The Rake Magazine

Tag: Chardonnay

  • Spring Break

    Ah. . . .spring break.

    I don’t know what the words conjure up for you. For me, a college professor and parent, spring break means two things: a week of stupid, drunken antics that tend to leave my students hungover, pregnant, and/or diseased, and a week of sleeping in, being bored, and watching too much TV that tends to make my children ready to go back to school.

    Either way, not my favorite time of year. Until last week.

    It was spring break in St. Louis Park. My two younger children were home, the 17-year-old newly jobless, the 13-year-old reading Ayn Rand. And somewhere along the line each of them decided to ask every single person they knew to come over and hang out.

    Now, you might not think a parent would like that. But I was just back in town after a long trip and irrationally happy to see my own kids. I was in a rare mellow frame of mind. And the simple fact is, the teenagers who were teeming into my house like droves of ants were just downright cool.

    There were boys ranging from 16-21, sprawled across couches and tables and chairs. They were drinking from enormous cans of Rock Star and Red Bull and Snapple, hauling in bags of chips and burritos the size of my head. And what were they doing: getting high, staging destructive wrestling matches, setting fire to things? No. They were engaged in a week-long Risk tournament that provoked discussions about world history and famous despots, as well as shouts of "You asshole!" that reverberated through the house at two in the morning, but I didn’t mind.

    There was also a younger tier — mostly girls, with a few shy, awkward boys hanging around the edges — from the ages of 12 to 14. They mostly ate pizza and sat on the front steps during those few days in March when it didn’t snow, texting each other even though they easily could have talked. After the boys were gone, the girls had sleepovers during which they held long Disney marathons, watching the videos we’ve owned since my daughter was born. The Little Mermaid. The Lion King.

    And I don’t know that I’ve ever had such a satisying week in my entire life.

    It was noisy and cluttered and SMELLY (at one point there were 14 pairs of boys’ shoes in my front hall). My husband and I slept almost not at all. But we knew exactly where our children were — and where every other St. Louis Park parent’s were, for that matter — and there’s no feeling in the world as good as that. Add to this the fact that we were buying pizzas and burritos at such a mad rate, we could afford nothing else and were drinking what we’ve come to call our "house" wine, a dirt cheap Nero d’Avola by Archeo that retails for about $4.99. And even THIS didn’t bother me. In fact, I rather liked it.

    Nero d’Avola is a Sicilian grape that makes a light, juicy, incredibly quaffable wine. And it seems that no matter how low you go on the price scale, it’s pretty standard and inoffensive. Rather like a happy puppy, the cherry and oak flavor is generally cheerful and easy to like.

    Next year, when my son is in college and only my daughter is home, spring break will almost surely have a whole different tone. I will miss the boys terribly — foot odor notwithstanding — and am grateful that at least I was here to enjoy this year’s Risk-and-pizza free-for-all.

    If you’re in a mood to read more about children and the joys thereof, check out the new Rake sister site: www.gomom.com. It’s a great resource. There’s only one downside: I’m afraid it’s a little short on wine drinking advice.

  • At Cue: A Thinking Woman's Wines

    She may look like a lost cast member from Charmed, the former WB’s show for Gothic teenyboppers that featured beautiful, modern-day witches living in San Francisco, fighting evil lords, and dyeing their long, silky hair. But Jessica Nielsen is, in fact, the wine captain at Cue and a first-level accredited sommelier (which is rare these days, when most people calling themselves sommeliers actually are not) who spends every night circulating among the tables and making personal recommendations for the guests.

    If you have a yearning to see what this sorceress of a wine expert would select for you, now’s the time. Three reasons: First, the Guthrie Theater is on hiatus, so it’s easy to get a table, even at prime pre-show times. Second, chef Michael Delcambre recently introduced a new spring menu that features pan roasted chicken breast in a roasted lemon sauce and a beautiful grilled artichoke and ricotta ravioli. But third — and most important — Cue is putting all its wines on special until April 11.

    Management at Bon Appetit — the company that owns Cue and runs the food service operations at high-end colleges such as Macalester, St. Olaf, and Carleton — has come up with a hopelessly (and unnecessarily) complicated rubric for what they’re calling the Spring Cellar Celebration. What it boils down to is this:

    Wines from overseas will be offered at a 30% markdown this weekend, through Sunday, April 6. Wines from the Americas, both North and South, will be offered at the same 30% discount next week, until April 11th. All 35 by-the-glass options will be available 1/4 to 1/3 off at lunch only. There’s a special prix fixe lunch for $20 that can be paired with a flight for an additional $24 or $30, and a prix fixe dinner for $30 also with the two tiers of 3-ounce flights. And finally, on the 11th itself, Nielsen is adding a special Big Red flight that will cost you a mere $45.

    Got all that?

    Well, here’s the real deal. Word on the street is that Cue overbought on the pricey end of the wine cellar, and they’re trying to sell off those truly [for most of us] out-of-reach bottles so they can bring in more $60 and $90 vintages that real people can afford. So for the next 8 days, they’re willing to broker some pretty incredible deals on wines you may never, under normal circumstances, have an opportunity to taste.

    Plus, Nielsen is a pro. Put aside the fact that she looks barely old enough to drink, she has a great palate, an ear for the things that make a wine interesting — such as the fact that it was made from grapes shipped from one tiny French region to another, then casked in a way that makes the taste completely unlike other varietals of its ilk — and she’s willing to tell you what she doesn’t yet know. . . .then go find out.

    My advice: Go to Cue, forget their ridiculous "program" for specials, pick out the wine you like and ask if they’ll give you the discount. My guess is the answer will be yes. And if you’re so inclined, there are a couple extraordinary and unusual wines there that I think serious wine drinkers really should try.

    Domaine Jean-Marc Pillot, Meursault 2001 — a white Burgundy with a sunny, straw-like yellow hue, this is one of the wiliest wines I’ve ever drunk; full of butterscotch and oak, it has a looonngg finish that zings back on perhaps ten seconds after you’ve swallowed with a shot so mineral-rich it’s like having a stone land in your mouth. There is even [and believe me when I tell you, I liked this about it] a slightly fishy, oyster-y quality to this Mersault. A wine you must think about as you drink, if I were ever to drop $150 on a bottle of white wine, this might be the one.

    Nicolas Catena Zapata 2002 — a huge, formidable, conquistador of a red from Mendoza, Argentina, that comes in the heaviest bottle I’ve ever hefted (I swear, it weighs a good three pounds). Meaty, complex, and hot — the Zapata has 13.9% alcohol — it has layers of salt, saddle oil, tobacco, and plum, all suspended in a strong base of cello: the wood, the bow, the resin, and the sound. Never have I had to listen to a blend so carefully. . . .This is a $205 wine that will sell for roughly $140 on special, Monday through Friday of next week. And if you happen to show up for Big Red night on 4/11, it will appear on the $45 flight alongside a California Zin and an ultra-smooth Bordeaux.

     

  • Blood, Sweat, and Chardonnay

    There is, perhaps, nothing on this earth so elemental as salt. It’s the flavor of the ocean, and of blood. Also sweat, tears, and — let’s be frank here — semen, that stuff which contains half the origin of human life.

    Salt has been used as currency. It is a mainstay of both religious ceremonies and superstitions. It can purify, preserve, and cure. Human blood is, in fact, .9% sodium chloride: the same concentration as the salt water that is used to cleanse wounds. It maintains the electrolyte balance in our cells and without it, we would die. Also, my mother insists a few grains are necessary to enhance every food, including her double-chocolate cake with angel-white vanilla frosting.

    Still, despite salt’s place in the canon of basic tastes, I am always surprised when I find it present in my wine.

    This happened a couple month’s ago, with a Grüner Veltliner called E & M Berger Kremstal 2006, which I described as having "the salty taste of sweat, like when you kiss a baby on the neck."

    However, that was a very subtle oceanic drinking experience; my most recent one was not.

    Domaine Vessigaud Cru de Bourgogne Pouilly-Fuissé 2005 is a
    powerfully briny wine, a French Chardonnay so robust, it will
    complement everything from strong cheese to fowl to a firm fish such as
    tuna or salmon. Even caviar. This wine is bursting with citrus, honey, and
    floral elements, but the central flavor is salt — like a wave of
    sun-filled, lemon-sweetened water from the Dead Sea.

    It’s tempting to compare this wine to sweet and salty foods: chocolate-covered almonds, caramel corn,crackling duck with cherry sauce. But that would be cheap. . . .and inaccurate. The tastes in the Vessigaud don’t contrast so much as scaffold, following roughly the primary areas of the tongue: sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. But in this case, the first three are only touched with honey, lemon, and a butterscotchy hint that’s ever so slightly dark. Then it is the final saline taste that remains.

    The truth is, I didn’t like the Vessigaud much at first. I was drinking it without food (probably a mistake), and found it offputting and difficult to parse. But after a couple ounces, I warmed to it — literally. The salty flavor softened and my palate accommodated. By the time I was halfway through the glass, it tasted far more natural. Nutritive in a biblical sort of way.

    As I poured the second, however, something else occurred to me. Back in the early 90’s, there was a late show on CBS called Forever Knight, about a reformed vampire living in an eerie and perpetually midnight blue section of Toronto and working as a cop. He was on the night shift, of course. Nick Knight was his name, and in order to soothe his 800-year-old urges, he drank cow’s blood (which he got from a slaughterhouse) from wine bottles that he kept stacked up in his fridge.

    As I sipped the Vessigaud Pouilly-Fuissé, I became more and more comfortable with the fact that even despite its clear color, it had a distinctly bloodlike taste. Nick Knight, I decided, would have loved this.

  • White Burgundy: Smooth Sunlit Chardonnay

    You would think — would you not? — that having been rendered temporarily, partially deaf would improve one’s ability to evaluate wine. Blindness, after all, makes the other senses more acute. Why not a faint pain and constant ringing of the ears.

    I had occasion to ponder this on Thanksgiving, after attending the Young Wild Things concert with my daughter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the night before. They, the wild things, were Cute Is What We Aim For, Plain White T’s, Gym Class Heroes (whom I adore), and the smashingly loud yet strangely dirge-ish Fall Out Boy. The last, headline band was accompanied by popping bursts of fire, a la Whitesnake, which amused most of the 40- and 50-something parents in the audience — and there were, by the way, A LOT: so many that Travy from GCH dedicated one entire song to us.

    Four hours. That’s how long we sat in the auditorium in C.R.

    But it was all worth it when, as we drove away through a sprinkling of midnight snow, my daughter turned to me, huge brown eyes shining, and said, "It feels like something’s missing now that I don’t have that thumping in my chest."

    The following day, Thanksgiving, I uncorked a Domaine de la Bongran Grand Vin de Borgogne, a white Burgundy from Clessé, France, 2002. I’d been saving the bottle, because it was expensive, highly-rated, and promised to be excellent. This, I decided, would be the perfect opportunity: my ears were wrecked, so surely my nose and tongue would be in top condition.

    Not so. Perhaps because I’m a bit of a synesthete — all my senses intertwined like tentacles of computer wire — I was in my echoey state also olfactorily confused. I smelled lime at the outset, and that was right. But after that, I got a whiff of green onion that no one else at the table (and luckily, I’d invited some excellent tasters) could detect.

    "You cut onions for the salad earlier," said one friend, tactfully. "Could that be it?" Indeed. It probably was.

    Everyone agreed that the wine was smooth and dry and delicious in a not-quite-crisp sort of way. The first taste seemed whole, as solid and neatly planed as a jewel. But as this Burgundy warmed and softened and unfolded, it became more complex, with a warm, sunny apricot flavor that filled the mouth and a finish that contained a bit of flint.

    Gradually, I figured out how to taste in my impaired state. This required intense concentration, and a palm pressed to my right ear in order to mute the dull throb inside. I got the spoke-like qualities of the Grand Vin de Borgogne, even if I couldn’t make the connection (as I might, under normal circumstances) between its flavor profile and a summer sunshower or a Sheryl Crow song.

    I have it on good authority — both Robert Parker’s and my Thanksgiving guests’ — that the Bongran Grand Vin de Borgogne (a Chardonnay wine with 14% alcohol) is well worth all the accolades it’s received. But I probably need a couple more days, preferably in a stark, white room with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young playing in a continuous loop and at low volume, before I’ll be recovered enough to tell you on my own.