Dr Vino's wine blog

Which wine under $20 would you pair with this: “rigatoni country style, which includes pasta, white beans, sausage, broccoli and a lot of garlic.”

If this sounds familiar, you must work in one of 12 NYC wine shops that got asked this question recently. Or you read the WSJ. Wine columnists Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher dispatched their assistant to query (anonymously) wine merchants about their food wine pairings. Then they ordered the rigatoni dish from their favorite take-out and tasted through the wines.

I’ll just reproduce their comments from the top two recommendations from their July 14 column. Unfortunately, the column is only available behind the WSJ subscription barrier. However, I’m pleased to say you can find all the shops plotted on my map of NYC wine shops–totally free!

VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Ca’Montini ‘L’Aristocratico’ Pinot Grigio (Trentino) 2004
PRICE: $16.99 (find this wine)
PLACE PURCHASED: Mister Wright, Manhattan
TASTERS’ COMMENTS: Best of tasting (tie). The bright acidity of the wine cuts right through the heaviness of the dish, like a splash of lemon. The food gives the wine weight while the wine lifts the food. Like a great marriage, they make each other better.

VINEYARD/VINTAGE: Santi ‘Solane’ Valpolicella Classico Superiore Ripasso 2003
PRICE: $17.99 (find this wine)
PLACE PURCHASED: Eli’s W.I.N.E., Manhattan
TASTERS’ COMMENTS: Best of tasting (tie). Lusty wine for lusty food. The wine seems proudly rustic, dancing on the tongue, which makes the food get up and dance, too. Put them together and we just wanted to say, “Get a room.”

It’s odd that two such contrasting wine styles worked for them with the dish. What do you think would work?

The other shops queried in the story are ranked here by effectiveness of pairing (I’d suggest more than one pick from each shop before writing any list of shops in stone):
Pasanella and Son Vintners
Bottlerocket Wine & Spirit
Best Cellars
Smith & Vine, Brooklyn
Gotham Wine & Liquors
Discovery Wines
Crush Wine & Spirits
Moore Brothers
Big Nose Full Body, Brooklyn
The Greene Grape

Image: maomau

tags: wine | wine + food pairings | NYC wine stores

By Judith Hausman

After a blind tasting or a big party, every host has wondered what to do with those bottle ends. If you are as frugal as I am, you just can’t bring yourself pour out that last glass of Laughing Magpie or Macon Lugny especially when it’s so easy to put it to good use. Got leftovers? Think opportunity.

Obviously you can cook with it. Add that gulp of red to a barbecue marinade, a stew or spaghetti sauce. Or salt it and refrigerate it until that cooking opportunity presents itself, reducing the salt in your recipe. Deglaze a pan with it, along with a little grainy Dijon mustard and a splash of cream, to make a classic sauce for sauteed boneless chicken, salmon filets or veal medallions.

Or combine red or white wine with orange slices, strawberries, grapes and some seltzer for an impromptu sangria. Stir even Champagne into a Scandinavian-style, cold berry soup. Whir a mix of berries, the wine and additional water or fruit juice in a blender, sweeten (or not) to taste and serve with a dollop of sour cream or yogurt.

To transform the wine further and keep it longer, bring the leftovers to mother…a vinegar mother, as the starter is called. The word “vinegar” comes from the French “vin aigre,” or “sour wine.” Formulas vary but essentially, you will mix roughly 2/3 the quantity of any wine with 1/3 the quantity of white or cider vinegar in a clean jar, bottle or crock… and wait.

Depending on temperatures, alcohol content and acidity, you will have wine vinegar in about two to four weeks. Once a filmy substance forms at the bottom of your container, you have a mother. Some recipes suggest putting the container in the dark and covering it lightly. Some suggest keeping it in a warm spot to speed the process.You can then carefully decant it into another bottle. Or use the vinegar above the mother and then continue to add a new supply of wine to it, waiting after each addition for the vinegar to develop.

Once you have transferred the vinegar to another container, you can spike it with herbs, spices, citrus peel, berries or garlic. Steep sprigs of classic tarragon with lemon peel, a combination of basil leaves, garlic cloves and a few peppercorns or slender chili peppers, dried or fresh. In a decorative bottle, these vinegars are beautifully sparkly gifts too. Attach a tag with a reliable vinaigrette recipe.

Here’s a last and favorite way to use up that red. You may have seen artfully wrapped Italian wine biscuits in specialty stores but they are not difficult to make at home. Elegant and not too sweet, the plump, crunchy biscuits pair well with a dry, assertive cheese, such as Parmegiano Reggiano or Asiago, before a meal or with coffee afterwards.

Wine biscuits
Adapted from They Called it Macaroni, Nancy Verde Barr (Knopf, 1990)

4/12 c. white flour
1/4 c. sugar
2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. baking powder
3/4 to 1 c. vegetable oil, a combination of sunflower, olive oil or other
1 c. red wine

Pre-heat the oven to 350. Put racks on the upper third of the oven.
Sift the dry ingredients and then mix in oil and wine, kneading well to make a soft dough that does not stick, or using an electric mixer with a paddle attachment. If the dough is dry, the biscuits will crack.

Divide dough into 40 pieces and roll each gently into a 5” “snake,” which you can then shape into rings or figure 8’s.

Place them on an ungreased cookie sheet 2’ apart and bake for 20 min. at 350 in the top third of the oven. Then lower the temperature to 300 and bake for 15-20 min. more or until golden.

Cool on a rack and store in a closed tin. Serve with aperitives and cheese or as dessert with coffee.

Image credit: Ha-Vi

tags: wine | vinegar | food & drink

When I was in Paris last week, I had the pleasure of meeting up with Bertrand. You may know Bertrand from his great pictures of the independent wine makers of France. That’s how I knew him.

We met up at La Muse Vin, one of a growing number of “natural” wine bars, in the 11th arrondissement roughly between Republique and Bastille. It is a wine bar/restaurant that, unknown to us, converted fully to a restaurant at 8:30 (20h30, if you will) slightly before we got there. So we each ordered a plate from the chalkboard since that was the requirement in the intimate space. I had chilled pea soup with a yowza amount of spearmint in it.

When it came to the wine, our thoughts turned to the Loire not only because I am a fan of the wines in general, but also because Bertrand had just gotten back from a shoot in the Loire of Jean Pierre Robinot. Although Robinot only started his winery in 2002, he has been around wine for a lot longer, previously owning a wine bar in Paris and founding the insider wine publication Le Rouge et Le Blanc (whose name would no doubt make Stendhal chuckle). You can read all the details on Robinot and see photos on Bertrand’s blog.

Coincidentally, several of Robinot’s wines were on the wine list at La Muse Vin. Or perhaps I should say in the cold storage since one of the onwers was “the list.” Example bottles with prices painted on them are on display around the periphery of the restaurant and he walked us through a few until we settled on the Robinot, Lumière de Silex 2002 from the Jasnieres appellation

As the chenin blanc was decanted and chilled at the table, I couldn’t help but marvel at the rich, golden color. With aromas of honeysuckle, on the palate it had a crispness yet also a slight note of sweetness. Overall, the wine was so intense that I could feel it in the back of my cheekbones. I was sorry we didn’t decant it several hours earlier to see what more appeared to be locked inside.

Enter Alder. Well, he didn’t really enter La Muse Vin. But he did assign a write up of a Loire white for today’s edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday. Another fortunate coincidence.

La Muse Vin, 101, r Charonne, 75011 Paris – 01 40 09 93 05

On our recent vacation to the Virgin Islands, Mrs. Vino and I dined at a surprisingly swanky restaurant in St. Thomas that opened directly onto the beach and the black night sea. Presented with the wine list, I was shocked to discover only four red wines available by the glass and a gaping void for the full bottles between the $40 Torres at the low end and the towering Silver Oak for $200 at the high end (and only one Pinot Noir—-I guess Sideways didn’t make it to the island).

The intrepid Mrs. Vino dared a $14 (!!) glass of Estancia Cabernet, which she found short, sharp and worse yet, warm, all of which led to an involuntary wincing after each sip. The atmospheric openings to the beach meant that the wine was served at room temperature or about 80 degrees. This led me to develop a theory of tropical travel for wine geeks: drink different.

I explored a local gourmet shop that had a surprisingly large range of wines available at about 30% above prices in the continental US. While the shop was air conditioned, some of the labels were stained indicating that either that bottle or one near it had leaked possibly because of heat somewhere along the way. In tropical heat, a case of wine doesn’t need too long to cook if it is sitting in a warehouse without climate control. Why even bother taking your chances when there are plenty of local options?

Although the Virgin Islands doesn’t have a brewery, that doesn’t stop buckets of beer from appearing on the beach. Jamaican Red Stripe was less than a dollar a bottle and served chilled. Mmm, refreshing.

But even more local is of course rum. Impervious to the destructiveness of heat, the island rum, Cruzan, is about $3.50 a bottle and forms the base of many drinks from Piña Colada to the local frozen Bushwacker (coconut milk, Kahlua, Baileys, rum and probably more). While mixed drinks and food don’t usually make good pairings they do go great with conch fritters by the ocean!

Although I would have loved to have had a good bottle of red wine at the restaurant, until restaurants and shops in the tropics make a better effort at wine selection, storage and serving, I’m drinking local. When visiting hot spots, I’ll leave even the thought of red wine at home. It’s easier on the wallet and leads to greater satisfaction—-two things essential to a good vacation.

When sea grapes are the local grape, choose rum or beer

tags: wine | food and drink | travel

Is it a slam on a wine to call it a “great food wine”? In today’s NYT dining section, Eric Asimov intimates as much when discussing extreme food – wine pairings with white wines from the Loire:

“Are Bourgueils, along with similar wines from the neighboring villages of Chinon and Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, great wines? No, but they are great food wines.”

I certainly have called wines great food wines too. But I got to thinking, doesn’t that mean that they are “great wines” since wine is best enjoyed with food? Why cede the title of “great wine” to heavily extracted, hedonistic fruit bombs?