Mock Turtle

I should have taken the hint from the description of the wine as a red wine that has a profile resembling “a deep purple version of gewürztraminer” (Szabo).

It’s an interesting curiosity, and well done as an example of what it is, but the bottle I bought of Giusti Piergiovanni Lacrima Di Morro D’alba 2008 has got to be classified as one of the weirdest wine experiences I’ve ever had. It’s an opaque deep purple, with a decidedly purplish rim, and a strongly floral nose of rose and Earl Grey tea. I have not a clue what one would eat it with. It’s one of those wines where one thinks, y’know, this would be really interesting as a component to give aromatic interest to something else.

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It’s been a while since we’ve done any wine blogging.

Here are a few highlights from our wine notes. All Vintages, current availability unknown. (Not to harp on it or anything, but one of the nice features of WineAlign is that it automagically does an inventory search of stores near you for any wine in their system.)

Reds:

Cennatoio Chianti Classico 2006. 13%, $24.95. A classic Chianti Classico with cherry, herbal, violet, earthy, and cedar/sandalwood notes. Dark ruby, darker than you’d expect from a non-riserva. Worth the extra $$.

Fumanelli Valpolicella 2008. 12.5%, $12.95. Straightforward fruity pizza wine, but not in a bubblegum way. Good $13 weekday wine.

Domaine Puig-Parahy “Georges” 2007. 13.5%, $13.95. Not a lot of bottles left the system but a few here and there. A great value southern French blend of Grenache, Syrah and Carignan — basically fruity (raspberry) with hints of spice, dried herbs, and sandalwood. Apparently it has seen no oak so I have no explanation for the spice and sandalwood.

Whites later, maybe.

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There is a thriving niche market in providing wine advice to the however many million Ontarians who are effectively captive to the Ontario LCBO wine monopoly.

Tony Aspler has been doing this for some years on his TonyAspler.com web site. I’ve been subscribing to his reviews for a few years, most recently renewing my subscription last January.

Since then, however, I’ve come across WineAlign, which collects reviews from a variety of sources but whose main reviewers are John Szabo and David Lawrason. Lawrason is well known as a wine critic — I think he used to be the Globe’s wine critic before they took it in-house, and he has been involved since in Wine Access magazine and now the Toronto Life wine column. Szabo is not as well known to me, but he is the wine consultant responsible for the wine lists at Terroni and Indian Rice Factory — I cannot say anything about the latter from personal experience but the diverse list of affordable Italian wines at Terroni is one of the features that makes Terroni more interesting than your average Toronto trattoria.

I got a trial subscription at Wine Align and I find both Szabo and Lawrason interesting and helpful. Szabo in particular is of the “I am allowed to have a point of view” school of wine reviewing which makes reading him genuinely helpful, especially since I happen to share his point of view on some things. In a sense, the whole idea is that since you get to see reviews from a variety of sources, you’ll have a better chance to figure out which critics’ views “align” with your tastes, and let them have more influence on your purchasing decisions. (The reality is that there probably isn’t much point in subscribing unless Szabo’s and Lawrason’s tastes “align” to some extent with yours — you can get the other reviews easily enough elsewhere.)

This excerpt from a recent blog post is a nice illustration of Szabo’s style and the “Wine Align” concept:

This will undoubtedly be a polarizing wine, with many swooning over its full-bodied ripeness and others, probably far fewer, wondering what just hit them over the head. You’ll see in the Vintages catalogue that Robert Parker rates this wine a 90-91, while I was considerably less enthusiastic at just 86. I found the fruit fully baked and raisined and the alcohol, at an exaggerated 15.5% (on the label), well, exaggerated. No balance, no finesse, no poetry, just sheer mass. Any long time First-in-Line or WineAlign readers will likely have already figured out which wines ‘align’ with my tastes so this won’t be surprising. I know Minervois is a hot region. I lived next door to it and traveled through it during the hot summer of 1998. I’ve visited Domaine des Aires Hautes and tasted 16-17+% alcohol barrel samples and found them excessive then too. I know that properly managed vineyards can produce fully ripe fruit at less vertiginous alcohol levels, as plenty of other producers in the area manage to do, so I’m left wondering why it’s necessary. I suppose it’s because lots of people including well-known and respected critics like the style. I can’t help thinking that if I wanted to drink amarone or fortified wine, then I would probably buy amarone or fortified wine. In any case, I encourage you to pick up a bottle and see for yourself – it will at least be warming on a cold winter’s night.

By contrast, Aspler can be a helpful reviewer, but it’s often difficult to figure out what he really thinks about a wine and why.

Wine Align charges about $40.00 a year for a subscription, with a free trial for about 60 days. Worth the cash, especially if you’re at all adventurous and want to make the most of the limited selection brought to us by Vintages and the LCBO.

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Apparently OSAP allows $7.50 a day, or roughly $225 a month, for a student food allowance. The Star is reporting on the extreme hardship this produces, and four intrepid students, risking starvation and perhaps even the odd foray into their own kitchens, are blogging their attempt to comply with this limit for three agonizing weeks.

One of these students felt the need to supplement this:

To cut costs, Crane will seek one of the $25 emergency grocery vouchers Brock’s student union offers cash-strapped students; this year it has upped the number of vouchers to 105 from 75 last year because of the recession.

so she now (lucky thing) has the slightly lesser horror of feeding herself on $250 a month instead of $225.

Right about now every single person living on welfare is rolling their eyes so hard they may be able to see out the backs of their heads.

I think back to fourth year, when K. and I each allocated $75 a month to groceries — $105.27 in current dollars — and we ate very well. Lots of seasonal fruit and veggies, yogurt, a little meat, lots of home-made muffins… and yes, pasta and rice but certainly not the “cheap carbo-loading” mentioned in the article as necessary. We often, as I recall, had money left over at the end of the month (with which we bought wine).

I might also look at our current grocery spending. On average I spend about $100 a week on groceries for the three of us, so that’s $400 for the month. Every two weeks a $55 box of organic milk, eggs and veggies is delivered; another $110. And we probably spend about another $100 on wine — Well, to be generous let’s call it $150 to cover off the odd bottle of fizzy and/or a decent LBV. $400 + $110 + $150 = $660 a month.

OSAP would allow $7.50 x 30 x 3 = $675.

To be clear, I’m not denying the challenges inherent in trying to live on the utterly inadequate amount OSAP provides if it’s your only source of income, and I won’t for a second defend a student loan system that saddles young graduates with absurdly large debts. But moaning about a $7.50-a-day food allowance isn’t going to garner much sympathy from me — or, I suspect, from the many students who are stuck feeding themselves on much, much less. ($1 a day: that’s hard.)

Come on kids: drop the entitlement and get cooking.

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A few random notes on recent red experiences:

2006 Farina Valpolicella Classico Superiore Ripasso “Le Pezze” ($14.95, 13.5%). This is currently available at Vintages though stocks in Toronto Central are starting to get low. A good value on a $15 red, with a very fruity red berry nose with a hint of sandalwood and spice. A hint of candiedness which seems to have put us off the first time we tasted it but not so much the second time. Barely dry, medium and med+ body, med- tannin, average balance and finish. A yummy everyday-ish wine.

Gabbiano 2008 Chianti (bottled by Beringer Blass Italia [!]) ($14.95, 12.5%). Another good value everyday-ish wine, with a classic cherry-sandalwood nose with a hint of spice. Not the most complex Chianti, but authentic. This is readily available on the LCBO general list.

Luigi Bosca 2006 Malbec Reserva, Vistalba Vineyard Mendoza (Argentina) ($16.95, 14%). This was widely available for a while at Vintages but seems now to be largely out of stock in Toronto Central. Strong dark fruit nose — plum, chocolate, blueberry/cassis, spicy dark fruit, tobacco, hint of something charred. A very rich nose and palate with very full body. Average balance and finish. We found it somewhat fragile with exposure to air, developing some rather odd notes towards the end of the bottle. Typical of our ambivalence toward Argentina Malbec — rich, yummy, not much sense of terroir, attractiveness on the nose and palate due in part to its heavy dose of alcohol.

Chateau le Barradis 2006 AOC Bergerac (south-west France) ($13.95, 11.5%). Organic. A slightly odd wine, completely the opposite of the previous wine. Shy nose, hard to place fruit (maybe strawberry), slight hint of green, meatiness, spice, sour cherry, develops secondary aromas with air. Medium acid and body, med- tannin, avg+ balance and average finish. A light red with some interest on the nose which carries through to the palate, goes well with food. A bit like a good light Ontario red (apparently made primarily with Merlot and Cabernet Franc). Perhaps not to everyone’s taste, but very good value at $14 and good with food. Apparently not widely popular since still quite a lot left at Vintages.

2008 Santa Julia Reserva Malbec (Mendoza) (about $14, 14%). J. just viscerally disliked this wine, leaving rather too much of it for me and ultimately for the sink. It’s a high alcohol, plummy red with a hint of spiciness, medium tannin, no terroir to speak of and a bit of a confected feel to it. The Luigi Bosca is much, much better.

We have unfortunately started to give up on the $7 reds we used to like and buy regularly — both the Farnese and the Citra seem to be heading increasingly in a fruity/candied/carbonic direction. I don’t think it’s just a matter of being able to afford better wines these days, but the $14.95 Italians mentioned above are increasingly becoming the wines we buy if we want an everyday red on a weekday.

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2008 was a rather cool summer in Ontario (though not as bad as 2009), and I was curious how the wines would turn out. The answer so far, interestingly, is pretty well, at least as far as the whites are concerned.

The great bargain of the Ontario wine world, as far as I’m concerned, continues to be the basic $12.95 general list Peninsula Ridge INOX Chardonnay. We first ran into this wine in its 2007 incarnation, which we liked a lot and thought was excellent value. The 2008 has a yeasty-biscuity-minerally nose, with generous citrus fruit and good follow-through on the palate. Stock up and drink now — we found the 2007 starting to fade a bit by last Spring.

Another good value from 2008 is the 2008 Malivoire White, a blend of Chardonnay, Riesling, and Gewurtztraminer readily available at the LCBO (may technically be Vintages — not sure) for $14.95. It has a racy nose of minerals and fresh green fruits with a hint of yeast and honey that carries through nicely to the palate. J. found the Riesling-Chardonnay combo nose a bit offputting, even before she knew it was a combination of Riesling and Chardonnay. She did admire the graphic design on the label though.

Slightly more expensive at $22.00, but worth the extra money if you’re in the mood for a good Riesling, is the 2008 Tawse Wismer Vineyard Foxcroft Block Riesling. It has a nose of lees, honey, green apple and limestone, with a hint of acidity on the nose. It’s only 11% but that’s enough to the give the nose presence. Good follow through to an off-dry palate balanced by quite a lot of acidity. A cool-weather Riesling (no petrol or tropical fruits) but nicely made with a generous palate and enough interest on the nose to take it above the standard $15 bottle.

The only real dispppointment in the whites department so far was a rather expensive-ish Riesling from Flat Rock, the 2008 Nadia’s Vineyard, which had an interesting nose but sort of vanished into lightly flavoured mineral water on the palate (very dry, high acidity, a bit of a spritz, but no follow-through from the nose or body to speak of). It’s $20 and 10.5% — spend the extra $2.00 on the Tawse which is a much more rewarding experience.

We haven’t been able to sample the standard $14-15 bottles for 2008 yet (Cave Spring, Henry of Pelham and the like). The 2006 off-drys were really nice, though for some reason the basic 2007s went all flabby and unfocused (the 2007 Cave Spring Estate Bottled, still available for around $18, is quite pleasant but maybe a bit *too* petrol-ly). I’ll be curious to see what happens with 2008.

Haven’t sampled much by way of 2008 reds yet. Tasted one of the mass-market VQA Cabernet Sauvignon bottles at a party, a not surprisingly it was pretty green. But mass-market Cab Sauv from Ontario is not usually a satisfying experience, even in a good year. I’m curious what the 2008 Malivoire “Red” blend is like — it’s a companion to the Malivoire white blend discussed above.

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This is a variation on a basic tomato-based pan sauce. Serves 3-4 over pasta of your choice.

Boil approx. 1/2 cup water in kettle and pour into small bowl over one package dried porcini mushrooms until mushrooms are covered — it probably will not take all the water to cover the mushrooms.

Chop one medium-sized onion and two cloves garlic. Fry in olive oil at medium-low heat until softened. Add one 28 oz. can Roma tomatoes, drained — I recommend the Unico San Marzano style tomatoes, which have some of the taste of Italy without the additional consumption of petrochemicals associated with the importation of actual Italian tomatoes. Whether or not you drain the tomatoes is up to you but in my experience it’s really a matter of how long it takes for the liquid to boil off — and you’re about to add more liquid at the next step.

Cut 4 slices prosciutto into small pieces — supermarket brands such as President’s Choice will do fine for these purposes. Add to sauce with reconstituted mushrooms and broth. Season according to taste — we usually use oregano and/or marjoram.

Boil down sauce until enough liquid evaporates — to taste, but I generally prefer a thicker sauce. Serve over pasta of choice, topped with grated parmesan if desired.

[Note: I have never made this sauce exactly as described, because only one of us likes Porcini mushrooms enough to have them dominate the whole sauce. Though probably it would not be as dominant if I were putting the mushrooms in the whole sauce as opposed to only one serving...]

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The Cappellaccio Aglianico Riserva 2004 I briefly raved about earlier was released at Vintages on May 2, and is still widely available throughout Toronto Central (though not at Manulife, apparently). We uncorked a bottle at dinner last night and — perhaps predictably — we gave it a rave review. It’s a rich dark tannic (and somewhat alcoholic) red, which needs a while to open up (give it at least half an hour in a decanter). It has a nose of  baked mincemeat, plums, oak, toast, and a hint of organicity to keep it interesting — maybe black olive. Med+ body, tannins, and acid; good balance and avg+ finish. It’s a good group dinner wine — ideal for smoked meats, charcuterie or rich meat dishes. It was perhaps a bit more than was needed for our tomato-prosciutto-(optional) porcini pasta but frankly I am not complaining.

It’s also pretty impressive after being pumped and left for a day in the fridge — similar mincemeat and plum profile once it warms up, just missing a bit of complexity.

It’s a bit pricey both cash and alcohol-wise at $17.95 and 13.5%. But still a great deal for a red under $20.

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Did the 80 layoffs at the Globe include all the copy editors? From Joanne Kates’ review of Globe Bistro this morning:

Despite evidence to the contrary, some people are afraid of eating pork.

Come again?

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It didn’t take us very long to uncork that Aglianico I referred to in my last post — we shared it with one of J.’s classmates in a post-term informal celebratory pizza dinner on Friday evening. It’s the Bisceglia 2006 ‘Terra di Vulcano’ DOC Aglianico di Vulture, at $14.95 and 13.5%, in the Easter weekend Vintages release. Beppi Crosariol gave it high praise in a column that has now been “matured” from the Globe’s free current content section to its paid archives.

I first ran into Aglianico in the summer of 2005, somewhat by accident at the St. Clair Market mini-Vintages when I was looking for something to serve with (and in) a lamb braise. Our notes on that wine, a Cappellaccio Aglianico Reserva 2001 from the Castel del Monte DOC in Puglia ($17.95), are somewhat sketchy. But we remember finding its “organic” nose of olive, earth, and cherry unexpectedly fascinating. The grape is apparently an import into southern Italy from Greece (Aglianico being a corruption of “Ellinico”), with the potential — albeit infrequently realized — to make top quality wines.

Our more recent Aglianico doesn’t have the “organic” quality that caught our attention back when we first encountered the grape way back when. But nevertheless it is a very well made wine, with a nose of dark fresh cherries, light sandalwood, and an indefinable (to us) though not overwhelming spiciness. It’s an appealing wine with medium-plus-ish body, acid, and tannins nicely in balance. Crosariol made a point of warning his audience not to expect a New World fruit bombish kind of wine, but frankly the wine is more fruit-forward and less austere than that warning would have led us to expect. Probably not an ideal wine for our pizza though — I seem to recall that Crosariol mentioned something like an ideal accompaniment for smoked meat antipasti which does seem to be more its style.

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