Macon-Vergisson

The 2007 white Burgundies are due in the local market soon so they have discounted the unsold bottles from the 2006 vintage.

For several years Verget has been one of my favorite producers for good quality wine at a very fair price. The 2006 Verget Macon-Vergisson "La Roche" certainly falls into that category now that the price dropped from $24 to $19.

There is a fresh and fruity nose with some sweet, green apple notes, a tiny touch of butter, some citrus and a suggestion of oak.

The taste delivers the apples and a tiny bit of pineapple along with an overlay of butter. There is great acidity to the wine and a pleasantly dry finish after some good length. It is quite drinkable now but will last a few years.

They were offering tastings of the wine on Friday and after tasting it I purchased two bottles.

There is one bottle left as one was consumed with Friday night dinner. The main course was a skin on, boneless chicken breast half seared in a hot skillet and then transferred to an oven. The skillet was then used to braise a chopped up leek using white wine and chicken stock. The sauce was finished with a swirl of butter. The breast was served on a bed of the leeks with pine nuts scattered over the top. It was an outstanding pairing with the Macon.

Spring

There was an automatic download of security software Friday morning but it had an unintended side effect. After rebooting it basically killed the computer. Two geeks and a day and a half later we are operating under a patched up system that allows us to do most things, but one of the things it won't do is open the wine software. Instead of scanning a computer list and picking a wine I actually had to physically start pulling bottles to find a correct wine. Terrible how I've come to rely on a stream of electrons to help with this task.

The local market featured two things this weekend, grass fed, strip steaks from Colorado and rack of baby lamb from Iceland. Both were outstanding bargains so it made easy choices for the weekend; steak tonight and lamb tomorrow. There are more of each for the freezer. I don't usually freeze meat, preferring to buy it as I need it, but the price was too good not to buy in quantity.

As an homage to spring we added a baked potato with sour cream and the first harvest of chives from the garden snipped over the top. Nothing says 'spring' like the first shoots of chives and a baked potato. It's just a harbinger of the things to come with fresh herbs. The mint is above ground, both the regular and lemon thyme are sending up shoots and the tarragon must have loved the winter because it appears to be on its way to a bountiful spring. The lavender is also looking very good. The rosemary plant wintered over well inside and is now re-potted and outside. In another month the basil plants will be at the local garden store. There is a new, huge pot waiting for them.

Tonight's wine turned out to be a 2005 Luciano Sandrone Dolcetto D'Alba. Inky dark, tannic, and fruity it was a great match with the grilled strip steak.

The photo? The local market also had a great special on two varieties on mangoes, Haden and Ataulfo. The Hadens are the rounder of the two. The light was good this evening and they made a good picture.

Still working on tomorrows lamb dinner.

Thanks to those of you who have e-mailed on our brief moment of fame in the Wall Street Journal. And yes, I know it's near the end of the article but I prefer to look at it as saving the best for almost last. After all the wine I've consumed in my life it's very funny that the brief moment of fame involved a Lambrusco.

Leeuwin Estates Riesling

Finally we are starting to see some dry Australian Riesling on the shelves in this area. Being in the middle of America sometimes means that it takes longer for fads or trends or good products to leave the east or west coasts and work their way here. I suppose that this is the time to cite a quote attributed to Mark Twain, "if the world ever ends I want to be in Cincinnati because everything there happens twenty years later." Being just north of Cincinnati I can understand this.

This was the third Australian Riesling I've tried lately, the other two being Plantagenet and Koonowla. This wine is the Art Series from Leeuwin and is from the Margaret River area in western Australia. Of the three the Koonowla was my favorite, but the Leeuwin is by far the most interesting.

One of the little nuances that Riesling throws at you is a hint of kerosene in the nose of the wine. Generally it is subtle and something that fades as the level in the bottle declines. Not so with this wine. This wine is the quintessential wine for smelling kerosene. It was strong, unmistakable and it was persistent. It smelled like lamp oil mixed with white peaches and lime. It was not unpleasant at all, but it was not subtle. If one wants to understand and learn the kerosene smell in Riesling this is the perfect wine.

The citrus and peaches carried over into the taste, along with great acid and and oiliness coming from that kerosene smell. It was dry but had just a touch of sweetness at the end. It was refreshing, but it probably isn't a wine for everyone.

Dinner was Asian inspired. The market was running a special on prime sea scallops from the east coast. I mixed five spice powder and flour and lightly dusted the scallops with the mixture. They were sauteed in a pan in some hot oil for about three minutes on each side, just enough to brown the surface and warm the interior.

Earlier I made a reduction of fresh squeezed orange juice, lemon juice, a pinch of salt and a little sugar, reducing it to a thin syrup. At the very end I poured the reduction into the skillet and glazed the scallops. They were finished with a small dose of Sambal Olec, a hot, Thai chili paste. There was forbidden (black) rice and a small salad dressed with rice vinegar and sesame oil. It was a good and refreshing meal and a very interesting wine.

Three for the Cellar

Interesting day yesterday from a wine perspective. I wandered into the local market's wine section and sitting on the counter for tasting were two bottles of Barbaresco, a northern Italian wine regioin adjacent to Barolo in the Langhe area. Both were from Produttori del Barbaresco, a cooperative winery owned by some of the folks who own some of the best vineyards in that area. They were single vineyard "riserva" wines from the 2004 vintage, a very good one for northern Italian wines.

As it turns out they were the second two of a set of four. The two others were opened the previous night and sampled. I still had two hours before they could open the tasting so I took the groceries home and then ventured back to the market.

I started with the Ovello. It was a perfect garnet color with medium depth making it correct for Nebiollo. The aroma was dried red cherries and an almost quintessential smell of roses and violets, all somewhat reserved. The cherries were there in the taste along with some clean, dry dirt. The taste was tight, tart, and tannic. It took some time and a little swirling for this wine to begin to open, but it remained austere and dry. The finish was wonderfully long and full. This was quite a nice wine and one with tremedous potential to develop in the bottle.

After some slices of crusty bread we moved on to the Montestafano vineyard. The color was a little darker than the Ovello and there was more fruit than flowers in the nose. There was less austerity on the taste and more fullness of red cherries. The acid was still great and the tannins were still there. With some more swirling it blossomed and the roses began to come out. This wine was just fruitier than the first one and seemed to have a bit more depth. The finish was equally long and wonderful. By a slight margin I preferred it to the Ovello because there just seemed to be a little more to it.

Since the folks in the wine department know I love Italian wines they went in back and pulled out the remains of a bottle of one of the two wines from the previous night, a Moccagatta. There was enough for two small glasses left. This wine had been open for 18 hours and the fruit and the violets were just singing. This was the fullest of the wines, though lighter in color than the Montestefano. The depth of the cherries was the best of the three and there was a damper earth in the taste as opposed to the Ovello. It was just great to stand there and smell what was coming out of the glass even though tasting it was better. It would have been nice to taste the other two with the same amount of breathing time.

There was one bottle of the Moccagatta left for sale and since I didn't want it to be lonely in the cellar I brought home one each of its litter mates to keep it company as they age for a couple of years. The three are pictured above.

It totally blows the wine budget for the month (and part of April as well) but these were exceptional wines.

For the record the fourth wine was from the Paje' vineyard and there was not a chance to taste it since the one remaining bottle was spoken for. Probably a good thing. They are expecting another small shipment so a Paje' may join them at a later date but I am very happy with the three in the cellar.

Cheap Red Wine

...or perhaps the word 'inexpensive' would be a better choice.

Friday night was a quick pasta dish with leftover sauce, a chopped plum tomato and a few scattered herbs. The wine was a 2006 La Serra Chianti that checked in at an amazing $8.99 a bottle. It was red, it smelled like wine, there was decent fruit and acid and a little tannin. There was nothing about this wine that said "look at me." All it said was "drink me." That's what we did.

Barbera D'Asti

There was a simple pasta dinner last night mostly made up of leftover and reheated chicken, some mushrooms and tomatoes tossed with some olive oil and cheese. The wine was very good. It was a 2004 Michele Chiarlo Barbera D'Asti, Le Orme, one of his standard bottlings. This was part of last week's mixed case and was a close out of an older vintage to make room for a younger wine.

It was bright purple at the edges in the glass but quickly moved into a garnet color of medium depth. The nose was all about bright red fruits - tart cherries, barely ripe strawberries, and some earth. The taste was about those cherries but with a bit of raspberry mixed in. Nice tartness and just a bit a tannin rounded out the wine. For an inexpensive wine ($12) there was a very good length to the finish. Excellent value.

Happy St .Patrick's Day