2-26 Old Wines, New Palates

Last week, my husband and I went to our first social, business dinner together. The French CEO of a young company had planned a feast at one of my favorite SF restaurants, paired with what we discovered to be delicious wines, and even though he wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy networking, I think he felt a little guilty indulging in the haute cuisine without me. Not that he hasn't been privy to many guilty dinners prior to this, but for the first time, spouses were invited.

After slowly sipping a martini during the brief cocktail hour (slowly, that is, to keep my wits about me) we were escorted to what appeared to be the Special Guest table in the center of the room. I don't know if this actually meant that we were special guests, or just that we were all not company employees, but let's assume the former. It was quite a mix of people. On my left sat two young technology focused gentlemen, across from me a distinguished and established French business man, and to my right the French lawyer for the host company and a midwesterner who loved to ski.

The fixed dinner menu and wine pairings were printed on long, slender cards in front of each of our place settings. I couldn't resist perusing mine immediately, even though the focus of the table was on business conversation (and snow skiing). The wine choices were from some of the best regions in France. The appetizer (a tuna tartare) was paired with a Condreiu, which is a viogner from the Northern Rhone, one of my absolute favorite wines. The next course (lobster bisque), came alongside a Puligny-Montrachet, one of the best Chardonnays of Burgundy (much different from California Chardonnay, crisp and a bit salty to go well with the shell fish). The main course (sturgeon and veal cheek) was accompanied by a Vosne-Romanee, which is a Pinot Noir from Cote de Nuit in Burgundy (known for its soft, elegant flavor, making it a great complenent for both fish and meat). All of the wines were balanced and beautiful, and the food was delicous!

As we moved further into the meal, the conversation turned from the business at hand to the food and wine in front of us. The technology guys were very interested and curious about it all, where, as I would have expected, the distinguished Frenchmen were very knowledgable. At the end of the meal, we were joined by a young New Zealander who introduced Zinfandel into the conversation and began talking to the technology guys about their thoughts on the wine. Both of the techie gentlemen, with their newly introduced palates, claimed to like them, but found them to be a little weak. Both Frenchmen, having older and more experienced palates, found the wines to be superb. This all made me think about how differently the old world (Europe) and the New World (everyone else) view wine. Americans typically like their wine "big", meaning full of flavor and body, while Europeans like their wines "balanced", soft and elegant. This has always seemed to me to be completely in line with the way the two cultures view wine differently, Americans for pure consumption, and Europeans as a complement to food.

So the lesson for everyone here is that if you like your wine big and bold, stick to the American, NZ, and Australian stuff, and drink it young. Americans tend to drink their wine they day its purchased (85% of wine is consumed this way), so winemakers make it so that it can be, at least at the reasonably priced level. If you want to see how well wine can complement a meal, try a French wine, but keep in mind that the French like their wine soft and elegant and this typically comes with age. They don't make their wines as drinkable early on.

PS. My only digression during dinner was an attempt to show the knowledgeable Frenchmen my "hand" map of France. When I worked at a winery in Napa I used the back of my hand to teach people about the regions in France (and as evidenced by this particular evening, I'm still known to do so from time to time). I could tell the Frenchmen were less impressed than your average middle-America tourist at my self described, brilliant tool. I think I actually saw them biting their lips to fend off laughter. I guess I'll stick to domestic students from now on.

France on (my) Hand:

2-15 Mocktails

One of my good friends emailed me her first ultrasound a few weeks ago and I decided it was time to carry out a plan I'd been devising for a few months. The ideas began whirling through my brain late last year when my husband and I were talking about how soon we'd like to try to get pregnant (which came along with little jokes from him like "I don't think I will get pregnant", but I digress). I started reading about all the things I should not be consuming in preparation for having those little ones growing inside me. Of course, pregnancy should be a wonderful time in our lives, not a time when we are focused on all the things we can't have, so in honor of our friend getting pregnant I decided to have a non-alcoholic cocktail party instead of my regular "wine night" with the girls to introduce them to some alternative drink choices. The mommy-to-be was ecstatic. She is a little over three months along and is already professing strong desires to order something other than soda water when out and about.

I thought fajitas would make a good mocktail pairing, so all of the girls brought a portion of the meal and I devised 3 cocktails to go along. I wanted the drinks to be more inventive than margarita mix on the rocks, or cranberry and soda, so I broke the flavors of some common liquors down to try and find a replacement for them in the drinks. There's something non-yummy about the taste of alcohol that I needed to discover to make pregnant women feel like they were still part of the party.

My first attempt was the Margarita, or in this case, Mockarita. Since tequila is often described as having carmel and earthy notes, I decided to look for a flavor of tea that would somehow represent that (caffeine free, of course). The closest I came was a vanilla/hazelnut brew. The next ingredient to mimic was triple sec. Its a sweet liquor with an essence of orange, so to replace it I made simple syrup, steeped with orange rind (Simmer equal parts of sugar and water on the stove with the rind of an orange until all of the sugar is dissolved. Then, remove from heat and put the lid on until it is cool, so that the orange rind can leave its zesty flavor.) The only ingredient left was lime juice. I used some limeade and some straight juice. I ended up squeezing half of the orange that I had removed the rind from in there too, a tip I got from a favorite Margarita specialist. Here's the resulting recipe for a pitcher, which tasted a little like a Margarita crossed with a Long Island, but was still delicious.

Mockarita (serves 6)
1 1/2 c. limeade
1 c. lime juice
1 1/2 c. orange rind simple syrup
1/4 c. tea
juice from 1/2 of an orange
To serve, wipe the rim of 6 glasses with lime juice and dip in 1/2 of the rim in salt. Fill glasses with ice and then with this yummy baby-friendly beverage!

Since the cosmopolitan is another popular choice of ladies (although by some recent sources declared "out"), it was my next project. Vodka is a lot like water, but a little off tasting, so remembering a time when my mom had me sample the aloe vera juice that had become her new health kick (a watery beverage with a slightly bitter flavor) I picked some up at the local natural food shop. The triple sec was again replaced with my orange rind simple syrup, and the remaining ingredients are already alcohol free. Here's the recipe...also superb!

The Suburbian (a mock-Cosmopolitan for 6)
1/2c. cranberry juice
2 c. aloe vera juice
1/2 c. lime juice
2 c. orange scented simple syrup

Line the rim of 6 martini glasses with lime juice and dip in sugar (I like to use pink sugar if I can find it). Serve the bevvie in the glasses straight up.

The final drink choice was intended to make it easy for mommy's to order in a bar or restaurant. My intention is eventually to distribute this entire drink list to every bar I come in contact with, first in the bay area, and then where ever else my influence can reach, but until I become that famous, I wanted something easy for the alcohol free-set to order now.

The ginger and tonic (single serving)
1 part ginger ale
1 part tonic
Fill high ball glass (short drink glass) with ice and halfway with ginger ale. Top off with tonic and a squeeze of lime. Drop the lime in the glass. Whaa-laa!

I also enjoy cranberry and soda, pineapple juice and soda, or a plain old 7up when I'm ready to take it easy for the night. You can always request your drink in a fancy glass, which will also make it look and feel more like a "real drink". Ginger ale in a champagne glass is so much more delicious than ginger ale in a regular ol' cup...Really!

2-6 It Happens to the Best of Us

A friend unintentionally taught me a great lesson about glassware on Super Bowl Sunday. Not every event requires good (aka Reidel) glasses. Some of you may argue that not every event needs wine, but in my defense, I'm not the one who brought the wine. I was, however, very happy to accept a glass of it. I gladly sipped on the Sauvignon Blanc, from the very popular Marlborough (New Zealand), while talking to the other wine-drinking ladies, prior to kick-off. As soon as the football started being tossed around the field, we all crowded into the seats around the big screen. I set my glass on the coffee table and nervously watched it as different male guests clumsily passed by, waved their arms, and threw things at the television. I decided to move the glass behind me, safe from the rambunctious boys, and onto the windowsill. Safe, that was, until the jumping kitty cat made her way from atop the chair next to me, onto the sill, and beside my glass. Hmmm. There was no good spot for it. As I reached around to grab the glass, its contents mysteriously made their way onto the chair beside me and the floor beneath me, and the glass crashed to the floor...in pieces. All that care taken to keep someone else from breaking the glass, and I managed to do it myself.

And what was the score of the game? I had no idea. I'd spent the first quarter so worried about someone breaking my glass, that I hadn't paid a bit of attention to the TV, not even the commercials.

I felt horrible. That is, until the hostess told me she'd just bought the glasses at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for $2.50 a piece. What a relief. At that moment I wished that I'd been able to tell everyone who'd ever broken one of my glasses the same thing. Lesson learned. Anyone who owns wine glasses should buy cheap glasses for occassions other than dinner parties.

Cheap glasses always share one characteristic that keeps me from wanting to buy them; they have what I call a "rolled" rim. What I mean by this is that the edge of the glass that you sip from is not sharp, its rounded, and thicker than the rest of the glass. This keeps the rim from chipping, but it makes it slightly less enchanting to drink from (in my view). That said, the smaller the "roll", and the sharper the edge, the nicer the glass will seem, even if it doesn't cost very much. However, its also true that the smaller the "roll", the more careful you have to be when washing it, but we've already discussed that issue, right?

So if you see a woman walking through Crate and Barrell testing the edge of each glass to her lips, that's me, trying to find my cheap glasses, and testing how sharp they are. As this is probably very unsanitary, I'm not recommending anyone do the same.

PS. I noticed the other day that Riedel is selling a line of glassware at Target. They were priced at 4 for 44.99, which is still over $11 a glass. They did have a sharp rim, but for the Super Bowl next year, I'd say go for the C&B glasses at $2.50.

1-30 The Truth about Cork

Lots of people who aren't obsessed about wine have still heard the many arguements about real and synthetic corks. In fact many of my friends who claim to "not know anything about wine" have noted to me that they have heard that natural cork (the old kind) is endagered and that's why wineries are moving to fake (synthetic) corks. While there are reasons to use synthetic cork, I just found further evidence that the depleting the cork forests (which reside mostly in Spain and Portugal) is not the most relevant one.

First and foremost, the making of wine corks does not involve cutting the tree down. The cork is made from bark that is shaved off the tree and after a long process of seasoning and boiling, is pressed into the finished product. The bark can only be harvested every six years, which has increased the price of cork as wine demand has increased, but the trees are not endagered.

I found further substantiation for natural cork production in the latest Pottery Barn Catalog (of all places). On page 15 they advertise a set of wine related products made from natural cork. The marketing blurb accompanying the products says, "Natural Cork is completely sustainable...But what few know is that its harvest is actually good for the environment. The demand for cork products ensures that cork forests...are protected, which in turn helps fend off erosion and protect a vast network of diversity". I stand firm that using this information not similar to validating which movie star is pregnant by reading US weekly. I'm sure Pottery Barn went to a vaild effort to make sure the statements they have made are true.

So natural cork is sustainable and environmentally friendly. Natural cork also provides a way for some air to get in the bottle over time to assist in the aging process. Natural cork does, however, have one problem and its called TCA. TCA is cork taint. Its a fungus that can grow in any type of wood in a humid environment if TCA is present. This reaction is what has occured when someone says a wine is corked. Corked wines are a problem because they make the wine taste less than perfect (in extreme cases, like wet newspaper). The percentage of corked wine produced is highly disputed, but in my experience, the average consumer doesn't even know when they have come across a bottle. The highly educated (wine-snob) consumer that can detect the taint, can return the bottle to the store or restaurant where it was purchased, so it has little affect on the inidividual in the end (as long as you have another bottle on hand if you happened to have opened a corked one at home).

So with cork taint possibilities and natural cork prices rising, synthtetic cork does have its place in the wine world. As long as you do not plan to age the wine (store it with the hope that the tannins soften and the fruit mellows), synthetic corks are a very effective wine closure, as are screw caps. Both of these wine closures allow little to no air to get into wine, which as I mentioned earlier, is essential to the aging process. Synthetic corks are also recycleable, so make sure they make it into the right trash can, will ya!

1-23 To Taste or To Drink

This weekend is the annual ZAP festival in San Francisco. ZAP stands for Zinfandel Advocats and Producers, and this event is a tasting of zinfandels put on by them. To my knowledge Zinfandel refers only to the red wine version of this grape being served at the festival. I don't recall any white zinfandel being poured in years past, and as a general rule, if you want to refer to the pink version, make sure to say "white zin".

The arrival of the festival made me think about the word tasting. Usually when people say they are going wine tasting, it means they are going wine drinking, and just about everyone at ZAP is there for wine drinking. When a member of the wine trade is tasting, they are usually spitting the wine out each time they taste, so that they can actually taste the wine all day and make decisions on which they liked the best. When most people are tasting, they can't remember much about any of the wines they tasted after the first two wineries, and they often end up with a couple bottles in the trunk that they don't remember much about the next day (not to mention a strong desire to down a bottle of aspirin). When I was working at a winery a few years back, we actually had a guy call and say he "accidently" bought a few cases of wine the day before and was wondering if he could return a couple of them.

I'm not advocating that you stop going wine drinking. Its fun, and as long as you remember to have a sober driver, go wine drinking as often as you can find friends who want to go with you! However, in case you do want to go wine tasting so that you can pick out some new wines to drink, or if you're going to ZAP and you want to be coherent and impressive enough in your wine know-how to grab a date afterwards, (its known to be quite a meat market) here are some quick wine tasting tips for you:

1. Don't argue with the pourer about the small pour she gave you. The 1 oz. pour is pretty standard for how much wineries suggest you need for tasting.
2. Once you have some wine in your glass, put your nose in there and take a big whiff. You don't have to say anything about smelling rose petals or blackberries, but the smell is part of your sensation of taste, so if you like how it smells, you are probably going to like how it tastes.
3. Now you are ready to take a sip. Breathe in through your mouth, and put a little of the wine inside. Close your mouth just for a half second and let the wine sit in there. Now open your mouth and breathe in a little more air over your tongue so that the wine hits all the sensory spots (sweet, salty, and bitter). This will help you really taste it in all its glory (or demise). If you like it now, you'll probably like it when you drink it.
4. At this point you can spit the wine into a spittoon or cup, or you can let the wine go down. Spitting takes a little practice to look elegant (female), or cool(male), but you can always practice spitting at home with one full glass of water and one empty (spitting into the empty of course), before you head out on your tasting journey. I recommend doing a little spitting and and a little less letting the wine go down, but that's entirely up to your desire to remember the occasion.
4. This process will not only help you taste each wine, but it will also slow you down, in effect making you more likely to remember what you tasted enough to decide whether its worth the $30 they're asking. And if you are at ZAP this weekend, it will help you ask that attractive man or woman you've been watching all day, where they are going after the show. If you don't have the guts to ask, its safe to assume they'll be somewhere along Chestnut Street.

PS. My apologies to those who live outside of the Bay Area and can't benefit from this last piece of advice. The scene on Chestnut is probably not worth moving here for, however.

1-15 Morning Wash

Washing wine glasses usually includes breaking a couple, at least over time. I've got a beautiful collection of glassware pieces on top of my refrigerator waiting to find their home in the trash or recycling. Half of them are stems(the bottoms) and half of them are bowls (the tops). When my uncle came to visit, he asked me if they were a piece of art. I laughed and then started thinking of ways that I could make them art. I settled for using the bottoms as ring holders. Jewelers say that you are not supposed to wear your wedding ring (or any precious gem) when doing dishes, putting on lotion, taking a shower, at the gym, and pretty much any time where you use your hands in any capacity. This is pretty difficult to remember, and , for me, its even more difficult to actually get the darned thing off. I've managed to make it a little easier by placing broken wine glass stems in just about every room in the house where I might need to take off my ring. So tip #1 for today is: use your broken wine glass stems as ring holders. Just make sure there are no sharp edges on the top that you could cut yourself on (and don't attempt to sand it down without doing some reading first, my husband said I could easily have hurt myself).

Tip #2: Never wash glasses when you've had more than a couple glasses of wine (a couple meaning about two, not about four). This will almost eliminate the need for tip #1, but there are plenty of places to buy a nice inexpensive ring holder. I tried to make this rule very clear to my New Year's Eve guests as they very graciously offered to help clean up after our dinner party. One very sweet and well meaning guest would not accept my plea to leave the wine glasses for me to wash in the morning, and what do you know, I have another ring holder...

Tip #3: Make sure that your complete attention is on washing the glasses. Obeying tip #2 will help with this, but there are always a million other things you could be thinking about, besides washing glasses, and I recommend that whenever you are thinking about something else, wait and wash the glasses when you can focus. Sounds pretty silly, but every time I've broken a glass when I haven't had more than two glasses of wine, my mind has been on other things. FOCUS!

Tip #4: Buy special brushes for washing glasses. I know this also may sound silly, but if you have nice glassware, you really should. They cost about $7 and they will save you much more. You should only wash wine glasses with it, and keep it out of the sink. This will also help your glasses from smelling like a wet dog, but I might be the only person who notices that happens with a normal dish sponge. They also keep you from putting extra pressure on one side of the glass (which often causes the bowl to snap into a couple pieces) as you would with a normal sponge. You can find them on wineenthusiast.com, and probably in your local wine shop. Everyone I know thinks I'm a little obssesive for having them. They are probably right, but I definitely break fewer glasses because of them (and then there's the wet dog thing).

You can dry your glasses with a soft towel and leave them out if they don't get entirely dry right away. They also sell special towels for drying, but now I'm showing that I'm definitely obsessive about my glasses. However, having some would sure make someone think you know your wine stuff. (P.S. You can also buy the towels on wineenthusiast.com. They are "suede microfiber wine glass towels").

1-10 Salty with Sweet Confidence

A couple nights ago I had a group of girlfriends over for our 3rd wine education/drinking dinner. Our concept is simple, I provide the wine and a little history or lesson along with it, and each of them brings a part of the meal to pair with the wine. I always ask them to give their thoughts on the wine, which I've noticed have gotten significantly more sophisticated each time. Hopefully this means I'm a good teacher, or at least that I've inspired them to speak up. One woman in particular has definitely taken the glass by the stem (or the bull by the horns, whatever cliche you prefer). I had never thought her to be very interested in drinking. She doesn't like champagne, for one, and what girl doesn't like champagne? However, a few days after our first dinner, she mentioned that she was very excited because she was able to use her new wine tasting knowledge to impress people at a work dinner. We had discussed the different types of bottles used for different wines and how that might help you in a blind tasting. She passed along the information and impressed the more wine knowledgeable folks at the table. Then, two nights ago I was surprised to hear her say that her first impression of the 1997 BV Tapestry, a Bordeaux-style wine, (which means it typically would use cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, malbec, and/or petit verdot grapes, of which this bottle contained the first four) we were tasting was "salty". Very confidently she confirmed her opinion, and as I took another sip, I tasted exactly what she did. It was a little like sticking your tongue in the ocean and then quickly pulling it out. I was so elated by her forthcoming statements on her opinion of the wine, as it was such an uncommon one, that I failed to notice that the entire experience of the wine was utterly amazing. The initial saltiness makes a bit of sense. If you look at a diagram of the tongue's sensory spots (see below), which I'm sure many of you didn't know existed, the tip of the tongue is where you taste saltiness. There were bountiful lessons in that first sip for all of us.

The saltiness also made the wine go very well with the aged cheeses that had arrived on our table via the assigned lady friend. She had done a little reading in the cheese shop (because the cheese person, formally called the fromager, was out) and discovered that aged Jack would be a good match, and so it was. As harder cheeses age, they generally get these little crunchy salt pockets that build up. There was nothing better than a sip of that delicious wine and that salty cheese...unless you count the yummy salad with mixed lettuces and salty-sweet nuts, the earthy mushroom risotto, and the feijoada (brazilian meat stew), that the other ladies brought. All were great matches for the wine, which after that initial salty taste, gave way to a peppery and earthy wine with deep, dark berry flavors (fruits like blackberry and cassis). We didn't have much wine left by dessert, but that went very well too; Sticky gooey bars covered in walnut pieces. Yum!