Gimme Some Sugar, Ninja

After the Theise tasting a bunch of us went out to Terroir wine bar in the E. Vill. Pretty sweet joint. The list stands up to the name. Focusing on the wine and the earth they came from. Where vines dig deep to pull out whatever they can from their rocky, mineral ridden soils. Where hot days follow cool nights. Where fruit is picked when it tastes ripe, not when the refractometer says 28 brix. Where points don't matter. Where balance is key. Where the wines truly taste like the soils they came from and the varietal that they are, not the really expensive Oak that's been shoved down their throat.

We had a few beers and some eats (Victory Prima Pils and Paninis, yo). The list is extensive and had some lookers on it. Raph (Big Bird's big bro) is a Riesling whore and had expressed a bunch of times how he had never had an old Reisling. "Yo Raph, a 92 on the list for $60, wassup??" yep, a 92 Schmitt-Wagner Longuicher Maximiner Kabinett. I thought, "that oughtta be great." Schmitt- Wagner rocks the 100+ year old vines (pretty rare these days, you know diseases, Phylloxera and all that), its 17 years old, a great producer, what could be bad? I didnt know much about the vintage. Fine, it's freaking German Riesling and a Terry Theise Selection to boot. But i thought, "it is a Kabinett." I certainly am not Riesling guru or anything, but I know that to go the distance you need good residual sugar. I know that when i read Terry's catalogs a ton of the Kabinetts he tastes he says can age for a looong time. Odds were not against us on this one, so I order it. The bottle comes and I am expecting something with some darker color and oxidative characteristics. Not a chance, dude. This baby was fresh as a baby's bottom. Bright gold, almost white. Smelled of tart granny smith apples and citrus fruits. Not a petrol flavor to be found. "What the H.??!!", I thought. A 17 year old Reisling that smells like its no older than an 07? I felt bad. I wanted Raph to experience that old, unctuous, petrol, gasoline jammy jam that you get from the oldies. Not this time. The palate was tight as a nun's poonawatta, yo. High acids had taken control of this baby and the fruit had dissipated. it was sorta out of whack. I mean, it was good, but not what I was expecting. And for that reason it was disappointing. Plus, it needed food! and we were all out of it. Despite it's lack of secondary characterisitcs and it being a but too austere for my liking, it was GOOD wine. The Acid actually PRESERVED the wine.

Which brings me to my point: POUR SOME SUGAR ON THAT BITCH. Yes, Riesling NEEDS sugar. It just works. It's a grape that is naturally high in acid. It needs that jelly with that peanut butter. I'm not saying to put some lumps in after you pour a glass, as the winery should take care of this for you. I'm saying don't front like you hate sweet wines, because you don't. Do you hate cake? Do you hate ice cream? Do you hate a starburst? Do you hate a jolly Rancher? Do you like Coca-Cola? Im sure you answered yes to most, if not all of those. They are all sweet. So, its in liquid form. But once you get that beautiful tart acid matched up with the nice, fat, sweet fruit. You've got yourself a nice little drinky drink. Throw some slate rocks in there and your tongue is going to be coated with the coolest of sensations and flavors. Have you ever dumped a pack of pop rocks on your tongue? Have you ever dipped your finger in some fun dip? Yeah you have. This is what a German Riesling with a minerality that you could cut with your diamond saw, an acid that will make your moth water for more, the ripe fruits you could put in a welch's bottle and the perfect amount of residual sugar to bring it all together will do to you. Oh, and throw some alcohol in with that shizz and you're good to go.

So the Schmitt-Wagner would have been off the charts if it was a Spatlese or an Auslese I think. I'm sorry Raph, I'm working on getting something with some age on it so we can get that unctuous petrol thing that you've gotta try. Come wedding time I think the mission will be accomplished.

Bert

Nothing spectacular but..............

So tonight Abby Cadabby made me a very delicious dinner. It was crab meat, mushrooms, tomatoes and basil over some simple shell pasta. Little bits of onion and garlic with some heavy cream and S & P. Quite simple but very satisfying. I've realized that simple and relatively light allows for more flavors to shine in their respective ways. Sort of like the way good, lean, white wines highlight every different aspect of itself. Fruit, acidity, minerality, body and flat out electricity. That's probably why we had a white wine with dinner. You don't have to follow any rules when pairing in my book but eventually you'll find a few axioms. Big, red and tannic does not go with what we had.



2007 Slipstream Sauvignon Blanc
100% Sauvy from the Pemberton region of Western Australia. This fruit, and also the winemaker, come from the Pannell family; longtime Francophiles that happen to live in Australia. They grow some serious Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc in this quite obscure region. The first sniff makes you think Kiwi Sauvy and you're probably right considering it originates roughly along the same line of latitude that Marlborough lies but with further inspection it says something else. The something else is in the philosophy of the Pannells. There is a certain restraint and depth to this that speaks more to the Sancerre region of France. Don't get me wrong, it IS ripe but in the context of Southern Hemisphere Sauvy its minerality, maturity (maybe not the correct term but I like it) and expression are a bit more sophisticated than the Monkey Bay's of the world. That UP IN YOUR FACE aroma that is so unmistakably Kiwi is a more of a coaxing aroma that introduces flint and something savory. The gooseberry in your typical Kiwi rings more of a ripe jalapeno pepper. More minerals with a clean finish. Just because a finish lasts long doesn't mean it's good. There is just something wrong with the long finish of a New Zealand Sauvy that makes me think that all of those cultured yeasts that people boast about that 'enhance' many wines of the world, are actually some sort of HGH Oeno-drug. Like body builders up on stage with their shitty fake tan's, shaved anus' and over-exaggerated muscle. There's just something wrong. Long story short, there's something that says integrity in this wine and it wasn't bad with dinner.

-Ernest-

The Outcome...

I did it!  I infused rum with perfectly browned butter.  And wow was it good!  I picked up a bottle of Duche de Longuville sparkling apple cider (4% alcohol and off-dry)  as a substitute for the "poire" cider they used at Tailor, added a splash to the rum with a few dried cloves, some ice, and shook that baby up.  Ive got to say, it was pretty damn close to "The Crumble."  The nose had that unctuous, nutty, butterscotch creme brulee thing that i obsess over.  It's addicting.  I dont even want to drink it, I just want to seriously breath it in with every single breath. 

After my olfactory orgy, i poured Big Bird a glass of the sparkling cider, pretty confident that I was about to blow her mind.  She loves her brother's homemade sparkling cider so I was pretty sure this would also impress, and i'd get some brownie points to boot.  Well, it did.  So much that she ordered me to buy 4 more bottles, called her mom to tell her about it, and asked me if she could blog about it.  

So without further adue, I introduce to you a blog about cider, in the words of Big bird.  Enjoy!

"In Lieu of Pretentiousness" by Big Bird

"Hey all, it’s me, Big Bird, Bert’s Bed Buddy.  So I’m no wine connoisseur and admittedly not well versed in all this but it’s ubiquitous in my life these days.  I can’t get up in the morning without having a hang over, tripping over one of Bert’s magnums or having to fight for space in the kitchen with the hundreds of bottles of alcohol from Bert’s collection… but… I’m pretty lucky and pretty spoiled.   I already had a Barolo this week (one of my favorites but “it was too young,” and I didn’t like it as well as that Silvio Grasso dude man’s Barolo) plus I had about 4 other bottles but I don’t really remember what they were…

 

So, I come from the country in Upstate NY.  I was raised on goat’s milk, homemade bread, vegetable gardens and orchards was where all our food was produced, eaten in the summer and canned or frozen for the winter, so I’m definitely someone who can appreciate the good that comes from your hands in the dirt and the toil in what I like to call “artistry” of gardening.  With the new culinary movement of “back to the land” and in this economic climate not only is it more acceptable and “hip” to be as my parents were/are but I’ll bet the farm it’s going to become part of the norm.  Bert’s already churning his own butter, it happens.

Anyways Duche de Longueville Antoinette Dry French Sparkling Cider.  You heard it here from the Bird, the connoisseur of the farm, this sparkling cider is amazing.  Bert handed me a glass last night and it blew me away.  I don’t even know if he told me what he was handing me but my first impression was “this shit is good”.  It tasted like something my grandmother would have made.  I started feeling my day dream come on and imagined sitting at a picnic table lined with French checkered fabric with the warm wind blowing through my feathers and my family passing the hearty comfort food around while the little birds are singing and the there are no cares in the world.  I have no mumbo jumbo talk to discuss this wine with you all other than the aroma was that of rotten fruit but lets be realists here, shouldn’t rotten fruit smell like rotten fruit?  However, it wasn’t a particularly bad smell, it was natural.  I like natural.  And the taste was nothing more than pleasant, simple yet refined and very delicate.  I also liked the fact that it’s naturally produced carbonation wasn’t overpowering, sometimes it almost hurts, I’m not yet sure if I like that! Shit, my 87 year old Grandma could drink this for breakfast and frankly, probably should…I looked it up on that google thing and it read that it’s an “artisanal” cider from a 50 year old distillery in Normandy, France. Sweet!

 Ok… here’s the kicker... It’s about $10.  These are hard times and a penny saved is a penny earned.  Not only can I afford to drink this on my budget but Bert might not be embarrassed that I like such a simple thing… It aint bad!  Check it!"

Until next time...

-Bert

Butter is Better

The lady (we'll call her "Big Bird" to keep with the theme here) and I spent the day in NYC yesterday. It was just a quick getaway to get out of dodge and get into dodge-ing pedestrians and potholes. First stop was one of my fave pizza spots, Posto, on 18th and 2nd. We try hard at home to make perfect thin pizza crust, and we're getting pretty good at it. I wanted to show Big Bird just how thin it could get. I happen to love Posto, but many I've turned on to it hate it, saying "it's like eating pizza on a cracker" because its so thin and crispy. The thinner and crispier the better, I say. Plus, their ingredients are so fresh. Try the shroomtown pie; wild mushroom mix drizzled with white truffle oil.

Now onto why I really wanted to write about....

After lunch we walked around SOHO for a few hours, just enough time to crave a late afternoon cocktail. I knew that Tailor was close by so we walked over there. I don't think Big Bird has ever been to any of these uptight cocktail bars. You know, the ones who try so hard to re-enact the snobbishness of the aristocratic culture in the 20's, 30's, and 40's, as well as re-enact, and a lot of the time, reinvent the classic cocktails of that era. I love it. So we head into Tailor and go downstairs to the cocktail bar area. The personality-less, vintage-uniformed mixologist who looks like he could have doubled as a Nazi butler comes over and gives us a menu. First on the menu, and as far as I am concerned, only on the menu, was a drink called "The Crumble," tipping the scales at a whopping $14. Served in a lowball with one giant rock (I love the giant rock, it's a way of keeping your drink cold without watering it down), "The Crumble" simply consists of browned butter rum, clove, Poire, (Poire is a sparkling pear cider from France) and whole shitload of deliciousness. It smelled like a spiked Werther's Original candy on top of creme brulee without the sweetness. it was straight up caramel, burnt sugar, toffee, butter, and a hint of that nose hair singeing alcohol. I could have drank enough of them to burn a serious hole in my wallet and stomach lining. Oh by the way, Big bird had a Kumquat caipirinha. Good, but it didn't stand a chance next to "The Crumble."

Since Big Bird and I are into drinking AND churning butter (Laugh it up Ernie), I asked how it was made. Simple. A quarter pound of butter per liter of rum. Brown (not burn!) the butter in a pan, add it to your liter of rum (they use a rum called "Fleur de Canne" from St. James distillery on the French-Caribbean island of Martinique. Its an average rum according to them, no need to get anything fancy). Chill it down in the fridge overnight. The next day the butterfat will have hardened again and separated to the top of the container, remove it. After you've removed the hardened butter fat, strain the rum into another container and voila! You've got your browned butter rum. Grab a bit of clove, and a small part sparkling pear cider if you have it, or substitute with sparkling apple, and you've got yourself your very own Crumble. Im going to try my hand at this today so stay tuned!

Bert

The Restaurant

Yaaauuuuuttttt!! The Restaurant at Rowayton Seafood. Rowayton; home to supreme existentialist Andy Rooney. Yaaauuuuttt. Nice little place on the water in southern Norwalk. It's officially Norwalk but I was informed that they have their own post office. Good company. We got a 200000000006 Grgich Hills Fume Blanc to start. I always liked this wine in my retail days but I probably wasn't as good a palate back then or maybe the wine was better. Anyway, it had this indigenous, Finger Lakes tinge to the palate. Like fresh concord grapes skins. I picked those babies during my childhood so back off. Not a whole lot Fume or Sauvignon to it. Interesting but not worth the dough. Nice Belon Oysters from Massachusetts and some Umami Oysters from Rhode Island. Good and clean, fresh and no miles in an airplane. That is what one of the guests was interested in. Green or not-green, it's part of the conversation these days....well sort of. I'm not a a green Nazi but it doesn't hurt to at least contemplate it. Dinner was a mixture of seafood stew, some scallops on the table and a single salmon steak. I had lobster ravioli in a cream sauce with parsley and a side of sauteed spinach. Very fresh, very simple and quite good. No complaints. The second bottle we had was the 2005 La Spinetta Ca Di Pian Barbera d'Asti. Very nice wine. 2005 really made wine making easy on the European continent I think. I like. This particular bottle was good out of the gate. Easy fruit, soft tannins and just a good, easy drinking persona. Everyone commented on this wine but it didn't' really go with any of the food. Warm chocolate cake for dessert and a double espresso to go; probably why I'm wired now and writing. Sitting here drinking a two-day-old, 2006 Capiaux Cellars Freestone Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir from the Russian River. Sean Capiaux made a name as the winemaker at Peter Michael and currently makes killer Cab's at O'Shaughnessy. This label is his own and he sources some serious fruit. After two days this has nice spices, potpourri hints and a little sour cherry-cranberry thing going on. The structure is still there and probably the only thing wrong with it is that it is a little bitter. I rather enjoy it. The wife is drinking a Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA and has just given up on it. Looks like Daddy is gonna finish it. Van Morrison Live at Montreux 1980 on WLIW21. Didn't know I like Van Morrison that much until Bert played it on Christmas Day to complement my wife's childhood video's she received from her mom.

-Ernie-

I'll Have Another

We reserve the right, here at The Cork Soaker, to contemplate all libations and food, maybe music and on occasion philosophy. We'll try to keep it about things you put in your mouth, well not all the things Bert puts in his but you know what I mean. Bert let "The Street", as we call it, go to his head. With that being said we are definitely going to talk up or down, beer. I'll talk down. I had a Sam Adams Winter Brew last night. It tasted like a gussied up Genny Cream Ale. No joke. It may have been that I went from Harpoon IPA to this Winter Brew that made it seem so creamy but it honestly wasn't anything special and just wasn't all that. People love Sam Adams and when you love something so blindly sometimes you just get it wrong. Take Jesus for example. Aside from that, I had a good time. That is what was important. The drink doesn't make the night; the company does and company was good. Black Duck baby. Cool little Ice Breaking Bardge that is officially retired and now is a pretty sweet watering hole in my new neighborhood. Good wings, fairly hot and supposedly one of the best darn burgers in Fairfield County. Come on and visit.

-Ernie-

Cotes-du-Right-On!

I dont get all the hoopla about Chateauneuf-du-pape. The wines suck. I rarely buy them, and if i do, its maybe a blanc, or something from a producer that I know doesnt make monstrous, over-ripe, alcoholic bombs. Think Clos des Brusquieres. I do love me some northern Rhone wines though. Syrah doesnt get any better than that. Mmm that unmistakeable white pepper. Cote-Rotie, Croze-Herm (and just Hermitage if i ever get the rare opp. to drink it), and most importantly, the neither-here-nor-there, Cotes-du-Rhone. Which i guess would be classified as southern Rhone more often than not. Oh well.

Right now ive got a $10 stiffy over a wine that i know nothing about. I dont know who makes it, i dont know where it comes from, I dont even know if it's a real place. All I know is it's flippin' delicious, and that's all that matters. And sometimes this is the best damned feeling in the whole wide world. Its just a stright up no frills good wine, that didnt slice my paycheck in half.

What is this faceless mostly grenache with a bit of Syrah wine? It's 2007 Les garrigues. Sue me. Im getting off on this wine. its fun, its effortless, its easy but not slutty, it lipsmackingly delicious.

Someone I know just told me about an old Beaucastel they drank. I guarantee that i am getting heaps more pleasure than they got when they drank that wine. It probably smelled like someone took a massive shit in the bottle and let it sit there for years. And that someone was a horse. And that's not terroir by the way, that's a dirty winery. Not only did they probably spend 50 times more than i did on this Les Garrigues, but they probably wouldn't have pretended to enjoy it as much if they didnt know it was a Beaucastel. Which goes back to me loving the fact that I am drinking a wine that i know absolutely nothing about. I'm not saying I love not knowing anything about it, i don't look for that when I choose a wine. I just love the outright ease and pleasure i get from it. It's effortless.

What is my point? It's just to shut up and drink. Stop being pretentious. Stop looking at the label. Stop looking at the score. Stop pretending its good wine. Because i guarantee you that if you put on a blindfold and drink it next to a les garrigues that you would join me in my $10 stiffy session i'm having over here. If people could do this more often the world would be a better place. Forget about whats on the label. Just look at what's inside the bottle.

Stay tuned to my next entry, where I will probably completely contradict myself.

-Bert