Tag: Food & Drink

Managing your portfolio is never as fun for the rest of us as it is for the wine collector. In the wine market, “sell” is replaced with “drink” and that’s usually done over cheese and good company rather than an antacid and a phone call. Buying replenishes your mealtime supply and diversifying is as easy adding white to red and new to old.

Historically, well-stored, age-worthy wine appreciates in value by about 15 percent a year—a perfectly admirable ROI—but it’s not quite that simple. As a global commodity that experiences the same ups and downs as any economy, wine is subject to its own host of market risks. It can be dropped, stolen, overheated, or otherwise mistreated. A 100-point score can double a wine’s price overnight. The buying habits of the Chinese (who pay no tax on wine sales and imports) significantly impact the price and availability of wine’s marquee names. And a case of fraud, like Rudy Kurniawan, who was arrested this spring for counterfeiting and selling millions of dollars of fraudulent Burgundy, can devalue an entire region’s reputation.

Add this atop a skittish economy and you’ve got the makings of a drowned market. Market Street Wineshop’s Robert Harllee has seen his number of collectors dwindle from 25 or 30 to five or six over the past three years. “Tastes and habits are changing. We’re no longer producing new generations of collectors,” he said.

Others see the uncertain market as incentive to collect. “Amongst the top echelon of people, the business of collecting has actually been heightened in this unstable economy,” said Bill Curtis, who opened Tastings of Charlottesville 22 years ago. Curtis has counted eight to 10 customers as collectors for 10 to 15 years. They spend $30,000-50,000 a year with him.

But because no Virginia retailers are in the futures (see Winespeak 101) game, it’s not Bordeaux that Harllee and Curtis are selling. Nor is it at the four-digit bottle price for which many Bordeauxs go. Instead, their collectors are buying wines from Burgundy, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and Napa, depending on what style of wine they dig the most. Typically, a Burgundy collector isn’t also a Napa Cab collector, and because Curtis’ and Harllee’s high-end bottle prices range from $65 to $135, these are wines to drink more than they are to collect.

Of course, it’s the drinkers who make the best collectors, because they keep coming back for more. Curtis’ wealthiest customer refuses any $200 bottles, because he’s drinking them straightaway. Still, having a customer who routinely fills a $1,200 case is better than one who spends big but lays them all down for a very stormy day. Curtis says it’s finance people who collect in this true sense. “They abide by the pork belly theory that it’ll all be worth three times as much next year,” said Curtis.

Many collectors go straight to the source for cellar advice and refills. Luca Paschina, winemaker at Barboursville Vineyards, has about 20 serious collectors who spend $5,000-10,000 a year on his “library” wines. One collector even came to him with a spreadsheet of his cellar contents asking for advice on what to drink, what to sell, what to keep, and, best of all, what to buy. The collector walked away with five cases.

A request that Harllee’s getting a lot more are for birth year wines. Depending on the recipient’s age, Harllee’s often limited to a Port or Madeira (two fortified wines that can outlast Gram or Pops), but he guesses he still makes 30 to 35 of these sales each year. “It’s not a bad little business,” he said.

Serious wine collecting is definitely a rarefied market for the 1 percent-ers, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t dabble in it. If you’ve got some room in your sock drawer, stow away a few bottles that have some life in them. There’s nothing at stake when you can drink your losses.

Three time’s a charm
Speaking of collectibles, the 2010 vintage of 3, the collaborative effort of King Family’s Matthieu Finot, Veritas’ Emily Pelton, and Grace Estate’s Jake Busching, will be released at King Family Vineyards on Tuesday, July 3, at 3:33pm. This will be your only chance to taste the wine, but you can buy the wine from the wineries’ tasting rooms. 2010 was a hot, magnificent year for red grape growing, so this one’s going to go fast.

Winespeak 101
Futures (n.): The early purchase of wines still in a barrel, often a year or 18 months prior to the official release of a vintage.

Now that the markets are bursting with summer berries and stone fruits, it’s tempting to forget about ’dem apples ’til the fall, when they’re as crispy as they are prolific. But why not enjoy them in a glass? Artisanal hard ciders are making a strong comeback nationwide and Virginia, with its vast variety of apples, grew from having two cideries to seven (and counting) in the past year. In cider’s colonial heyday, John Adams drank it every day with breakfast. While it’s mighty tasty on its own, cider also makes a refreshing summertime cocktail perfect for thunderstorm-watchin’ and front-porch sippin’.
Here are a handful of favorite recipes from some of our area’s cideries.

Albemarle Ciderworks, a family-run cidery in North Garden grew from, naturally, an apple orchard that boasts a dozen or so heritage varieties of apples. The Sheltons produce four varieties of cider that range from dry to semi-dry. Here’s their take on the Parisian classic, kir royale.

Kir Royal Pippin
Put 1 teaspoon crème de cassis liqueur into a champagne flute. Top with Albemarle Ciderworks Royal Pippin cider and garnish with a lemon twist.

Bold Rock Cider just south of Nellys-ford is one of the newest kids on the cider block, with a tasting room due to open next year, but with distribution of their six-packs starting this month. Owner John Washburn’s had the land since 1985, but only recently found consulting cidermaker Brian Shanks in New Zealand to bring his cider to “fruition.” Choose their Virginia Draft or their Virginia Apple for this punch.

Cider Punch
Combine 3 to 4 bottles of Bold Rock Cider,
1/2 cup Cointreau, 1/2 cup brandy, and 1/2 bottle chilled soda water and serve in punch cups.

Originally built in 1764, Castle Hill Cider in Keswick was the home of Colonel Thomas Walker, guardian and mentor to Thomas Jefferson. Today, it serves as a bucolic site for weddings and special events and produces four styles of dry and semi-dry ciders. This cocktail doesn’t bother comparing apples to oranges—it combines them.

Apple Sass
Mix 3 ounces orange juice with 2 ounces vodka in a highball filled with ice. Top with cider and garnish with a maraschino cherry.

Foggy Ridge Cider in Dugspur is made with apples harvested from three different orchards and poured into small batches that exhibit the uniqueness of each apple variety. Cidermaker Diane Flynt makes four straight ciders plus two ciders combined with apple brandy and is passionate about every step from pruning and picking to pouring and marketing. Gin gets a different kind of juice in this invention of Diane’s.

Summer Cider Cocktail Pitcher
Make a simple syrup by bringing 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup water, and 4 large sprigs of thyme to a simmer until sugar is completely dissolved. Cool completely and remove the thyme. Add 1/4 cup gin, juice of one lemon, and 2 to 4 chopped plums (or other seasonal fruit) to the simple syrup and chill for at least two hours. Just before serving, add one bottle of First Fruit or Serious Cider. Serve in a cocktail glass or champagne flute.

Located in Free Union, Potter’s Craft Cider is a farmhouse-style hard cider made using Virginia-grown cider apples and traditional production methods. Owners Tim Edmond and Dan Potter experiment with different yeasts, but stick to only one variety, selling it to about 10 restaurants who serve it on draft and about 20 retailers that carry it by the bottle (including Whole Foods, which sells it in refillable growlers). Here’s a cocktail obsession amongst the local foodie crowd.

Potter’s Cherry
Stir 1 oz. Lairds Apple Brandy (or bourbon), 5 port cherries, and 2 teaspoons port cherry liquid in the bottom of an ice-filled lowball. Fill with Potter’s Craft Cider and swizzle.

We lingered long after we should have. Tables had been cleared, the swoosh of the dishwasher had replaced the sound of sizzling proteins, and the bar was quiet, apart from the occasional clink of ice in a shift drink. Still, after a meal like the one we’d had at Zinc, we felt an unspoken urge to stay and worship the site of such gustatory pleasure.

Vu Nguyen’s restaurant on West Main has weathered storms in the five years since it opened. When Nguyen bought the converted garage (previously occupied by The Station and Wild Orchid) with then-partner Thomas Leroy, they named it Zinc Bistro, channelled Paris, and served steak frites and croques madames. When the recession started rearing its menacing head, they reconceived the menu to small plates with price tags to match. Customers seemed confused though, and in mid-2010, Nguyen bought Leroy out, ditched the tapas concept, and hired a new chef.

Justin Hershey (right), a French Culinary Institute grad who’d been on the locavore fast-track under chef Ian Boden at the now-closed Staunton Grocery, took the executive chef gig at Zinc instead of moving to Chicago because “the place was kind of awesome.” Within months of Hershey’s arrival, his fresh and contemporary menu tightened Zinc’s focus into being “responsible” and “relevant”—two words Nguyen uses to describe his goal—and the restaurant got a tagline: Seasonally Inspired, Locally Acquired.

Our visit, which fell two months after the restaurant celebrated its fifth anniversary and two months prior to Nguyen opening his pho-devoted Moto Pho Co. in the Main Street Market Annex across the street, revealed that despite the double identity crisis and down economy, Zinc’s most definitely found itself—it’s a restaurant cooking some of the best food in town.
We primed our palates at the bar with cocktails expertly shaken by bartender Laura McGurn, who personifies the virtuosity of C’ville foodies by also tending the restaurant’s extensive patio garden and working at Market neighbor, The Spice Diva. Freshly plucked herbs and edible flowers float their way into cocktails and onto every pretty-as-a-picture plate of food that emerges from the open kitchen.

Seated on the patio with pearly cava percolating in our flutes, Hershey came out bearing a grin and a huge piece of pyrex covered in a rainbow of edibles not unlike a painter’s palette. Slices of house-made beef terrine, local cured meats and cheeses, deviled eggs, glazed walnuts, apricot purée, confited tomatoes, a quenelle of whole grain dijon, and fans of fruit made for dozens of heavenly combinations with warm baguette slices serving as our canvases.

We were fighting over sprigs of pineapple sage when four appetizers arrived that sung of the season and Virginia’s sources—from the well-known (like Caromont Farm and the Rock Barn) to the unknown (like the Mennonite farmer who comes by with handfuls of produce). There was a salad of baby beets, rosy strawberries, pine nuts, golden radishes, scoops of quince paste, and blue cheese, and a chilled soup of asparagus poured over sour cream, asparagus shavings, and Surryano ham chips. Buttery tuna crudo anointed with red onion and parsley sat atop a crostini spread with Meyer lemon-tarragon aioli; and duck confit, spring garlic, garden peas, and a coddled egg over fusilli was comfort food from another world. We created diversions and wielded forks to clear the decks for our entrées and a bottle of Provençal rosé.

Reverence overtook when Hershey came to introduce the glories before us. Perfectly cooked salmon shared a plate with dill, tendril-tipped snap peas, and tender, tangily-dressed potatoes. Seared scallops were joined by grilled spring onions, roasted dates, preserved lemon, and a chickpea-fava panisse that was light yet rustic and savory. Rib-eye, fingerling potatoes, and meaty trumpet mushrooms were baptized with a delicate quail egg that enriched an already serious sauce. A roasted pork shoulder yielded to the touch of a fork and shredded into its accompaniments —Parisian-style gnocchi and spring veggie fricassée.

I was marveling over a tiny roasted carrot still wearing its green top when Hershey noticed my awe and said, “Roasted carrots are soooo good, aren’t they?!” After getting nothing more than a cursory scrub, a drizzle of olive oil, and a sprinkle of salt, they get roasted at 275 degrees for two full hours. Hershey can geek out over techniques with the best of chefs, but in the end, humble ingredients win his heart.

We decided that dessert would be gratuitous, so Hershey poured himself some Port and sat with us, his whites rolled up exposing arm tattoos as colorful as his food. It was the end of a long day and he was going to do it all over again the next, but his eyes still twinkled. “You have to have the discipline to keep pushing, eating, and cooking. To keep yourself inspired so that every day isn’t groundhog day,” he said. Of course, we wouldn’t mind reliving it.

Once relegated to a scattering around the rim of the plate, herbs have come a long way—especially in this season when fresh ones flourish. Find them on area restaurant menus—from cocktails to desserts—and get herby with it.

Prime your palate with Tempo’s strawberry basil martini made with freshly muddled strawberries and basil leaves, a squeeze of lemon, simple syrup, and vodka, served up in a martini glass that’s garnished with a strawberry.

The guacamole at Aqui es Mexico wouldn’t taste nearly as authentic without the generous handful of cilantro that punches up the big chunks of avocado and diced tomatoes.

At Horse & Hound Gastropub, roasted corn cut from the cob and diced zucchini join basil, chives, and parsley in fluffy fritters that become even more irresistible when dipped in the two housemade sauces—creamy grainy mustard and sweet red pepper jelly—that accompany them.

Parsley and mint abound in the fava bean-based falafel at Afghan Kabob Palace. It makes a perfect lunch served over romaine lettuce with tomatoes and tahini.

Fragrant rosemary flavors Mona Lisa Pasta’s housemade focaccia, which serves as a base for the hearty sandwiches. For a double dose of herbs, the La Giaconda gets a basil/sundried tomato pesto smear beneath the fresh mozzarella and tomatoes.

Love it or hate it

Few things divide a crowd like cilantro. This dichotomizing herb has been the subject of both odes and hate-based blogs. Lovers call its flavor verdant, haters call it soapy. Curiously, coriander (the name for its seed) is said to have been derived from the Greek word for “bed bug” because its aroma has been compared with the smell of bug-infested bedclothes. Don’t know about that, but squashed stink bugs come close.

It’s the purple-stemmed, narrow-leaved thai basil that gives Monsoon Siam’s spicy roasted tofu with basil its flair, but the sliced red pepper, onions, and green chili makes the dish sweet and full of heat.

The farmer’s pasta at Orzo changes with what’s delivered by the farmers, but whether the housemade noodles are graced with spinach or asparagus or radishes (or all three), it gets a light sauce made with ouzo, preserved lemon, butter, and a shower of fine herbes—chives, parsley, chervil, thyme, and tarragon.

At the Blue Light Grill, crème fraîche panna cotta shares the dessert plate with macerated strawberries and lemon-sage shortbreads.—Megan J. Headley

Herbaceous look alikes

Most of us can tell our basil from our sage, but there are a few herbs out there with doppelgangers. Here’s how to spy the difference.

Marjoram or oregano? Oregano leaves are smaller and furrier than marjoram’s bigger, smoother leaves. Marjoram is sweet and lemony. Oregano is pungent and earthy. Oregano can withstand the heat of cooking, whereas marjoram should be added to a dish at the end.

Parsley or cilantro? Flat-leaf parsley has a bigger leaf with sharper edges and a thick stem. Cilantro’s leaf is smaller with more ruffly edges and a lankier stem. One sniff answers the question too—parsley is peppery and cilantro is citrusy.

Winter savory or rosemary? Both have long slender leaves off of a hearty, central stem, but savory leaves are wider and more flexible than rosemary’s more needle-like leaves. And, winter savory tastes spicier than rosemary’s piney flavor.—M.J.H.

Shoo fly pot

Basil, that favorite of herbs for everything from caprese to pesto, also helps keep flies and mosquitoes away. Plant basil outside next to your doors or put a pot indoors on the windowsill and retire your fly swatter.