On the Cheap

Fresh and Easy recently came to town. I stopped by to check out their prepared foods and left with a basket of groceries. I wandered the wine aisle, looking for their version of a Two-buck Chuck. Sure enough, they had several wines for $1.99.

I chose the Big Kahuna Chardonnay.

I fixed crab cakes with the leftover crab from the Geurwertz tasting and oven roasted some veggies (zucchini, carrots, Brussels sprouts, peppers, broccoli).

The wine wasn't bad on first sip. But by the end of dinner it had lost all power to stand up to the food and take its place as part of the meal. A bite of vegetables would bring it back to half-mast, but it never fully recovered.

But it was two bucks. For the price, it wasn't horrible.

It felt very dry on the tongue and sharp to acidic on the finish.

Gewurztraminer and Crab

Saturday Wine Snob Hubby wanted to compare the two Gerwuertz... Guerwert... you know what I mean. Anyway, he bought two different bottles at our recent field trip to Total Wine and
he wanted to taste them side by side.

RNDaughter was home for the weekend and she wanted crab. Usually we have one night a year with newspapers on the table, crackers (the metal kind, not the edible ones), wine, and a salad.

WSH checked his Wine Bible and MacNeil's Wine, Food, and Friends and decided it could work with the right accompanying sauces.

So we called some friends, threw the papers on the table, and chilled the wines.

The menu:

Crab (one non-shellfish eater had a chicken breast)
Assorted dipping sauces (Thai peanut, cocktail, spicy ginger, garlic and chile) and drawn butter
Ceasar salad
sourdough bread
And dark chocolate truffles for dessert.

First up:

Adler Fels Gewurtz from the Russian River Valley.

Heard around the table:

• "With the spicy sauces, it really opens up the flavor of the wine."
• "It's not sugary sweet, it's flowery sweet."
• "The spicy ginger sauce brought out the dry elements."
• "It pours pretty."

My uneducated thought: I liked it a lot. It stood up to both the crab and the vinegary salad dressing. A bite of bread refreshed the palate.

Next was the French edition, Vin d'Alsace Gewurtz (as the name implies, from Alsace):

Heard around the table:

• "Makes the cocktail sauce super hot."
• "Has a chardonnay finish."
• "Would be great with a spicy sushi."

I liked the Adler Fels wine better. Not that there was anything wrong with the Alsace, at least nothing I can articulate. The Adler Fels just seemed a better fit. It's very possible the Alsace would have been wonderful with Thai food or a jerk chicken with fruit salsa. We made it work with what we wanted and it's probably our fault that it didn't shine.

Beouf Bourguignon

December 30 Wine Snob Hubby decided to try a new Beouf Bourguignon recipe. He made one a couple of months ago and it was too hearty, if that's possible. He used a 'quick' recipe and the wine flavor simply overpowered everything else.

So this time he went for a more 'traditional' preparation, including flaming brandy before the simmer. He added some left over Fresno State red and a Cabernet.

We ate it on egg noodles and he paired it with a Tejon Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon. I'm not a red drinker. I just don't care for the sharp flavors but this red worked so well with the beef that it was totally good.

I tasted berries.

Christmas and Beyond

Our traditional Christmas Eve supper is basically snacks. Cheese and salami and crackers. Maybe a dip, maybe hummus and pita bread. Lil' Smokies. Frozen canapes (no, we don't eat them frozen, we bake them first). This year, we had them with a bottle of cheap champagne. Cook's, I think. Maybe Korbel. No, Cooks. The champagne was a little drier than I remembered but it went nicely with the cheeses. We had a smoked cheddar, a pesto jack, and a sharp cheddar. The wine and the pesto jack were excellent. And the smoked cheddar was amazing. It actually tasted creamier as the evening went on.

Christmas dinner was a whole pig. It roasted in the Caja China for several hours and then was carved and served with sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, Caesar salad, corn, rolls, olives, cranberries, etc. I had water. There just seemed no where to go with all the choices.

Saturday, Dec. 26, we made our way north to visit family. While there, the mother ship called Wine Snob Hubby and we all answered the call with a stop at Total Wine in Roseville, CA.
We knew risotto and veal was the evening menu, so WSH whipped out his copy of Karen MacNeil's Wine, Food & Friends to get her recommendations for risotto.

Her first suggestion was Col d'Orcia Brunello di Montalcino. It was available but at $50 a bottle, a bit out of our price range. Her back up was Rosso di Montalcino at $15. We got it.

The white MacNeil suggested wasn't at the store (Domaine Weinbach Cuvee' Ste. Catherine Pinot Gris) so we went with an employee suggestion of an Alsace Pinot Gris from Albrecht.

I'd read about eiswein (or ice wine) and I wanted to try some so we found an employee who was very helpful and knowledgeable and he pointed us in the right direction. They were from Germany and Canada and ranged from $12 - $75. I figured since this was a new experience, I'd start cheap and work my way up. We bought the $12 bottle and I'll let you know when we open it.

WSH found 3 other wines he purchased. Then we moved to the tasting area. Total Wine was offering flights of champagne. For a whole dime each, we tasted 5 different wines, ranging from $6 - $50. One of the lower priced and the highest priced were the best. (When will I remember to write these names down??)

For dinner, the risotto was cooked in a red sauce but the veal was light and thin, so we opened the Albrecht Pinot Gris. We tasted first and I tasted pears. We had a crab cake appetizer and the wine complemented the smoothness and richness of the crab and its crust. Then we segued into the veal and risotto and the wine contrasted with the risotto in a very different way. I lost the pear tones, but the wine still, in my uneducated opinion, held up very well.

Cheese and Crackers

We had dinner last night with our daughter and her fiance', but we started with a trio of cheese and crackers. Cream cheese with garlic and chives. A red-wine soaked goat cheese. And a garlic jack. Also water crackers and jalapeno stuffed olives.

We had the ever-present Pacific Rim dry Riesling and a Kenwood Merlot.

Wine snob hubby gave me a taste of the merlot with a cracker spread with cream cheese. I tasted the wine first and had no strong feelings and no strong sense of what it tasted like. I try not to read labels until I've at least tasted it so I don't taste with any preconceptions of what flavors I should be finding.

Anyway, nothing from the merlot at first sip. Ate the cracker and cheese. Tasted the merlot again. At first, not much. But on the finish, I tasted... berries! Then we checked the label and I was right! I rarely, if ever, can find the hints and flavors so I'm stoked. I tasted berries! And the other flavors (I don't know what they were, but I know they were there) were intensified after the cheese.

We repeated the process with the dry riesling. The results were disappointing. I enjoy the dry riesling with most foods, but the cheese just left the palate flat. The wine couldn't wake up the taste buds again.

WSH read me a quote from Karen MacNeil. She said caterers know the secret of serving cheese with low price wines. The cheese makes the wine seem better than it is.

I don't know what the Kenwood merlot runs, but the cheese certainly woke up my uneducated palate.

A Surprising Pairing

Several months ago, I had Pacific Rim Dry Riesling for the first time. One sip and I loved it. I try to keep a couple of bottles on hand for when I don't know what I want.

Last weekend, Wine Snob Hubby prepared bacon-wrapped fillets. He had his with a Tobin James Merlot.

Going against all that wine snobs around the world hold dear, I had my dry Riesling. And loved it.

The meat was tender and flavorful, almost delicate, in spite of being beef. The light fruit essence made the beef even more melt-in-my-mouth delicious.

Which brings up a discussion WSH and I had last week.

He's reading The Wine Bible by Karen MacNeil. In it, MacNeil says that it's a fallacy that if a wine tastes good to you, then it's good. She argues that there are objective parameters and conditions a wine must meet to be considered good.

I understand what she's saying. I think. And I look forward to learning those parameters and how to apply them to what I like.

I know I like the dry Riesling with bacon-wrapped fillets.

Thanksgiving and Beyond

We opened 3 reds and 3 whites for Thanksgiving dinner. I made sure to write them all down. I could tell you what they were. But not how they tasted or paired with the dinner. So why bother?

I was so busy putting the food out, keeping up on the dishes, hiding the pumpkin fluff, that I don't remember what went with what.

So. Skip ahead to last night.

Wine Snob Hubby and I went to dinner and a movie. Okay, technically, if we lived in Florida it would be the Early Bird Dinner special since we arrived at the restaurant at 4:00 PM, but the movie started at 4:45. And us 50 year olds can't eat after 7:00 and get any sleep so it meant "dinner" first.

Anyway, we went to a local Asian fusion kind of place, Dai Bai Dang. We had pork pot stickers (gyozas to my Taiwanese friends), then chicken chow mein (pretty good) and the crispy chicken (very spicy - too spicy the next day).

I asked for a glass of the house chardonnay and was offered either a Kendall-Jackson or a Snapdragon.

I know I've had the Kendall-Jackson. Many people love it, but it's never done much for me so I opted for the Snapdragon.

It was wonderful. Airy. Not quite ethereal but almost. It complemented the gyozas perfectly.

Highly recommended and I don't know what I'm talking about.