I was at Jackson’s the other day, looking for reasonably priced liquors that I have not tasted and found this treasure.  Bluecoat gin uses only organic herbs and is made in Philadelphia.  It has a much more balanced, clean and robust taste, instead of that medicinal ”hint of Pine-Sol” aroma from pretenders-to-the-throne, like Tanqueray.  I want to taste this guy head-to-head with Citadelle’s gin.  It’s $25, which is a great price, considering it may be the best gin I have ever had.

Posted under Uncategorized

This wine, available at Chow, comes from Portugal’s Douro region, an area known more for genuine Port than for its table wine.  It is produced by a major Port producer, using grapes generally used for Port, but not only is it a dry red, it is a rather light one at that.  This wine is not one of the best examples of this region, but for $7.50 it, it is quite pleasing. 

Rather sour, with a tame astringency, this is a great pairing for pots of beans; simple, light cheeses; rabbit and pork chops.   Nothing too special about it, with the fruit flavors being mostly grapey, with a bit of vague berry and cherry.  The finish is pleasantly toasty with a hint of chocolate beans.  Really, this is a wonderful food wine for the price, able to pair reasonably well with a wide variety of foods.

Posted under Local Picks

There are a thousand ways to prepare a steak, but when I want to open a bottle of something amazing, I want my steak prepared simply.  When I don’t have a specific wine to drink with the steak, then I might prepare it any number of ways: I might buy a flank steak and put it in a vinegary, spicy marinade or grill a porterhouse and smear Roquefort on it.  When I need a steak as a compliment to a great wine, however, the goal is not to add all sorts of flavors, but to cook a great steak simply, but perfectly.  Your Cab, Petite Sirah or Super Tuscan deserves a great pairing that won’t obfuscate its taste.  Below are two methods.  The first can be done on an impulse, the second method, and its variation, require some planning, since they are on the grill.

 

Standard Method:

 

1)      Buy the highest quality steak you can splurge on.  You’re going to cook it rare, so it should be great.  These instructions are for grass-fed beef, by the way, which dries out a bit more easily than grain-fed.  Grain-fed beef can be cooked a tiny bit hotter and/or longer.

2)      Preheat your oven to 425 and put on an apron or old clothes.

3)      Rub both sides of the steaks with coarse sea salt.  If it is a filet mignon, rub it with highest-quality butter, too, to help keep it from drying out.  Try Straus: it tastes great, it’s local, it’s sustainable and it has a high smoke point.

4)      Pour a thin layer of grapeseed oil onto a skillet and turn it on high.  You want the oil to get ridiculously hot.  Canola oil is a decent substitute, but don’t use any other type of oil; you need a really high smoke point.  DO NOT USE OLIVE OIL or you will turn everything bitter and fill your kitchen with smoke.

5)      Keep your eyes on the oil and let it heat up to the point that it is just about to start smoking.  It starts to get a bit “shimmery” for lack of a better word.  After doing this once or twice, you’ll get it.  No big deal if a wisp of smoke comes off of the oil, but you must put the steaks in immediately then.

6)      Your goal is only to sear the whole steak shut.  Leave the steak on for about two minutes, depending on its thickness and the heat of the pan.  Flip it and leave the other side on for only one minute.  Sear filet mignon for a bit less.  While each side is cooking, coarsely crack some black pepper on.

7)      Now put the skillet with the steaks into the oven.  Again, depending on thickness, you want to put a filet mignon in for only 4 minutes and other cuts in for about 6 minutes.  Let it sit for 5 minutes before serving.  It still cooks during this time and this ensures that the steak stays juicy after cutting.  Serve with coarsely ground pepper.

8)      All these times depend on the piece of meat, how accurate your oven is and how hot your pan is.  Use a meat thermometer to measure the center and get it right.  Very rare is 100 degrees Farenheit, rare is 120 and medium rare is 126. 

 

Butter-Grilled  New York Strip

This method may not be too healthy, but it tastes great.

1)      Drop a pound of butter into a heat-safe dish.  Use more or less depending on your steaks and the size of your dish.  Using your stovetop on its lowest setting or your oven on its lowest setting or any other heat source, melt the butter.  You want it warm, but not warm enough to cook meat (100 degrees works well).

2)      Ideally, the  New York strip (also known as Delmonico or entrecote), will sit completely covered in butter, but you may have to flip them regularly if they don’t.  They should be able to sit at least half-covered in butter. 

3)      If they are completely covered, let them sit for half an hour, if they are not fully covered by butter they may need to sit for as long as an hour.  Your goal is to get them warmed up and get the butter into the steak’s grain. 

4)      Meanwhile get the grill going using mesquite hardwood (you can use hickory, if you like, but I prefer mesquite).

5)      Sprinkle coarse sea salt on each side of each steak.  Sear the steaks for about 3 minutes on each side, after the flames have died down.  See above instructions for measuring doneness and serving instructions.

 

Variation:  For a bit more flavor and doneness, take the steaks off for as brief a time as possible after searing them and cover the mesquite chips with fruitwood branches that have been soaked for half an hour in water (depending on how green they are). Good choices include grapevine trimmings, cherry branches, stone fruit trimmings (like peach and plum) and pomme fruit trimmings (like pear, quince and apple).  Alternatively, you can just drop on soaked mesquite or hickory chips.  If you know someone at a large winery, they may have access to oak cubes, staves or chips that have been sitting in wine or, of course, grapevine trimmings. 

 

Close the grill and leave the steak in there for 5 to 10 minutes.  This is a good technique for lesser quality meat and less special wines.

 

Cheers,

 

Gabriel Froymovich

Posted under Cooking, Food

We’re taking a little break from the series of articles on the winemaking process.  I have put together a list of ten great dead giveaways to help you in any blind tastings you might put together for fun.  Usually, when people who do not regularly taste wine decide to put together a blind tasting, the number one thing they try to guess is the varietal.  Here are ten tips to help you guess more accurately.

1)  Aromas of Blueberry or Blueberry Juice almost invariably indicate a syrah or a Rhone Blend.

2)  Full-bodied wines with jammy raspberry or jammy dark fruit, like black plum, cassis or blackberry are likely to be zinfandel.  The jammiest ones are from Dry Creek Valley.

3)  A tea-like taste, accompanied by an astringency that leaves the mouth feeling dry is likely to indicate a Merlot or some Bordeaux.

4)  Bell pepper is a quality found in older and poorly made young Cabernet Sauvignons, Bordeaux and cuvees (blends) of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and/or Cabernet Franc.

5)  Tart cherries, accompanied by black or white pepper, is often indicative of pinot noir from the Russian River Valley.  If it is pinot noir, most of the bitterness will come from the barrels, so the bitterness will correlate to the taste of wood, toast and/or vanilla.

6)  California Chardonnay:  California chardonnays are characterized by heavy barreling and malolactic fermentation.  They will taste of wood, vanilla, toast, cream and butter.  A buttery aroma is a near 100% guarantee.  More expensive chards will have a balance of these flavors and fruit; less expensive chards will have little apparent fruit and taste woody.

7)  Other Oak-y Whites:  Some other whites are oaked, including fume blanc, which is an oaked sauvignon blanc, so watch out.  If the wine is highly acidic, which will taste tart and cause the sides of your mouth to fill with saliva, then you are not tasting a chardonnay and sauvignon blanc is a good guess.

8)  Tropical fruit flavors, high acid and grassy or other green notes indicate a sauvignon blanc, likely from the Marlborough region of New Zealand.

9)  Gewurtztraminer is highly aromatic and known as a spicy white.  The flavors can vary but common ones include litchi, pepper, gingerbread, vanilla and honeysuckle.

10)  Light gasoline, tar and other petroleum product smells from a white wine is almost certain to be a Riesling.

Bonus Tips:  Alcohol tastes sweet, so you can’t taste it in wine.  If you want to guess the level of alcohol in a wine, inhale deeply through your nose.  You can sense it at the top and back of your nose, right your you feel ice cream headaches.  Poorly made wines will seem like they have more alcohol than they actually have.

Acidity provokes salivation in the corners of your mouth.  The most common acidic red is probably Barbera, which will have little bitterness or woody/oaky flavors.

Bitterness is a function of tannin.  It can come from barrels or from grape skins.  The most tannic wines are generally cabernet sauvignon and petite sirah.

Posted under Wine Tasting

Good grapes can make bad wine, but bad grapes cannot make good wine.  Whether the grapes and wine are good or bad, a great deal of the wine’s taste depends on the grapes and how they are grown.  There is a complex and dynamic interplay between the many factors that effect the growth of grapes.  Here is a cursory breakdown of those factors:

Appellation:  The appellation is the indicator of where the grapes came from.  The system for how this is described varies from country to country.  Typically, the more general the appellation, the lower the quality of the wine.  So, a wine labeled as ‘California’ will typically be of lesser quality than a wine labeled ‘Dry Creek Valley.’  The appellation can tell you quite a bit more than general quality, too.  A Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel, for example, can be expected to be high alcohol, full-bodied with a jammy, intense fruit quality.

Varietal:  The type of grape, of course, has a great deal of influence on the taste of the wine.  Remember, though, that it is only one factor, and the other factors can create great differences in the varietal’s expression.  For instance, cabernet sauvignon grown in cooler conditions may have much more vegetal aromas than what you are used to.  Matching varietal to vineyard is incredibly important.

Climate:  The weather patterns of a region, a vineyard, or even a specific row of vines has a great effect on the grapes.  For instance, colder areas tend to create more acidic wines with lower levels of sugar.  Similarly, some areas get more fog, which helps protect more delicate grapes, like pinot.  Temperature can vary by a couple degrees even within a vineyard.  Climate varies a great deal from year to year, which is why some vintages tend to be better than others.

Aspect:  This is the orientation of the grapes to climactic factors, particularly the sun.  A south-southeast facing slope in California will produce grapes with more concentrated flavors, due to sun exposure.

Growing methods:  The way the vineyard manager does his job affects the grapes, of course.  Much of this is somewhat arcane knowledge, but typical issues involve watering schedules, pruning, crop load per acre, training styles and pest control.  Take, for instance, the amount of crop per acre.  If many tons are grown per acre, the wine will have less flavor.  Viticulture is an area where the winemaker also tends to try to exert his or her influence.  One prominent example is the decision on when to pick, based on the taste of the grapes and the amount of sugar in the grapes, which is often a negotiation between the grower and the winemaker, even if they work for the same entity.

Miscellaneous:  There are many minor issues that arise that fit only partly into the above categories.  A common example is the effect (not always negative) that diseases and pests can have.  Picking and sorting of the grapes can also have a significant effect.

In my next entry, I will tell you about the grapes I chose to purchase this year and how all these factors play into that decision in practical terms.

Posted under Viticulture and Enology