The Right Music for the Job

Today I was doing a small bit of manual labor. As I began my work I thought, "We need some appropriate music to accompany the laborious labour that is about to go down." For some reason manual labor sparks a sense of good ol'fashion Americana for me, so I though some Creedence Clearwater Revival would be the best bet for work that may result in a callus.

Working and rocking to Proud Mary just felt right. It was the appropriate music with the appropriate work to the max. Don't get me wrong, like CCR a lot, but I would not say they are my favorite band or even style of music, but at this exact moment, they sounded better than they had in a long time. This made me think about how the appropriate thing at the appropriate time is a perfect thing.

People always ask "What is your favorite wine?" and I give some answer like, "It depends." Even to me that sounds like a copout and dodging the question, but it is true. Sometimes a big Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon and a steak the size of mailbox is the best thing mankind has created. Just 24 hours later, a plate of fried chicken and a sparkling wine from New Zealand - make me think all other wine and food combinations are fools gold. And it may not even be a great wine and food pairing that makes for a great food and wine experience. One of the best food and wine times I have ever had involved Ben's Chili Bowl and an '85 Lynch Bages standing around in an old friend's kitchen. While the chili and the wine went together like long walks and the beach, it was the company and mutual appreciation for the wine that made such an occasion memorable.

So the moral of this tale is - do not limit yourself to one favorite. Listen to CCR while changing your oil and Motown while you clean the house on Sunday. Drink a rose with a piece of grilled fish and a merlot with a french dip sandwich with lots of horseradish. Laugh about long ago high-school hijinks with a cold bottle of Gruner Veltliner.... and whiskey chasers.

Or... how about the best idea, drink pull-tab Coors (The Banquet Beer) with some friends on a flight to somewhere.

Wine as an intellectual exercise.

Wine does taste delicious and has provided refreshment and libation for centuries. Wine is nothing more than bottled farming. The only difference between oranges and wine is the process of fermentation. Why then do fermented grapes inspire such devotion and overall nerdiness? It must have something to do with the effects that fermentation has on the brain. Let us then explore the idea of wine as a mental exercise.

A wine that inspires quiet contemplation is something indeed. I recently had a wine that did/does just that. The 2008 Donkey & Goat Roussanne. This is a white wine grape from the northern portion of the Rhone wine region in France. The grape is notoriously hard to grow as well as work with in the winery. This only adds to the chin scratching after each sip. Why would someone attempt to grow this grape then make something delicious out of it when there are other grapes that are easier to grow and manipulate? Why would someone climb the highest mountain when they probably live near a fairly well sized hill? Because, we as humans can and want to always push for something.

The first sip of the Donkey & Goat Roussanne presents a crosswords worth of riddles and possibilities. Five across – Lemon. Eleven down – honeysuckle. One swallow and already a puzzle?

The wine beguiles with such fresh fruit up front, such creaminess in the middle and the most toasted nuttiness to finish. How could one thing be so many things?

This question begs the question, should wine be mental exercise? Should you spend more than a moment pouring over each nook and cranny of a wine? Is it silly to examine a wine and seek out something new or unexplored? Oh so very Lewis & Clark like. Can drinking a wine be something that stretches your imagination, inspires the desire for greater understanding of how it came to be so delicious? Can a wine literally be described as “transcending?” Should leisurely playing with a plastic toy test your brain power and become a world wide measurement of acumen?

I say yes on both accounts. Wine is a pretty neat thing and on occasion (Looking for subtle nuances and the secret meaning of life in the tepid glass of red wine being served at your cousin Henry's wedding reception at the Moose Lodge is silly.) metaphysically delving into a glass of wine and taking a look around is worth while. Having your preconceptions challenged and expanding your opinions is what makes life interesting. So if you can do that while enjoying a lovely libation, I say by all means nerd out on that glass of wine. The next great American novel might be in there floating around.

Spring Break 2010 Wine Dinner
(May 17, 2010 at 7pm)

Chef Chris Carey helps us ring in the spring with a fresh and delicious menu highlighting the new flavors of this glorious season. Each course will be paired with an equally lively Italian wine.

Amuse Bouche - Tuna Tartar with tamari vinaigrette.

Second Course - Sake and maple marinated sablefish with a citrus soy glaze.

Third Course - Veal tenderloin wrapped with Speck served with ramps morels, English peas and a light veal jus.

Fourth Course - Brillat Savarin cheese with strawberries and a balsamic glaze.

Fifth Course - Blueberry brioche bread pudding.



Call the restaurant to reserve your seat today. 703 777 9463

Romance in the Wine

Why wine is like a romantic comedy.

Like a lot of things in life, good wine and good romantic comedies are about balance. In this discussion let's use the comedy portion of a romantic comedy film to relate to the sweetness in a wine and the romantic portion to relate to the acidity in wine. I find specific examples to be the most effective examples so for this example we will use: Vouvray – a white wine from the Loire region in France made from the Chenin Blanc grape and “Along Came Polly” as its equal in a romantic comedy.

Now. Any good romantic comedy worth its salt will have a good balance of comedy and romance sprinkled throughout to help assuage a broader audience and move the movie along. There will be tender moments with overwrought dialogue concerning love and relationships balanced by situational comedy and maybe even a flatulence joke thrown in for good measure. In the same vain, any wine worth discussing out loud will have a pitch perfect balance of residual sugar (aka – sweetness) that creates the full round texture and depth of flavor offset by acidity (aka acidity) that adds the structure and running theme that ties all the rest of the wine together.

To sight our specific example- all the scenes with Philip Seymour Hoffman, especially the basketball court scene, are the comedic interludes that fill in the gaps and round out the underlying romance in the Along Came Polly. The residual sugar in Vouvray does a similar thing by taking the edge off the naturally high acidity in the Chenin Blanc from this area in France where the soil is basically all limestone. The extra sugar left in all most all Vouvray acts as momentum builders to the crisp theme of acidity that holds the wine together and runs straight through the entire movie. This thematic structure created by such pure acidity in the wine is represented in the budding romance between Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. Acidity and romance aer what make the movie and the wine what they are.

Just like some romantic comedies can be completely off balance and end up in a piling heap of cinematic disaster like Gigli, a wine that is out of balance is is a clumsy drink to say the least. Even wines that have a good bit of sweetness need a lot of acidity to provide the freshness and tang on the finish so the wine doesn't taste like your trying to swallow a love scene between Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.

Doing Laundry is Fun

This week Chris, our chef, did his version of dishes from one of the world's most famous kitchens, The French Laundry. We used recipes from Thomas Keller's French Laundry cook book and relied on Chris' own trip to the culinary mecca for others. Each dish was a universe worth of flavor and balanced like a dumb-truck on a pin needle. Here are a few pictures and comments that do not do each dish the credit it deserves.

Oh and the wines were pretty good as well. The wine played a supporting role in this dinner. The wines job was to let the flavors of the dishes shine through and accentuate each delicious layer of taste. To that extent, the wines were perfect.

Below is a salmon croquet. The supple flavors of the fresh salmon and the creme fraiche were perfectly accented by the toasted sweetness of the cone.

Below is Angilote, rich with it's brown butter, sweet with it's sweet potato filling and a fresh savory note from the sage cream sauce.

Then it was on to the the delightfully tangy delicate nature of an olive crusted rock fish

The final savory course was a double lamb from Fields of Athenry served over a casoulet of fresh spring beans and a red wine sauce so rich with marrow butter it could make you give up donuts for a year.

Dessert does not always have to be heavy and chocolate, although it is encouraged to be. This desert could have floated away on a flower petal, but with enough flavor to occupy your taste buds for hours.

Tender vs. Delicious

If someone said you could eat something that was either delicious or tender, which would you choose? For me it is easy – I always take delicious. One is a adjective to describe how something tastes and one is an adjective that describe how something feels. Granted feeling and texture play a role in how much we enjoy something we eat, but I think how something tastes plays the greatest role.

Steak is a great example of the delicious vs tender debate. The prized filet mignon is one of the most tender cuts of beef, but in almost all cases lacks that distinct deliciousness that makes a steak a steak. This is why you often see a filet wrapped in bacon (delicious) or a porcini crust (also delicious). Ask any butcher what cut they would always keep for themselves, nine out of 10 would not pick a filet. Maybe a flat iron, skirt steak, or NY Strip which have a tremendous amount of flavor at the expnse of overt tenderness. Or maybe the sainted ribeye which has 10X more flavor than a filet and may be just as tender.

Don't fight against delicious for the false flavor of tender. Yes delicious can be tender and tender can be delicious, but if you are serious about your delicious – put tender on the back burner.

This is just a warm up for the smooth wine vs delicious wine debate.

New Awesomeness

We have put a new dish on the menu that is classical, simple, rich and don't forget exquisite. We have added pommes aligot (phome - aligo) as a side to our new braised veal breast.

While the veal breast is so very delicious after being braised for five hours with cinnamon and castelvetrano olives, it is the pommes aligot that steals the show. This is a classical French dish from the Auvergne region. This recipe calls for equal parts potato and cheese with some cream thrown in to ensure the scale is tipped from decadent to a certain primordial richness that speaks directly to the core of being a human. It is that good. Come into the WK and find out for yourself.

Wine Myth Busting 101

Swirling a glass of wine then looking intently at the glass and commenting on how great the legs look on a particular wine makes you sound like you know what you are talking about and opens the door for yet another sly double entendre at a cocktail party. But alas, those legs don't quite mean what you think they mean - in either sense.

Those "legs" or the less sexy name "tears" dripping down the inside of a glass of wine are simply an indication as to the fact there is alcohol in the wine. More legs indicates more alcohol and not much else. If you measure a wine's quality by the level of alcohol in the wine those legs might mean something to you. But if you measure a wine's worth by what it tastes like, then... Open up and say ahh.

If you were interested the nerdy explanation for wine legs follows below.

The scientific explanation for wine legs is a result of the varying evaporation rates and different surface tensions between alcohol and water (The major components of wine.). The wine crawls up the glass as you swirl it because alcohol has a lower surface tension rate than water and pulls itself up the side of the glass. Then as the alcohol evaporates faster than the water, because of its lower boiling point, the water forms droplets and falls back down the inside of the glass. Or something like that.

Drink what you like.