They say artichokes are brutal when it comes to pairing with wine.
But as I discovered with this risotto last night, that if you braise the artichokes in bacon grease (along with the onion, mushrooms, and garlic) syrah is an awesome match.
I wanted to make something special for my husband to lure him into participating with me for this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday’s North vs South challenge, with Vino V’s 2005 White Hawk Vineyard Santa Barbara California syrah from the Northern hemisphere going up against a hazyblur Adelaide Plains 2003.
I found a lovely rack of already frenched lamb which he dolled up with a nice rub: kosher salt, black pepper, fresh rosemary and a few twists of Italian seasonings with sea salt.
For a side dish, I decided to make the artichoke risotto I’d been promising him. I had no official recipe but this is what I came up with and it tasted great! Here’s the recipe: In a large preheated iron skillet, Continue reading →
Two questions: Where do you cellar your wine? And what should I drink from mine?
in the late 1950s, my grandfather built a wine cellar into the hillside of his house, the floor made from water-washed Japanese stones used as ballast in a ship almost a hundred years ago.
He enjoyed his wine, but it didn’t take anything too exotic to please him–he drank chianti by the jug, the more unusual or interesting wines in the cellar supplied by friends. One day I will inventory what’s there and see if any of it is drinkable, much less valuable for more than a conversation or two.
Conveniently for me, my grandfather’s nearly empty wine cellar is less than a mile from my house as the crow flies, right up the hill from where we live near the beach. It’s just far enough away to keep me from ransacking it regularly, and it allows me to forget exactly what’s in there allowing the wine to age well past what it would if it was underneath our house which also maintains cellar like temperatures most of the year.
For this Remy Charest’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, I decided to do syrahs (no surprise to anyone who knows my fondness for them!), and to compare Vino V’s White Hawk syrah with something from Down Under. So yesterday I headed up to the cellar to see what I had stored that would be a worthy competitor to Michael Meagher’s wine. Continue reading →
That would be: a report from the Millenium Wine Group tasting last Wednesday, Wine Bloggging Wednesday, bottling day at Old Creek Ranch Winery, some current wine deals (and a few wines to avoid) at Big Lots and more …just as soon as I get my notes together and some coffee in my cup!
In this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, host Remy Charest the Wine Case challenges us to taste, to discuss, and to blog about not one but two wines: one from the “south” and one from the “north.”
I met Remy at the Wine Bloggers Conference last October when we strolled the vineyards of Quivera with a small group then I sat next to him at lunch. Now I often visit his blog and I follow him on Twitter, so I was happy to find out he was offering this month’s prompt which includes these closing words:
The one restriction is that the wines should be comparable in nature: Bordeaux blends from Bordeaux and Australia, sauvignon blanc from the Loire and from California, cabernet franc from the Niagara and Long Island, riesling from Washington State and Spring Mountain, etc. If you compare a Barossa shiraz with a chablis… well there just isn’t much actual comparing to do, right?
You have until March 18 to find these wines, taste them – and while you’re at it, see how they compare with a same dish. Put your tasting notes up on your blog, put up a link as a comment on this blog, and you’re all set. Heck, if you don’t have a blog, you can just put up a tasting note as a comment here, and I’ll include it in my roundup, on the weekend of the 21st of March – the official beginning of spring.
Cheers to everyone, and thanks a bunch to Lenn Thompson, founder of the WBW, for letting me in on the fun.
How to decide what to drink? A French Rhone wine with a California or Australian style rhone? A coupla GSMs perhaps like Twisted Oak’s with one from AUS? A California favorite like a syrah with an AUS favorite syrah from Grateful Palate? What about a northern California syrah and a southern California one? Hmmn, I’ve been wanting to try Vino V’s Michael Meagher’s Syrah–maybe this is finally the time!
Notice any trends? Bet I’ll be writing about something red for Wednesday!
Enjoy a Casual Saturday afternoon Wine Tasting this Saturday, March 7, 2009 in The Cave! We are working to expand our import selection, and we’ve invited a French Specialist to come in and share 3 special Bordeaux Wines from France with you. The tasting will take place from 1:30 – 3pm and its complementary. Again, it is casual so come and go anytime you’d like during the scheduled time – or stay awhile and enjoy some Small Plate menu items and check out what’s new on the Enomatic Machine! We have changed out most of the Enomatic Machine wines this week… check out our new picks: Here is your chance to try one of the most famous wines in California, Opus One! You can taste it this weekend on the Enomatic. We know this wine is expensive, but if you like it, as part of our “stimulus package” we are offering it for sale in our retail store at a substantial discount!
Let’s see if any are biodynamic/sustainable/organic choices!
Ventura Wine Company: 4435 McGrath St. #301, Ventura, CA 93003 805-642-9449 phone
Monday 10am to 6pm
Tue, Wed, Thurs 10am to 8pm
Fri, Sat 10am to 10pm
Again I have been MIA on Wine Predator and busy posting on Art Predator!
And what have I been busy posting about? Getting the Best Job In the World–as Island caretaker on the Great Barrier Reef! Which doesn’t exactly encourage me to go on and on about AUS wine!
To be in the running for the Island caretaker job, applicants had to produce a 60 second or less video highlighting their qualifications, including why they want the job, and sharing a little about the Great Barrier Reef. In addition to years writing the Art Predator column and now several blogs (this wine one with lots about AUS wine!), plus other journalism and creative writing experiences, I had my own TV news show in high school, I’ve written scripts for PSAs and produced 7 spoken word videos.
So as soon as I heard about the job, I got right to writing a script. And rewriting. And revising. And writing completely different scripts. I won’t tell you how many. I drank quite a bit of wine while working on all this and neglected to take adequate notes to describe them to you!
I enlisted the help of a friend, Imre Juhasz, the father of my son’s best friend Shimon. Imre works on films all over the world, most recently for the Discovery channel. He knows his way around a video camera AND is skilled with final cut pro.
Once we meshed our schedules, we had to work around the weather (rain, rain and more rain). My family being under the weather meant I had to revise the script so that it required very little of the man of my life who was down with the flu, and the small boy wasn’t well either.
So there went the funny script with both of them or even including them in much of the way of anything, certainly not anything athletic or adventurous!
We started at the beach down the street from Imre’s house. While our boys played, we played too with some camera angles and ideas, and filing the sand writing sequences. We considered going to Channel Islands NP but ended up scoping out my mom’s house as a rainy backup with expansive views.
The next day, Valentine’s Day, we met again at sunset, this time with the whole family and our bikes to shoot the cycling scene and the closing scene with the globe beach ball. Imre drove his car with his son sleeping in the back–that was our steadycam!
The third day of shooting we did in the backyard and then hiked up to Two Trees. Marshall was too sick so we shot him close to the car then he waited for us there while we hiked up.
The fourth day we couldn’t get together until after the kid were asleep. So at 830 I came over with a bottle of Hutton Vale Vineyards 2000 Eden Valley Grenache Mataro blend I picked up for around $10 at the last Grateful Palate sale. Hutton Vale is one of those wineries GP dropped over the summer, and if this wine says anything about what they produce, it was a mistake! It came in red tissue paper with s sticker closure and the wine was sealed in red wax. Very classy presentation! I also chose it because Imre and I had some very unimpressive and bland Coppola Tempranillo the night before (regularly $16 on sale at Vons for $9) and I’d raved to him about how much I enjoy GSMs which he was unfamiliar with.
So the Hutton Vale Grenache Mataro I figured would be perfect for the task–something wonderful as we edited the video.
And I was right! From the first sniffs to the last sediment filled sips, the wine was quite a pleasure. The nose had that funny musky rich Mataro thing with some sage thrown in going on which at first raised Imre’s eyebrows but then he settled right into it happily and with amazement. The grenache gives the mataro a fine balance with its spicy fruitiness. It was so good that I’m practically desperate to go find more!
The wine lasted through three hours of editing, then we called it a night and I headed home with the empty bottle and a promise to get more!
On the fifth day, we worked about 12 hours on it, on and off during the day. We stopped for a pizza and I picked up a bottle of Ecco Chianti (regularly $12,on sale for $8) and we were all unimpressed–the memories of the Hutton Vale too strong on our palates! About midnight we finished and ready to upload when Imre started having trouble getting it to be the right size without distortion. It took over 3 hours to get it right, then I headed up to post it on the site–at 4am! Unfortunately a day or so later, it was rejected –some sort of YouTube problem and they asked me to resubmit. Back to the drawing board with Imre and another 3 hours down the tube trying to get the right size without distortion. Another late night ensued for me when the site went down for maintenance when I was ready to upload it! Finally I heard the news that it was accepted and live. Because the site gets so bombarded, it is easiest to watch it on YouTube in HD:
Now just waiting to hear whether I make the 50 shortlist!
Two questions: Where do you cellar your wine? And what should I drink from mine?
Again I have been MIA on Wine Predator and busy posting on Art Predator!
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 