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Glazed Pork and Big Barrel Pinot Noir

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Bird Big Barrel Pinot Noir Tasting Notes:  There is not much one can say about this wine without gushing.  It is delicious. From the remarkable color to the nose full of delicately scented cherries and roses and baking spice and the taste of a very carefully and lovingly vinified Pinot Noir, it is to be savored. If handled improperly, Pinot Noir grapes will still yield a juicy wine, but it will lose all the uplifting aromatics.  Therefore, this wine is made in the eponymous big barrels to keep the oak from overpowering the essence of the grape.  The winemaker also uses an unusual “Vernou roll” technique that allows the wine to come into contact with the skins very gently and with limited exposure to oxygen, thereby preserving much of the flavor and intensity without extracting harsh tannins.

 

Pork or Veal Loin Glazed with Pomegranate and Oranges

  • One 3-pound roast of pork or veal, or two 1 1/2 pound tenderloins
  • Marinade
    • 1/4 cup fresh orange juice
    • Grated zest of one orange
    • 2 tbsp soy sauce
    • 2 tbsp peeled and grated fresh ginger
    • 2 tbsp pomegranate syrup or pomegranate molasses
    • 2 tbsp hot mustard
    • 2 tsp freshly minced garlic
  • Basting sauce
    • 1/3 cup fresh orange juice
    • 3 tbsp honey
    • 3 tbsp pomegranate syrup or pomegranate molasses
    • 2 tbsp soy sauce
    • 2 tbsp reserved marinade
  • To Make:
    • In a large bowl, combine the ingredients for the marinade. Reserve 2 tablespoons. Then marinade the roast in a dish, covered by plastic wrap or a lid. Marinade for at least 6 hours, overnight if possible.
    • Combine the ingredients for the basting sauce. Reserve 1/4 cup for spoon on at the very end.
    • Broil or grill the roast or tenderloins not too close to the heat source, turning the meat and basting with the sauce at least 4 times. Cook until a meat thermometer registers 140 degrees Fahrenheit, 20 to 30 minutes for a large loin, 5 to 7 minutes per side for tenderloins.
    • Or, in an oven, place in a roasting pan at 400 degrees.  Baste every 5 minutes, until meat thermometer reads 140 degrees, about 40 minutes.
    • Transfer meats to a carving board and let rest for 10 minutes. Slice thinly. Simmer reserved basting sauce until slightly thickened. Spoon over meat to glaze.
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When can I have the next bottle?

While everyone has heard of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas (pronounced ghee-gohn-dass) is a bit more in the background.  First of all, why is the last “s” pronounced?  I am told it is a dialect difference in the south to pronounce more of the last letters.  Second of all, what is Gigondas and why should we be drinking it?  The short answer is, it is delicious and it has a great quality to price ratio (QPR).

Gigondas is an appellation in the Southern Rhone region of France that is nestled in the valleys and foothills of the romantic sounding mountains, Dentelles de Montmirail.  This area has a warm, mediterranean climate that ripens the constituent grapes in Gigondas to perfection.  Grenache is a lovely, fruity grape whose vines are resistant to both heat and drought.  They are often not trellised but rather “head trained” – allowed so stand on their own and are pruned to be close to the ground and provide shade to the bunches of grapes it produces.  It ripens relatively late, but can develop enough sugars to push the alcohol levels it can produce to over 15%.  And because it has thin skin, it can be relatively low in acids and tannins which makes it an ideal partner for the more forceful Syrah and Mourvedre varieties.

Wine made from Syrah is powerful – with dark berry flavors offset by notes of white and black pepper and relatively high tannins.  It is more famous for its massive wines from Hermitage, Cote Rotie and under its alias, Shiraz, from Australia.  But it is one of the most important parts of Southern Rhone blends – from Chateauneuf-du-Pape to Vacqueyras – as well as in Languedoc and Roussillon.

Mourvedre is made less as a single varietal because it can be very tannic and overwhelming – but in blends, it can be sublime. It is also known under the names Monastrell in Spain and as Mataro in Australia where it has thrived.  It is also a heat loving, late ripening variety that brings a meaty, herby and potent character to wines.

Together, in a 50% Grenache, 40% Syrah and 10% Mourvedre blend, the 2013 Lavau Gigondas is a wonderful example of how these very different grapes work harmoniously together to create a big, rich, fruity, spicy wine that can stand up to anything you throw on the grill or any spices you might add.  This wine has had 5 years in the bottle to meld its various parts, mellow out its rough edges and become downright luscious.  It is filled with blackberry, black currant, peppery notes and licorice on the nose and is almost chocolate-like on the tongue.  Having already finished one bottle, I am already anxiously planning when I can have more!

Cheers, Seema
Photo of Gigondas by Slow Tours
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Nothing dry about Dry Creek Valley

Wine tasting is an endeavor of sheer endurance.  That is a lesson I have learned through sheer, hard work.

Let me start at the beginning.  Sonoma County, 90 minutes north of San Francisco, is gorgeous wine country.  Picture rolling, lush green hillsides, covered in orderly and beautifully staked and grown grape vines interspersed with aspens, sycamores, wild grasses, flowers of all colors and herbs of all fragrances.  Driving through the winding roads, you roll down the windows and smell the fresh air as if it is something that reaches into your lungs and blows wonder into your every pore.
The morning temperatures are cool and breezy and perhaps a bit foggy.  The perfect temperatures to put on a sweater, drink some hot coffee and set off on a day of exploration for the senses.  The afternoon warms you up just enough to sun your face and make you feel like you should find the closest hammock for a nice little nap.  And the evenings… are slow as molasses.  Breathtaking shades of peach and lilac drift through the sky as the sun sinks lazily past the horizon, bringing that hint of chill, making you want to reach for your favorite bottle of pinot noir – or is it zinfandel tonight?
My particular adventure has been in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma Valley.  I have never felt more whole as a person than I feel here.  Life is relatively simple here.  People work hard, they grow the grapes, they make the wines and they sell those beautifully labelled bottles full of dark magic.
Sonoma Valley is best know for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the Russian River Valley areas and for their juicy, scrumptious Zinfandels along with world class Sauvignon Blanc (often called “Fume Blanc”) and Cabernets in the distinctive Dry Creek Valley style.
Ferrari-Carano is one of those vineyards that changes one’s life.  You wander up to the Italianate facade and filled with wonder, continue through the magical gardens filled with spring blossoms of cherry and apricot, azaleas and tulips to the fountains and statues, wondering, why can’t I just live here?  Can’t I just move here and leave everything else behind?
And all of this before you even taste the wines!
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Good wine for a great cause

Parkinson’s Disease is a neurodegenerative disease that slowly moves from tremors to stiffness to cramping, eventually leaving its sufferers entirely disabled – in a wheel chair or even bedridden.  It is painful and horrifying, knowing that it will only bring more and worse suffering.  The most famous face of Parkinson’s in our lifetime has been Michael J. Fox, who has been tireless in raising funds, awareness and supporting research to fight this blight.  And one of his signature efforts has been the production and sale of 4 Foxes Chardonnay.
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This wine was released by the President of Jackson Family Wines, Rick Tigner, whose wife also suffers from Parkinson’s. It is a wine typical of the storied Russian River Valley of Sonoma County.  On the nose, you get delicious smells of lemon, pear, apricot, perhaps a hint of tropical fruits like mango.  On the palate, you get a buttery mouthfeel with the oaky taste of vanilla and caramel.  It has a soft finish that would pair well with everything from a simple white pizza to chicken with mushrooms.
A good wine for a great cause – cheers!
Seema 🙂
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Crab Salad & Sparkling Wine

The warmer weather is slowly arriving and the Sophora NV Cuvee Sparkling Wine and crab salad (see below for recipe) combo is the perfect combo to welcome spring!
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Sophora NV Cuvee Sparkling Wine Tasting Notes: Don’t confuse NV – non-vintage – with lower quality.  Non-vintage just means that the wine in the bottle has been blended with a “reserve wine” during the second fermentation to create a house style.  This wine is scrumptious.  When the distributor came by with it for a tasting, I was blown away and asked to take it home that evening to share with my true love.  And even my beloved, who for the past 23 years has professed indifference to sparkling wines, loved it.  It is rich and full-bodied, being a combination of 52% Chardonnay and 48% Pinot Noir, with the best of both grapes.  Crisp acidity, fruit forward off-dry taste and a round, soft mouthfeel aided by the very fine bubbles.  Had I not known better, I might have guessed it was a champagne and twice the price.  This wine will pair perfectly with an endive and crab salad.

Crab Salad in Endive Leaves

  • 1/2 lb. crab meat, all cartilage removed
  • Dressing: 
    • 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
    • 1/3 cup mayonnaise
    • 1/3 finely diced celery
    • Grated zest of 1 lemon plus 1 or 2 tbsp lemon juice
    • 2 tbsp chopped fresh chives
    • 1 tbsp fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
    • Salt, ground black pepper and cayenne pepper to taste
  • 12 to 18 Belgian endive leaves
  • To Make:
    • In a large bowl, combine the mustard, mayonnaise, celery, lemon juice, chives and parsley. Add the crab meat and mix in gently. Season to taste. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. When ready, scoop some crab salad into individual endive leaves and arrange on a platter.
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Oak, smoke, toast…vanilla?

Wine makers and wine drinkers love to talk about oak.  And given that oak-use is incredibly complicated, it is not surprising.  Oak barrel fermentation, aging in oak, the flavors that oak imparts, the amount of oxidation you get through the porous oak barrels, the type of oak that is used – American, French, Slavonian – and the size of the barrels not to mention the discussions of how the barrels are made and who makes them.
Oak barrels are made in “cooperages,” and each cooperage imparts its own unique character to its barrels.  The staves are the raw materials of oak.  American oak is less dense and can be cut to size.  French oak, with a tighter grain, must be split.  In the most traditional (aka, “best”) cooperages, the staves are left out in the weather for a few years to “condition.”  A lesser cooperage will kiln dry the wood.  Then the staves must be heated to bend the staves into the characteristic shape for a barrel and then roasted for the desired length of time the right amount of “toast”.  The toasting of oak is very important because it determines the flavors that are imparted to the wine.  More butterscotch?  Less smoke?  That is all a function which type of oak and of how the barrel is toasted.
  • White wines tend to show more oak because the wine itself tends to have more delicate flavors and fewer tannins.  The oak  itself has tannins that bind with the proteins in the wine, so whites do not become more tannic with oak fermentation or aging.
  • Red wines on the other hand, already have tannins that have bound with the proteins in the wine. That means that non-neutral oak generally imparts more tannins to red wines than they have naturally.  So, in addition to the vanilla / caramel / butterscotch types of flavors in American oak and the more coconut / hazelnut / smoky flavors in French oak, red wines tend to become more structured in oak barrels.
Two wines that display some oak character:
The Four Foxes Chardonnay is a moderately oaky chardonnay that has had a few years in the bottle.  It is a mellow wine that has notes of apple, pear and apricot with a medium amount of oak.  In contrast, the Treana Chardonnay has a bolder oak character – more rounded in the mouth with riper flavors of peach, apricot and honey.  The dominant flavor of “creme brûlée” is a result of the distinct character of the fairly heavily toasted oak in the wine.
The Lopez de Haro Rioja Reserva is a wonderful example of a red wine whose flavors intertwine seemlessly with oak.  The Temperanillo grape loves oak and as a “reserva,” this wine spends 20 months in a combination of French and American oak, smoothing out its rough edges, aging gently and becoming absolutely delicious.  The Roots Run Deep Winery’s Educated Guess Cabernet Sauvignon is the equivalent of a big, bold wine in exclusively American oak that Napa is famous for.  It is a burst of black currant and black berries with a deep, caramel, vanilla and leather set of flavors that lingers on the palate.
We hope to see you at Mystic Wine Shoppe soon,
Thanks for reading – Seema
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A Personal Journey

When I began studying wine several years ago, I really just wanted to know the difference between a Rhone and a Burgundy, a Napa Cabernet and a Bordeaux. I did not have any grand ambitions. However, as I progressed through the classes, I realized that wine brings so many subjects together – you have to pore over detailed maps to memorize appellations, you have to know the different character imparted by schist or slate or loam or limestone, you have to study how many hours of sun each zone averages to know which grapes are likely to ripen well or over cook in which areas. You have to smell your way through the world – what is the difference between black berry and black currant? What does acacia or hawthorn smell like? is there a difference between lemon, lime and grapefruit smells? Or apples, pears and quince? You also have to study the various ways that wines are made – when are they harvested and by machine or hand? How are they crushed? How is the juice handled before fermentation? What temperature do you ferment at and which strains of yeast do you use? Then there are complicated processes for filtering, fining, additional malolactic fermentation, blending, aging, bottling…

It is astounding how complicated the process is and how much of a bargain wine is at almost any price that we pay these days.

Wine is a second career for me – in the my previous life, I worked in international development and traveled the world. I have been to Mali and Malawi, Albania and Macedonia, India and Indonesia, Nepal and Mongolia. After having children, this sort of travel became impossible and it took me years to find something that was as absorbing and challenging, not to mention something that would give me enough of a reason to take time off from spending all my time with my children.

Who knew wine could be that thing? The more I learn about the wine world, the more I realize there are depths and nuances that I would never have guessed. Something relatively new to me has been the world of Wine-as-fundraising. The wonderful thing for me is that it brings my previous life – working with the poor and vulnerable – together with my new life – learning and teaching about wine. Therefore, the wine I am discussing and we will taste in the shop this week is a wine for a cause.

Thanks for reading, Seema

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Wine, Wisdom and Baseball

As opening day for the Red Sox approaches, I can tell the fans are getting excited. The problem is and I have to be honest, I am not a baseball fan. I know people LOVE the Red Sox and I appreciate that – I am a fan of wines and would totally fan-girl over some famous winemakers, give critical commentary on their raw materials, their decisions for how to make wines, how to label them, when to release them. And most philosophical, I think people find real depth when thinking of and speaking about baseball – similar to the Truth that is said to lurk in every bottle of wine. The link between the two seems inevitable.

red sox opening day

Photo by: CBS Boston

Being a complete novice though at baseball, I began researching this game that so absorbs and thrills fans. The wisdom among its famous is quite real. For example, some guy named Bob Feller said, “Everyday is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind you and start over. That’s the way life is, with a new game everyday and that is the way baseball is.” Those truly are words to live by. I also loved Tommy LaSorda saying, “There are three types of baseball players, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened.” Again, this is a very profound life lesson.

But perhaps the person most credited with folksy wisdom in baseball appears to be Yogi Berra. And these seem to be his best quotes:

• “When you get to a fork in the road, take it.”

• “It gets late early around here.”

• “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

• “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

• “Ninety percent of this game is half mental.”

• “I really didn’t say everything I said.”

• “You can observe a lot just by watching.”

• “Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true.”

• “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up someplace else.”

• “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too.”

But to go with all this wisdom, one needs the right wine. What better choice than the Red Sox Club Series Cabernet Sauvignon? Wine consumption grew 40% between 2000 and 2013 and baseball club series labels are sold in many stadiums these days – meaning people are drinking wine at baseball games. Beer is losing its supremacy. This wine is bold and structured, the perfect wine to go with meats off the grill – burgers, ribs and sausages. As a Cabernet Sauvignon, it is not as heavy as some others making it more approachable in the summer heat. But perfect for those “I’m-expecting-it-to-be-warm-but-it’s-still-cold” spring days. It has all the black currant you expect from a Cab but also some subtle hints of chocolate and tobacco, with a nice fruity finish. It is the perfect gift for a baseball fan on opening day!

Enjoy, Seema

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