River Village Cellars

The 2009 vintage in this area, southwest Ohio, was miserable from a weather standpoint.  It was wet and cold and basically a washout.  Still there were grapes and if there are grapes there must be wine.  There was.

There was a pan roasted rib eye steak the other night so I grabbed a 2009 River Village Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon.  This is the second label for one of my favorite wineries, Kinkead Ridge.  The year's entire production of red wines was moved off the primary label and bottled under this second label and sold at a more than reasonable price.

Nice cherry flavors with some earth notes underneath it, and surprisingly it was dry earth and not the wet mud that dominated much of the harvest.  There was a small suggestion of darker fruit, but this primarily stayed on the red end of things.  Unmistakably Cabernet, but definitely on the light side.

Good wine with the steak, and there was no sauce or heavy seasoning on the meat,  just a simple steak and a simple wine to go with it.  Nothing wrong with that, and at the price a good buy.

13.1% alcohol and $11.

Salad Days

No wine here. A more austere week for eating following a couple of large meals last week.  Golden beets, roasted and peeled with grapefruit sections, goat cheese and croutons dressed with a vinaigrette made with grapefruit juice, Dijon mustard and olive oil.

Liquid Dessert

Burns Night was a chance to do something that I don't usually do, open a dessert wine.  In this case it was a 2007 Ferrari Carano Eldorado Gold from California's Sonoma Valley.  The wine was a botrytised blend of 91% Semillon and 9% Sauvignon Blanc.  This was a wine that I picked up at the winery during a visit in 2009.

The wine had a deep golden color, as pictured at the left, and a wonderful nose of perfectly ripe apricots, golden figs and golden raisins.  Thick and sticky on the tongue the apricots were joined by some honey, the before mentioned figs, a touch of herbs and just a suggestion of pineapple.  Nicely balanced wine that really lingered on the tongue.  It was quite sweet but there was still enough acid to keep it from being syrupy. 

Dessert was a mixed bag.  There was a shortbread cookie topped with a coconut caramel sauce, a slice of freshly baked gingerbread and a small scoop of caramel and sea salt gelato.  Hard to argue with any of them, but together they made a nice test for the wine.  It went best with the coconut caramel shortbread.

13% alcohol and $40.

Burns Night Riesling

There was a salmon course during the Burns night dinner that begins with the post below this one. Few things are as Scottish as salmon but this one had an unusual twist in that it was full of southeast Asian spices.

The wine was a fully mature 2005 Spreitzer Oestricher Lenchen Kabinett from Germany's Rheingau region, a wine I have had on several occasions.

The wine has evolved into a beautiful light gold color and after an initial burst of kerosene it smelled of peaches, pears, apples and citrus.  Sweet on the front of the tongue the wine added some lychee to the flavor profile of the other fruits. The finish was sweet, but tart, and left a wonderful mineral taste on the back of the tongue. 

The coho salmon was roughly chopped and combined with some lemon juice, chopped red and yellow sweet peppers, chopped red onion, soy sauce, black pepper, cayenne, Sambol Oleck, brown sugar, cilantro and just enough fresh bread crumbs to hold the mixture together in small cakes.    Just prior to hitting a medium hot skillet the cakes were coated with panko bread crumbs.  They were sauteed on each side just until the crusts were crisp and the salmon was lightly cooked.  The sauce was a puree' of mayonnaise, lime juice, grated fresh ginger and pickled ginger.  A small slice of the pickled ginger garnished the top of each cake.

There was some heat in the salmon and that matched well with the residual sugar in the wine while the acidity in the wine paired with the richness of the salmon.  The ginger flavors were an added bonus as they seemed born to be with this wine.  Great recipe and a great match with a wonderful wine.

8.5% alcohol and $22.

Burns Night Treat

There was a lengthy, multi-course meal last night to celebrate Robert Burns'  Birthday, and I'll have the details in several installments over the next couple of days starting at the very top of the ladder with a 2002 Corison Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

We pulled the cork about an hour before dinner and splashed out enough wine to give it some breathing room.  Beautiful color in the glass and a nose of blackberries, dark cherries, cinnamon, cardamon, vanilla and a bit of earth. We put the wine aside without tasting it and returned to it later when the third course of the meal hit the table.

The Corison was paired with a filet mignon of beef, seared and then pan roasted.  While the filet rested we made a pan sauce of a splash of the wine, beef stock, blackberry jam, blackberry vinegar, Dijon mustard and fresh blackberries.  The sauce was finished with a few swirls of butter.  The side dish was a rendition of neeps and tatties, or potatoes and turnips.  The vegetables were cooked separately, riced, combined with some chopped spring onions, milk and butter and then roasted in a loaf pan while the beef cooked.

The nose on the wine had virtually blossomed by this time and the blackberries and cherries were joined by some currants. They were definitely singing some harmony.  The dark cherry flavors dominated on the palate but had some strong support in the mixture of baking spices that were in the original nose.  There was an earthiness to the wine that appealed to me.  The tannins here were smooth and integrated and almost Burgundian in their mouth feel.  This wine was not in your face or over the top in any way.  It was refined, graceful, mellow and classy.  There was no pretension in the glass and the wine made no attempt to be more than it was.  It was elegant.

The cherry and blackberry flavors married perfectly with beef and the sauce while the neeps and tatties brought out the earthiness and perhaps a bit of mint in the wine.  It would be hard to imagine a better pairing.  Wonderful wine and there is a glass remaining for this evening.

13.6% alcohol and $70

2008 Simmonet-Febvre Chablis

We opened this for a late Friday night dinner with some friends.  Dinner was a chicken roasted in a closed pot.  The wine was opened before dinner with some olive tapenade and a couple of mild cheeses and some toasted bread slices.  The wine was a 2008 Simmonet-Febvre Chablis Millesime.

The color of this wine was darker than I remember from a previous bottle.  The wine smelled wonderfully tart with sweet citrus and a bit of toasted nuts.  The hard edge of youth was gone here and the wine has matured into something different.  The angles were more smooth and the flavors were softer with sweet apples, pears and the hint of hazelnuts.    Long finish to the wine and a pleasant blast of acid to clear the palate at the very end. 

This wine has fully matured and has acquired a bit of elegance.  There are two more bottles in the cellar and they won't stay there long.  For a simple, inexpensive Chablis this is hard to beat.  Very pleasant wine.

13% alcohol and $12.99

Condrieu

It had been awhile since I opened a Condrieu and after consuming this one I should probably drink more.  The wine was a 2006 Georges Vernay Les Terrasses de l'Empire.  Medium yellow in the glass, the nose was incredible ripe with peaches, nectarines, apricots and toasted nuts.  This was a very viscous wine and clung to the side of the glasses.  Wonderful flavors of the above fruits with a touch of pineapple coming along for the ride.  Full bodied and a wine that cried out for some food.  There was a small pork roast and it matched up well with that, but the side dish was amazing.  Sliced carrots and parsnips were sauteed with some shallots, butter, tarragon and a pinch of sugar and pan roasted until they began to caramelize and develop a slight char.  Great combination of flavors withe wine.  The parsnips were rich and warming and the wine had great acid to balance that.  The shallots had their usual pungency and the viscosity in the wine paired with that. 

We sipped this over the course of the evening and it showed no signs of fading, but it definitely was most brilliant with the vegetables.  There's now a post-it-note on my last bottle of this wine to repeat the vegetable dish when I open the bottle.

14% alcohol and $52