Category Archives: Year

Oct 15 2012
13 Comments
2007, South Africa

2007 L’Avenir Pinotage

Another anniversary companion

As I mentioned before, Nina and I met in Botswana, while she was interning for the National Museum and I was doing part of my legal training for the local human rights advocacy group DITSHWANELO. While there, we had the great fortune of trying a number of awesome South African wines (Botswana does not have a wine industry). The wines were super affordable and I liked a lot of them.

One particular grape we both grew fond of is Pinotage. It is native to South Africa and was first created in 1925 when Abraham Perold, a professor of viticulture at Stellenbosch University, crossed Pinot noir and Heritage vines (Heritage is better known as Cinsault). The first wines were made in 1941, and the legendary Kanonkop winery planted its first vines in the same year. The grape seems to be perfect for the South African climate and growing conditions, but has not really been adopted elsewhere.

Cork and cap top for this pinotage

When I first tried Pinotage in the early 2000s with South African friends in Germany, my friends were very upset. The wines were incredibly hot from alcohol, and they tasted rubbery. This was in line with what I had read prior to tasting the wines. One of our friends, an older Boer lady, was so upset, that she suggested shooting people that make bad Pinotage like this (she also advocated shooting wine columnists who say Pinotage tastes like burnt rubber). The problem back then was, and petty much still is: It is very difficult to get good Pinotage outside of South Africa. There are exports, for sure, but they tend to be not very good. And the ones that taste good, cost a fortune once they reach Europe or the US.

So being in Southern Africa allowed us to develop a taste for Pinotage, and to find wineries that we enjoy and want to drink more of. Nina’s favorite in Botswana came from Laroche’s L’Avenir winery, the L’Avenir Pinotage Reserve. I fancied Tukulu winery’s Pinotage more, but also enjoyed the L’Avenirs.

We acquired this bottle as ransom from a friend of ours who visited us in Germany on his way from Seattle to South Africa for the football World Cup 2010. He was staying with us on his way there and back. When we chatted with him while he was in South Africa, he asked what he could bring for us, and Nina did not hesitate to ask him for wine (always being the wine schemer that she is). And he did bring us back two bottles each of 2007 L’Avenir Pinotage and 2007 Tukulu Pinotage. We had a bottle each in Germany, and two came with us in our move from Germany to Ann Arbor.

It was still our anniversary, so to connect us back to Botswana, I had picked the 2007 L’Avenir Pinotage for consumption after dinner. The wine was decanted for 1 hour prior to tasting. It has 14% ABV.

In the glass, the wine was of dark red color with slight hints of browning. The nose showed berries, plums, leather and tobacco notes, as well as petrol. I detected some eucalyptus, but Nina didn’t find it, so I am not sure. The first thing that struck me when we tasted it, was that this pinotage was surprisingly light-bodied (more medium, but definitely lighter than expected). It had a bunch of acidity and strong tannins, with leather and noticeable bitter notes towards the end. It was low on fruit aromas. Over time, the wine mellowed out and the bitter notes disappeared. The heat of the alcohol was not disturbing its long, lingering, complex finish.

While writing this, I am realizing that this sensoric description does not do the wine justice. Seen as a whole, it was actually nicely smooth, and the tannins were never overpowering. I feel like it was a good member of Team Pinotage, especially because it shied away from the overbearing fruit that some show, and the burnt rubber taste that others espouse. The nose was gorgeous, and the wine definitely pleasing. It was as powerful as I remembered these wines. According to Cellar Tracker, this wine is nearing the end of its drinking window. What I can attest to is that it is still very drinkable!

These two made our anniversary a blast.

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Oct 10 2012
9 Comments
2011, Food and Wine Pairings, Germany, Saar

2011 St. Urbanshof Ockfener Bockstein Riesling Kabinett

Another Korean dinner companion

As I mentioned in a previous post, last week was our anniversary, actually the first anniversary we got to celebrate together. After the dinner “fiasco” at the restaurant the night before our anniversary, I decided it was time to pull out some Korean food to give us a comforting dinner on the actual anniversary day.

Probably, Botswana food would have been more appropriate, given that we met and fell in love with each other in Botswana, and given that we got married on Botswana’s Independence Day (we actually had no clue when we set the date), but somehow Botswana cuisine has not really won our hearts…except for their steaks! Hands down, I have had my best steaks in Botswana. I don’t know what they do with their cattle, but the produce is phenomenal. Getting Botswana beef in the US, or even Europe, is near to impossible, though.

St. Urbanshof Cork Art

Our love for Korean food stems from my time in Seoul in 2000/2001, and our friendship with our good friends ManSoo and Hyekyung. There is something refreshingly honest in Korean cooking: few ingredients, you get what you order, no glutamate sauces or fancy dishes, down to earth, satisfying cooking. I really do prefer home cooked style meals, which is why the Tuscan and Burgundy cuisines are equally dear to my heart. But riesling is such a perfect match for Korean food, that it is the easiest to pair with my beloved rieslings.

So, for our anniversary dinner I made 감자 조림 (braised potatoes in a spicy sauce; a first and I used the delicious and super easy recipe available here) and 호박전 (zucchini pancakes, to which I add mushrooms and scallions). Both dishes turned out really yummy, and the only question was the pairing.

Korean braised potatoes

We went with a 2011 St. Urbanshof Ockfener Bockstein Kabinett. St. Urbanshof is a winery in Leiwen, along the Mosel (check out their website here). Their black labels are quite iconic. I was first introduced to their wines by my friend Helge many years back. The winery is an early experimenter with the spontaneous fermentation method, which is now quite popular in Germany. The initial nose of these wines tends to be rather sulfuric, but once you get through that, they are irresistibly fresh and fruity and said to age better. This particular wine is a Kabinett (the lowest level of Prädikatswein, for more information check out my at a glance tool here).

The Bockstein is a vineyard along the Saar river in the village of Ockfen. According to the Urbanshof website, it is a 50 degree vineyard slope facing southwest, without other hills blocking it from the sun. The soil is gravelly grey slate. The vineyard is a prime vineyard along the Mosel tributary Saar. More on the vineyard here. If you look at the label closely, you will see a “1” beside a cluster of grapes on the right hand side. This stands for “Erste Lage” (literally “first-class site”). It is a particular designation style used by wineries that are members of the prestigious VDP, the German association of elite winemakers (I will have to write about them in a seperate post, promised). It denotes top vineyards and higher selection standards than required by the German Wine Act.

The beauty in the glass

The wine was, as you can hopefully discern from the photo, of a very pale yellow color. The nose had the typical initial spontaneous notes (in German sometimes referred to as “Sponti-Stinker”, you get the idea). After a couple of minutes it opened up to overwhelming yellow peach, honey and whipped cream aromas. It was surprising in its intensity. On the palate, we welcomed a somewhat viscose riesling, with initial citrus and peach aromas. Despite the citrus, the wine was not overly fresh because it showed low acidity, which was noticeable, but not dominant. The wine felt very smooth on our tongues. As we kept moving it in our mouths, there were hints of banana and floral notes coming in (maybe jasmine).  It had a long finish and for a kabinett was very complex, not just an easy guzzling wine.

The higher residual sugar level in the wine worked marvelously with the braised potatoes which were quite spicy. We got the wine at Costco for $13.99, which is just slightly more than what I would expect to be paying in Germany. In other words, it is quite the steal. At 9.5% ABV, it is also a great companion for fall evenings, when the sweetness is more soothing than in summer.

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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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