and yet -
you have already moved
to a place beyond
memory, where
landscape and recollection merge
in fruitless gyration
spawning a brown-specked
labouring beast,
so heavy with time
that the slightest incline takes hours
to achieve and instead
stands thrust
in primordial slough
with a few blades
of cattail
and the muddy turnings
of frogs.
Last Thursday I had the opportunity to weigh in on the menu for the upcoming 2011 California Wine Fair, the Citadel Theatre’s annual fundraiser wine tasting. It was a fantastic chance to taste some delicious food and brainstorm with several of the ladies on the Citadel staff about how to improve the event from previous years.
Sharon has already posted on the lunch here; she was the other local blogger in attendance. Since she’s already done a recap of the basics I won’t repeat any of that here – instead, I’m going to talk about wine. Don’t act so surprised.
Since the purpose of the lunch was to experiment with different food options, Natasha Susylinksi (of Treasury Wine Estates) chose four representative Californian wines to accompany the spread.
First up was a good old fashioned Napa Valley Chardonnay: 2007 Stags’ Leap Chardonnay. It was everything a good Napa Chard should be, offering honeyed tropical fruit notes with toasty oak and buttery malo influences.
2007 stags' leap chardonnay
Chardonnay is one of those wines that you can enjoy all by their onesome, but they are also fairly easy to pair with food. Out of the various hors d’ouevres that we tasted, this Chardonnay went particularly well with this:
seared scallop fork with vanilla apple chutney
and this:
mango crab stacks with wasabi mayonnaise
and these too:
Moroccan salmon skewers with fennel seed
Next was a fruity little Pinot Noir from Santa Barbara. It had a fair dose of candied cherry and strawberry on the nose – definitely a warm climate Pinot – along with just a hint of lovely damp soil. It was a little flabby in the middle, but finished with a good zing of acidity.
2008 santa barbara pinot noir
You could probably get away with pairing the Pinot with this:
goat cheese sphere with caramelized onion marmalade
and maybe even this, if you didn’t think about it too much:
goat cheese and olive tapenade canapés
The next two wines were full-bodied reds, and they really didn’t pair well with any of the foods that were served – through no fault of either; full-bodied reds scream for full-bodied meals (read: red meat), so tapas just ain’t gonna cut it.
...but I'm still going to show you this picture, because look how pretty! (jerk chicken and mango chutney in a tortilla cup)
Beringer is a huge Californian wine producer with many tiers of wines. We tried one from their mid-range Knights Valley line, the 2007 Knights Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, which I’m happy to report was quite enjoyable, with lots of thick red fruit, a whiff of slate/minerals and chewy tannins. It could have used a bit more acidity, as well as an hour or so in the decanter – but overall quite enjoyable.
2007 beringer knights valley cabernet sauvignon
Last up was the 2008 St. Clement Oroppas Cabernet Sauvignon, which is technically a Bordeaux blend, but more so in name than in taste (the 92% Cab Sauv pretty much overwhelms the 6% Merlot and 1% each of Cab Franc and Petite Verdot). It was quite closed on both nose and palate, evincing no more than some dusty minerals, black fruit and dense tannins. This one is definitely for the cellar; I’d love to taste it in ten years.
2008 st. clement oroppas cabernet sauvignon
Thanks again to Sydney and Pamella for inviting me to this superb lunch!
To buy tickets to the 2011 California Wine Fair, and to see the full list of wineries that will be represented, click here.
Yesterday I attended the trade tasting portion of Winefest, a fairly large-scale wine festival that started in 2009.
I recently blogged about a similar tasting, the 2010 Rocky Mountain Festival – which, incidentally, also happens to be hosted by Liquor Depot. Winefest is like a baby Rocky Mountain: you get the same array of fairly generic, entry-level wines, a few interesting oddities and some hors d’oeuvres. Rocky Mountain just has more of everything, as well as much more of an emphasis on food.
My usual modus operandi is to look for the unusual stuff, the things I haven’t seen before and/or haven’t tried yet.
First up was something I encountered last June at the 104th Street Al Fresco tasting: wild hibiscus flowers in syrup, served in a glass of prosecco. Though there was a display of these at Al Fresco, they weren’t available for sampling.
From a purely aesthetic perspective, a deep magenta flower floating in a glass of prosecco scores pretty high. (Though my pictures don’t do it justice as it was only a sample-sized glass.) From a flavour perspective, the syrupy flowers are very sweet, though this is tempered when they are served in a glass of dry prosecco. Obviously the wine acts as just a backdrop, so if you’re serving them this way you should stick to a simple, inexpensive bubbly. (I had it with NV Collalto Extra Dry Prosecco Superiore.)
They make a pretty sexy drink, and the flowers are quite versatile – and edible. They taste like candy. You could use them in tea, or incorporate them in all manner of cocktails.
I’ve had fruit wine on the brain lately, so as soon as I saw the meads from Meadow Vista I had to stop and taste. Meadow Vista is a honey winery in the Okanagan, but they source all their honey from Alberta’s Peace River region – there isn’t a single supplier in British Columbia that could support the amount of organic honey they require
I was particularly smitten with the 2008 Joy sparkling honey wine, as it has such an intriguing mouthfeel and interesting wild clover aromas.
I also tried the 2008 Mabon spiced honey wine, which has an absolutely luscious nose of warm baking spices – nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, allspice. The palate is shockingly austere and just off-dry, which means this could pair with a savoury main course as well as a dessert that’s not too sweet.
I try not to be lured in by a wine’s label, but sometimes they are just too striking to pass by – I think everyone can agree that Charles Smith‘s bold black-and-white labels stick out. However, I justified my interest because these are Washington wines, something we don’t see too much of around here (in relation to other regions, anyway).
The 2009 Kung Fu Girl Riesling was a competent wine, slightly off-dry, and overall fairly pleasant.
Pretty much the same can be said of the 2008 Eve Chardonnay, which had lots of vanilla on the nose but a good backbone of crisp apples on the palate. We didn’t try any of the reds, but I’m guessing they are similar: soundly made and generally pleasing. It’s the labels that will sway your wallet.
Since we had already been wooed by funky labels, we fell prey to the Dirty Laundry table, an Okanagan winery named after a Klondike-era gaming house and brothel.
The reds were smoky. Really, really smoky. Like a campfire, or smoked sausage. The 2008 Merlot was a touch green for my liking, and I don’t know if I could drink much of the 2009 Kay-Syrah due to the aforementioned smoke reek. The 2008 Bordello Meritage was the most balanced out of all the wines, and the only one I would actually consider buying myself.
I have tried Forbidden Fruit‘s wines before, but not for a couple years, so I was eager to re-acquaint myself – so eager I forgot to snap any photos. The Adam’s Apple smelled like tart apple pie – good stuff. The Impearfection Fortified Asian Pear wine was easily my favourite, as it had such an interesting spicy nose and lovely mouthfeel.
Though I did try a few more wines, nothing else really stuck out as particularly memorable. The hors d’oeuvres were pretty tasty, especially the desserts. (I had tried several of these yesterday, at a preview tasting for the 2011 California Wine Fair, which I’ll blog about soon.)
If you happen to be headed to Winefest tonight for the sold-out evening session (or you’re just arriving to the afternoon session) , I urge you to check out the fruit wines.
There is something of childhood here; the web of aromas woven through the limbic system straight to the seat of long term memory: a wordless something twitches in the centre, caught.
Caught from a time before it was necessary to elaborate with adjectives and clever descriptions: only sensation, taste: warm languid relaxation honey licked off fingers spread under the apples washed away with the milky certainty of magic, hidden garden knowledge. Turning another page.
The first raindrops darken perfect spreading circles over print.
Sour cherry fruit, toasty mocha oak, undercurrents of slate and minerals.
As the men toiled bent in fields
With a city now for skyline
I squatted in mud and waited and
the cows unceasing chewed, ground spring blossoms underfoot
Beside an algae-bloomed slough, placid they
gazed at the water, mirror, time.
Long time no blog! I’m not going to make excuses for my absence from here – but I will assure you that I was still fulfilling my daily word count through various other venues. So there.
Twitter: @melpriestley
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