Author Archive
Gus The Spear – Meet Vlad The Impaler!
Posted by: | CommentsOur wettest spring in years may have blunted the only green shoots we are likely to see here for a long time. Nevertheless, enough plucky bunches have made it through the rain to get Britain shaking the dust off its steamers and trawling the rack for the right white for asparagus, recalling, perhaps for the first time since last year, how devilishly tricky that can be.
Kiwi sauvignon blanc, a popular choice, often has a leguminous touch, but generally, I find it too trenchant to do anything but clash with the differently green spectrum of the vegetable. Not for nothing is it called a/grass by London’s fruit and veg community, whose members often display it alongside the contrasting glossy purple of a stack of obo’s (sic).
Like English straws, home-grown sparrer grass achieves a unique balance of sweetness and acidity. For that, I want a not-quite-dry, grapy northern hemisphere white. Quirky English wines sometimes work, and dry Alsace muscat is a sublime, if extravagant match. A third option, unveiled too late for last year’s crop and only now put through its paces, is – wait for it, I had to! – Prince Stirbey Tamâioasa Romaneasca Sec.
Tamâioasa (pronounce it támmy-wássa) is an indigenous Romanian variety bursting with the aroma of fresh grapes and punchy on the palate with that vital bit of subtle sweetness in the background. At £9.50 it’s not as cheap as I feel such a tongue-twister should be, but it’s under a tenner, which the best Alsace muscats are not.
It can also absorb the extra ingredients that TV chefdom, in its restless wisdom, deems necessary to help asparagus along. For all I know, the predictable litany of pancetta, parmesan shavings and, Lord help us, blue cheese, tomatoes and anchovies, may transform Peruvian imports. For me, though, anyone who complicates our most glamorous product with anything other than heat, lightly salted butter and freshly ground white pepper deserves banishment to the Tower of London, or, better still, somewhere very gothic and scary in Transylvania.
Janet Wynne Evans
Specialist Wine Manager
My Fussy Valentine
Posted by: | CommentsWine Without Fuss subscribers will have received these recipes in their latest Premium Selection together with the perfect wines for the job. Members who don’t have anything suitable in the rack may like to make use of our Next Day Delivery service.
Heart-shaped Neufchâtel cheese
Night in the Gardens of Spain
Give Pacific wild salmon the Atlantic kiss of life with this recipe, inspired by the last of the Seville oranges, brilliant for marinades. Place a 200g skin-on tail-fillet of wild salmon skin side down in a glass bowl. Add the juice of a Seville orange, or lemon and the finely-chopped stems of a small bunch of fresh coriander. In a saucepan, toast a pinch each of whole dried cumin and coriander seeds until they release their fragrance. Add 100ml medium Sherry, a tablespoon each of chilli-flavoured oil and top-quality Sherry vinegar and a dash of anchovy essence. Boil down to half the volume and leave to cool before straining over the fish. Leave overnight. Cometh the hour, preheat the grill. Put the fish, skin side up in the tray, without the grid, and pour the marinade around. Brush the skin with a little oil and grill for 6-8 minutes. Peel off the blackened skin, cut the fillet in half lengthwise and serve garnished with a mixture of salad leaves, including the reserved coriander.
Try this with a brisk Iberian white like Fefiñanes Albariño, 2010 (£14.95).
Love Me Tender
More than enough for two, with sublime leftovers. This can be simmered conventionally for two hours on a hob, but use a slow cooker for preference. Models and heat settings vary, but in principle, the beef and vegetables benefit from browning at high heat before 6-7 hours’ slow cooking. In a frying pan, heat a tablespoon of oil and soften an onion, carrot, two sticks of celery and a small fennel bulb, all finely diced. Transfer to the base of the cooker. Add a little more oil and brown a well-seasoned piece of lean beef topside, about 750g, on all sides. Lift it out of the pan and lay it on the vegetables in the cooker. Deglaze the pan with 500ml red wine, scraping up any beefy residues. Let it bubble for a few minutes while you tie together some sprigs of fresh parsley and thyme and a couple of bay leaves. Tuck under the meat and pour over the wine. Replace the lid and leave for at least six hours, until tender. Lift carefully from the cooker and transfer the vegetables and liquor to a blender (put the meat back in the slow cooker to keep warm) to make a smooth, tasty sauce. Carving will be difficult to let the meat collapse into chunks, or serve more elegantly in warmed individual casserole dishes, napped with the sauce and garnished with little potatoes and seasonal greens.
Serve with a generous South American red eg Koyle Reserva Carmenère, 2010 (£8.50).
Heart’s Delight
Say ‘cheese’ to the one you love
Far from being a Valentine’s Day gimmick, Neufchâtel cheese has been made in Normandy since the 16th century, and is protected by an appellation contrôlée. A heart-shaped cow’s milk cheese of the Chaource family, it’s velvety in texture, mild and subtly floral in taste. Once ripe, it should be eaten up, at its ethereal best, with a thin slice of walnut and raisin bread.
A medium white like Vouvray Sec Tendre, 2008 (£9.95) works brilliantly with soft, buttery cheeses.
Janet Wynne Evans
Specialist Wine Manager
Bring Me My Spear (But Please Don’t Blunt It)
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Acting upon information received from various sources, some of them fairly sensible, I celebrated the arrival of the English asparagus season with a taste test involving friends, a platter of the only green shoots you can rely on these days, a jug of melted salty butter and a couple of examples of grüner veltliner.
First up was Lössterrasen 2009 from Stadt Krems (just sold out, sorry); fresh, perfumed and quite delicious until it made contact with the asparagus. Our palates quickly became a battleground for an ill-tempered clash between acid and chlorophyll neither of which was willing to surrender. An alliance was out the question.
Next, we tried the more restrained, mineral Society Exhibition bottling, also from the 2009 vintage. Its fresh, spritzy charm was much liked by all present, except its blind date, the asparagus. On the palate, they circled around each other with suspicion. There was neither instant attraction nor commitment to explore each other’s hidden depths. They escaped from each other as soon as they could, and did not exchange contact details.
Conclusion: This delicious Austrian white is good news, indeed, versatile and decidedly “grü-v”, but not with asparagus. For the rest of the season, I’ll stick to a nice dry muscat, thanks, or a very old, buttery and forgiving chardonnay.
What are your food matching dreams and nightmares?
Janet Wynne Evans
Specialist Wine Manager
Strong Stuff
Posted by: | CommentsStories in the media, compounded perhaps by the recent spell of warm, sunny weather, have prompted several enquiries from members concerning high alcohol levels in wine. The following article on the subject may be of interest. It originally appeared earlier this year in the literature that accompanies The Society’s popular subscription service Wine Without Fuss.
Few topics exercise our feedback forums more than the inexorable rise of alcohol levels in table wine. A quarter of a century ago, when most wines scored around the 11.5%–12.5% mark, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, at around 13% by volume, was just about as alcoholic as wine got, pipped very occasionally by the odd Californian.
We are often asked if global warming is responsible. It’s an obvious and tempting suspect and certainly a number of winemakers are not only reflecting upon but actively planning for what happens when the time-honoured varieties at the heart of their appellations begin to show signs of stress in their increasingly warm environments. Some have already begun to do so, notably in Alsace, where premium producer and Master of Wine Olivier Zind-Humbrecht has already raised the alarm for grapes like pinot auxerrois, which are naturally low in acidity. It’s good news for some, though. In the Languedoc, the stock of heat-resistant varieties like carignan, which can be relied upon to remain upstanding when more glamorous vines begin to wilt, has risen dramatically.
Climate change can certainly hasten the ripening process, as English wine-producers have found, with increasing relish, but it is only part of the story. If the Rhône, Australia and the Cape can make perfectly good wines that pack 12.5% or less, higher alcohol levels can not simply be just a matter of heat. Fashion plays a part too. Quite simply, many people like the taste of alcohol, not just for the speed with which it makes the world seem a better place, but for the enhanced sweetness, smoothness and ease of drinking it brings to the palate.
We would also contend (clearly, this is not a short answer!) that some varieties do need to achieve higher alcohol levels to taste as they should. Syrah and mourvèdre, say, and even that most cuddly of grapes, zinfandel can taste green and highly unpleasant because they lack phenolic ripeness, which affects the colour, flavour and tannin compounds found in grape-skins.
This is why, despite concern that the combination of the 250ml goblet and the 14.5% shiraz make a glass of wine an altogether scary experience, we continue to list such wines. To strip a wine of its correct balance – a key feature of all good bottles – would be a travesty. At The Society, we like to keep a similar equilibrium in our Lists and of course, we do sell smaller glasses too.
Janet Wynne Evans
Specialist Wine Manager
The Spice is Right
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Looking for a mature white that can cope brilliantly with a mild-to-medium chicken curry? Look no further than Château de Berrye’s Saumur Blanc 2002. Labelled as “sec” and coded 2 on the current List, it delivers enough residual sweetness to massage those tastebuds after an onslaught of ginger, cardamom, cumin and garlic. But there again the best food matches are often happy accidents, as was the case here when a chilled bottle was grabbed from the fridge for an impromptu feast. As with all good chenin, it has excellent acidity, so add as much thick yoghurt, butter, cream, or ghee as you like. Also, as with all good chenin, it ages beautifully. This is now eight years old, and brings new and positive meaning to the phrase “no spring chicken …”.
Peas Please Me with Pinot Gris!
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I’ve been overdosing on asparagus since the Morris Men dusted off their bells in April, and I’m not wholly sorry to wave them off for another year. Not in the least tempted by the sprue, sorry-looking spears outstaying their welcome at seasonally-challenged supermarkets, I’m now wolfing down home-produced peas and broad beans. For them, I invariably reach for sauvignon blanc, but a much more exciting match I have found this summer is Kiwi pinot gris.
This hard-to-pin-down style, that often scores 3 or 4 on The Society’s sweetness scale can vary from soft and ample to unattractively sweet, and one reason for that is vine age. My colleague Pierre Mansour, who buys The Society’s New Zealand wines tells me that younger vines – and many of New Zealand’s pinot gris plantings fall into this category – tend to produce grapes with less concentration and more acidity, which has to be countered with residual sugar, making the resultant wines taste awkward and unbalanced. It’s the subtler sweetness in the drier, more concentrated styles our Pierre seeks out that resonate best with the sugars in the peas. I also find in Kiwi whites a uniquely leguminous quality which, unless it’s totally out of balance (what we call “asparagussy”), works brilliantly here too. Try a glass of Kumeu River pinot gris with a summer risotto, pea or bean purees (lovely with grilled lamb or fish), or the classic pasta sauce of broad beans, bacon, sage and cream.
Love at First Bite
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They may come from opposite ends of Spain, but I can report love at first bite between The Society’s Exhibition Viejo Oloroso Dulce and a chunk of exceptionally good Picos Blue cheese.
The Sherry was originally uncorked to lubricate the chocolate mousse, which it eventually did to perfection, but we couldn’t wait that long! The nutty, raisiny character of the Oloroso really resonated with the creaminess and subtle mould of the Picos and though blue cheese and sweet wine almost invariably work, this is a combination I had not thought of trying. I will certainly try it again, and on purpose this time.
