another wine blog

I was randomly surfing around the Web when I stumbled across a blog named “Drinkplanner.com” and a post entitled “The 10 Commandments For Drinking Like a Man” that amused the hell out of me.

Despite the title most of these rules are good advice for anyone. Here are some of my favorite excerpts, but you should go there and read them all.

Thou Shalt Learn to Enjoy Whisk(e)y - Bourbon, Scotch, Irish, Tennessee whiskey and every other form of the drink shall heretofore be your best buddy. You can start by mixing with soda at first to ween yourself into it if you need to (Jim Beam and Coke is a perfectly acceptable manly drink), but at some point you’re going to have to learn to drink the stuff on its own.

Okay, now this one I have to take some exception to. First of all, no decent whiskey should ever be mixed with some syrupy sweet liquid unless you are sick and need to mix in a little honey and lemon for medicinal purposes. Secondly, if the hooch is bad enough that you need to mix it with a kiddie drink it isn’t worth drinking in the first place. Otherwise, GREAT rule!

Thou Shalt Not Consume Drinks With Idiotic Gimmicky Names Meant to Cover Up How Girly They Are - So help me God, if I see any of you jackasses out there with a Sex on the Beach or a Screw Me Blue in your hands, I’ll slap it to the ground and eat your worthless soul so fast you’ll truly come to appreciate the phrase “life flashed before my eyes” like never before. You’re not fooling anyone.

I watch that crap Bobby Flay mixes up on his BBQ show and want to vomit. How a man drinks any of that, much less with what appears to be damn good BBQ is beyond me. Grab a beer or a glass of wine, something…sheesh!

Thou Shalt Learn to Appreciate All Forms of Beer - If Natty Light, Keystone and Coors are your idea of what beer is and is meant to be, you’re living your drinking-life like that of a child in sub-Saharan Africa.

If you drink any of the beers listed above, or any like them, don’t call yourself a beer drinker. And if I am buying you will be asked to try again if you order any of that swill.

Finally, this one deserves to be quoted in its entirety:

It’s More Than Okay to Drink Wine - Knowing the name of a few good Cabernets and Pinot Noirs is a highly valuable thing. Inevitably in your life you’ll need to go to expensive restaurants for anniversaries, birthdays, and pet funerals… and knowing what’s good vs. what tastes like grape-flavored vinegar not only makes you look smart and sophisticated, but saves you from drinking grapes that taste like they were fermented in horseshit. Become familiar with the ins-and-outs of a few wines, and the impression you’ll make will be well worth it. Being labeled as “cultured” is never a bad thing…being labeled as “ignorant” always is.

Now go check out the full post!

Since the Big Three, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, and Eric Asimov, have all written about this, it MUST be HUGE news in the world of wine. Personally, while I have enjoyed it a time or two, I don’t get the opportunity to drink much Brunello di Montalcino so I am not as up in arms over this as I probably should be. Or, maybe I just assume that wine labels are not 100% accurate, particularly in Italy and Spain. As long as the wine is good, I am okay with that.

That said, it appears that there is a major scandal brewing.

From Wine Enthusiast:

Taking extreme measures, the United States has issued a warning to Italy that all imports of Brunello di Montalcino could be blocked starting June 9th.

From that date forward, the US will require laboratory certificates accompanying all Brunello authenticating that the wine contains 100 percent Sangiovese.

According to the rules that govern the wine, a bottle cannot carry a Brunello label if it contains any percentage of foreign grapes such as Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon or Montepulciano.

And, from Wine Spectator:

When news of the investigation was reported, the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco and Trade Bureau (TTB) sent several letters to the Italian Embassy in Washington asking for a list of producers under investigation and any other relevant information, according to a spokesman for the TTB. After not receiving the information, the TTB sent a followup letter on May 7 informing the Italians that if the matter is not resolved by June 9, the U.S. Customs bureau will hold any Brunello shipments unless “the importer submits a full and accurate statement of contents verified by laboratory analysis, or a statement from the government of Italy demonstrating that the product is made from 100 percent Sangiovese grapes.”

“These wines are not properly labeled,” said Art Resnick, a spokesman for the TTB. Even though the investigation is still ongoing, “in the meantime, we don’t know what the consumer is being sold.” The bureau is responsible for collecting excise taxes and ensuring that wines are labeled, advertised and marketed according to the law. The U.S. and the European Union have trade agreements that wine labels shall not contain false or misleading information. “It is all about truth in labeling,” said a source at the American Embassy in Rome. “It doesn’t matter if it is Parmigiano cheese or wine, the Italian product has to be what it says it is on the label. It’s about protecting the consumer.”

Finally from Eric Asimov:

Still, my sense is that the government would not have stepped in had the Italians given them the information they sought. Rumors and concerns abound over wine producers all over the world not adhering to the letter of the law. Yet, the last time the American government stepped in to block wine imports was during the scandal over Austrian wines in 1985, Mr. Resnick said.

Clearly, this is a far less grave situation. And while the threat of blocking imports may compel the Italians to provide the information requested by the regulators, I have to wonder whether it might have a dampening effect on any future whistle-blowing around the globe.

Since this scandal did not involve the use of antifreeze I am hereby offering my services to any Italian wine makers who need someone to help them get rid of this obviously useless wine.

I love finding great bottles of wine for as little money as possible. Duh!

Here is a very good article with great tips on how to do just that. It has some information specific to the Bay Area, but a lot of it applies everywhere.

This is another instance where a little knowledge pays off at the cash register. While Snyder likes the fancy Bordeaux, it can cost $100 or more, but Cotes du Rhone, which is produced nearby, costs $10 or less. It’s not Chateauneuf, but it has similar qualities and is quite enjoyable.

Instead of white burgundies from Sancerre at $30-60, Snyder and Sharp suggest Quincy, grown next door for $10-15.

Another money saving tip comes from knowing about “second labels”. Some of the best wineries have more than one label. For instance, Stags leap — a renowned Napa winery — has cabernets that cost $150 a bottle. Its second label, Hawk’s Crest costs more than 10 times less, at $10.

Holidays are a time when we take stock of how we have been blessed in life. Today leads me to think about how I am blessed by having my own mother, the stepmother of my children, and her mother all in my life to celebrate.

My mother raised me, taught me to be an individual, and made me who I am. My wife accepted and grew to love two children who are not her own by birth. It is no small task to deal with two teenage boys neither of whom she got to hold as affectionate, adorable and adoring babies. My mother-in-law, despite having no real say in the matter, found herself attached to me and my unkempt brood, and has welcomed us into her family in every way.

While there is no way to adequately thank these wonderful women for all that they have done for me, I hope that they at least know how much they are appreciated. My personal way of trying to express love, appreciation, and honor is to cook for people. As my own mother lives thousands of miles from me, I will have to owe her one.

Today I will spend a lot of time cooking to try and make it a good day for people who mean a lot to me, which in turn makes it a good day for me. I find cooking to be an engaging way to spend my time. I love finding the ingredients, the processes, and the eating. These are all the more enjoyable when I am doing these things for others. While not as altruistic as it sounds, I thoroughly enjoy the accolades when everything works out well, I love to see how much enjoyment my food can bring.

This morning started off with a trip to my favorite local fish monger. This is another blessing. I live near the Gulf of Mexico and a 10 minute drive gets me some seriously fresh seafood. I arrived there just as they were opening and the workers were still spreading ice and the morning’s haul was yet to be placed out on display. The smell was wonderful. It was clean, fresh, and smelled of salt water.

Fresh Red Snapper, Gulf Shrimp and some Sashimi grade Yellowfin Tuna all made it onto the menu. I am thinking Tuna Tartare to start. Snapper stuffed with a sake-ginger risotto and shrimp, and a nice Napa cabbage Asian salad will round out the meal.

Now I just need to decide between a nice Pinot Gris or a Gewürztraminer to go along with it, and come up with what some around here consider the most important part of a special meal…dessert.

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone, and especially to the special women in my life!

Everyone knows how to taste, right? It is one of the five senses that we are born with, so it stands to reason that there is not much to be learned. While it is true that tasting is something that we do naturally, it is also true that it is something that we can learn to do better.

While wine can certainly be enjoyed without honing the ability to taste, enjoyment does increase with education and practice. So, how does one learn to taste, particularly wine?

Reading and studying are a good way to start. There are many great books written about wine, but there are a few that really stand out as fantastic resources for increasing knowledge regardless of the reader’s level.

One book that would have to be any list of books to learn about wine from would be Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: 2008. This book has so much essential information and wonderful illustrations that if you only can have one wine book in your library, this should be it.

Wine: An Introduction is another excellent book that covers all of the fundamental information a wine lover should have at hand. This book has great facts about grapes, wines, pairings and also has excellent photos.

Knowing the wine regions of the world is quite important to enjoying wine, not to mention discussing and purchasing it. I don’t believe that there is any better reference book covering the subject than The World Atlas of Wine. The photos alone are worth the price, but the maps, labels and insight make this a must have.

Yeah, I know, you are reading this and thinking, “Yo Foolio, readin’ ain’t tasting!” Right you are. Reading will give you a nice basis for tasting but the real knowledge is in the glass. The appearance, aromas, and flavors can be described on the page, but can only truly be experienced drinking wine. Isn’t education a wonderful thing?

As you experience more wines it will become easier to distinguish not just the characteristics of the various grapes, but also the individual aromas and flavors that make up the wine. This is true of both single varietals as well as blends, however I do recommend trying single varietals when the chance presents itself. They allow you to get a sense of the grape, its personality, without being tempered in any way the characteristics of another grape. Blending is done many times, not just to enhance a wine, but often to smooth out rough edges or strong flavors of a grape.

Making tasting notes is a great way to enhance your ability to discern flavors and aromas. Even if you never refer back to them, just the act of taking the notes forced you to concentrate on, and pick out all of the notes that you can. Writing them down helps commit them to memory.

One of my favorite ways to gain more knowledge is to attend wine tastings. While some can get quite pricey, many others are unbelievably reasonable. I have tasted fantastic wines at tastings for as low $10, $5 and even for free. Try and get on as many distribution lists that are wine related, including local shop mailing, and you will find all sorts of tasting opportunities.

While some might argue that all of this is too much work just to enjoy a glass of wine, I couldn’t disagree more. First of all, if you find drinking wine to be work, then you must have one hell of a great job. Secondly, without a little education it is impossible to fully enjoy or appreciate wine. Considering how much wine can cost, I prefer to get every bit of enjoyment out of every drop that I can.

Coming soon: A review of a very nice tasting a friend put on last night. For now, I am off to study.

Arneis is a grape that I was completely unfamiliar with until this single varietal from the Willamette Valley showed up on my doorstop courtesy of one of my favorite wine clubs.

Arneis means “little rascal” in the Northern Italian dialect of Piedmontese, and gets its name due to having a reputation as being hard to grow. It is typically used in blends, often with reds in the manner that Viognier is sometimes used in France. However, it makes a pretty tasty wine on its own.

Ponzi Vineyards is one of only a few growers in the United States growing Arneis, and the only one in Oregon. Having only had their version of this varietal, I can not say whether this is a representative wine from this grape, but I can say that I enjoyed it.

The nose is crisp and smells of ripe pears, peaches and apricots. Those aromas are mirrored in the taste but are joined by bright floral notes and toast. This wine has some residual sugar and would make a nice aperitif. It would not seem to be a natural match with a lot of foods, but I think it would make an excellent wine served with smoked meats or spicy Tex-Mex food.

Don’t you hate when the wine you are drinking really opens up when you are drinking the last glass of the bottle, leaving you to ponder how much better each glass could have been?

This is one of the easiest sides to make, but always seems to impress. Not only does it work especially well as an accompaniment for BBQ and grilled food, which comes in handy this time of year, but it also works well with a variety of wines and beers.

Start with nice bunch of fresh green beans. Canned or frozen will work in a pinch, but won’t have anywhere near as much flavor or crunch. Clean the beans and throw on a pot of salted water.

Blanch the beans for two or three minutes and then plunge into an ice water bath. Your beans should now be a nice bright green.

Cut some bacon into pieces, using enough to compliment however many beans you are cooking, and toss into a medium hot skillet. Cook, stirring often, until the bacon is cooked. Once the bacon is cooked add some diced onion and cook until transluscent and just starting to get some color.

At this point add your beans and toss to get them well coated with the bacon grease. Cook until just tender-crisp. Add a knob of butter and douse liberally with red wine vinegar. Pepper to taste and serve.

For my money, Côtes du Rhône wines are some of the best values going. The better ones can deliver almost everything their much more expensive cousins do. The problem is that there are quite a few that do not deliver much of anything. The trick is in finding the really good ones. While I haven’t yet discovered any such trick, I have lucked onto a few. The 2001 Séguret Côtes du Rhône Villages is definitely one of the really good ones.

This bright red blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre has a wonderful nose that combines the aromas of bright fruit, wood, vanilla, caramel and fresh herbs. Ripe dark, sweet and juicy fruit provide the primary flavors. But this is a wine that appears to be at its best, and the secondary flavors are spectacular and hint at wonderful baking spices. The age of the wine provides elegant round tannins a supple mouth feel.

I served this with mustard grilled pork chops, green beans with bacon and onions (recipe later), and polenta. It matched well with everything, but was spectacular with the polenta.

Blend: Predominantly Grenache
Alcohol: 14% by volume

If you can not find this at your local market it is available from Ferry Plaza Wine Merchants at $18.00 a bottle for club members.

The folks at TheDieline.com have a post about Oxford Landing’s South Australian Shiraz. They don’t review the wine, and having never tasted it myself, I don’t know if it is any good or not.  In fact, the post isn’t about the wine at all, but the way that the label is made.

The label features a tab that allows for part of it to be torn off and saved. The torn off piece has all of the important info about the wine. This idea is so simple and so ingenious that I can’t believe it hasn’t been a standard practice for years.

To see photos of the label and how it works go over to the article.

Cono Sur is a very cleverly named winery in Chile that combines a play on the word “connoisseur” with the Spanish for “Southern Cone” which references the shape of South America.

I first tasted this wine at a presentation with Master Sommelier Bob Bath entitled “How to Blind-Taste Like a Master Sommelier.” Everyone at our table really liked it so my wife and I set out to find it. We we stunned to find that not only was it readily available at our neighborhood wine mega-mart, it was also under $7.00.

This is not a great Pinot Noir. It will not blow your socks off, nor will it make you wax rhapsodic in some pseudo-Sideways rant on the wonders of this heartbreaking varietal. What it will do is put a pretty damn drinkable wine on your table for under 10 bucks.

This bright cranberry juice-colored wine has an earthy nose and flavors of cherry, strawberry and raspberry with a hint of smokey wood. It is a light bodied Pinot that is very fruit forward and food friendly.

For the price, it is hard to go wrong with this wine.

CNN Money has a very good article on the trading of Bordeaux futures. This is something that I had heard of, but had only a vague idea of how it worked. The article does a nice job of explaining how it works.

During April tasting week the wine is still maturing in vats and oak barrels. But producers set their prices based on these early orders and gut feelings. Tasters, on the other hand, are betting that their palates can discern whether a mouthful of young wine will mature into a classic, long-lasting, and very expensive Bordeaux along the lines of the 2000 or 2005 vintages - not to mention 1961, 1949, or 1924 - or whether it will turn into at best a pleasant wine but not a particularly memorable or lucrative one (there hasn’t been a truly bad year since 1992).

I wonder how one becomes a taster. Wouldn’t it be cool to put this down as your job description? (emphasis mine)

But when 5,000 wine experts, wholesalers, and importers descend on the Bordeaux region in the first week of April every year to swirl, sniff, and suck mouthfuls of fermenting grape juice before spitting it out noisily into barrel-sized spittoons, they too are engaged in market making.

While investing in these futures does not sound like a very good way to get rich, as the article points out, even if you lose everything you can at least drown your sorrows.

I’ll drink to that.

Okay, the site move is complete and we are back in business! I am finally rid of the terrible hosting company that caused me so many problems. I have been advised not to rip on them by name, not due to that being against the law, but due to the cost of defending against a frivolous lawsuit. They were so bad it would almost be worth getting in a fight with.  Almost, but not quite. However, if anyone is looking at hosting companies, feel free to send me an e-mail and I will be happy to give both positive and negative advice.

As I have mentioned before, this site is being hosted by one of the worst server farms on the planet. That is about to change soon. I have already moved all of the files and the database to another server with a different hosting company that has a much better reputation. As it can take a day or so to get the address to point to the new server, I will not be posting much of anything until it does, because it will only get lost.

Sorry for the interruption, but it should be very short lived, and hopefully worth it. The new company brags about having almost 100% up time, that by itself is a major improvement over the other company. Look for more wine ramblings very soon. Probably no longer than 24 hours, and possibly as soon as this evening (Monday 4/28).

Wine tasting events are all the rage these days. They are held as everything from home parties to mixers to fund raising events. These events are almost always a lot of fun, and are typically much less pretentious than many people imagine. However, if they aren’t something that you attend very often they can be a little intimidating.

It can seem that everyone present knows more than you about wine and it is easy to imagine that you might make a mistake that causes everyone to stare at you in disbelief. Neither could be farther from the truth. You can bet that most of the people there are a mix of folks possibly ranging from complete novices to serious wine drinker, and you probably fit in quite comfortably somewhere on the scale. Plus what horrible mistake could you possibly make? Swirling the wine the wrong direction? That won’t happen (there is no wrong direction, by the way).

Even so, there are a few things that can make attending a wine tasting event more relaxing and enjoyable.

First, and in my opinion, most importantly, unless you are going to a wine dinner, eat before you get to the event. Trusting that the tidbits that are typically served at wine events will be sufficient to slow down the absorption of alcohol is a good way to quickly find yourself a lot drunker than you had intended. The food provided is usually just a morsel intended to show off the pairing capabilities of the wine. Try to eat something with a relatively high fat content, but that isn’t heavily seasoned. You really don’t want your wine having to battle Taco Bell from earlier.

Another important thing to remember is to try and avoid wearing perfume, cologne, or use heavily scented soaps or lotions. Not only will you infringe on the enjoyment of those around you, the scent could be adding or masking aromas in the wine without you even being aware of it.

One of the easiest ways to look like you are at ease is to properly hold your glass. Just remember to hold it by the stem and and not cup it by the bowl. There are more pretentious ways of holding the glass, but we can save them for occasions when you want the pourer at a tasting room to think he better break out the good stuff. Use the stem and you will look like a pro.

Swirling the wine is another possible stumbling block. If you aren’t comfortable swirling it in the air by the stem, simply find a flat surface and swirl while keeping the glass on the table. Practice before you go, if it worries you.

Another good tip is to wear dark clothes. All that swirling, slurping and sipping invariably leads to a little spill now and then. Even the most practiced wino inadvertently lets a little drop fall when tasting, or even worse (and probably more common) accidentally snorts a little up their nose when sniffing. It is much easier to laugh off such occurrences when there aren’t red drops staining your favorite white shirt.

Most importantly, just have fun. Wine events are not rocket science, and being an expert is not required at all. Just taste, enjoy and mingle. It is amazing how friendly folks get about 30 minutes after one of these things get started.

Viognier is showing signs of becoming a trendy wine. It has all the richness and big flavor of a Chardonnay, but isn’t typically subjected to all of the manipulation that can make that varietal so flabby at times.

The 2006 Eberle Viognier is an excellent example of how good Viognier can be. This a very full-bodied wine with some refreshingly crisp acidity. It has a light nose of honeysuckle and melon that does not really hint at how full this wine is.

The flavors, while typical of Viognier, are very well balanced and powerful. Floral notes of honeysuckle and rose mix with big fruity flavors of apricot, melon, ripe peaches and spicy ginger.

This wine is excellent by itself or accompanying Asian food, particularly Thai or Vietnamese.

If you can’t find this in your local market it is available from Ferry Plaza Wine Merchants for $18.00 a bottle. That’s a serious bargain for a wine this good.

A frequent visitor (Hey Chuck!) to this site sent me this message and these recipes:

Two recipes with the same question: what wine should go with them?

As part of this whole new “getting fit” thing, I’ve dug out a cookbook I got for Christmas a few years back that features healthy recipes in smallish portions (appropriate for 1-4 people, which is a good size for people just starting out). I’ve especially taken a liking to two recipes, but I have no idea what wine would go with them. Any ideas?

New Maryland Crab Cakes (serves 2)

1 slice firm-textured white bread
1 egg
1 tablespoon mayo
1 heaping teaspoon dijon mustard
1/2 lb. lump crab meat, picked over for shells/cartilage
1 tablespoon shallots, finely minced
1/2 teaspoon Old Bay
1 teaspoon olive oil
salt to taste

Preheat the Oven to 400.

Make bread crumbs in a blender. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs until foamy, then beat in the mayo and mustard. Add the crab meat, bread crumbs, shallots, Old Bay, and salt. Mix with your hands until everything is very well-blended. Then gently shape into 2 patties, both of which will be big–around 1″ thick, if not a little more.

Use the oil to brush two circles the size of the cakes on a baking sheet. Put the cakes on the oil circles, then bake 15-20 minutes (until the tops are slightly brown). Serve hot. (Also, FWIW, these are especially good reheated in the microwave.)

Braised Beef & Mushrooms with Rigatoni (serves 2)

1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 lb. cubed lean beef (the recipe actually calls for veal, but I’ve interpreted this as “the cheapest lean beef I can find,” since I’m living on student loans)
1/2 cup onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 1/2 cups crimini mushrooms, sliced thick
1/4 cup Madeira or Marsala
2 cups beef broth
1 cup rigatoni
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a 10″, nonstick, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the beef and brown it well, turning as necessary, then push it to the side of the skillet. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the onion, garlic, mushrooms, and wine. Cook and stir for two minutes. Add the broth and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook over low heat for 45-60 minutes, or until the meat is fork-tender.

Add the rigatoni to the skillet. Cover and cook for 15 minutes, or until the pasta is tender. Season with salt and pepper. Serve hot in shallow bowls with some of the broth.

My answer:

Both recipes sound pretty good.

Crab cakes - Something crisp, citrusy and unoaked. Pinot Gris (Oregon or Alsace, preferably) would be my first choice. Sauvignon Blanc or Muscadet might be good, too.

Beef - I think there are a lot of reds that would be good with this, but I would serve a nice Cotes du Rhone with it. It would be a great match and it is cheap. I’ve been drinking a lot of Perrin Reserve lately, and I think it could fool a lot of people into thinking they were drinking a much more expensive wine from the region. Should be under 10 bucks.

If Chuck takes my advice, I hope he comes back and lets us know how it went. If anyone else has questions like this, feel free to ask.

In the 1970’s Sutter Home Winery started producing and selling White Zinfandel wine. They were crappy wines that obviously had a great press agent. Despite the huge amount of it sold, it was actually created due to an accident occurring to what was basically waste product.

Sutter Home was producing red wine from the Zinfandel grape using a process known as saignée, also known as bleeding. After the juice has been in contact with the skins for a short time some is drained off. In the case of Sutter Home, this was done to increase the tannins in the red wine. As the proportion of juice to must is now higher, the the skins and seeds impart more tannins. What is left is rosé wine. However, in this instance it was basically waste product that was given to employees for free as it wasn’t fit to sell.

In 1975 the fermentation process became “stuck” and much of the sugar from the juice was never utilized by the yeast which left a residual sweetness in the resulting wine. Someone had the exceptionally bright, but quite evil, idea that this was marketable to an American public that was not all that wine savvy, and the White Zin craze was born.

Lest anyone think that this was an entirely negative thing, I believe that much of the current interest and boom in American wine culture is directly related to Sutter Home and the abomination known as White Zinfandel. Just as withered wives of 80’s political leaders asserted that smelling someone else’s joint at a P-Funk show would cause one to become a heroin addict, or as George Carlin put it, “Mother’s milk leads to cannabinol,” White Zin was a gateway into wine culture for many people.

Another positive was that many Zinfandel vines were saved from being uprooted to make way for other varietals due to the popularity and profitability of White Zinfandel. Fans of this grape have the aforementioned craze to thank for it still being around to enjoy on such a large scale.

On the negative side, both Zinfandel and rosé wine have terrible reputations due to their association with White Zinfandel, despite neither tasting anything like the stuff. Rosé is a topic for another time, but neither it nor Zinfandel deserve the negative connotations.

Zinfandel, the deep red stuff, is a big fruit-forward wine. It typically has a lot of raspberry or blackberry fruit mixed with brown sugar and spice notes. If it could ever shake off its associations with wines of ill-repute, I firmly believe that this wine could become a favorite of the American wine drinking public.

Most Zins should be drunk young because the fruit is the draw here, and it will fade with age. Also, many of these wines are quite high in alcohol and become “hot” over time when the fruitiness is no longer there to provide balance.

Zinfandel can be successfully paired with a lot of foods, steaks, ham, rich pasta dishes, and a lot more, but I really prefer it by itself or just a little cheese to nibble on. I find that the brown sugar and spice flavor is best without competition from food.

If you usually shun this varietal, do yourself a favor and pick up a bottle. If you don’t, I will be forced to write about it again, and next time I might not show as much restraint and start punning with “Zin.”

I don’t usually link to someone else’s blog post without much comment, but I thought this one about Robert Parker over at MustLoveWine was well worth it.

A short excerpt:

So why do I say Bob rocks? Say what you will about the guy who rates wines – a subjective bit of work if ever there is one. However, Bob has done more for the world of wine than few could ever dream of. Bob is truly an independent. He accepts no advertising in his publication, “The Wine Advocate” and buys all wines that he samples for rating out of a personal budget. Wines which are shipped to Bob gratis for his work are subsequently donated to good charity cause auctions. His character and mission of absolute independence and honesty without the pressures of indebtedness is honorable. That’s a pretty high standard for any to hold dear and yet Bob seems to do it with élan.

I am blessed to work at a place that employs people from many diverse cultures. When Chinese New Year came around I was invited to lunch to celebrate. There was some teasing that went on about the food and whether I would be able to eat it. It was all in fun, and the food ended up being very good and, unfortunately, all well-suited for American tastes. However, it did lead to discussions of traditional Asian foods that would seem strange to most of us in America.

Last night it led to more as a friend of mine from Taiwan, Chinglan, took me on a culinary adventure. Right after work she took me to Houston’s burgeoning Chinatown. We started at a very small place with the innocuous name of China Gourmet. Afterwards we were to meet her husband and my wife for Peking Duck and other more “normal” Chinese fare, but the China Gourmet was the biggest part of the adventure, that they were intentionally skipping.

We walked in and I knew immediately that I was not in Kansas anymore. Once Chinglan began speaking to the gentleman behind the counter it struck me that there was conversation all around me, not a word of which did I have the ability to understand. I can’t exactly explain why, but being nudged out of my comfort zone was exhilarating. For all I knew my friend was telling the counterman, “Hey, this stupid white boy fancies himself a food tourist, fry him up some cat turds marinated in goat urine and if he eats it I can post about him on my blog!”

Luckily for me, she is a very nice lady, and apparently ordered the dishes that we had come for; Stinky Tofu and the ultra-mysterious Four Things Soup. Although, had the batteries in my camera not been dead, she would be posting a picture of a stupid white boy eating Stinky Tofu on her blog this morning, but that was previously agreed upon.

Stinky Tofu is bean curd that has been aged in fermenting vegetable matter and then steamed or fried and served with a dipping sauce that I could not identify and some kimchi, which I could. The fried variety, which is what we had, is less fragrant that its steamed cousin, but still earns its name. While I am very grateful to Chinglan for sharing this dish with me, and I will be able to proudly be able to brag about having tried it forever, I can not claim to be a fan of it. Fried Stinky Tofu is not entirely unpleasant. It has a nutty, slightly cheesy quality that is very nice. It does, however, retain flavors from the rotting vegetation if gets its name from that is much less nice.

Then there is the texture. I had imagined that it would be creamy, maybe even slightly runny. It is not. Another friend and co-worker of Chinese descent had described it perfectly earlier in the day. He told me to imagine that someone had cut a dish sponge into cubes and the battered and deep fried it. Bingo!

The other dish, Four Things Soup, was much more to my liking. I’m not entirely sure what the four things are, but I do know that it had stomach and lotus bean seeds in a broth made from rice wine. It is reputed to have medicinal qualities and I found it to be both tasty and refreshing. It also left a very pleasant aftertaste. I will definitely eat this again. Chinglan did inform me that it is traditionally made with intestines and not stomach, but having no other frame of reference, I was quite content with how this tasted.

The more American-friendly food we had at the next restaurant was also fantastic, but wasn’t quite as adventurous. I ordered us all a bottle of Pinot Noir, figuring it would pair well with the widest variety of foods, and Chinglan ordered the food. For the record, Peking Duck is fantastic with Pinot Noir.

Afterwards we headed for a third restaurant for desert; shaved ice topped with strawberries and mangoes, sweetened condensed milk, and a scoop of ice cream. It was unusual, but highly addictive.

It will probably take me weeks of penance at the gym and much sacrifice at the dinner table to recover from such a food orgy, but it was worth it. I hope to get the opportunity to do this again soon. The fried duck tongues on the menu sounded intriguing.

If you don’t open yourself up for new experiences you might spare yourself the occasional bad taste, but you will miss out on so many more wonderful ones. Don’t be squeamish!