Mock Turtle

I bought a bottle of wine for an experimental quasi-Provencal braised beef thing we made for dinner today. The braised beef absorbs a good third of the bottle in the braising sauce, making it possible to buy one of these 14% New World reds on a weekday without regretting it the day after.

The wine we bought was Tarapaca Gran Reserva Carmenere 2007, a Chilean Carmenere from the January 10 Vintages release that caught my attention. It had the unusual distinction of being a $15 (exactly $15 — not $14.95…) wine with 4 1/2 stars from Tony Aspler. I can see where he’s coming from — it has an interesting spiciness with plenty of fruit on the nose and good followthrough on the palate. It  reminded me a bit of a very different wine that also received very high scores from Aspler and also from Robert Parker — a spicy white blend from Australia that we bought early in our time in Ottawa and ended up regretting. Both wines with a complex, interesting, and reasonably intense nose and palate, obviously impressive to two highly respected critics, but which ended up leaving us cold.

Why? J. finds the oak on a number of modern reds — including this one — rather overwhelming. I sometimes agree with her, though it didn’t strike me as a problem with this particular wine. In the end (and we both agree on this one) it’s more about what these wines are missing — they have lots of ripe fruit, lots of spice, but nothing by way of organicity, minerality, earthiness, etc. — in short, terroir.  Unfortunately, spicy ripe fruit all by itself makes me think of that cheap scented candle smell you can’t avoid in Hallmark shops. (A slight green pepper note on the nose doesn’t help any either — I don’t always complain about bell pepper notes but they just seem weird in the context of a ripe, fruit-driven New World merlot/malbec/carmenere.)

On a more positive note, I think I am starting to get a handle on quasi-Provencal braised beef. Hint: orange peel is your friend.

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I bought a bottle of the Hillebrand Winery Trius 2004 Cabernet Franc (VQA Niagara) this evening, partly on the strength of having enjoyed the 2002 version and partly because it was, er, conveniently available where I was buying the wherewithal for dinner.

J. nicely deconstructed (or perhaps reverse-engineered) the label as broadcasting a sort of sort of middle of the road, yuppie-ish, respectable-but-not-too-complicated vibe. Which is essentially what this wine is all about. It has a degree of interest — an attractive Niagara-red smokiness with a bit of greenness which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — but ultimately too much greenness (more raspberry-leaf than raspberry…) and a serious deficit on the palate.

I don’t regret giving this one a spin but at $14.95 and 13% there are better values out there.

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Occasionally we actually have practical wine suggestions.

Beppi Crosariol recommended Gabbiano Chianti 2007 some months ago in the Globe and Mail as a reliable $14 Chianti, also pointing out that (improbably) the operation was owned by the Australian megawinecorp Beringer Blass, better known for decidedly non-Chianti-like products such as the Wolf Blass line of Aussie reds (mainly) and whites. It’s a general list wine with widespread availability throughout Toronto Central and also (I presume) elsewhere.

As indicated it’s not exactly a Shiraz-y style wine — it’s young, relatively light (really medium-bodied), without a lot of oak (I think maybe a bit of oak). The LCBO says 12.7% alc/vol (the label 13%) which sounds about right. It’s got a pleasant bright fresh cherry/red berry nose — with a bit of air you also get  hints of spice, light cedar, maybe a hint of some kind of floral note. It drinks well immediately after opening but holds up well and (as noted) develops a bit of complexity with airing. Medium/medium+ body, medium acid, medium tannin. A good wine for a wide range of dinner food — pizza, pasta, chicken, sausages, etc. etc.

Definitely worth the money if you’re looking for something along these lines — a reasonably priced young red with some interest and no hint of vegetable patch, carbonic bubblegum, or overwhelming vanilla-oak.

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Even hoppy Dogfish Head beer won’t be enough to get some people through the next bumpy year. And so, the return of Depression-era cocktails:

The industry has seen a resurgence of drinks that hark back to the prewar eras of Prohibition and the Great Depression, such as the Sidecar, the Old Fashioned and the Manhattan.

Let the markets fall, production shrink, and unemployment rise. If it leads to me being able to order a Sidecar and receive it made with something other than ReaLemon, there’s hope for us all.

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We have become distracted on the way home from singing at SMM on a regular basis by a small bistro on Harbord at Brunswick. Formerly known as Dessert Trends, now they go by DT Bistro. They have excellent sandwiches, quiches and the like for around $10-13. Not to mention desserts…

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We’ve now had a chance to sample (er, consume) most of the wines we bought in Niagara on the Labour Day weekend.

We liked all the Niagara College Teaching Winery wines we bought, without falling in love with any of them. They all struck us (perhaps predictably, in retrospect) as somewhat textbooky, good examples of what they’re supposed to be without being really interesting. We seem to have managed to consume both bottles of the 2006 Chardonnay without taking notes on either one of them. The 2006 Pinot Noir was more memorable: intense cherry-raspberry “Pinot Noir” fruit with notes of cedar and sandalwood. No terroir to speak of, though, and a sense of inflated body — “alcohol that is not very integrated” as J. put it. Not very interesting but decent value for Pinot at $15.95. I thought the best of the three was the Cabernet Franc from the warm 2005 vintage — nose of dried prune with toast and oak and plumminess. Good example of a new-world style Cabernet — doesn’t disintegrate with air, has good tannin. J. thought too much oak, not much fruit, and not much enjoyment.  I don’t think we’d go out out of our way to look for NCT but they are all very reasonable wines and decent value for money.

We’ve now tried both our Black Paw and Red Paw 2006 Cabernet Francs from Coyote’s Run. Unfortunately the Red Paw struck us both as rather anonymous — more of an ungenerous Pinot Noir than a Cabernet Franc. Still they manage to avoid the cabbage-patch underripe Cab Franc effect and it’s not too oaked for what the juice will bear. Young vines, not so good vintage conditions. Worth another try in a better year. Contrary to expectations we liked the the 2006 Black Paw better — cherry, pomegranate, “cabernet spice” and a hint of cedar and toast on the nose. Just a bit more interesting all things considered.

Other Niagara: We’ve had a chance to try both the 2004 Lailey Pinot Noir and the Coyote’s Run 2004 Red Paw which we bought several years ago when we were in Niagara. We liked them both better than the NCT — both well-made wines with red cherry, spiciness, sandalwood and cedar on the nose. We liked the nose of the Coyote’s Run better, while finding the nose on both more impressive than the palate. Usual story — the ideal Pinot for $20-25 simply doesn’t exist. We have another bottle of the Red Paw which we are saving for another few months to see if the oak settles further.

We’ve picked up a number of 2007 whites already from the LCBO. Unfortunately we’re a bit underwhelmed with the standard entry-level Rieslings: both the Cave Spring off-dry and the Pelham Reserve — both excellent in 2006 — are kind of flabby and uninteresting. On the other hand, the 2007 entry-level Peninsula Ridge INOX — a real value at $12.95 at your local LCBO — is excellent: minerals, earth, grassiness, tropical fruit with a hint of citrus. So perhaps avoid the Riesling and go for the unoaked Chards instead this year.

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Caves de Rasteau Tradition Rasteau, regularly available at Vintages, used to be one of our favourite bargain-ish wines (about $16.95). It comes from Rasteau, which if memory serves is a sub-AOC in the Cotes-du-Rhone Villages AOC. (It’s one of the Villages.) It used to be one of those fun southern Rhones with a lot of character for the money. We’ve probably praised it here at some point.

No longer. We brought a bottle to P&C’s last as a complement to a delicious braised beef dish and, well, it’s gone all carbonic. They’re releasing the 2007 vintage now, which should have been our first clue. (It’s also been re-branded as Ortas Tradition Rasteau, with Caves de Rasteau in the fine print to mislead the wary.) Dark colour, forward fruit, no terroir to speak of, and the inevitable cotton candy overtones. It’s still drinkable, but it used to be really good.

Sigh.

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There’s a very entertaining profile in the New Yorker of the great Dogfish Head microbrewery and its founder, Sam Calagione — link below.  I’ve been a fan for a long time, but I’m not enough of a beer geek to know they had this kind of following.  My only concern is that this kind of publicity will catapult them from cult status to something like unavailability.  Hope my local beer superstore has a good supply arrangement…

Best quote:

“Calagione, for his part, had no time to drink. Going to the Great American Beer Festival with him, a friend of his had told me, is like attending a Star Trek convention with Captain Kirk.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/24/081124fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all

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Hemp Bliss?

Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease.

Found on the shelf at Loblaw’s.

Of all the things to name a hemp beverage…

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Update: More here

As Putin rears his head

and comes into the airspace of the United States of America,

where do they go?

It’s Alaska.

It’s just right over the border.

It is from Alaska

that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation,

Russia,

because they are right there,

they are right next to our state.

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