Dr Vino's wine blog

Continuing our fine, week-long tradition of “impossible food-wine pairings” (see chips n salsa), we pick a food that we eat here in Amurrica and you decide what to pair with it. And today’s contestant is:

Falafel sandwich!

Two reasons. First, I had a such a terrific falafel in Paris a short time ago at L’As du Falafel in the marais. Great street food. So great that I thought (in one of those delusional traveling daydreams) about opening a chain of falafel shops back home.

Second, it turns out I was not the only one having such daydreams. In the Financial Times last week, James Altucher threw out a business idea of his, which is to open a national chain of falafel shops to capitalize on the phenomenal demand for good falafel seen in NYC. So we’re clearly on the front end of this food trend. Which means…we have to know which wine to pair with it!

Comments are open for your suggestions (and which falafel joint is your fave?). Please note this is not a meaty shwarma but the fried chick pea, hummus, lettuce or purple cabbage, chopped tomato, possibly eggplant, possibly onion, and white sauce version in a pita. Wow, after writing that description, I’m in need of lunch!

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Sommeliers unite!
“Almost a dozen” sommeliers in Melbourne are boycotting Tasmanian wine from Gunns Limited because of a perceived deforestation through their new pulp mill. The wine waiters may not be the big guns but, according to one, “Gunns have got a lot of money and a lot of power and we don’t. But we have the power, not through money, but through influence.” [“Pulp friction“]

Red hot red wine
“Château Lafite Rothschild 1996 has been selling at £7,000 ($14,300) per case, up from £4,200 six months ago; Château Mouton Rothschild 1998 has been on the market for £2,600, up from £1,500; and Château Latour 2004 has sold for £3,200, up from £2,050.” [FT.com]

The new pink?
“Citrusy and bright, Picpoul de Pinet is lively enough to be an aperitif, complex enough to drink with cheese or seafood and — no small consideration — affordable enough to indulge in a second bottle while waiting for a perfect partner for more than food.” [LA Times]

Attention deficit
“Financially we don’t mean very much to the state wine distributors, compared to Robert Mondavi,” Mike Reynolds of Hall winery told CNN. “Distributors look at the bigger brands,” he explained, and “our volume does not justify their attention.” A good point in general, but specifically, maybe the $70 million Gehry-designed winery will get the distributors’ attention for the Halls? [CNN]

A contingent future
Buy six and get one…option? Yes, that’s the new futures policy at Cloof Winery in South Africa. Buy six bottles of the 2006 Very Sexy Shiraz and get one option to buy a bottle of their top wine, Crucible. No word on whether the options themselves are tradeable, or what the demand is. [allafrica.com]

OK, which wine category is hot? Sooo hot? As in up 39 percent nationally for the first six months of this year? That’s right, folks, we’re talking about rosé! Dry rosé!

Just as America is warming up to dry pink wine, Papa Bear Eric Asimov tells us it’s jumped the shark. It’s over. Before it even began! Rosé, we hardly knew ye! EA cries out for rosé therapy on his blog:

But doc, why am I so unhappy about rosés? I don’t want to buy them. I don’t want to drink them. I don’t hate them. I’m just not interested. But I know I’m supposed to care. That is, I’m supposed to be carefree, which is the proper attitude for rosés. You know, lunches in Provence, tapas in Spain, let the rosé flow. But I’m not carefree about rosé. I’m grumpy. What’s wrong with me?…I hate to be a killjoy, doc. Isn’t there anything you can do for me?

Don’t be grumpy, Eric! Just get into the vibe! Although I’m not the kind of doctor you’re looking for, here are some tips for starting to think pink:

1. Context matters: rosé could be the ultimate wine where context matters. When it’s hot, chill it and have it on the deck, at a sidewalk cafe, under a tree, in a hammock–wherever there’s no air conditioning! The hotter you are, the better it will taste. 😉

2. A halfway house for whites and reds: dyed in the wool partisans of whites and reds may not often overlap but rosé may just prove that common ground.

3. Tired of serious wine? It’s a quaffer, easily downed. Refreshment is key. Rosé is almost a state of mind more than it is a wine. (Is this sounding New Age-y yet?)

4. Food friendly: high-acidity dry rosé pairs with a lot of foods, including some hard ones like salads and gazpacho and, of course, anything meaty.

5. Wallet friendly: I’d be grumpy too if I paid a lot for rosé–$15 is my max. This is the first press of some wine or from red vines that aren’t mature enough to do anything interesting so there’s an economic argument for it’s being cheap too. Last summer when we were in the south of France we got a 5L box of the hearty Bergerac rosé for 12 euros, which brought down our per glass costs to practically nothing. It makes you extremely generous when the wine is always cold and your per glass cost is less than a postage stamp–and wine is for sharing!

Some of my favorite dry rosés from this summer:
* Chateau Peyrassol. At $17 it is in my grump-zone, but still very nice light Provencal style. (search)
* Commanderie de Bargemone: Yummy, fresh strawberry notes, good acidity and $12 (search).
* Domaine Houchart (St. Victoire): This wine just makes me think about lunch, outside under an umbrella. $15 (search)
* Domaine Sorin, Terra Amata (Cotes de Provence): Sustainably grown; wonderful with fried calamari (search)
* Chateau d’Aqueria (Tavel): Darker in color and bolder in taste, this is a good one for enticing people from the red side as I did last weekend with a guy who “only drinks red.” Though at $17, it’s into my grumpy price range (search)
* Bodegas Muga (Rioja): easy to find, this one is an even better value at $10 (search)
* Bernard Baudry (Chinon): pleasant, but a tad too serious for mindless summer fun with it’s dollop of minerality (search)

Preppy is back. Drink pink.

“Vino bags stage honors”
“Tenacious Vino surges to another stage win”
“Vino, like a good wine, improves with time”

You could be forgiven for thinking these headlines were about my illustrious cycling career (come on–I went mountain biking over the weekend!). In fact, these are some of the headlines appearing today after the Kazakh Alexandre Vinokurov, aka Vino, won the stage in the Tour de France, his second win in three days. A pre-race favorite, he’s out of the competition for overall leader now because of an early crash and a poor performance yesterday.

Congratulations, Vino, you’re doing all of us Vinos proud. Hopefully, if there’s any suspicion with his being “juiced,” it would just be with wine!

I can’t say that my iPod is exactly loaded with country music tracks. So it’s no surprise that I’d never heard of Brad Paisley until last week, despite the fact that his last album sold over two million copies.

In the funny song “Online” on his new album, 5th Gear, the schlumpy lead character has an alter ego on MySpace (Yes! A country song writes about the internet! And wine!). Roll some of the lyrics:

‘Cause online I’m out in Hollywood
I’m 6 foot 5 and I look damn good
I drive a Maserati
I’m a black-belt in karate
And I love a good glass of wine

Maybe in the next album, the main character will drink wine instead of the aspirational alter ego (Brad Paisley himself?).

See the video on bradpaisley.com

The good people at Wines of Alsace held a press event in the Bronx yesterday. It allowed me the opportunity to ponder a question I have long overlooked: which wine goes with hot dogs?

The venue was in fact the venerable and soon-to-be-demolished Yankee Stadium. Bud Light be damned–the wines available were, naturally, from Alsace!

So for you, dear reader, I broke a decade-long fast and had my first ball park dog, loaded with sauerkraut and mustard. It’s a crazy food that comprises of salt, fat, some meat-like product, nitrates, and probably much more. I wasn’t about to eat 66 of them like that American who brought home the glory earlier this month in other “sports” news. (As a point of interest, there was a hot dog afficionado present who informed me that, indeed, the hot dogs consumed in such a contest have to “stay down” and if they come back up, it is a violation known euphemistically known as a “reversal.”)

Hot dog in hand, I surveyed the Alsatian wines. With their good acidity and minerality, they seem like a good pairing overall for the dawg if you’re not doing the classic beer pairing. The most effective was the Albert Mann, cremant d’Alsace, brut nonvintage (about $19; find this wine). It has bubbles, like beer! But more importantly, I found the zesty citrus notes worked really well with the dawg.

Moving up the wine richness scale, I found the heft of the Domaine Ehrhart, “Rosenberg,” geurztraminer, 2004 (about $20; find this wine) to work well too. The faint spice of the wine was somewhat overwhlemed by the “zesty mustard” but the refreshing core of acidity and minerality remained a good complement. The Albert Boxler 2004 pinot gris (about $30; find this wine), a rich, sweet and powerful wine seemed a little too flabby with the food.

The Hebrew National dog was great going down but an hour or so later I found it had an unpleasant, um, “finish” (safe for work: no “reversal”!). The finish of the Boxler wine lingered longer and was much more pleasant.

Maybe this should be an “impossible food pairing” post, too. A double-play, if you will. So which wines do you like with hot dogs? Vega Sicilia?

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Who wrote these words:

“The tannin has become more supple, the texture is sensational, and the wine is like a towering skyscraper in the mouth without being heavy or disjointed.”

a) Santiago Calatrava
b) Donald Trump
c) Robert Parker
d) the DC Madam

All right, people. Saddle up them ponies, we’re going on a trip! Thanks to the lobbying from Neil, aka the Brooklynguy, our next meetup will be at Stonehome wine bar in Fort Greene, Brooklyn!

Stonehome has been racking up the accolades recently. Zagat NYC Nightlife says it is the #1 wine bar in NYC. NY Mag praised the outdoor space. All that sounds like we need to see the place for ourselves!

So next Thursday hop on a train to Brooklyn and savor a glass with fellow vino-philes in the latest of our series of meetups. Post a comment or drop me a line if you can make it since the folks at Stonehome would like a heads up on numbers. Hope to see you there!

When: 6:00 – 8:00 PM, Thursday July 26
Who: you – and feel free to bring a friend!
Where: Stonehome wine bar, 87 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11217. Map it!
How: G to Fulton; C to Lafayette; 2, 3, 4, 5, N, R, Q to Atlantic Ave, BAM/LIRR exit.