Hedonia

Taste-off: Carneros rosés

Ah, summer. Long, lazy days basking in the sun ... oh, who am I kidding. At best it gets to 70ºF here. But there's one summer treat I do like to indulge in regardless: Pink wines.

Now, I'm not talking about your sticky-sweet White Zinfandel [shudder], though some would argue that a glass of that, over ice on a blazing hot day is not unwelcome. But again, see above about the weather.

No, rather, I am referring to the pretty, pert and sometimes petulant rosé wines so popular in Europe yet all too often overlooked stateside. The French and Spanish are particularly fond of these wines, especially as a complement to summer lunches. I remember steaming-hot days in Barcelona, sipping rosato wines, almost unbelievably dry and crisp and redolent of ripe strawberries and pears.

Clearly, I'm not the only one with an appreciation for these lovelies. Paul at Champion Wine speaks directly from my own heart:

"...The word hedonist is often used to describe red wines that taste more like pancake syrup than wine. In my world, rosé is the definition of hedonistic – crisp, refreshing, light and lively. The kind of wine that sings – an echo of the setting sun, an instant reminder of warm weather and days outdoors...."

Did someone say hedonistic?

And so, after a recent trip up to wineries up in Carneros, we came back with a carful of gem-like pink bottles, just dying to be sipped. But though Paul states that pink wines are meant to be enjoyed and not analyzed, I couldn't resist staging a little taste-off with a few good friends.

Carneros, for those not local, is the region spanning the southern reaches of both Sonoma and Napa counties, hugging the northern boundary of San Francisco Bay. Because of its proximity to the water, it enjoys a cooler, foggier climate, and so is ideal for grapes that require less intense conditions. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are the primary crops here.

A word about the tasters:

Donna and Dennis have a penchant for northern Italian wines, particularly those of the Piemonte region, having spent a fair amount of time in that area. Jim would step over his own grandmother for a good Barolo. Matthew isn't partial to any one region of varietal, though I would venture to say his is the most sensitive schnozz among us. DPaul, historically, had a thing for big zins, but lately has turned to lighter wines. And me, I've long been a pinot-holic (well before that movie), and have only in the last few years introduced whites, much less pinks, into my repertory.

I would categorize us all squarely in the camp of wine consumers rather than wine afficionados. Still, we know what we like. And so, armed with three chilled bottles, some crudely scribbled-upon paper bags and a scoring sheet lifted from a website, I coerced my friends into some comparative analysis of three rosés, all produced within a few miles of each other.

Apples and oranges ...

... and flash-frozen corn.

Yesterday a couple dozen Bay Area food bloggers got together to volunteer at the San Francisco Food Bank (900 Pennsylvania St), packing cosmetically undesirable (yet still entirely edible) fruits for distribution, and then bagging and packing miniature corn cobs (or, "cobbs" as it were) one dozen at a time.

I think it's wonderful that, whereas many other cities' food banks can handle only canned and dry goods, the SFFB goes out of its way to incorporate lots of fresh produce in their program. There's no reason the beneficiaries of food banks should be subject to an unhealthful diet due to their circumstances.

This was pretty hard work, no doubt, and at times outright disgusting. Most of the apples were in good shape, but a whole lot of the oranges were squishy or, worse, completely covered in powdery or hairy mold. Seems like I just posted my confession about how I feel about oranges, and fate dealt me this card. Guess I better not say anything about how I feel about car accidents.

The corn bagging was more fun. We set up assembly-line stations to put stickers on bags, which in turn got filled with a dozen half-cobs, then sealed with a tape machine and finally boxed up for distribution. I enjoyed the machine-like process.

Being food bloggers, we obviously know how to handle food. We processed more than a ton of apples and oranges, and plowed through the entirety of our tasks in significantly less time than originally slated.

After, we all headed to Yield Wine Bar (2490 3rd St) for a little sipping, snacking and socializing. We sampled some excellent edibles, including a delish sausage from Fra'Mani; some super ham from Fatted Calf; rich, salted dark chocolates from Poco Dolce and really phenomenally good chutneys from McQuade's Celtic Chutney. Not to mention top-notch bartendressing from hostess with the mostess Sam.

Involved and interested as we all are in food, it was rewarding to get hands-on and do something that will help put food in the mouths of those who might otherwise not get enough. It's also bigtime fun. We worked like dogs and drank like fish. But boy, am I sore today.   

Related: See what other food bloggers present had to say about the experience: Our intrepid hostesses Amy and Sam, Christine of Albion Cooks and Joy the Restaurant Whore. Plus, an interesting reflection on the part of Marc of Mental Masala on mycology as it pertains to groady moldy oranges.

One year ago today ... we dished up some perfect pizzas.

Drink me: Nicolas Feuillatte NV Brut Rosé

I have to confess that I am not much of a sparkling wine connoisseur, or even appreciator. I rarely go out of my way for bubbly. (DPaul, on the other hand, adores the stuff.) However, I've had enough of it to know what I like, and I like this.

We first encountered the Feuillatte Rosé at the tail end of 1999. We had purchased a bottle at Bi-Rite, in a comemmorative cylinder. It wasn't until we got it home and opened it on New Year's Eve that we discovered it was a rosé. Unsure what to expect, we opened it for our midnight toast, and discovered that we liked it very much indeed.

And then, for a matter of years, we could never find it again.

Because this label was new to us, and because of its scarcity at the time, we assumed it was a small producer. Little did we know, in fact, that Feuillatte is part of a collective that is in fact the largest in the region, and second in production only to Moët.

In the last couple of years we've seen a resurgence of Feuillatte champagnes, and now the Rosé is readily available. And that's a good thing.

Flutes are fine, but this champers really shines with a good set of champagne saucers. I wish I knew why this flavor of stemware fell out of fashion. I love watching the columns of bubbles rise from the floor of a wide saucer, collecting in everchanging continents on the surface. I also like the gentle spray of mist you get when you go in for the first sip. And there's something so wonderfully old-school classy about them. Think Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember.

Feuillatte Brut Rosé has a gorgeous salmon color, with consistent and diminutive bubbles. It's mildly sweet, with subtle berry flavors, and a fluffy mouthfeel as it explodes into an airy cloud on the tongue. I can't think of a better way to usher in the new year.

Happy New Year to all of you. May 2007 bring newfound prosperity, fortune and happiness.

Le beaujolais nouveau est arrivé

As you almost certainly know (especially if you read my post of the same title as this on ThisNext), yesterday marked the arrival of beaujolais nouveau worldwide.

Beaujolais nouveau is not something I get terribly excited about. I have always found it to be cloyingly grapey, overly fruity and with some bizarre notes in the bouquet, like overripe bananas or bubble gum. (I can't tell you how many times I've seen "Jolly Ranchers" included as a descriptor for the flavor.) I don't really consider myself a true wine snob (trust me, I'll drink almost anything), but I have some limits.

Still, beaujolais nouveau is tradition, and I do sort of get caught up in the frenzy and festivity of the whole affair. I also figured that there had to be no small amount of diversity between producers. So off to Plumpjack I went.

Predictably, they had the vins nouveaux, three of them, positioned at the endcap to greet you as you enter the store. I chatted with one of the fellas there about it. He steered me to the Georges Duboeuf as the fruitiest of the bunch. Duboeuf is the biggest producer and the only one I've ever had, so I wanted to try something a little different. Of the other two, one had more earthy notes, and another was most like a pinot noir in profile. As the notion of earthiness on a young and fruity wine kind of scared me, the latter is the one I tried: Domaine Ruet.

The good news: No banana/bubble gum/Jolly Rancher flavors here. In fact, had I not known it was a beaujolais nouveau, I might in fact have thought it to be a pinot noir, albeit not a very good one. It even had a bit of tannic structure, which is completely unusual. But, it lacked more than just fruit forwardness. It lacked a little bit of everything. The nose was simple, grapey and a little plummy; on the palate it was just ... wine. It wasn't exactly bad, but it had little to recommend it other than its complete and utter innocuousness. It did pair well enough with delivery pizza, though. Oh, and the best part? Screw top, baby.

Salisbury steak, sticky toffee pudding and a sigh of relief

At the tail end of three back-to-back trips followed by my first week of overemployment, I'm feeling a little out of sorts -- and it's not just Monty's fault. I've spent little time in the kitchen, even less thinking about what to do in the kitchen. I look forward to spending some time this weekend planning and preparing for another week of madness. At least with a little advance organization, we can hopefully eat in the way we have become accustomed without cooking into the wee hours.

And so it becomes a game of drumming up old chestnuts and researching new options. Salad of pain -- definitely. Saltimbocca, sure why not. Roasting the occasional chicken and pork tenderloin makes for easy out-of-the-oven meals, too. But I'll need to spend some time browsing thru my newsreader and seeing what fabulous fare other food bloggers are coming up with that I simply must try.

Speaking of salad of pain, that is precisely what we planned to make last night, albeit an anaesthetized version of it, for our friend Kathleen. However, the Safeway delivery arrived with cube steak in lieu of flank steak. Whatever, it all comes out of a cow, right? So Paul took a different tack and whipped up a quick pseudo-Salisbury steak kinda thing with caramelized onions, which was quite good. Add to that a light salad of baby arugula with heirloom tomatoes and plums (that latter two both from Bi-Rite's Balaikan Farms, and both truly awesome), and for dessert: Häagen-Dazs Sticky Toffee Pudding! Amazing to me that at Bell Market you cannot find basic staples, but you can find the most coveted limited-edition flavor of ice cream out there. It's like they're a really big corner store. Wonder if they sell rolling papers, too.

We happened to catch the televised competition for Häagen-Dazs' new flavor when we were in San Diego last month. I was so disappointed -- I really wanted Cannoli to win. I mean, there are already so many caramel-based flavors on the market, and I felt like Cannoli would be a real market differentiator. The judges felt differently. Still, Sticky Toffee Pudding was quite good: strong gingerbread flavor, rich caramel. I don't much dig cake in ice cream, but I managed to put away an entire bowl of the stuff without complaining too loudly.

There was one other ray of sunshine from last night's meal. During the dreadful heat wave a few weeks back, you may recall, we found our wine sweating through its very pores, and so we whisked it straightaway to our much cooler basement. I was very worried that all of our wines had gotten cooked in the 100º-plus heat, and that seemed to be substantiated a few days after the incident. We took a bottle (to Kathleen's place, coincidentally) of Domaine Drouhin 2002 Laurène -- not a cheap bottle of Willamette Valey pinot noir -- to test our theory. As we feared, the bouquet had lost its complexity and the palate was completely dead. And so we decided it was time to just wipe the slate clean, consume our older wines and start the collection anew.

But last night DPaul brought up a bottle of St Francis 1997 Cabernet Franc. We love cab francs, and '97 was an exceptional year for them, so we've been holding this and a couple others back for just the right moment. We were resigned to the idea that this precious wine had been destroyed by the heat. So imagine our surprise to find that not only was it not cooked, but indeed still had enough tannic structure to stand for another several years. It was a gorgeous wine, ruby with bluish tones, lovely blueberry and lavender bouquet, just wonderful. On the one hand it's a shame to have drank it on a Thursday night with cube steak, but it was worth the price to know that, hopefully, some of our best and longest-kept wines are still intact, waiting for the perfect meal to open up and shine.

Bottles for bloggers

I am by no means a wine afficionado; no sommelier am I. But I do like to think of myself as a rather avid appreciator, an enthusiast even. I have a moderately sharp palate, far from perfect. More than anything, I know that the best way to understand wine is to keep tasting it. So when I recently learned of Mankas Hills Vineyards offer to send a free bottle of their Amelie 2004 Cabernet-Merlot to anyone in the US with a blog, how could I resist? Now, you are not obliged to post anything about the wine, but come on. Like you can shut me up about such things.

Now, I'm not sure I've ever had a wine from Suisun Valley, but I've been pleasantly surprised by wines that have come from what I would have considered to be unlikely locations, and Suisun is not so unlikely at all, adjacent to Napa as it is.

Best of all, it was waiting for us upon our return from Mexico, sitting demurely on the stairway between the second and third floors of our building, its nondescript white box hiding its boozy secret. Last day of vacation rules. Perfect!

And so we cracked open our bottle of Amelie and paired it with, what else, delivery pizza (from Noe Valley Pizza, of course). With the caveat that my palate was perhaps far from its most refined, having just been sick for a few days and then on a plane for several hours, my musings forthwith:

Color: Ruby tinged with brown, reminiscent of many Italian wines, albeit without the tendency toward amber/orange on the edges. Dense, fading almost to black at the bottom of the glass.

Bouquet: Big, bright cherry and dark berry notes, finishing with an almost minty or eucalyptus-like note, not unpleasantly. But it's a bit hot -- rather high-alcohol. After that burned off a bit, it mellowed out considerably.

Palate: Smooth mouthfeel, no doubt driven by the merlot. The tannins were still there and obviously substantial enough to give the wine some structure, but it didn't have that tooth-sweatering effect of a big, chewy cab. The flavor and the bouquet hewed very close to each other, with strong berry flavor, trailing off to a bit of tobacco, which worked rather well with that eucalyptus note. Not a huge finish, but satisfying and definitely drinkable.

Pairability: Well, it went just fine with pizza, but it could easily stand up to big meat. I think lamb would be especially nice -- again, that eucalyptus thing -- but even pork with a nice fruity sauce would do well.

Would I buy it? At $15, sure, why not. If I were John at Quaffability, I would rate this wine a solid 100 -- even price-to-quality ratio.