Wine Club - Sherry

I'm usually the one who researches and buys the wine for wine club every month, so it was a real treat for me in February when one of our members offered to round up some Sherries for us to try. Given that we are mostly all Sherry neophytes, and we were tasting through four very different styles of Sherry, we did this as an open rather than blind tasting and read up on the different styles as we tasted. He also brought an amazing and varied selection of food (pictured above) - homemade black olive tapenade, pistachios and almonds, olives, and Garroxta, a really wonderful aged Spanish goat cheese. Looking at the scores, all of the wines got better with the food, but in most cases they didn't necessarily go perfectly with everything - some played really well with the nuts, others with the cheese, etc. But overall the food pairings were really good, and led to us drinking rather a lot of Sherry as we had to keep trying all the different combinations, and all those salty foods made us thirsty!

Barbadillo Fino Sherry Sanlucar de Barrameda SP
Very pale. Nose of caramel and vanilla, butterscotch, with hints of lemon and hyacinth. Very dry and light bodied, quite acidic. Sour sweet salty, all in one. Good with almonds and olives. 2.3 alone, 3.2 food. 1/3 alone, 2/4.5 food. $7.99





Hidalgo Manzanilla La Gitana Sanlucar de Barrameda SP
Very pale. Nose is a little retiscent, but once it starts showing it just grows. Butterscotch, caramel, nuts, honeysuckle. Palate is compex with salt and honey. Dry but round, medium body. Great with pistachios. 3.0 alone, 3.2 food. 2/4 alone, 1/5 food. $11.99 (500 mL)




J.P. Perez & Co. Amontillado Sherry, Jerez SP
Honey brown/toasted caramel. Nose has vanilla extract, caramel and maple syrup. The flavor is reminscent of a tawny port. Silk sweet, but not cloying, with some earthy undertones. Very drinkable. Balanced acidity, medium to heavy body. Good with cheese. 3.3 alone, 3.7 food. 2.5/4 alone, 2/4.5 food. $8.99



Hartley and Gibson's Oloroso Sherry, Jerez SP
Deep brown, almost coffee colored. Sweet, and a little bitter. Slightly medicinal, like a horehound cough drop. Alcoholic heat in the throat. Heavy bodied. Particularly good with the tapenade and cheese. 3.0 alone, 4.1 food. 2/4.5 alone, 2/5 food. $12.99





(Understanding the ratings: Wines are scored on a 5 pt scale. The scale does not reflect a formal evaluation of the wine, just how much people like or dislike it. Scores reflect averages and ranges across the group. Wines are tasted and scored first alone, and then with food. )

Wine Club - Sparklers

Every December, we like to taste some sparkling wines so we can find interesting things to serve at New Year's. Here's what we tasted this year.

Jean Laurent Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut $45.00
Faded sunflower color. Nose of melon, citrus and straw - noticeable chardonnay aromas. On the palate, it opens with a hint of sweetness but resolves dry, with flint/mineral flavors and a long tart finish. Score: 4.0 Range: 3/4.5






2000 Rotari Riserva Brut, Trento, IT $13.99
Nose of vanilla and melon. "Smells just like pinot grigio." Fairly one-dimensional, with some butterscotch and cherry flavors in a light bodied wine with moderate acidity. Short finish. Score: 3.2 Range: 2/5






Henri Maire Vin Fou Blanc de Blancs Cuvee du Centenaire $11.99
Our original bottle was bad - low fizz, nose and palate of banana candy, bitter and waxy. "This can't be right!" A replacement bottles was better, with just a hint of banana that some found pleasant, but it wasn't anything to write home about either - one-dimension and fairly uninteresting, but good enough given the value price.



Jaillance Cremant de Bordeaux Cuvee de L'Abbaye Brut $18.99
Immediate perception of spice and nutmeg, followed by some lily of the valley and lavender. Big and bright on the palate, with those spicy flowery aromas coming through in the flavor as well, and a minerally finish that hints at salt. Nice balance of sweet and acid. (Generally quite well liked, with one outlier who said it "smelled like the bottom of a Maneschevitz bottle left in the sun.") Score: 3.6 Range: 1/5

As usual, we had a couple of nice cheeses as well.

On the left, Ailine de Vigne, an 8-month aged French goat cheese. And on the right, Green Hill, a soft cow's milk cheese made in Georgia by Sweet Grass Dairy. Both were excellent. And that's a piece of my no-knead bread behind them.

We tasted the wines blind, and without anyone but me knowing about the price range beforehand. When we were about to reveal, I said "If I told you one of these bottles cost $45, which one would you say it was?" And everyone chose the Jean Laurent - it was clearly a superior wine. But not that much better than the Jaillance Cremant de Bordeaux, which would have scored nearly as high if not for that one person. So for $19 vs $45, I know what I'll be buying for New Year's Eve. Don't get me wrong - I absolutely loved the Jean Laurent - it had everything I love most about wine (rocks and acid) - but I just find it really hard to pay that kind of money on my budget!

My cheese and wine dessert

Here's what I put together in response to my eGullet Baking and Pastry Challenge.

On the left, red grapes on the stem, covered in Stilton and rolled in chopped port-glazed walnuts. You can see some of the whole walnuts scattered around the sauce. The sauce is the reduction of the glazing liquid, and has port, sugar, black pepper and bay leaf. On the right, a Seckel pear, which was roasted in a baking dish with a mixture of Carlos VII and sugar at the bottom (recipe adapted from here). That was used as a basting liquid, and later reduced to the caramel sauce. Lying jauntily against the pear is a crisp of 5-year Boerenkaas aged gouda. And a few toasted hazelnuts for good measure.

I invited a few friends over to kibbitz and taste. Here are their comments, so you'll have some idea of the flavors as well as the looks!

Dave: There is great synergy in the pear-sherry-hazelnut-cheese combination. Not only is the pear taste accentuated, but you get an added taste of fig, and a nutty flavor that comes not just from the nuts, but from the cheese wafer, that finishes with a smoky, almost a charcoal taste.

The combination of Stilton cheese and grapes did not work as well, not because of any discordance in the tastes, but I believe because of texture. The grapes are too watery to be paired with this cheese. I recommend chilling the grapes first to firm them up.

Beth: you can never go wrong with Stilton in my book, and the combination of Stilton and 'ported' walnuts was a fantastic combination of sweet and shocking-salty. however the taste of the grape itself was lost. i found that drizzling further with the port reduction added back a nice, fruity flavor.

the pear-gouda had a nice nutty taste as well - i've never had an aged gouda, and the process intensified the nutty flavor that worked well with the pear.

Hope: the stilton-grape-ported walnut combination was absolutely delightful - the delicacy of the grape wasn't overwhelmed by the stilton, and the walnuts gave a wonderful contrasty texture. There could've been a little more of the port reduction sauce, which had a wonderful flavor. The pear-gouda-sherry reduction combo was a little too sweet for my tastes, but the gouda laces set off the sweetness very nicely, and were very tasty all on their own. There were some delightful Montgomery cheddar 'eclairs' that were wonderful, but sadly didn't work with the red wine gelato - though both were very good on their own. All in all, a wonderful evening - it's so much fun being one of Tammy's 'guinea pigs'!

My comments: I over-reduced both sauces, which made it easy to make them stay where I wanted on the plate, but made them too sticky and sweet for good eating - I'd correct that in the future. The pear-gouda-sherry combo worked as well in reality as it did in my head, so that was cool. I'm with Dave and Beth on the issue of the grapes - the Stilton did overwhelm the grape. I think because the amount of Stilton needed to wrap the grape made it too much. I probably should have done what most recipes suggest and cut the Stilton with cream cheese. If I make these for a party sometime (and I might - they are tasty and unusual), I will do that. And chill them - these ones warmed up while I was getting everything else ready. Oh, and the plate needed more of the port sauce for that amount of grapes/cheese.

The two parts of the plate didn't really go together, but neither did they clash. If I was serving the pear on it's own, I would do it in a little bowl, because then I could use the unreduced sauce, and that would be very tasty. And while the crisp was fun and made for a nice presentation, I think some of the sweet butterscotchy flavor of the aged gouda was lost, so I'd just do shavings of the cheese.

Wine Club - Cotes du Rhone

Wine Club this week was Cotes du Rhone. We didn't have as good a food pairing as we should have had for this one (I should have saved some of my cassoulet from the week before), so I expect the "with food" scores would have been higher with another pairing. All scores are averages across the group (the scores with the "/" indicate the range across the group). Notes are a compilation of the entire group's comments. Personally, I was at the high end, giving most of these wines a score of 4. The exception for me was the Les Queyrades, which I found absolutely vile. But other people in the group really liked it, so I don't think it was a flawed wine.

2003 Chateau Suzeau Cotes du Rhone FR
Light garnet, fading to brown on the edge. Pleasant cherry fruit nose. This light bodied wine opens with early fruit which fades quickly to an empty midpoint, but comes back with a strong and long mineral finish. Lots of slate, like "licking rocks." 3.1 food, 2.9 alone. 2/5 food, 1/5
alone. $14.99




2004 Domaine du Vieux Chene "Cuvee Beatrice" Cotes du Rhone Villages FR
Deep ruby, with a big nose. A little stinky, but in a good way, like camembert. Rich blackberry fruit in a full rich wine with pronounced tannins and a mineral finish. 3.2 alone, 3.3 food. 2/4 alone, 2/4 food. $18.99





2003 Les Queyrades Lirac AOC FR
Red with a hint of orange. Complex nose - pomegranate and green notes along with plenty of dark, earthy, fermented notes. Minimal fruit, peppery and mineraly, with high acidity and heavy tannins. 2.1 alone, 2.6 food. 1/4 alone, 1/4 food. $17.99







2004 Domaine Mireille & Vincent Cotes du Rhone
Red with a hint of orange. Lots of sweet red fruit (strawberry candy) on the nose plus fresh mown grass, and a little bit of barnyard. Light bodied, with unexpected citrusy flavors, some minerals, and a long finish. 3.4 alone, 3.7 food. 2/5 alone, 2/5 food. $11.99





To eat, we had a really nice English farmhouse cheese. The Lincolnshire Poacher is an aged cheese similar to a cheddar. It was a good accompaniment to the wines, as it had quite a bit of the "barnyard" stench that shows up in Rhone wines. It was certainly strong enough to stand up to the earthy elements in some of the wines. It had lots of "flavor crystals" - little amino acid crystals that are a sign of a long-aged hard cheese (you see them in the best parmesan as well) and I always love those in a cheese. Nice crumbly texture. Cotes du Rhones are considered classic food wines, so I had hoped to have some more "dinner" like food to show them with, but my food shopper hit some snags, so we just ended up with the cheese.

Wine Club - Chenin Blanc

I host a monthly wine tasting group here in my cohousing community. We gather once a month and taste four wines on a given theme. Sometimes it's a varietal, other times a particular region or style. We taste all the wines "blind" so we're not biased by any preconceived notions we might have. First we taste them on their own, and next with food - it's amazing how many times a wine that has scored poorly in the first pass improves dramatically with some cheese or sausage or other nibble. And vice versa.

We have a lot of fun. We talk about the wines as we're tasting them, and point out different things that we're smelling or tasting. As such, the notes below represent a sort of "group mind" take on wine tasting notes. We each rank the wines on a five point and completely non-scientific scale - 1 is "blech," 2 is "okay, but not for me," 3 is "happy to drink it, wouldn't buy it," 4 is "really good, where can I get it?" and 5 is "great stuff - I'd take out a second mortgage to buy more." The numbers in the notes represent the average score, and then also the range among the group.

Last night we tasted four Chenin Blancs. Chenin Blanc is mostly grown in the Loire Valley region of France, in South Africa (where it is sometimes known as Steen), and also in California. Especially in California, it's often used as a fairly non-descript white blending wine, but there are a few producers doing interesting things with it. In France it reaches quite admirable heights in Vouvray and in some of the most ageworthy whites. Our tasting featured one from Vouvray in France, two very different wines from South Africa, and a Californian example.

Notes:
2004 Chateau de Montfort Vouvray FR
Very pale. Refreshing nose of straw and lemon-lime. Noticeable sweetness on the palate with a lingering tart finish as the sweet fades away. Green apple, pear and peach on the palate. Viscous and oily body. 3.5 alone, 3.3 food. 2/4 alone, 2/5 food.
$15.99, Everyday Wines





2005 Riebeek Cellars Chenin Blanc Coastal Region South Africa
Very pale. Floral nose, with mineral metallic notes. Prominent mineral on the palate, but also some citrus and honeydew melon. A touch of bitterness on the finish. Light bodied with high acidity. 2.7 alone, 3.0 food. 2/4.5 alone, 2/4 food.
$8.99, Everyday Wines


2005 Ballentine Vineyards Old Vines Chenin Blanc Pocai Vineyard Napa Valley California
Very pale. Alcoholic nose, with cantaloupe and a little bit of grass. Big wine - floral, tangy and juicy, with some bitterness on the finish. Fully dry, but lots of fruit. Good balancing acidity, but not sour. Full, but without any viscosity or oil. Good complexity. 3.3 alone, 2.7 food. 2/5 alone, 1/5 food.
$14.99, Village Corner


2004 Ken Forrester Chenin Blanc Stellensbosch South Africa
Straw yellow. Nose has honey, oil, flowers, straw and perhaps a bit of apple. On its own, the palate is extremely recalcitrant - hard to get anything from this low acid and full bodied wine except a spicy white pepper finish that lingers. But with food, it's a different wine entirely, and opens up with all kinds of layers of flavors. 3.0 alone, 3.9 food. 2/4 alone, 2/5 food.
$13.99, Village Corner




One of our members works at Zingerman's, so we put him in charge of picking up the munchables. Last night we had three kinds of cheese - a Rolf Beeler 2 yr Gruyere from Switzerland, Tomme de la Chataignerie (an alpine sheep and cow milk cheese from France), and Leonora, a raw milk goat cheese from Spain. And a little bit of dried tomato pesto I whipped up from some tomatoes a neighbor had dried.

That Gruyere has always been a big favorite of mine. Sweet and mellow, with nice crunchy crystals. The Tomme was new to me. Salty and soft, with a distinctly grassy flavor. And goat cheese was excellent, very crumbly but not chalky and wonderfully goaty (but I'm an absolute sucker for goat cheese, so it's kind of a given that I'd like it). The pesto turned out quite well for something I just whipped up on the spur of the moment.