Category Archives: Food and Wine Pairings

Oct 04 2012
16 Comments
2009, Côtes du Rhône, Food and Wine Pairings, France

2009 Kermit Lynch Côtes du Rhône

It was our anniversary this weekend, so we decided to try a restaurant in Ann Arbor that is focused on using local ingredients. It was our first time there, so we tried their five course tasting menu to see what the chef was capable of. The restaurant offered an accompanying wine pairing for half of what dinner cost. While I sometimes have had good experiences with these restaurant offered pairings, this is usually only the case if the restaurant has a sommelier and is as devoted to its wine menu as it is to its cuisine. Somehow, this place (and their wine menu) did not give off that impression, so I was reluctant to take it.

Given that the tasting menu was a surprise menu, it was not the easiest thing to decide what wine to go for then. Given that there was no riesling on the menu (shame on them), we decided to go with a lighter red wine that could complement most of what was possibly going to come, and sit out on the wine when it did not match at all. I find Côtes du Rhône wines to usually be a good companion when it comes to this. They are not as heavy bodied as other French reds, and at the same time offer an interesting mix of spices and earthiness. The only Côtes du Rhône the restaurant had was this one, so we decided to go for it.

Today I found out that Kermit Lynch is a major wine merchant in the tradition of French négociants from California. They offer a whole variety of wines from France and Italy with a gazillion of producers working for them. This particular Côtes du Rhône blend is vinified by Jean-François Pasturel from Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Carignan grapes from 40 year old vines on 36 hectares around Avignon.

The wine had a medium ruby color. Its nose was nicely perfumy with wooden and earthy notes, Nina detected some blueberries that were definitely there. On the palate, the wine was on the lower end of medium bodied, and it showed a nice fruitiness of red berries and herbal, foresty aromas. The finish was of medium length, with a nice peppery note to it. It was pretty yummy to guzzle at dinner, and was just the right weight.

It also paired nicely with our – quite disappointing – dinner. The first course was a duck liver paté, to which the earthy notes paired well. The second course was a very nice salad with pan-seared (over-peppered) local trout, where it sort of worked. This was followed by uninspired “gnocchi” (which had nothing in common with gnocchi any Italian would serve) in a tomato sauce – the wine worked again. The next course was pork loin with potatoes (talk about uninspired again), where the wine complemented the roast aromas on the pork and went nicely with the onions. The dessert was an abomination of a panna cotta, made with buttermilk which destroyed its texture and taste (hardly any vanilla, and not even a reminder of the creaminess a panna cotta should have) and topped with a horrible concord grape syrup that tasted as bad as a Welch grape juice (which I completely detest)…luckily, I had the wine to clean my palate from the few spoons I ate before I abandoned the dish.

It was kind of a sad thing, this dinner. While I want to support locally sourced restaurants and like the idea, using these ingredients does not absolve you from making dishes that taste good. It is like organic wines. There is no inherent goodness in making wines in an organic fashion. They have to taste good first and foremost. If the two go together, the better. If not, I will relinquish ingredients over taste at any moment.

The wine was nice, so I recommend it.

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Oct 02 2012
6 Comments
2005, Food and Wine Pairings, Germany, Mosel

2005 Studert-Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett

A liquor store find

Do you know those moments when you are browsing through the lined up wines in a liquor store or wine store and you make a find that has you intrigued? Well, this was one of them. While I was browsing the rather random collection of wines displayed at the local liquor store a couple of weeks back, some of the wines quite overpriced, others weirdly underpriced, some of them stellar wines, others I was wondering, I saw this lonely bottle on their riesling shelf.

An aside: I understand that it is easier for liquor stores to group their wines by grape variety, but I still am not really happy with it. I would much prefer to have them grouped regionally…but that might just be me.

Studert-Prüm winery is part of Germany’s elite winemaker guild VDP (Verein deutscher Prädikatswinzer), an association which you can only join by being suggested and voted into by its members. They have certain, higher/stricter requirements for growing their wines (like less hectoliters per hectar etc.). The winery is located in  Wehlen, now a suburb of Bernkastel. According to their website, they produce about 40,000 bottles per year from their 5 hectares of land. It is an exclusively riesling producing winery in the 12th generation (producing wines since 1581), with holdings in the top vineyards Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Graacher Dompropst and Graacher Himmelreich, as well as Bernkasteler Graben. 80% of their vines are non-grafted.

Wehlener Sonnenuhr is a top vineyard on the Mosel. The name means “Sundial of Wehlen”, and it is named after a sun dial that was installed in the vineyard in the 1800s. You can find a couple of sun dial vineyards (Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr, Zeltinger Sonnenuhr, even the Ürziger Würzgarten has a sun dial in its core) along the Mosel, and most of them are pretty good. Unfortunatley, as all too many vineyards on the Mosel, later, what used to be about 5 hectares just around the sun dial, was expanded to a 45 hectare vineyard, because other winemakers wanted to profit from the name. The idea of terroir seems to have completely eluded folks back then. Similar things happened to the Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, the Ürziger Würzgarten and many others. So, it is always good to know whether the grapes actually come from around the sun dial or further away…

My friend Man-Soo (who else?) introduced me to their wines and I have always liked them. So, when I saw this bottle, marked down from $22 to $13, I figured why not give it a try. There are some issues with liquor stores, mainly how they store their bottles (standing rather than lying, the temperature in the store…), but at that price it was worth a try…most newer riesling kabinetts are not necessarily made for ageing, so it was also unclear how this one was intended to be. On the other hand, 2005 is considered a spectacular vintage in Germany, so why not try it?

We decided to open it with a riesling loving friend of ours, whose husband has recently discovered that he finds older rieslings interesting. We classicly paired it with a cheese platter of gruyere, goat gouda, goat cheese and a brie type soft cheese.

Upon opening, the wine poured clear and lightly yellow. It had a somewhat dusty smell to it, overall a quite subdued nose. On the palate, it had contracted quite a bit, with initial petrol notes. As the wine opened up, it showed more citrus flavors and the dust settled down a bit. There were signs of ripe grapes. The wine was probably past its peak (which I would blame on the storing rather than the wine itself), but still it paired exceptionally well with the cheeses, especially the brie type, where the slight moldiness of the cheese met with the dust and citrus flavors. They greatly complimented each other, but it also worked well with the gruyere, the saltiness of the cheese pairing off with the citrus.

It was an interesting experience. I would love to try this wine when it was properly stored. It was the last bottle they had at the store, so I also am not tempted to go back and try another bottle.

Check out the vineyard here: http://www.weinlagen-info.de/#lage_id=1585.

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Sep 21 2012
6 Comments
2007, Apulia, Food and Wine Pairings, Italy

2007 Epicuro Salice Salentino Riserva

(This is a review of the 2007 vintage. The current vintage on sale is 2009, which I reviewed over here.)

Epicuro’s wines have been my go to Italian reds since I moved to Ann Arbor. They are reasonably priced ($5.99, I believe) and easily available at Trader Joe’s. I actually had my first sip of an Epicuro during my last weeks in Germany, when  my friend who gave me the Scharzhofberger, brought this wine for a dinner I had cooked. I had seen the bottles before, but it being such a mass label, I never tried it. They have a row of wines, differentiated by the color of their labels:

Red is a primitivo; blue is a nero d’avola; silver is an aglianico; and gold a salice salentino. They also produce a white, a vermentino.

I am not fond of their aglianico and nero d’avola, but I thought the 2008 vintage of their primitivo was great. A nice table wine, chewy and interesting, we had it for many BBQs and other evenings of just drinking wine. The currently available 2010 vintage, however, does not fit my taste. It is quite sweet, something that 2008 did not have to that degree. I don’t think I will keep buying that wine. But there still is the 2007 Salice Salentino Riserva…

Salice Salentino is a red wine from Southern Italy and has had DOC (denominanzione di origine controllata) status since 1976. The village it is named after is in the heel of the Italian boot. The main grape in a salice salentino is negroamaro, which is generally described as a rustic and earthy grape.

This red has 80% negroamaro and 20% malvasia nera in it. It has 13% ABV.

It poured as a medium to dark red. The nose was alcoholic and perfumy, with hints of leather. On the palate, I first noticed how nicely chewy this wine was. I then got cherries and herbal tastes, as well as rather strong leather and tobacco notes, which gave the wine depth. It had good acidity and the tannins came through well. A long finish made it a really enjoyable wine on a later evening. To me, this is definitely the star of the Epicuros.

As I indicated in Wednesday’s post, I had never had red wine with my risotto, so I gave it a try. And oh man, this really worked very well with the earthy flavors of the mushroom risotto. I wish I had paired them to begin with, but by the time we opened this one, I was already stuffed…

I will definitely be stocking up on this wine. Who knows how long it will be around, being a 2007 vintage? At $5.99, there is hardly anything wrong with it. It definitely tasted like a more expensive wine.

Photo taken from leftovers the next day. That said, I do like my risotto less creamy than most American chefs.

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