Monday, March 21, 2011
The First Rose' of Spring
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Viscosity Breakdown
Good wine not only tastes good but feels good – in your mouth. (Take it easy with the sexual innuendoes will you.) What I mean, is that often times a good wine will have a rich luxurious texture that you can feel as it rolls around on your tongue. (That is enough you perv, we are trying to have an intelligent discussion about how a juicy wine feels good on your tongue.)
Gylcerol and alcohol are the main drivers of a lush wine's plumb texture. The more of each will equate to more a wine feeling more or less like a silk sheet. A wine with a large amount of viscosity will give you the sensation that you have more wine in your mouth than you initially sipped. When a wine is referred to as “full bodied” it is usually thought to have a good amount of viscosity, aka, glycerol and alcohol, aka plumpness.
Like most things in life, too much viscosity becomes a bad thing quickly. When a wine is so rich and dense that it comes in a squeeze bottle, it might be time to dial back a little bit. Balance is the key here. A wine with good “balance” will have a unit of acidity to balance each unit of viscosity. Without this balance, a wine will tumble from the scales of delicious into the abyss.
Stay balanced my friends,
PS – don't drink motor oil.
Monday, July 12, 2010
The Right Music for the Job
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
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.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
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
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Romance in the Wine
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.