Tag: Food & Drink

I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it every year: Just because someone loves wine doesn’t mean that she wants a wine gadget as a gift…or a cork doormat or a light-up wine bottle Christmas tree topper or a Rudolph bottle stopper, for that matter. The ideal gift for the wine lover is wine, but sometimes finding the right bottle for a connoisseur can be a daunting task. Here are some gift ideas bound to delight even the most jaded palate on your list.

For the foodie wine geek

Wine tastes so much better with food—especially if that food is prepared by Palladio’s Executive Chef Melissa Close Hart. Give your gift early and your beloved oenophile will feast on a five-course lunch at Barboursville Vineyards (with its wines to match) on Christmas Eve from 2-4pm. Call (540) 832-7848 to make your $65 per person reservations (price excludes wine, tax, and gratuity).

For the wine geek with lots of wine geek friends
Several board games that test wine lovers’ knowledge of grapes, regions, winemaking, history, food pairing, and blind tasting are on the market (Bouquet, Karafe, VitiVini, Wine-opoly, Winerd, and Wine Wars are just a few). Some involve drinking real wine while you play, but it’s still better to buy for someone with other wine-loving friends or else you’ll end up going glassy-eyed while recalling first growths.

For the Virginia wine geek
The Commonwealth boasts close to 200 vineyards and the majority of them offer a wine club membership that grants members discounts, early releases, and invitations to special events. Find out your recipient’s favorite area winery and sign him up there, or opt for more variety with a membership to the Virginia Wine of the Month Club. Choose one bottle a month for $15.95 or two bottles a month for $26.95 and it’ll be the gift that keeps on giving. If the wino on your list is also a Wahoo, there’s the UVA Alumni Wine Program, which offers five local selections each year based on alumni favorites tasted at Reunions Weekends.

For the well-read wine geek
Books about wine are a dime a dozen, but good ones are harder to come by. A few favorites? Jay McInerney, despite his pretenses and name-dropping, is undeniably entertaining in Bacchus & Me and A Hedonist in the Cellar, which compile his House & Garden columns. In The Widow Cliquot: The Story of the Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It, author Tilar J. Mazzeo spins a riveting tale. For budding wine writers, Inspiring Thirst: Vintage Selections from the Kermit Lynch Wine Brochure, serves up pages and pages of literary inspiration. For a reference tome, you can’t beat Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine. Those fascinated by the winemaking side of the industry will love The Vintner’s Apprentice by Eric Miller. On the fiction side, Vertical, a sequel by Sideways author Rex Pickett follows Jack and Miles on another wine-soaked journey.

And, instead of giving a subscription to a wine magazine as a gift (All those ads! All those scores!), consider a digital subscription to a newspaper with great weekly wine coverage (like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal) or membership to an in-depth wine newsletter like Jancis Robinson’s “Purple Pages” or Stephen Tanzer’s “International Wine Cellar.”

For the sports-loving wine geek
Perhaps a bottle of former NBA player Yao Ming’s newly released Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon will fit the bill for the fellow (or lady) in your life who loves sports and wine equally. It’s selling for the Chinese equivalent of $289 and should be available stateside for who knows how much. Nevermind that it’s made with juice purchased on the bulk market. With the big man’s name on it, it’s still likely to be a slam dunk.

For the wayfaring wine geek
I’d rather eat glass than go on a cruise, but a river barge cruise around the wine-producing regions of Europe sounds very appealing. They’re small (four to 22 passengers), scenic, and involve more wine and cheese than they do shuffleboard and conga lines.

’Tis the season for dinner and holiday parties and the easiest way to arrive (apart from empty-handed) is bearing a bottle of wine. Seems like a perfectly straightforward gesture, but it comes with a host of etiquette questions that can stump even the most experienced partygoers. Opinions run the gamut, but here’s my strategy on the Ps and Qs of bringing wine to a party.

(File photo)

Unless your host doesn’t drink, wine is an appreciated gift. Sure, there are chocolates, olive oils, flowers, hand towels, smelly soaps, jams, and other acceptable gifts, but wine is one-size-fits-all. You don’t have to spend a lot—between $12 and $20 shows that you did more than grab a bottle off the sale end cap at Kroger. How much you splash out (as well as what you choose) depends on how well you know your host and how well your host knows wine.

Having said that, as someone who does know wine and entertains often, I hate when aguest shows up, apologizes for not knowing anything about wine, and then thrusts a bottle into my hands. It discounts his selection before I even get a chance to form an opinion. If you are a novice buying for a connoisseur, simply ask your retailer for a recommendation and then give credit where credit is due. If you are a collector, bring something from your cellar. If you’re somewhere in the middle, bring a bottle that you’ve enjoyed before or one that means something to you (i.e., a Michigan wine because you were born in Michigan).

A common question raised is whether to expect your host to open the bottle you bring. Emily Post’s etiquette guide advises that wine brought to a party is a gift and meant for the host to drink on his or her own at another time. Once the bottle leaves your hands, it is no longer yours. A gift, by definition, has no strings attached and the assumption is that the hosts have planned their wines in advance. You can put your hosts at ease by saying as you give them the bottle, “Here’s something for your cellar.” (Nevermind if that cellar is the fridge and the bottle gets opened by the end of the night once supplies have dwindled.)

On the other hand, if your host is a friend with whom you dine frequently (or with whom you share a love for trading wines), you may be inclined to call in advance and ask if you can contribute wines for the meal. In that scenario, you’ll ask what’s on the menu and arrive with the mutual expectation that your selections will be served with dinner.

The real quandary is when you bring a bottle of wine that you really want to drink because you know that your host will be serving swill. To some, wine is just an afterthought. You watch in horror as they root around in a cabinet above the stove and unearth a bottle of red that’s been cooking there for two years. They open it with a winged corkscrew, get half of the crumbled cork into the wine, and then pour to the brim of a thick-rimmed goblet that tastes of Cascade. Short of bringing your wine uncorked and in an ice bucket or already decanted (see Winespeak 101), there’s no guarantee that you’ll be saved from plonk. I’ve witnessed the tactless (marching straight into the host’s kitchen to fetch a glass and pour his own) and the tactful (suggesting that this Gigondas would go perfectly with the lamb chops) all in an effort to avoid the undrinkable, but it is, ultimately, up to the host.

It should go without saying that you ought never to retrieve your unopened wine at the end of the night and bring it home—or drink it in the car. Finally, when in doubt of what to bring? Go with bubbles—they’re as festive as you can get and if the bottle’s already chilled, it might just get popped.

Winespeak 101
Decant (v.): To pour a wine into another vessel in order to expose it to air and/or to separate it from its sediment.

After leaving a restaurant that will go unnamed without having been served (not a drink or even an ounce of eye contact), we wandered into Tempo, one of the newest additions to the city’s replete culinary scene. Owner Stuart Cunningham and his son, Brice (part owner in Fleurie and Petit Pois), greeted us and we settled into brown leather stools at the mahogany-topped bar. A gigantic mounted water buffalo head loomed over us. Behind us crouched crushed red velvet banquettes with curved black-and-white cowhide backs. Church lights and a mother-of-pearl chandelier from the Philippines lit the restaurant. There was so much to look at, we almost forgot to drink.

Good taste runs in the family. Brice Cunningham (above), whose father, Stuart, owns Tempo, is a co-owner of French eateries Fleurie and Petit Pois.  (Photo by John Robinson)

When a new restaurant opens in an already crowded marketplace (not to mention in an economy singing the blues), you have to wonder how it will stand out. In biz speak, it’s called your “unique selling proposition” or USP. In industry speak, it’s called your “thing.”
Tempo opened in September on downtown’s Fifth Street mere weeks before Commonwealth cast a shadow over the alleyway with a shiny copper-trimmed skybar that attracts patrons who hear the lively din from the bricks below. The skybar is Commonwealth’s thing. So, what is Tempo’s?

It starts with the name. Brice explained that in music, the tempo is the underlying beat that stays the same no matter the culture from which it comes. In other words, tempo is universal. The explanation helps the décor feel more eclectic than disjointed and the menu’s international offerings more intentional than random.

Tempo’s executive chef, Mark Henrichs, came from Chicago for the job and cooks with the fearless approach of a 30-year-old American not married to one single cuisine or style. At the bar (open from noon until 1am), the menu includes an Indian fried potato snack served with tamarind and cumin raita, all-American potato chips (salt & vinegar or spicy BBQ), Asian tempura (veggie or shrimp), and Italian-style housemade ricotta.

Beverages span the globe as well. The Ginger & Spice is made with agave, ginger ale, Don Julio Reposada, thai chile, and lime. A $5 glass of house white and red are called Tempo Blanco and Tempo Rojo respectively and taste as friendly and Spanish as their names suggest. America, Australia, France, and Italy are also represented in the other 19 choices of wines by the glass. Beers range from the domestic (Bud Light) to the far-flung (Meinklang Ancient Grains Ale from Austria).

Once we were seated for dinner, it became clear that service is a big part of Tempo’s thing. Stuart pulled the table out from the banquette for us and asked if he could pair our wines to our meal. When the well-chosen white (Loire Valley chenin blanc) arrived, it was so cold that I cupped my hands around the glass to warm it. Stuart noticed this and promptly removed the bottle from the ice bucket, wiped it free of moisture, and set it on our table. At another table, a woman began to remove her jacket and Brice, who spied this from his front door post, glided gracefully across the dining room to help her. When a server put my husband’s ribeye with roasted parsnips, baby carrots, and foie butter bordelaise with the meat at 6 o’clock instead of 12 o’clock, Stuart rotated it before bidding us “bon appétit.”

It’s what the French call “savoir-faire,” or the art of knowing the appropriate thing to do and say in every situation. And it’s something that the Cunninghams—who’ve run restaurants all over the world—do very, very well.

The whole place feels posh and luxurious—something we’ve become unaccustomed to in such lean times. You pay for it, of course, with entrées between $18 and $29, but there are deals too. I could have made a meal of the $7 vegetable fritto misto. The tempura coating was crispy and perfectly salted, the yuzu aioli rich but punchy and amidst the usual suspects of zucchini and yellow squash, there were escarole leaves, fennel slices, and rounds of lemon. Order creatively and you’ll have space and pennies left for dessert, which are inspired. A trio of housemade ice creams included strawberry, coconut, and chile-spiked chocolate and a lemon tart with blueberries was topped with toasted marshmallow instead of meringue.

Trying a new place when time and money are tight can feel like a risky investment, and the team at Tempo seems to appreciate this. Let them pamper you with an evening of attentive service, plush fabrics, and international escapism. Or, go for lunch—you’ll get all that luxury at a fraction of the price.

Americans are becoming a wine savvy bunch. Last year, we drank France under the table, becoming the world’s largest consumer of wine. Vino has become the beverage of choice at restaurants, too. More and more restaurants are recognizing this by offering flexible wine lists that reward diners with the opportunity to try several wines over the course of an evening.

When Steve Dowd, general manager and sommelier at Commonwealth Restaurant and Skybar, was working on his wine list for the restaurant’s September opening, he added a dozen full bottles that could be ordered as half bottles. The equivalent of two generous glasses of wine, a half bottle allows a couple, for example, to each have a glass of white with appetizers and then each have a glass of red with entrées, spending the same, or even less than they would if they bought a whole bottle. In Dowd’s case, these wines would be too expensive as by-the-glass pours, but still wines that many people would appreciate the chance to try.

So what if another table doesn’t order that second half of the bottle that night or even the night after? Commonwealth uses a wine preservation system called Vinfinity, which hooks up to the bar’s soda gun and vacuums the appropriate amount of air from each bottle before it’s sealed with a rubber stopper. If the wines are vacuumed after every pour (which Dowd and his staff do), they stay fresh for about two weeks.

At tavola, Michael Keaveny’s cozy Italian trattoria in Belmont, any of the dozen or so wines offered by the glass can also be ordered as a carafe, which amounts to about two and a half glasses and is less expensive than ordering two glasses of the same wine. Manager Tracey Love sees a lot of parties of four ordering a carafe between them to sip while waiting for a table or looking at the menu.

“It’s convivial because you are sharing with others—and pouring from an open container is less fussy than a bottle,” said Love. Tavola uses a hand pump to store open wines, but because the carafe wines are also by-the-glass wines, they have no problem selling the remaining half before it goes past its prime.

With an 800-bottle, 32-page wine list under his purview, Keswick Hall sommelier Richard Hewitt has a lot of open containers to keep track of. The restaurant doesn’t sell carafes, but they do offer about two dozen 375 milliliter bottles, which offer the same flexibility for diners but without the cost savings. (The packaging of half bottles dictates prices just above half the price of a full bottle.) Hewitt will, however, pour a half glass of something for you to try, although he doesn’t advertise this service. You read it here first, folks.

Siips Wine & Champagne Bar offers a half glass (3 oz.) pour in addition to a full glass (6 oz.) of their 75-plus list of sparkling, white, rosé, and red wines. They also give diners the choice of a 1 oz. or 2 oz. pour of their ports and dessert wines. Oftentimes, an ounce is all you need of these high-octane wines and the price of the smaller pour sweetens the deal.

At Tastings of Charlottesville, Bill Curtis will pour you a half glass and features a flight or two every weekend with three to four wines side by side for $10-12. It’s a fun and economical way to compare wines from the same region or wines made from the same grape. Recently, for instance, he grouped a Serbian gamay, a Morgon (gamay from Beaujolais) and an American gamay together for $10. You’re bound to get a lesson or story from Curtis thrown in there too.

I’d love to see more restaurants offering half glasses, carafes, and flights. Variety is the spice of life and especially fun when that variety comes in the shape of wine.

Food steals the show on Thanksgiving, but that doesn’t mean the wine should be a complete afterthought. It is, after all, easier to reconcile family feuds with a glass in hand. This pairing advice comes straight from the pros in town who know just what wines will get along with Aunt Edna and her cranberry Jell-O salad.

Wine Made Simple
(2214 Ivy Rd., 296-WINE)

Albemarle CiderWorks Cider, four varieties. $17
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to enjoy sparkling apple cider made from locally grown heritage apples. It’s low in alcohol and great as an aperitif or along with dinner.

Laurent Miquel Vérité 2008. $19.99
This wine from Languedoc, France, is a pure expression of the viognier grape. It has aromas of white peaches, apricot and honeysuckle and the palate is balanced with well-integrated oak.

Domaine de la Colline Chinon 2010. $14.99
This 100 percent cabernet franc is aged in stainless steel to preserve all of its pure cherry fruit character. Chilling it slightly enhances its fruit and at 12.5 percent alcohol, it won’t put your guests to sleep after such a big meal.

Rio Hill Wine & Gourmet
(1908 Rio Hill Center, 295-VINO)

Adami Prosecco Garbel NV. $13.59
The nose of this sparkler releases crisp-edged, complex notes of fruit and the palate is full-flavored with a crisp acidity and a clean finish. Delicious, forward and easy, with slightly sweet almond, peach and tangerine notes.

Crios de Susana Balbo Torrontes 2010. $12.74
The No. 1 torrontes imported from Argentina has the perfumed aromas of peach nectar and flowers reminiscent of viognier. It has a bright framing acidity and finishes juicy and long without being heavy.

Chime Sonoma Pinot Noir 2009. $18.69
This small production pinot is an amazing deal. The nose is packed with cherry kirsch, a hint of tilled earth and subtle vanilla wood aromas. The mouth is loaded with plump, savory fruits and finishes with an expansive luscious mouth feel. The tannins are tame enough for the varied Thanksgiving menu.

Wine Warehouse
(1804 Hydraulic Rd., 296-1727)

Mullineux White 2010. $26.99
A unique chenin blanc-based blend from South Africa that’s aged in neutral oak barrels giving it the body and intense dried fruit flavors of a top flight white from Rhône Valley.

Georges Vernay Côtes du Rhône ‘Sainte-Agathe’ 2009. $29.99
Made with 100 percent Syrah from the Northern Rhône in France, this wine displays the silky, meaty and polished side of the grape without so much tannin or oak to overpower the variety of Thanksgiving foods.

r ‘springbok’ 2005. $19.99
A wine from Lovingston Winery’s winemaker Riaan Rossouw’s personal label, this 100 percent chambourcin made from 25-year-old vines has generous fruit, silky tannins and just enough earth and gaminess to go with the turkey’s dark meat and all its fixings.

Tastings of Charlottesville
(502 E. Market St., 293-3663)

Eric Rodez Rosé Champagne NV. $44.95
This pinot noir-based Champagne has rosy fruit and such well-integrated carbonation that it evaporates instead of explodes. It would pair beautifully with turkey, duck, or goose and everything in between.

Forstmeister Geltz-Zilliken Saarburger Rausch Riesling Kabinett 2006. $24.95
The bright fruit and razor sharp acidity of this German riesling is perfect with turkey and its sides.

Arch Terrace Merlot 2006. $23.95
This Washington State wine has powerful strawberry fruit with good depth and length that’ll remind you of your turkey’s red currant jelly.

In Vino Veritas
(3015 Louisa Rd., Keswick, 977-6366)

Virginia “Fizz” NV. $21.95
This sparkler made by local winemaker Claude Thibaut is very easy and smooth and a perfect way to begin the meal, or to even drink throughout as a palate refresher.

Anton Bauer ‘Gmörk’ 2011. $11.95
Made with the grüner veltliner grape from Austria, this wine is a wonderful blend of fruit and acid with no oak. It’s bright and refreshing and would easily hold up to a Thanksgiving meal.

Yamhill Valley Vineyards Estate Pinot Noir 2008. $16.95
From Oregon, this pinot possesses great layers of fruit and a rich, velvety texture that would match up beautifully with your bird on Turkey Day.

Will donate for wine
During the rest of November, Jefferson Vineyards is waiving its tasting fee for anyone who brings in three canned goods for donation. In December, bring a new toy for donation and taste for free.