2009 Albino Rocca Moscato d’Asti

I occasionally make hay about how much I dislike too much sweetness in my wines. Really, it’s just the overbearing sweetness you might get from a cheap merlot that tastes like cherry candy or something like that. Unwelcome sweetness, sweetness without context.

Jen and I tasted a Moscato d’Asti that was real sweet and real delicious. A 2009 bottled by the Italian producer Albino Rocca. Incredibly floral in aroma, easy drinking, lightly fizzy. The pourer had two or three Moscatos, each sweeter than the previous. This was the high end of the sweetness scale.

The Muscat grape may be the oldest grape variety to be domesticated, and there is evidence that wine from Muscat grapes may have been served at King Midas’s funeral feast. This is intriguing, not least of all because I thought King Midas was fictional.

This would be a fantastic dessert wine, or failing that, a great breakfast wine. I’m not sure how the idea got into our heads, but we opened up our bottle one Saturday morning with scrambled eggs, applewood smoked bacon, and a few berries.

Heaven. The wine splashed coldly through the bacon grease and provided a bracing accompaniment to the fruit. Don’t tell Jen, but I thought it had a bouquet reminiscent of soap. Like, really good, fancy soap you’d encounter at an upscale Paris hotel.

We were prepared for a day of foggy tipsiness, but the tipsiness never came. We couldn’t figure out why we weren’t drunker than we were, having finished off a bottle first thing in the morning. Then we noticed: Alcohol 5% by volume.

Hell, you could give this to children.
Part of a complete breakfast.

Pasta, Meet Wine

I can’t remember how I first came upon the recipe for linguine avgolemono. But I have a theory.

My parents went to South America a few years ago and returned with a drink called the “pisco sour.” They brought back a few pouches of mix powder—just add pisco!—but the full recipe from scratch involves pisco (a South American liqueur distilled from grapes), lemon juice, simple syrup, bitters, and egg whites.

It drinks like a deadly cross between a margarita and the greatest Kool-Aid ever, and it probably warrants its own blog entry. But when I made it, I felt weird using just the whites of the eggs and tossing out the yolks. I felt the need to salvage the yolks somehow.

So I typed “egg yolks” into Epicurious and found linguine avgolemono, a Greek pasta dish involving not just egg yolks, but also artichoke hearts, green beans, cream, and parsley. It’s got a great creamy, earthy, slightly acidic thing going on, and it’s one of a handful of go-to dishes I can be relied upon to make.

Anyway, one day I was tasting at Fine Wine Brokers, and one of the whites being sampled was Béchar, 2007. I have a really hard time describing this wine, other than “unusual.” I’ve described it before as cake-like, and there’s a hefty mouthfeel and a mild sweetness that make me think so. But there’s also smoky edge to it, and kind of an earthy perfume that luxuriates in the sinuses.

I immediately knew it would go with linguine avgolemono. An unexpected cool sharpness that would complement the flavors while slicing through the cream.

I have bought several bottles, and I have only drunk it with linguine avgolemono. I brought Jen into the fold, and recently the two of us took to contemplating the flavors of the wine.

I kept saying pound cake, she kept saying breakfast.

“Do you get bacon?” she asked. We were on my back deck finishing off the bottle, our stomachs full of pasta and artichokes. I did not get bacon. I maintained there was something more bready and sweet.

“Yes, but there’s the smoke,” she said, and she squinted into the distance and flexed her jaw. She does this to simulate eating, which triggers her brain to analyze taste. (At least, that’s our theory of why she does this.) “And something kind of meaty.”

We sipped and analyzed in silence. Soon I tasted it too—bacon!

We reached the conclusion that the wine tasted like French toast that had been made in the same skillet as the rashers of bacon you made earlier. Why on earth that would go so well with a Greek pasta dish, I can’t begin to imagine, but it does. And thanks to the brief restock of Béchar a few weeks ago, and my subsequent consumption of the one I’d been saving, I am back to owning the last bottle in all of Chicago.

What Pairs Well with Cocoa Puffs?

Wine for breakfast.

Frédéric Magnien Pinot Noir, 2007

Jen is away, so I stopped at Dawali for a chicken shawerma sandwich. In my experience, it goes really well with bold red wines.

Last night, we opened one of the forty bottles I bought over the weekend, the pinot noir from The Chopping Block. I got a thick dark chocolate and red berry taste from it, like eating a liquefied gourmet candy bar.

I tried it with the sandwich. It went well. It’s a pretty spicy pinot.

I noticed that Jen had done some shopping. I finished the sandwich and ate some tortilla chips dipped in guacamole, and for the hell of it some tortilla chips dipped in hummus.

I went back to the wine. It suddenly tasted like Welch’s.

Such a mystery is the human tongue.

Don’t Tell Jen

I bought five freaking bottles of wine today.You can tell her about the toilet paper.
I headed to Fine Wine Brokers for my weekly free buzz. Jen was elsewhere, so I was on my own.

The second bottle on the tasting was a rosé. Happily, rosés are not the awful, melted-lollipop atrocities they’ve gained a reputation for being. They can be more complex and less cloying that their worst examples, and they vary from sweet and dark to light and crisp. They pair well with everything, even roadside pizza in France.Pictured: Tom, pizza, rosé, France.
This wine, a blend of cinsault and syrah grapes from Domaine Sainte-Eugénie in Corbières, was a refreshing splash on the tongue. I said to the pourer, “It might just be the color, but I get a bit of watermelon on the finish.”

He replied, “Yeah, maybe. I get strawberry.”

Dammit! Why do I always taste the wrong thing?!

To save face, I obviously had to buy a bottle. Chicago will eventually get muggy (though today feels like a warm day in November), and this will go down like cold liquid happiness.

The next wine was from Domaine Gachot-Monot, a pinot noir with some bite that will cling beautifully to some salmon.I plan to do a lot of this over the summer.
Then I found Scott and thanked him for a recommendation he made earlier in the week. (On Thursday, Jen and I were going to have a hunk of Humboldt Fog cheese for dinner [shut up, we’re allowed], and Jen read that it would pair well with a sauvignon blanc. I stopped by FWB and asked Scott for a recommendation, and he produced a 2007 SlipStream from Western Australia. It went perfectly—nice and grassy and clean.) Today, I told him how much we enjoyed the wine, and he essentially said, “You like grassy? You should try this!”

He showed me a 2008 Sancerre from Eric Louis.

I didn’t want to anger the gods of wine recommendation, so I bought it.

Okay, so I managed to leave FWB with a mere three bottles. Then I made the mistake of stopping into The Chopping Block, where they’re selling off their old stock of wine at 20% off to make room for the new stock.

The two women behind the counter, probably noticing that I was already carrying three bottles of wine, spotted their mark and swarmed me mercilessly. “What sort of wines do you like?” asked one. “Well, with the summer coming, I’m probably going to be into some dry, crisp whites.”

She pointed to a Gavi from Stefano Farina and said it was strong and dry and not to everyone’s taste. That sounded like a challenge. It was also the last bottle. Done. Hand it over.

I also mentioned that I liked bold, spicy reds. She directed me to a Frédéric Magnien pinot noir. At this point, I was like “Why not. Here’s my credit card.”

Jen and I are pretty good at finishing off bottles of wine. But I think I buy them even faster. At this rate, we’ll never run completely out.

2007 Béchar Fiano di Avellino

I am very excited about this.

Yesterday, Jen and I popped into Fine Wine Brokers in Lincoln Square for their weekly tasting. A worker (I believe his name is Scott) who has come to recognize us greeted us with, "I think we have a surprise for you in the next room."

My first thought was, I bet they got more of the 2007 Béchar Fiano di Avellino that Jen and I love so much!

This was quickly followed by, Nonsense. That wine is long gone. I bought the last bottle in existence several months ago, and I am guarding it jealously because it will never be seen again.

We went into the tasting room, and there it was: the wine we had fetishized for so long, the third wine along the table.

I discovered it at a tasting at FWB over a year ago--a unique, fragrant, mouth-filling cake of a wine. It pairs beautifully with food, particularly a Greek pasta dish I enjoy making called linguine avgolemono--noodles, green beans, and artichokes in a lemon cream sauce. But according to Scott, it wasn't to everyone's taste. I bought it there a couple of times, and the final bottle sat there week after week until I finally snatched it up. I promised him that if he ever re-stocked it I would buy it.

If the wine was unpopular in the past, it seemed to be more beloved yesterday afternoon. The small crowd was very complimentary toward it, and I watched a woman snatch one of the three bottles from the sampling table. I picked one up as casually as I could, but make no mistake: I would have thrown punches to make sure I got one.

The Best Wine Ever

"A succulent, deep and spicy blend of Granache and Syrah from the Southern Rhone Valley. A wine with new world texture and old world flavors - soft and slick on the palate with deep, foresty blackberry notes, bramble fruit and a finishing pepper kick."

This is the text of the handwritten note taped by bottles of 2006 Clos-du-Mont Olivet Montueil La Levade Cotes Du Rhone at Fine Wine Brokers in Lincoln Square. Notnits and I were browsing around after a tasting and discovered it. Pretty much every word on the little sheet (Foresty, Blackberry, Bramble, Pepper) declared You will love this. At around $15.00, it would have been silly to pass it by.

That night we picked up some chicken shawarma from Dawali down the street and ate on the back porch. Notnits opened up the Cotes du Rhone and we gave it a shot.

I think any one who eats Middle Eastern food on a regular basis (or knows anything about wine) would be horrified to learn that we paired this with the shawarma, but what we discovered delighted both of us.

The Clos-du-Mont was dark and plummy purple - it's the kind of liquid you can barely see light through. But it wasn't too thick when I swished it around in my mouth. All the notes were there, bramble, forest and pepper.

When we tasted it with the Shawarma, I was pleased to find that the tastes didn't clash at all. In fact, they paired very well; the nutmeg-or maybe cinnamon-enhanced the earthy overtones in the wine and the tahini and cucumbers pulled out some of the lighter minerality. (When I say minerality, I mean this: imagine licking a rock.)

I know very little about Old World vs. New World wines, except where they come from. My experience with both is difficult to describe. Drinking New World wines (North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa), is very pleasurable and fun. A Chilean Syrah is great to drink with some red meat or barbeque. I find that I'm more interested in drinking the wines than I am ruminating over intricacies of tasting notes.

When I drink Old World wines (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria), my experience is far more three dimensional. I'm transported. These vines are old, and they announce their maturity with every sip, swirl or smell. I tend to launch right over the moon about a particular hint of leather or dry mesa. "WOW. It's like I'm in somebody's kitchen!" or "This tastes like a flowery meadow at dusk." Once the initial image explodes in my head, I take it apart and decipher what elements of the flavor bring flowers or simmering sauce to mind. Old World wines offer a depth and nuance that can go on for days.

In my childhood home, (up on top of Allen Mountain in the Appalachians of Western North Carolina), we had a playroom. This Playroom was damp, cavernous and suffered consistent water leakage. When it rained, the room was practically vaporous. It was mostly underground, with a small window looking out just at the earth-line into the woods behind our house. The Playroom was a creepy place; wet walls, the smell of mildew, Earth, and soaked bark. But we played there all the time.

I tasted the Playroom in the Mont Olivet. The old dank flavor, the fragrance of the rotting woods behind the house, the weird feelings of childhood fear and comfort, imagination. All this poured from the bottle in the chill of a late summer night, eating shawarma.

We've purchased it several times since and I can't recommend it enough. I will say that I'm not sure your experience will be as transcendent as mine. I'm positive of it - it's sort of unfair to assert that you will re-experience the magic of childhood when you drink this. So, on the short sell...it's a good wine (with a good price) that I happen to love.

Dievole Chianti Classico Dieulele Riserva 2001

I went to Italy in the summer of 2006. While there, my friends and I hit a wine museum in Siena, where I bought my dad a bottle that was personally recommended by the guy behind the counter.(I wrote about the trip in detail here.)

The bottle was a 2001 Dievole Chianti Classico, the “Dieulele Riserva.” It’s a beautiful bottle. I gave it to Dad for Father’s Day.

Wine Spectator had this to say about it: “This is beautiful and balanced with berry, vanilla and milk chocolate aromas and flavors. Full-bodied, soft and round with a long finish. Drink now. 375 cases made.”

“Drink now” is a little worrisome, since the review was written in 2005.

• • •

Not long ago, -j-j- had an idea that we should head over to my parents’ place and cook lasagna for them. The recipe: A butternut squash and spicy sausage lasagna I learned how to make at the Chopping Block back in 2003.

We arrived at my parents’ place, and to my surprise, my dad brought out the Dievole. I didn’t know he was going to do it, but hey, Italian wine and Italian cuisine. What would be a better time?

So Jen and I began creating.
Jen made some bruschetta…
…and I hunched my back and set into the lasagna…
The finished lasagna was pretty good if I may say so, much better than the only other time I tried to make it. (By the way, I bought the spicy sausage at Panozzo’s Italian Market in the South Loop. Go there—it’s a wonderful place with Italian meats, cheeses, groceries, wine and pre-made dishes.)
We opened the wine. It was excellent—very dark and inky, and sweet without being cloying. And it had a bit of a kick to it. I wish I could remember more—this was almost two months ago, and I didn’t take notes. Hopefully, Jen will remember more and chime in. Jen?

As for whether it went with the lasagna, I have to reluctantly say it didn’t, really. The sweetness kind of fought with the lasagna’s sweetness, and the spiciness of the wine was intensified by the spiciness of the sausage. They weren’t bad together, but they did come into conflict a little.

I was able to enjoy both by consuming them separately. I drank some water and let a little time pass between each bite of the lasagna and each sip of the wine. But I am thrilled that my dad remembered the bottle and deemed this a special enough occasion to open it.

• • •

I have noticed that nice bottle of wine is an intimidating possession. When I bring home a bottle that might be a little more expensive than I normally buy, or one that was a gift from someone, or one that I bought after having really enjoyed it in a tasting, I become reluctant to open it. I have to wait for the right moment, or serve it with the right food, so it sits forever, off-limits.

There was a story on NPR of a community that holds a party every year where people bring in the bottles they’ve been sitting on and open them up. The thinking is, “If you’re waiting for a special occasion, fine: here’s your special occasion. Open those bottles.”

The moral of “Toy Story 2” comes into play here. Toys are meant to be played with.

It’s Christmas Eve. I fully expect to be on the receiving end of a bottle or two. I still have the Riesling my brother gave me last Christmas, and the Riesling he gave me the year before that. (To be fair, the 2007 gift was specifically meant to cellar for several years. I believe Matt referred to it as a “cornerstone” wine.)

I almost have to make specific trips to buy wine that doesn’t mean a lot to me, just so I have something to drink.

So maybe the Dievole wasn’t perfect with the lasagna. But there’s no way to know that without cracking open the bottle.

And in hindsight, they look pretty good together.

Canneto Vino Nobile de Montepulciano 2004

-j-j- and I tasted this at Fine Wine Brokers and fell in love with it.

It was very deep and strong. Dark and mouth-filling.

I thought I tasted fennel.

This may have been because I had fennel on the brain. I was at that very moment making a gravlax. Though “moment” is probably the wrong word; the gravlax took a week to concoct.

How to make a gravlax (literally, “hole salmon”): You take raw salmon and cook it without using heat. Instead, you cure it, in this case by packing it in a mixture of chopped fennel and onion for three or four days. Then, rinse it off. Then, wrap it in plastic. Then, unwrap it and top it with chopped fennel fronds and dill. Then, wrap it in plastic. Then dig in!
Except I realized too late that it’s supposed to be an appetizer. Gravlax is not a pigout food. You’re supposed to serve up a few slices to trigger your guests’ salivary glands and then move on to the main course. But -j-j- and I had a pound of it to get through.

When it finally came time to eat it, we thought we’d crack open the wine that had the whiff of fennel.

It was a mistake. They didn’t go together at all.

-j-j- theorized that the fennel on the fish may have been cancelled out by the fennel in the wine, leaving nothing but an oily, fishy scent forced up our sinuses. It was all right, though, if we used some roasted sweet potatoes and sautéed vegetables as a buffer, cleansing the pallet of the fish and preparing it for the wine.

When we’d finished eating, the wine was able to come into its own. It opened and developed and mellowed, and I was able to remember what I loved about it. There was nothing light or fruity about it. It dragged my tongue through the dank underbrush.

As for the salmon, I nibbled at it some more a day or two later. The raw saltiness was very good, but it kept me from eating more than a few bites of it at a time.

It’s supposed to be able to last for another week in the refrigerator, but in a moment of panic, I decided to try baking it, to see if I could enjoy it in greater quantities. But no—it just got fishier and saltier. I gave up and threw it out.

And I decided never to try anything new again.