Happy Friday everyone!  Today I want to share with you the much awaited details of my recent organic wine collaboration with my darling friend Nina!  When Nina approached me with the concept of an organic wine tasting I instantly loved the idea.  Why organic you ask?  Well, organic wine is made from grapes grown on organic farms, which means no chemicals, pesticides, herbicides or unnatural flavor enhancements.  It has greater health benefits, it has a reduced environmental impact, and it is delicious!  I had not had a lot of experience with organic wine and felt it was important to better educate myself.   I decided upon Bonterra, Frey and Parducci.  Bonterra and Frey are both organic and Parducci is sustainable.  I felt that even though Parducci didn’t quite fit the mold of what we originally set out to do, it was still created with noble intentions of being green and responsible so decided to let it play.  Now, each winery produces a variety of wines.  I selected the red house blend for all three.  That way the tasting would be more apples-to-apples.  It is hard to compare a Merlot from one winery to a Cab from another, right? They were even all from the same region, Mendocino County, CA!  So with an even playing field we dove into these bad boys and didn’t look back.  Let me tell you, I was impressed!  Here are our reviews:

Bonterra – Merlot (52%), Syrah (22%), Cab Sauv (20%) & Zinafandel (2%) – $10.99/bottle

Light tannin with a somewhat vegetal nose and a combination of stone fruit (from the Cab) and black olive (from the Merlot) on the palate.  A softer wine, didn’t pack as much of a punch as you would expect from a wine dominated by Merlot, Syrah & Cab.  But pleasant and easy to drink, good for sipping on its own.  I thought this was a good wine, but after seeing Bonterra wine all over the place I guess I was expecting more.  Granted, this is a table wine and not one of their pure varietal wines, so you should not expect it to be super well defined.  But of the three this is probably the one I would least likely buy again.

Frey – Carignane, Zinfandel & Syrah – $10.99/bottle

Lovely wine with bright, ripe fruits (from the Zin) and a touch of floral/herbal notes.  A nice hint of anise on the finish, unless you’re paring it with a flavorful food in which case you may not detect it.  Much rounder than the Bonterra, very smooth tannins.  This wine was great!  I had never tried Frey going in to the tasting but I am glad I did.  I would buy this wine again, it is soft and easy to drink.  I would most likely drink it on its own as with food I felt it got a little washed out.

Parducci – Zinfandel (39%), Syrah (26%), Cab Sauv (23%) & Carignane (12%) – $9.99/bottle

Pronounced, bold flavors.  The Zin really shines through, this wine clearly has the most pronounced alcohol of the three.  Paired well with the cheese plate we created, especially the pungent Camambert/Blue hybrid.  Big and beautiful – a wine after my own heart!  This was my favorite of the three.  Really held up against the food we were eating but super smooth and delightful on its own.  Love the Zin characteristics and I think the blend was done very well.  I will be buying this again for sure!  Definitely my favorite of the three.

Sorry for my lack of postage!  Nothing crazy or scandalous going on, plenty of wine consumption but we’ve been a bit lazy and haven’t tried anything new in a while.  I plan to change that tonight at my birthday dinner, however!  We’re heading to one of my favorite old places in Boston, The Wine Cellar.  Fondue and fine wine, yes please!  And we’re almost ready to share the details of our recent organic wine tasting that took place a couple of weeks ago.  Lots of info to digest, but i promise the wait will be well worth it  :)  So in the meantime, have a fabulous day and we’ll be back soon with exciting new content!  Cheers!!

I haven’t seen this many empty glasses since… [insert joke here, I don't have the energy]  We had a wonderful wine tasting last night at our house and I can’t WAIT to tell you all about it next week!  In the meantime, happy Friday, if you’re in the mood to wash some dishes please let me know.

Did I mention there were only 4 of us tasting?

So, I told you all about the cheese tasting part, now let me tell you about the preceding dinner we enjoyed as part of Cheese Tuesday at L’Espalier…

Our first course was a salad of asparagus, pickled beets, AFS mizuna, and Shy Brothers’ Hannahbell cheese (you know, the little ones that look like thimble?  LOVE!).  It was paired with a delightful 2009 Simonnet-Febvre Brut Cremant de Bourgogne.  (Side note – Any time you see “Cremant” in a wine title you know that it is a French sparkling wine made in the methode champenoise but not of grapes grown in the region of Champagne.  Some sparkling wines just have air injected into them like a soda, can you believe it?  Guess it’s cheaper that way than letting the bubbles develop naturally in the bottle over the course of a year, but I digress…)  The wine is a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and was buttery yet crisp with light acidity and a nice citrus finish.  I truly believe that one should enjoy sparkling wine every day.  It is just such a treat.  This particular bubbly was a great pairing with the salad.

The second course was housemade gnocci with radish puress and spring peas, topped with truffled pecorino.   Truffled Pecorino, um, yes please…  It was paired with a 2009 Maison Champy from Saint-Romain, Burgundy.  The wine is produced exclusively from Chardonnay grapes (white Burgundy = Chard, red Burgundy = Pinot Noir) and has a subtle oak nose that reflects its barrel aging before bottling.  The palate is a combination of  honeysuckle, the hallmark of the region, and toasted popcorn.  So delicious.  The perfect Chard for people who don’t think they like Chards.  No one could dislike this little beauty.

The main course was an absolutely outstanding Chartreuse of Painted Hills beef with Parmesan and root vegetable puree.  I can’t believe that I STILL cannot spell chartreuse without looking it up, even after writing it a million times as it was the accent color at my sister’s amazing wedding…  It was paired with a 2006 Domaine Les Aphillanthes, “Le Cros” Cotes-Du-Rhone Villages.  This bad boy was GOOD.  In general Cotes-Du-Rhone produces red grenache wines in this part of the valley but this Les Cros is actually 100% Syrah.  It was meaty, full, had some great vegetal flavors like beet and black olive, it was really amazing.

All in all, this was an amazing meal!  I still cannot believe they gave us all that cheese after this three-course meal.  I feel like we got away with something, like we pulled the wool over their eyes, almost guilty!  It was just THAT good and really affordable for L’Espalier!  So check it out, try to find the wines, and have a fabulous Thursday  :)

(photos via here, here & here)

Morning everyone!  I received a some emails yesterday asking about the cheesemaking process chart that I referenced in my post about Cheese Tuesday at L’Espalier so I thought I’d share it with you!  Really interesting stuff…  Enjoy!

I don’t even know where to begin…  Last night was our long awaited Cheese Tuesday at L’Espalier.  The L’Espalier website describes the evening as follows:  ”Cheese Tuesday combines wine and cheese in a casual night featuring a three course dinner with paired wines, followed by a grand cheese tasting and musical entertainment.”  Casual night, some food to snack on, a few wine tastings, sounds great!  Friends, it was so much more than great.  After an amazing gourmet 3-course dinner with superb wine pairings (I’ll get into the dinner later), the Fromager, Louis Risoli, rolled out two big tables covered in wheels of delicious cheese.  Now, the room was packed, there must have been at least 40-50 people in there.  We though, “Cool!  We can circulate, nibble on a couple of the cheeses, try some dessert wine, call it a day!”  Oh no.  The tables of cheese were just for display during the grand cheese tasting and lecture.  Tasting of 11 different cheeses.  An entire plate of 11 cheeses to try – PER PERSON.

The lecture was amazing and went through the cheeses in order of intensity, starting with the curd (fresh curd made at home by Mr. Risoli himself!) and ending with the blue.   At the top of our list were the 5 year aged Gouda, the Burgundian Epoisses, and the Oregon Caveman Blue.   We were even provided with a chart on the cheesemaking process which I found very interesting.  Little Miss Muffet would have LOVED it, lots about curds and whey…  I have included a full list of the cheeses below.  They were paired with a delightful dessert wine from Sauternes (Bordeaux), a 2001 Chateau Lahonade-Peyraguey.  Great acidity, lovely notes of peach, apricot and burnt orange, a really perfect pairing that was not too sweet for the mild cheeses but not too delicate for the bolder ones.  This event may become dangerously addictive…

L’Espalier Cheese 101 – April 12, 2011

The How’s, Why’s and What’s and Yummy Yums of Cheese

1. Fresh curd, cow, homemade
2. Mount Vikos Feta, sheep and goat, Greece
3. Pave Sauvage, goat and herbs, Perigord, France
4. Hartwell, cow, Ploughgate Creamery, Albany, VT
5. Epoisses, cow, Burgundy, France
6. Pecorino Ginepro, sheep, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
7. Fiscalini Cloth Bandaged Cheddar, cow, Modesto, CA
8. Tarentaise, cow, Spring Brook Farm, Reading, VT
9. Gouda, aged 5 years, cow, Holland
10. Bayley Hazen Blue, cow, Jasper Hill Farm, Greensboro, VT
11. Caveman Blue, cow, Rouge River Creamery, Central Point, OR

This is totally one of those wines that you see all the time and think, “Really?  TRUCK?  That does not make me want to drink this wine.  It makes me think of dirt.”  So in hopes of discovering something new and fabulous I grabbed a bottle as part of a 3 for $25 deal.  And you know what?  It was pretty decent!  It was light but had a substantial amount of fruit.  If I hadn’t known better I may have thought I was drinking a merlot, that’s how much ripe berry I found.  I brought it to temperature with my wine chill drops and I think that made a big difference in taking the edge off, I would recommend you try this wine a little on the cooler side as well…  Great for a casual mid week dinner when I didn’t really know what I was going to pair with it.  At 3 for $25 I think Red Truck is right priced and I would definitely get this again if I wanted an easy drinking red for just hanging around the house.  A very pleasant surprise from a wine I affiliated with dirt, I must say!  :)

(Image via)