Cheap, Good, Delicious

Reflections on generic wine lists

One of my favorite descriptors for my least favorite things is saltine. You may not be familiar with this use of the word. I like to think I invented it as a child, having grown tired of boring descriptors like vanilla, plain, and bland. Yes, the word is the name of the simple square crackers often paired with soup, or given to nauseated children as a snack by their parents. I do not dislike saltine crackers. In fact I like them very much when I am in the mood for them, but their very purpose is to be bland.

I value originality, almost above anything else. That’s not to say that I only go for something different. Sometimes a vanilla ice cream cone is exactly what a hot July afternoon calls for. My favorite writer happens to be Ernest Hemingway, whose prose style is considered simple and, his unadorned, quick sentences show that they were written by a trained journalist. Sometimes all I will eat for dinner is a bowl of arugula with lemon vinaigrette. And most Sundays I will wear jeans and a white t-shirt, nearly the simplest of outfits. But, I find originality to be very refreshing—in people, in food, in literature, and in wine lists.

Eric Asimov’s April 1^st The Pour posting “On Generic Wine Lists” came at an appropriate time for me to reflect on an experience I had this past weekend. I went for a glass of wine Friday night with a friend near Columbia University, and I was met with a list of wines by the glass that was marred by being the quintessence of saltine. The list looked a little like this:

Cheap $8

Good $12

Expensive $18

When the waitress came over to take our order, I asked for a little further information. She told me she thought the cheap was Merlot, the good was Malbec, and the expensive was Sangiovese, or something along those lines. I hoped she could clear up the varietals for me, as well as perhaps vintage and even country of origin. I told her I needed a few minutes.

At first, I had been somewhat intrigued by this wine list design. How unusual! How different! I had never seen this anywhere before! But the more I thought about it, the more I had no idea what I wanted. When presented with a wine list with six different Chardonnays by the glass, I often feel completely torn. But this was far worse because they were offering me only three unidentified beverages. I felt I was being forced to make an uninformed choice.

Composing a restaurant’s menu is difficult, so is making a wine list. There are so many choices, so many customers, so many palates, so many restaurants, and so many of them fail. When restaurants make their lists, they have to consider so many questions: Who will the audience be? What price range can we offer wines in? How large do we want the list to be? What is the concept or theme? All things considered, the wine list needs to be at the very least informative, and if it isn’t, the staff should be. Otherwise, the patrons end up feeling like me last Saturday night, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

In the wake of this last experience on the Upper West Side, I’m wondering about what’s valuable in wine lists. Is it better to go off the beaten path and try to do something wildly creative? Or is it better to play it safe and run the risk of being saltine?

Dinner and a Bottle

BYOB in the city

Last Saturday after a long day of hosting tastings throughout the afternoon, all I wanted to do was sit back, relax, and open a special bottle of wine. I chose the Luce 2006, a blend of Merlot and Sangiovese from Toscana, to enjoy with dinner that evening. It’s a very full-bodied and concentrated wine, so I thought that it would go really well with a rich meat. The original plan was to stay at home and cook a nice steak dinner with my boyfriend, but when I got off work I was so tired that I didn’t want to invest time in cooking. Since the focus of the evening was the wine, my boyfriend and I decided to look for a BYOB restaurant in the area. BYOB restaurants are not so easy to come by in the best circumstances, but on a Saturday night at 8:00pm, it’s an even greater challenge.

Amazing! Almost immediately, we found one called Catch de Fish, just two blocks away from work. I was slightly disappointed that it was a seafood restaurant because the wine we had was so bold, but I was even more surprised that it was a Thai Seafood fusion restaurant. But as long as it was BYOB, I was sold. We ended up ordering a crab cake with spicy mayo, shrimp tom yum soup, Chilean sea bass with vegetables, and baby back ribs with honey and Thai spices. None of these dishes were a “textbook” pairing with the wine that we brought, but everything was delicious, and the evening turned out to be wonderful.

The experience we had that night really reminded me of Jane’s blog “The Power of Context.” Our wine and food pairings certainly weren’t what one would expect or even choose, but I’ll always remember the night for the good meal and even better company. If you said I could rewind time and make a different, more appropriate choice, I would tell you that I wouldn’t change a thing.

The Flavors of (Some) Italian Varietals

Master basic flavor profiles of popular Italian grapes

It seems to me that when you buy wine in a wine shop, go to a wine bar for a 5 o’clock happy hour, or get a bottle while dining at your favorite restaurant, the very first thing that the sales associate, bartender, sommelier or waiter will talk about is the flavors—and the aromas—of the chosen wine.

Without a doubt, there is a connection between grape varietal and aroma. You can always expect to find specific scents in specific wines based on their varietals and their blends, but the truth of the matter is what you get from a wine is a very personal matter and changes from both individual person to individual person and estate to estate. As difficult as it is to get ten people to agree on a place to have dinner in New York City that they all like, it’s difficult to get those same people not only to agree on all liking the same wine, but liking the same thing about it. However, as much as it may be difficult for people to agree on how to describe wines, there are qualities we can generally attribute to specific grapes.

The fun thing about wine drinking in the 21st century is that the market understands the concept of individual experience, so you can express yourself any way you want. From saying “it tastes like shoe polish” to “there are notes of tar” is perfectly normal. It’s not that you take a spoon full of shoe polish with your morning coffee and then take a dive in a vat of tar every time you walk pass a “Road Work Ahead” sign, but as our own Christy Canterbury has pointed out, taste is smell so you’re not necessarily tasting but smelling.

In wine tasting as much as everything else, practice makes perfect. If to you a wine tastes like toasted maple leaf, perhaps it does, but maybe you really want to make sure. You might want to practice tasting wine at home with some dried fruit and nuts to help you taste the corresponding flavors of your favorite wines. It is easier to make comparisons if you have both things you’re comparing. Do it enough, and you’ll be able to do it by scent alone. It’s a lot of fun when you can recognize wines by their smell alone—practice at home, give it a shot, and impress your friends at parties.

While smell and taste are highly personal, you can expect some specific flavor profiles with specific varietals. To help you out in your quest to master your next favorite party trick, here are the basic flavors to look for in some popular Italian varietals:

Sangiovese (Toscana): Dried flowers, berries like blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, or strawberry. You’ll find a really nice example in the 2006 Fontodi Chianti Classico.

Nebbiolo (Piemonte): Cherry and other dark fruit (like dried cranberries) or tar and rose petal, but please do not have a wine, tar and rose petal tasting! I would try the De Forville Nebbiolo 2007 or Massolino’s 2004 Barolo for some great aroma and flavor representation.

Nero d’Avola (Sicilia): This is one of my personal favorites. You can find many flavors; look for black cherry, plum, vanilla, tobacco and licorice. My Nero d’Avola go-to since I started at IWM has been il Moro by Valle Dell’Acate. The 2006 is great.

Palagrello Bianco (Campania): Orange blossoms, pears and peaches—grab some juicy pears and peaches and open a bottle of Alois Caiati 2005 or Vestini Campagnano 2004. I’d thrown in a couple of pieces of Reggiano while you’re at it just to complete the experience.

Pigato (white, Liguria): I love this wine! Look for apricot, peach and herbs. Both the 2008 U Baccan by Bruna and the Bisson 2007 are exceptional wines and will help you to understand this varietal.

Cortese (white, Piemonte): This is your Gavi’s varietal. Look for white flowers, white fruit like peaches, pears and apples. I would give the Ca’ dei Mandorli a shot, a wine that dips under the radar but really shows what Cortese is about.

And for those of you who have mastered the art of the nose, what are your favorite scentastic wines? What profiles can you detect and in conjunction with which varietals?

« go back — keep looking »