Tag: Food & Drink

Certain wines confuse people just by nature of their multiplicity. It’s easier when a wine has an overarching flavor to define it—like grapefruit in Sauvignon Blanc or black pepper in Syrah —but why scoff depth when there’s shallow pleasure to be had? Chenin blanc, a grape whose ninth century birthplace along France’s Loire Valley remains its most hallowed ground, is called “the world’s most versatile grape variety” in The Oxford Companion to Wine and inspires rhapsody among winos. We call it underappreciated and misunderstood, but most of all, we call it mind-blowingly delicious.

First, an explanation for chenin blanc’s coat of many colors. The grape itself (a mutation of Pineau d’Aunis) is neutral enough that the climate in which it’s grown dictates its style. And although chenin blanc’s grown elsewhere in France (and everywhere from Canada to Cape Town), the Loire Valley—namely Anjou, Bonnezeaux, Chinon, Côteaux du Layon, Jasnières, Montlouis, Quarts de Chaume, Saumur, Savennières, and Vouvray—showcases its entire range from citrusy coquette to sexy sophisticate. A la French mode, the bottles don’t hint at the grape within, rather just the name of its village.

In the cooler, northernmost reaches of the Loire, like Jasnières, wines made from chenin blanc are dry and lean with vigorous acidity. In especially cool vintages, the grape’s acidity can be so austere that its most amicable home is in the region’s sparkler, Crémant de Loire. The continental climate of appellations in the Middle Loire, like Vouvray, Anjou, and Saumur, balance ripe sugars with preservering acid, and a more coastal environ like the Côteaux du Layon promotes the development of botrytis (or noble rot), which creates a honeyed, unctuous wine. In the tiny AOC of Savennières, where winds keep the fog and botrytis at bay, the wines are most often dry. The traditional use of aging in acacia and chestnut barrels gives a yellow tinge and creamy flavor to Savennières, making it, perhaps, the most cerebral of an already brainy bunch.

To add confusion to perplexity, it’s rarely obvious how dry or sweet they are since dryness designations are not required. Sec will be dryer than demi-sec and doux will be sweeter than moelleux, but there’s often more variation and overlap than such a scale implies. What matters most is that the residual sugar in chenin blanc is what makes it so alluring. Without it, the grape’s acidity would feel like whiplash to the tongue. Instead, it fills your mouth with a round, almost oily lushness that’s kept in check by chiseled edges.

Chenin blanc’s aromas and flavors are a cross between bizarre and seductive. In the fruit family, there’s quince, apple, pear, citrus, and melon. In the flower family, there’s honeysuckle and orange blossom. In the none of the above family, there’s lanolin, beeswax, and wet wool. With its slippery, creamy texture and sweet-tart flavor, I often find that lemon meringue pie compares the closest.

Sometimes referred to as France’s answer to riesling (that other darling amongst sommeliers), chenin blanc’s an ideal dinner date. Dry chenin blanc works with anything other whites do. Semi-dry versions can handle everything from creamy sauces to chicken liver paté and sweet versions are a knockout with foie gras. And given our mild winter and summery spring, a perennial crossover’s good to have.

Chenin blanc’s unique for its ageability. In sweet versions, it can live for at least 100 years due to the grape’s naturally high acidity. Demi-sec examples can last into their 30s and even some sparkling and dry bottlings from top producers and favorable vintages can age for 10 years or so.

I’d be remiss not to mention South Africa and California, which combined grow more chenin blanc than France. In South Africa, where it goes by the name Steen, the wines are usually dry or off-dry with characteristic aromatics and viscosity. Nice examples come from Indaba, Man Vintners, and Stellenbosch. Most of California’s chenin blanc plantings are in the hot Central Valley where the result is one of mediocrity, but in the past 15 years or so, the Clarksburg AVA in the Sacramento Valley has made a name for itself with plush and pretty examples like Dry Creek Vineyards.

The best way to fall for chenin blanc is to go somewhere where you can try it in all its glorious variations, poured by someone who’s cuckoo for it. Here, that’s as easy as pulling up a stool at Tastings of Charlottesville and asking Bill or Jason to enlighten you. It’s spring and love is in the air.

I’m usually too busy drinking and writing about wine to really hone my craft. But last month, I received a fellowship from Terlato Family Vineyards to attend the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers, where I had four days and four nights in the Napa Valley to do some serious navel-gazing. I normally wouldn’t subject you all to such self-indulgence (or overindulgence), but with books on our mind this week, I thought I’d share some of the more universal highlights of the week and what I learned about wine writing.

As a key note to set the stage for thinking creatively, Michael Gelb, renowned speaker and author of How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci, shared his “seven steps to genius every day.” He’s hired internationally to teach out-of-the-box thinking as a method for success in all sectors. From his detailed study of Da Vinci’s notebooks, Gelb delivers the word of the ultimate Renaissance man who believed that every child is born with genius, but that we “de-genius” them. Distilled, the seven steps to re-genius-izing (as long as we’re making up words) are 1) Staying forever curious, 2) Doing instead of assuming, 3) Opening up your senses, 4) Embracing the unknown, 5) Studying art and science, 6) Balancing mind and body, and 7) Remembering that everything is connected. There were mind maps, juggling, and a live opera solo to illustrate his points, but my favorite message was to “write drunk and revise sober.” It’s a method I’ve always practiced, but never dared to admit.

Eric Asimov, New York Times wine columnist and role model to many a wine writer, shared his favorite examples of wine writing. He read aloud excerpts from Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route, Hugh Johnson’s Life Uncorked, Robert Camuto’s Pentimento, and poetry from John Keats. What stood out for me was the writing of A.J. Liebling, an American journalist who wrote for the New Yorker from 1935 to 1963. In the year before his death, he penned an ode to hedonism called Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris, in which he wrote gems like, “Last week I had to offer my publisher a bottle that was far too good for him, simply because there was nothing between the insulting and the superlative.” Liebling was also known for using bacon for a bookmark. What all this wine writing had in common was that it was less about wine and more about people, places, and experiences.

We did, from time to time, stop swirling our conceptual glasses long enough to enter the practical realm with writing workshops and exercises, panels of editors reacting to story pitches, and discussions of traditional book publishing versus self-publishing versus e-book publishing. One day, I learned that the average American writer makes $9,000. That’s to say nothing of the wine writer who spends a good portion of that on the materials about which he writes. Even amongst our all-star faculty, only but a few require other sources of income to survive. At least there was plenty of (free) wine at arm’s reach to drown out that sobering fact.

Entrenched in the digital age, we learned that while Facebook is the new gatekeeper (together with Google, they comprise 40 percent of display advertising on the Web), print hasn’t dried up completely—although numbers talk. When Condé Nast kicked sentimental favorite Gourmet to the curb in October 2009, it was because their lower-brow Bon Appétit had 40 percent more subscribers. The e-book business saw a 1,000 percent growth in the past two years, with authors reaping about 40 to 50 percent of royalties (compared to the 5 to 15 percent more common with traditional books).

I learned that hundreds of Napa Cabernets are too much of a good thing, especially when 42 of them are served alongside 27 Napa Merlots as breakfast one morning. I missed the character, restraint, and authenticity in Virginia wines—and some pancakes. I learned that I prefer the look of Virginia’s naked vines to California’s irrigated ones, but that golden mustard blooms against shiny blue skies make up for them. I realized that we are beyond lucky to live smack in the heart of a wine-producing region that’s growing exponentially, but that hasn’t gotten so big that it can’t humor a writer who wants to muck in during harvest. And I learned that even in a room bursting at the seams with a veritable who’s who of wine writers, they all drink their wine one sip at a time.

In a good vintage, the hardest job for winemakers is staying hands-off enough to let lovely fruit speak for itself. In a bad vintage, their hardest job is having all hands on deck to turn lousy fruit into delicious wine. Vintage 2011 was the worst wine weather that Virginia’s seen since 2003 (remember Isabel?). Irene hit close to white grape harvest and incited a rash of premature picking. Then it rained for the entirety of September (the month when red grapes ought to be sunbathing) and winemakers ended up with diluted, underripe, and in many cases, rotted fruit. They were such a grumpy bunch that I steered clear of any postmortem interviews.

Now that the skies have cleared and the 2011 wines have been barrelled or bottled, I asked how our skilled and clever winemakers worked their magic against the crappy hand dealt by Mother Nature.

For Jake Busching, manager of Mount Juliet’s 50 acres of vines and winemaker of soon-to-be Grace Estates Winery, most of his damage control took place in the vineyard.

“My goal was to react as quickly as possible towards the need to pick. The difference of 12 to 24 hours of hang time made or broke a pick this year,” Busching said. He sold 200 tons of grapes to 22 vineyards in 2011, but lost some sales because of disagreements over early-picking. He got his later-ripening grapes through the rains by removing excess leaves around the fruit for better air circulation and by dropping infected clusters over multiple passes.

The name of the game at Glen Manor Vineyards, where winemaker Jeff White just took the Governor’s Cup for his 2009 Hodder Hill Meritage, was sorting, both in the vineyard and in the winery. White let his grapes hang longer than most, but the risk he took (based on 19 years’ experience) paid off. “We left a lot of clusters at the vine because they had fallen apart, but what we picked had gained ripeness, sugars, and flavor development over those weeks,” he said. Their usual two sorting tables were manned differently this year, too, with more people on the first table picking off rotted berries before they got destemmed.

Michael Shaps, who makes his own wine in addition to overseeing 25 brands and 20,000 cases at his custom crushpad, Virginia Wineworks, thought outside the box. For 12 years, Shaps has been making a sweet, late-harvest Cabernet Franc by laying the grapes in trays and drying them with fans in order to reduce their moisture and concentrate their sugars (a technique the Italians call appassimento). “I realized that this would be the perfect year to do this with our dry wines, too. The grapes came in mature, but diluted, so the drying process would bring them back to where we want them,” he said.

Andy Reagan, winemaker at Jefferson Vineyards, lost about 40 percent of his usual fruit intake this year and will likely produce 2,000 fewer cases than his 7,500 annual average. Sounds dismal, but because 2010 was such a fantastic year (and because he felt like luck was running out after sitting pretty for seven vintages), he bought and processed an excess of red fruit last year, leaving him with options. “I may make some non-vintage Cabernet Franc, and will give the 2010 Meritage an extra year of oak-aging to make up for not making one in 2011,” Reagan said.

White’s been pleasantly surprised by the blending trials of his reds so far. “They’re not big, tannic, structured wines, but they have great color and real nice flavor. We’ll bottle earlier than normal and will suggest people drink them within the next few years. These wines will appeal to a different palate and different foods and will answer the voices out that think that reds have become too alcoholic,” he said.

Great wine may be made in the vineyard, but when that fails, thank goodness for the professionals who make it in the winery.

There are certain wines that, even without knowing what they are, make you want to drink them happily, heartily, with friends, and without restraint. They make you want to stuff rustic foods like bread and salami into your mouth using little to no table manners. These are my favorite wines. They don’t need to be aged, decanted, swirled, sniffed, or analyzed. They just need to be enjoyed with reckless abandon. Reds from Southern Italy fit this description and a Pugliese producer whose line is carried by Richmond-based importer, Peter Atkinson, makes wine fit for a bacchanalian feast.

Most of Puglia’s wine is produced on the high-heel of Italy’s boot—the Salento Peninsula—where the land is flat and drenched in sun with a mean annual rainfall so low that it’s measured in millimeters. But travel to the northern reaches of the region, near the country’s ankle, and it’s hilly and mountainous. Here, in the town of Lucera, accountant-turned-winemaker Alberto Longo is producing an impressive range of wines on about 85 acres of vines. His über-modern facility, complete with light-, temperature-, and humidity-controlled cellars, was built from a 19th century farm house, so terracotta tile roofs contrast with sleek stone walls.

Atkinson imports an interesting white that Longo makes with Falanghina, a grape more commonly grown in Campania, as well as a gravelly rosé that’s made from Negroamaro, an indigenous red grape that literally means “bitter black,” but it’s the reds that beg to be downed by the bucket.

Longo’s reds are as generous and lusty as those from Puglia’s sun-baked south, but because the north has iron-rich soil and a growing season that’s four to five weeks longer, Longo manages to coax out a minerality and complexity that isn’t always there in the Salento-grown stuff. A bonus, I should add, that comes at no additional cost. The Cantine di Terravecchia line retails for around $10 a bottle at Market Street Wineshops, Tastings of Charlottesville, Wine Made Simple, and Greenwood Gourmet & Grocery.

The pàmpana is 100 percent Negroamaro and tastes of fresh black cherries with lithe tannins and a bitter almond finish. The citerna takes Nero di Troia, a grape traditionally used only for blending, and lets it stand on its own. It comes across soft, floral, and swelling with blackcurrants. The làmia showcases Puglia’s trademark red wine grape, Primitivo, more gracefully than the often overripe, stewed versions from down south. With the same DNA as Zinfandel, Primitivo is all about spice and fruit and in the làmia, specifically plums and cinnamon.

In all three, fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks, then the wine’s transferred to cement vats (see Winespeak 101) where it spends a few months before being bottled. They’re fresh, juicy, and ready to drink. I’d pair them with orecchiette, spicy sausage, and rapini; or pizza with soppressata and sweet peppers; or even just a hunk of sheep’s milk cheese and bread.

Of course, you need not limit yourself to Italian food. Tavola’s poured these juicy jewels by the glass, but so does Bizou and Bonefish Grill, where the pàmpana is the Happy Hour Red and a most contented companion with everything from surf to turf.

Longo makes higher-end wines that he oak- and bottle-ages for 18-plus months, but it’s his low-priced ones that scream instant-gratification, friend-filled, food-fueled, guilt-free fun.

Winespeak 101
Cement vats (n.): Vessels for aging wine that allow the microscopic exchange of oxygen without imparting any of the vanilla or baking spice flavors that oak barrels do.

The polished up Gov Cup goes to…

Glen Manor Vineyards 2009 Hodder Hill Meritage took this year’s Governor’s Cup, the first in a revamped competition which raises the profile for both the competition and its winners. The Meritage was selected from more than 400 entries, all of which were made from strictly Virginia-grown grapes. This year’s competition, judged by a panel of 15 wine professionals, placed the top 12 wines into a Governor’s Case and nine of them were from the Charlottesville area. The winners were announced last Thursday in conjunction with the Virginia Wine Expo, which ran over the weekend in Richmond.

Dinner down on the trail
The wineries of the Appellation Trail (White Hall Vineyards, Mountfair Vineyards, Glass House Winery, and Stinson Vineyards) are joining forces with Bill Curtis, owner and chef of Tastings, to offer a five-course meal at White Hall Vineyards on Saturday at 6pm. Each course will be paired with wines from the Appellation Trail. The cost is $175 per couple and includes all wine pairings, tax, and tip. Make your reservations at: theappellation trail.com/#events. Want to make a weekend of it? The Inn at Sugar Hollow Farm is offering a two-night package that includes the dinner along with a wine reception on Friday.

I was so elated after a recent meal at The Ivy Inn that I woke my husband when I got home to tell him all about the six delicious courses that chef and owner Angelo Vangelopoulos had served us. My husband fell back to sleep halfway through the second course, but I continued my exaltation anyway. It was, after all, the best food I’ve eaten in Charlottesville in years.

I’ve been to The Ivy Inn before, but don’t think of it as a place to go on a regular basis. I suppose entrées from $22 to $36 qualify as special occasion, but you’d easily spend that much on a couple of small plates elsewhere—and you wouldn’t get a salad and slices of warm house-baked bread with them. The restaurant is out on Old Ivy Road, which is not that far off the beaten track. It doesn’t have a bar scene or a theme. It’s just a family cooking seasonal (and often local) American food and flying way under the radar doing it.

Of course, companions contribute a lot, and sharing a table with Charlotte Shelton (stockbroker by day and Vintage Virginia Apples grower/Albemarle Ciderworks cidermaker by night and weekend) and Gabriele Rausse (Monticello’s assistant director of gardens and grounds by day and winemaker by night and weekend) can’t hurt. There are only about three degrees of separation in Charlottesville (and even fewer in the food and wine world), so Gabriele and Charlotte were talking shop in no time—from how Fuji apples make terrible cider to how yellow-bellied sapsuckers are ruining the apple trees.

The Ivy Inn was where Gabriele first ate after landing in America on April 10, 1976. That was before Angelo and his father, Thomas, a Greek immigrant, purchased the restaurant in 1995. In the five years prior, Angelo had graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and worked under great chefs in Washington, D.C., including Roberto Donna. Angelo’s wife, Farrell, oversees the restaurant’s all-American wine list (see Working Pour) and her brother, Penn Webster, is Angelo’s sous chef. Our charming server, Jessica, handled our incessant chatting and excessive glassware with elegance.

All of that was the icing on the cake (or the malted vanilla ice cream and dried cherries over gianduia shortcake, as our luck would have it). The food was exquisite—top quality ingredients shining through Angelo’s meticulous preparations—and we ate every last bite, wetting our whistles with thoughtful, local pairings.

Piquing our appetites was a sweet potato gnoccho with crispy pork belly and a chiffonade of Brussels sprout leaves along with a cream of parsnip soup swathing a brunoise of curried apples and spiced pecans. Small forks and spoons helped us relish every last lick. The bracing acidity of Albermarle Ciderworks’ “Royal Pippin” acted as a foil to the velvety bites.

Next, pork from the Rock Barn starred three ways with rounds of perfectly pink ribeye wrapped in sausage (can I get a hallelujah?) alongside a pork shank raviolo. Gabriele provided the Pinot Grigio for the course in more ways than one (he was the first to plant the grape in Virginia after grafting it from an Oregon bud wood in 1983). His 2010 version had pear and bitter almond on the palate with a creamy finish.

Gabriele was pleasantly surprised when his Nebbiolo 2010 accompanied a pan-seared Scottish salmon over French lentils, spinach, and fennel in a red wine sauce. Gabriele said the Italians would balk at the non-traditional pairing of fish with red wine, but with the earthy lentils and rich salmon, it really worked.

The next course showed Angelo’s whimsy by pairing his favorite sandwich with a beer stein shot glass of Blue Mountain Brewery’s Classic Lager. The sandwich tucked a tender lamb meatball, pickled red onions, microgreens, and tzatziki into a toasted pita. Enrapturing us more than anything were the puffy souffléd potatoes, which looked like ladyfingers and defied my usual disregard for white potatoes.

I squealed and clapped at the arrival of the fifth course: a braised veal shank (osso buco) that came nestled upon olive oil-crushed potatoes with roasted Brussels sprouts and a generous pour of Gabriele’s currant, cedar-filled Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2007. I asked Angelo for marrow spoons, then Gabriele and I started with the marrow.

Somewhere between the pork and the salmon, our conversation turned from annual productions to our astrological signs. As we cleaned the last morsels from our dessert plates and Gabriele sipped espresso (which came with chocolate curls and a biscotto), Angelo poured himself a glass of Gabriele’s cabernet, and joined us at the table. The servers began to leave, warning one another to drive carefully as the night had turned foggy. The place felt like one big, happy, half-Greek family, and we were all a part of it.