragraph is unclear, the winged auger sucks.)

What you really want is the workhorse of the uncorking industry, the so-called “waiter’s friend.” Shaped like a pocket-knife, it has a helix-shaped screw (wine geeks call it a “worm”) without that Cork-destroying central pillar, a one- or two-stage brace, and a small knife for cutting through the capsule (the metal or plastic prophylactic that covers the end of a bottle). Two-stage versions are the nicest, because they aid in the removal of the ultralong corks that tend to show up in pricey bottles. Even better are those with Teflon-coated screws, which slide in and out of corks with ease.

Feel free to make your own joke here.

If a waiter’s friend sounds like too much work, the Screwpull is made for you. It’s a worm with a handle that fits through a clothespin-shaped brace. Clockwise twisting pushes the screw into the cork, then extracts the cork into the welcoming arms of the brace, all without any sort of levering or pulling. If you go this route, you’ll need a foil cutter (sold separately).

The Bluray, highd-ef, home-theater version of the corkscrew is the Leverpull. It’s a Screwpull without the (minor) effort. I’d need a series of diagrams to demonstrate how it works, but it’s really slick (for the price, it had better be), and a skilled user can uncork a bottle every two seconds or so. However, buyer beware: there are dozens of cheap knockoffs, and the only alternative that seems to be worth a damn is the Rabbit. No, it’s not related to that Rabbit. Though if you can figure out a way to open a wine bottle with the latter device, send pictures.

Some corks are impossible to remove, no matter what kind of corkscrew you use. Either they’re too tightly wedged, or years of storage have adhered them to the bottle. That’s when the two-pronged cork remover, popularly known as the ah so, comes in handy. Two slightly curved metal protuberances are slowly wedged, via a careful rocking motion, between the cork and the bottle, after which a steady twisting pulling motion slowly removes the cork. Be careful, though: employed too aggressively, these openers can explode the necks of fragile bottles. If you think wine with floating cork is bad, try glass shards.

Now that you’re armed with the proper tools, here are two important things to remember. One, don’t use any sort of Teflon-coated corkscrew with those hard, rubbery synthetic corks; they’ll abrade the Teflon, making future insertions of the screw more difficult. Use a corkscrew with a metal worm instead.

And two, watch out for screwcaps. It’s quite possible to push a sharply pointed worm or a razor-edged foil cutter right through a metal cap. I’ve seen unsuspecting waiters do just that; the screechy metal-on-metal noise makes people at neighboring tables gawk and stare. Who wants that sort of audience for an unexpected screw?

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.