The Charm of Southern Wine Festivals

I’m packing for a weekend away to head to the Blue Ridge Food and Wine Festival in the charming mountain town of Blowing Rock, NC. I went down with the whole family two years ago and we had a blast. I’m looking forward to seminars on Food and Wine Pairing as well as a Vintage Reserve Seminar. If I make it into town early tomorrow, I’ll try to catch a California Basics class, too. The grand tasting is Saturday afternoon. North Carolina has a fairly developed wine industry. Looking at their terroir, it makes sense. Warm days but cool evenings in the rolling hills. When I visited a couple years ago, I learned that NC was a leading American wine grower before prohibition put the kabosh on the industry.
Two weeks from now, I’ll drive south again, this time to the St. Michael’s Food and Wine Festival in Maryland.

WBW #44 French Cabernet Franc

Olek-Mery
2004 Chinon Cuvée des Tireaux
12.5%
First of all, shout-out to the Wine Library where I bought this wine. Now that WLTV is so hot, being from North Jersey is something to brag about. But onto the wine.
Being a newbie to Cab Franc, I can better describe what this wine isn’t than what it is. It isn’t dark. It isn’t heavy. It doesn’t smell like jam. I drink a lot of French wine and this is a different animal than the Bordeaux/Burgundy/Côtes de Rhône/Beaujolais/Chateauneuf du Pape I’ve had. It seems to have a mineral quality I’m much more accustomed to in white wine. It’s a light-colored red, light bodied as well. It slips over the tongue without packing a wallop of fruit and tannin, unlike many Cabernet Sauvignons (which, by the way, I often enjoy). On the nose, I’m probably picking up something slightly vegetal, as is said about the varietal. I quite enjoyed this wine. There was a nice amount of acid, good balance, and nothing overpowering—very food friendly. I’ll be back to try more.

Raise a Glass

I attended a special celebration last night—a gala for the South Orange-Maplewood Adult School featuring Andre Braugher, Norbert Leo Butz, and Isaiah Sheffer. And what did they pour to commemorate their 75th anniversary? Champagne, of course. I don’t know the producer or the vintage, but from what I could spy of the bottles swimming in silver bowls of ice water, it did look to be French, thank heavens.
Last fall I met a pretty française on a flight from Bordeaux to Paris. She had an enviable lifestyle only suited to the young—work long enough to make money for the next trip, then head off for friends in far flung points around the globe. She always stuffs her luggage with Champagne, Bordeaux, and foie gras to take to her amis, even during a trip to India. As we chatted, she told me about her shock when she discovered that Americans were making wine and calling it Champagne. “But how can they do that?” she asked me. I wasn’t prepared on this six a.m. flight to defend America’s free-wheeling use of the term. I didn’t want to let her know we had also appropriated Chablis and Burgundy. Instead, I told her that I completely agreed with her. We can drink sparkling wine, cremants, cavas, proseccos, but when we drink Champagne, we want it to come from France. We want to know it was made in the méthode Champenoise. No other beverage has its cachet. When the occasion is truly memorable, as it was last night, nothing is more fitting than indulging in the authentic pleasure of a glass of Champagne.

Gorgeous Gewurz

I haven’t drunk a Gewurztraminer in years. But after trying this 2002 Alsace Grand Cru from Pierre Sparr, I won’t wait so long before opening another. Gewurz means “spicy” in German, and this wine has sweet and spicy elements. Gewurtraminer is often sold much younger: this six year old wine was really special, with huge fruit and complex layers of flavor.
I love this unusual green bottle. It has swirls climbing the sides like the baroque columns of the baldacchino in St. Peter’s Basilica. The varietal frequently paired with foods like smoked salmon and foie gras. So, here was dinner on a recent Friday night. The sweetness of the smoked salmon picked up the sweetness in the wine, and the bitter bite of the watercress was a nice foil against that. Next was the pate de foie gras from D’Artagnan simply spread on water crackers. Blended with truffles and Sauternes, it tasted…Oh wow. The earthy, powerful truffle penetrated the rich, buttery duck liver—it was bursting with flavor. So, a big, flavorful wine like this Gewurz stood up to it nicely. What a wake-up call for my palate. Big food! Big wine! Sometimes a night of full-out decadence does a body good.

Bracing Myself

Unlike wine aging in a bottle, we humans can actually keep tweaking things to improve ourselves as we, um, mature. Such high hopes led me to getting braces later than most. Yesterday my orthodontist bound my clear ceramic braces with a chain of transparent stretchy plastic. The problem? That plastic stains like crazy, and red wine and coffee (two of my favorite things) are the worst culprits.
It was on my mind last night as I headed out to meet my friends at Pershing Square, a bustling spot down the block from Cipriani’s fabulous event facility (from the glass front, I could peer in at the lucky ones basking in the glow of a purple light, being feted under the high, high ceiling. Please—anyone—invite me to a party there).
Once at the restaurant, which faces the magnificently-restored Grand Central Terminal, I chose the mushroom risotto and roast chicken. The J. Lohr 2006 Chardonnay was an excellent accompaniment: crisp, light fruit, a whiff of oak. So that, my friends, is the answer. A lot more non-staining white wine. If last night is any indication, it could be a wonderful thing.

The Gift of Gab

Here’s a great topic for St. Patrick’s Day.
An Irishman with the gift of gab can enliven the most banal conversation. In the same way, some wine writers can get pretty colorful with the way they talk about fermented grape juice.
Over at Open Wine Consortium, there’s an ongoing discussion about using terms such as “rustic” to describe wine. Does everyone interpret these terms the same way? And if not, should we avoid using them?
I think there can be poetry in wine description (some writers certainly take poetic license), and I’d hate to see wine writing boiled down to the beverage’s most basic characteristics, i.e. acidity, tannins etc. However, I’ve worked in communications my entire life, and I know it’s essential not to leave the reader behind when your copy takes a flight of fancy. So, if writers get creative with wine descriptions, they should ask themselves, “Am I effectively communicating my meaning?” If the stylized writing conveys something about the wine that would be hard to describe otherwise, then it works. I say, “Long live poetic wine descriptions (when used by skillful writers)!”

Back to Basics

I love wine classes, and I’ll shell out big bucks to hear wine gurus like Kevin Zraly walk me through the basics. To me it’s money well spent. But when I can taste 10-12 wines a night for seven weeks for only $130—that’s the bargain of the wine education world. And that’s the deal I scored (for a second time) out here in Jersey at the Caldwell/West Caldwell Adult School.
Wine classes are great for learning, of course, but also for tasting. I don’t work in a wine shop, for a distributor, or the wine press—and there are only so many bottles I can drink personally. So when our teacher cracks open a chilled bottle of Lillet (this aromatized wine is still a little weird to me) or a 22 year old Leeuwin chardonnay from the Margaret River Valley (a beautiful wine that kept revealing more layers as it opened up), it’s a wake-up call to my palate.
As an introductory first class, we really ran the gamut last night: a Cava (look for 1+1=3—I don’t usually get into Cavas, but this reminded me of Champagne), Riondo Prosecco (always fun at parties: light, sweet, fizzy & inexpensive), and a Peter Lehmann Riesling (a poor example of the varietal from Australia). Reds were represented by a 2003 Chateau Bernadotte from the Haut Medoc (rich & super tannic—I’d save this for a few more years) and, from our teacher’s cellar, a 1999 Robert Mondavi PNX Carneros Pinot Noir (brick red and unfortunately lacking in fruit). We rounded out the evening with both Port and Sherry. Whew!