Posted
by Evan Spingarn
on Feb 11, 2009
in Features
Growing into adulthood means accepting life’s bitter aspects. This is true for everything from love to the weather. But in the world of food and drink, it’s a literal transition. As human beings grow older, their palates change. They leave behind the sweet tastes of youth and learn to appreciate the subtler pleasures of bitterness.
What do kids like to eat? Chocolate pudding, Pixie Stix, Laffy Taffy and Cap’n Crunch. I used to eat full tablespoons of cake frosting while my mother looked on in horror.
But now? Hot black espresso, please. Campari cocktails and tonic water. Black Moroccan olives and lemon zest. Gravlax, broccoli rabe and crunchy green salads full of rocket and escarole. We revel in the hop tang of lager beers, the bittersweet bite of dark Swiss chocolate. And when we come back to those luridly sweet candies of our youth, we smile at their familiarity, but most of us just can’t choke them down the way we used to.
As one’s adult tastes evolve toward bitterness, what is the adult beverage to accompany such fare? One answer, bred from my successful experimentation, is to match bitter foods with bitter wines. I do not mean wine with an unpleasant bite that spoils things. Bad wine is bad wine, no matter what you’re eating. But certain wines have what the critics call a “pleasing astringency.” It is a euphemistic phrase, like “military consultants” and “pre-owned automobiles.” What it means in relation to wine is a certain textural snap in the finish, often from a combination of acidity and grape-skin tannin, that enlivens the palate and refreshes the taster after each sip. Think of apples with their skins on, or candied orange peels. It’s bitterness, yes-tamed in part by other aspects of a wine. An occasional quality in reds, it occurs more frequently in whites.
If you want to know what I’m talking about, try a bottle of Verdicchio. The Verdicchio grape grows in the Marches region of eastern Italy, primarily in the towns of Castelli di Jesi on the Adriatic coast and Matelica further in from shore. With its dry taste and citrusy acids, it constitutes the local seafood white, one of dozens of such wines indigenous to Italy. Indeed, it would normally rate just a passing mention in most wine scribblings-but for one thing. A crazy, nose-tingling aroma of licorice invades the wine; a high-toned, almost medicinal quality. In strong, old versions from Matelica, it tastes like a shot of absinthe; in light versions (those kitschy, fish-shaped bottles on package-store shelves), it’s more delicately vegetal, like anise or fresh fennel. Call it what you will, but it is there, belligerent and ineffable, and as it runs the gauntlet of the wine’s natural acidity at the finish, it turns persistently bitter. What tames such a wine?
Saltwater fish is the classic match with it; but the pairings get really interesting with bitter greens like amaranth, mustard, and broccoli rabe or (not surprisingly) dishes involving anise and fennel. The edge of the wine collides with the bite of the vegetables in such a way that both are enhanced, leaving the taster a little thirstier and a little hungrier than before. Seafood risotto with braised radicchio is marvelous with it. Throw in some sweet sausage for contrast, and you’ve achieved a sensational, regional food-wine experience. Organic labels of Verdicchio include Villa Bucci, Colle Stefano, and Cantine Bellisario. Sartarelli, grown sustainably, is more readily available.
Other white wines deliver a modest measure of the so-called “pleasing astringency” that works so well with bitter or aggressively herbal foods. Italian examples include Vermentino, Vernaccia and the Sauvignon Blancs of the northern regions. Muscadet from the Loire has it, and many lighter-styled Gruner Veltliners from Austria. Shellfish with a drop of Pernod or white fin-fish with lots of fresh parsley work wonderfully with these. If you can find a bone-dry Elbling from Germany or a Gros Plant from the Nantais, you are in for some masochistic enjoyment.
In reds, tannin provides the sensation of bitterness, particularly tannin coupled with an acidic structure to propel it. Reds that nip at you nicely are led by Cabernet Franc, the herbaceous red wine of Chinon, Bourgueil and Saumur, again in the Loire. Organic versions seem to outnumber conventional ones in the American market these days-you can practically close your eyes and point. There’s also a cluster of light red wines valued for their astringency in northern Italy, including Bardolino, Refosco, dry Marzemino and sparkling Lambrusco, which work perfectly with the salty, savory salumi and olives of the sub-Alpine provinces. Or if you want a BIG red with bite, look for Sagrantino, officially the most naturally tannic red wine in the world. Paolo Bea’s is legendary, but Di Filippo is a fine organic contender for half the price. Grilled lamb with a black olive tapenade would be miraculous with this vinous monster from Umbria. Also try the ancient ink-dark wine of Madiran, made from Tannat and Cabernet, a combination of ferrous minerality and jet black fruit encased in tannins. Sound scary? Pour it with char-broiled meat and a side of Brussels sprouts (notoriously bitter) and become a convert.
A great fortified wine with bitterness is fino sherry from Spain. Endlessly versatile, fantastically refreshing, and priced far below what it should be, it masters any and all bitter foods you throw at it, including the nuts and olives with which it is traditionally served. My search for organic sherry didn’t yield much, but Bodegas Robles in nearby Montilla-Moriles makes a fine organic fino from Pedro Ximenez grapes.
The world’s most famous and expensive astringent wine? Champagne of course. Its low sugar and high acidity scratches at your palate, while those prickly little bubbles snap at you like a jealous lover. Low dosage bottlings-those with less sugar added than conventional, mass-market brands-are especially useful for the two briniest foods associated with them: caviar and oysters. Also a hit are raw vegetables with a bitter edge like radishes and celery. A dash of salt marries them to the wine seamlessly. My father enjoys Champagne at the holidays with a crudité of raw fennel stalks spread with dollops of chopped liver. It’s a strange combination of bitterness and fat-but it works.
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Posted
by Evan Spingarn
on Jan 26, 2009
in Features
“Between 1775 and 1818 there lived and flourished (more or less) in Malta, Naples, Paris, and elsewhere, a notable composer, Nicolo Isouard, more generally known as Nicolo. He wrote many operas, all of which are now forgotten. Having lived in Naples he was a great macaroni eater, and prepared the dish himself in a somewhat original manner. He stuffed each tube of macaroni with a mixture of marrow, pate de foi gras, chopped truffles, and cut-up oysters. He then heated up the preparation, and ate it with his left hand covering up his eyes, for he asserted that he could not afford to allow the beautiful thoughts engendered by such exquisite food to be disturbed by an extraneous mundane sight. No wonder he died young.”
—From The Greedy Book by Frank Schloesser
Whether you find such reports enticing or disgusting depends, I’d venture, on what state your appetite is in. But can you deny the appeal of the idea? A little stolen moment of opulence. A mouthful of something tasty and rare, even if only on special occasions, confirms that we’re not just surviving here – we’re sometimes actually living.
Thus, my newfound revelation about red Burgundy. Everyone who has shopped for it or ordered it in fancy French restaurants knows it is prohibitively expensive and frequently disappointing. Of all wines in the world to collect, it is undoubtedly the riskiest and most foolish investment. It is fickle, mercurial and downright thin in most vintages. But have you ever had a good one? Ah yes…..that’s living.
Try this. Acquire a pair of Cornish game hens and rub them inside and out with fresh butter, salt and pepper. Then sauté a chopped shallot with ¼ lb of wild mushrooms and some herbes de Provence in a frying pan, about 3 min. Toss with plain bread crumbs and a dash of Cognac; stuff the cavity of the birds with the mixture, and roast them at 350º for just shy of an hour, until the skin crisps and the juices from the leg run clear. Serve with buttered potatoes or noodles and a pot of good French mustard.
To be honest, you could serve almost any wine here-red, white, pink or even Champagne. As I’ve seen one wine shop in New York City cheekily advertise: ALL WINES GO WITH CHICKEN. True. But the darker meat of a small hen, especially if it has the sinew and pasture-fed gaminess of a free range bird, conjures mid-weight, earthy reds to me. In this case, the mushrooms seal the deal. Pinots from Burgundy-silken, fragrant and savory-both flatter and are flattered by this dish.
These days, decent Burgundy starts at about $20 for a basic villages-level Bourgogne. Good Burgundy with a name you might recognize starts at $35. For $50 and above, the 1er Cru and Grand Cru selections open up. It’s no bargain, but for a wine of such scarcity and devotional allegiance, it’s not unreasonable either. The real question to ask, as you pick the price and quality of your wine is how do you feel about your dinner guests?
Once you’ve committed to the region and the expenditure, there is the choice of appellation to consider. The first decision is easy. While the wines from the Cotes de Nuits in Burgundy’s northern half are generally the stars, their black fruit flavors and sturdy structures seem to me a little rich for poultry. They share more of an affinity for red meats, whose blood mingles with their molten iron core. Among the lighter, brighter, southerly Cotes de Beaunes lie the wines that seem designed for a chicken dinner.
So which Cotes de Beaune works best? Pommard has a gutsy earthiness that I admire and Savigny-les-Beaune lures with its light, treble clef jazz; but the satin elegance and cherry-sweet warmth of Volnay seems the most poetic match for these tender little birds. The wines are consistently fine, too; the unusually high number (34) of 1er Cru vineyards in Volnay means the chance of getting wine from a good site is high.
Some great organic producers include Roblet-Monnot (biodynamic), Michel Lafarge (organic), Jean-Marc Bouley (organic), and Hubert de Montille (organic). Sustainable viticulturists from the old school include Joseph Voillot and Francois Buffet.
The Roblet-Monnot Volnay ‘St Francois’ 2006, crafted by Pascal Roblet-Monnot, is especially intricate and wonderful. Pascal’s family has vines predominantly in Volnay, and in Pommard as well. I have not tried it yet with game hens, but a bottle I opened one night with a rib-eye steak, smothered in duxelles and a bundle of buttered asparagus was ravishing. All through dinner, I instinctively held my left hand near my eyes…
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Posted
by Evan Spingarn
on Mar 16, 2008
in Features
Champagne is like a polite, clean houseguest. Other wines commingle with your food, stain your teeth, then rudely leave their flavors all over your mouth. Champagne breezes in, wipes down your palate, then exits with a bubbly flourish.
Pale, bejeweled in crystal, shimmering with bubbles, it’s a “clean” beverage literally and figuratively. Its reputation is spotless as well: insulated against criticism by its glamour, blended to immunize against bad vintages, luxury-wrapped, and cross-marketed with fashion, romance, and celebrity. It does not rely on scores or notes like other wines. It is above them. It is unsullied.
Imagine my surprise, then, wandering through the vineyards of Champagne this summer, and turning up shocking amounts of… well, filth. Among the vines, I found a battery here and a pen cap there. Tinfoil, cardboard, cigarette butts, small shards of glass—all accompanied, invariably, by thousands of little shreds of blue plastic, the kind we use for recycling bags in the U.S. I found them in small artisans’ vineyards and larger-scaled plantings; it didn’t seem to matter. One vineyard after another was ridden with litter and blue confetti, as if someone had thrown a massive party and forgotten to vacuum. Were the vineyard workers so incredibly careless? Did they smoke on the job and flick butts on the ground, listen to music and toss dead batteries from their Walkmans? Naively, I brought a corroded Duracell AA over to one vigneron and wondered aloud at what I was seeing. “Oh, yes,” he responded casually. When he told me what it was, my jaw dropped.
It seems that until recently, the vineyards of Champagne were fertilized with garbage from Paris. Granted, fertilizing with refuse is not unusual. Before the advent of chemical substitutes, it was standard practice, both on commercial farms and in kitchen gardens. In fact, municipal composting on a grand scale is a concept those of us in the organic food and beverage movement would love to see make a comeback.
But this was not food scraps and lawn trimmings. It was garbage. Unsorted, inorganic, toxic trash. Facts are hard to come by, but it seems the Parisians sold their trash to Champagne as cheap fertilizer for years. The Champenois call it “les bleus de ville,” referring to the blue color of the bags it was shipped in—bags that eventually ended up in pieces all over the vineyards.
Allegedly, the practice is no longer continued. It was outlawed in 1998, when a wave of ecological reforms started washing over the French wine industry (including renewed interest in biodynamics). All the winemakers I spoke with confirmed they had not used garbage as fertilizer “in five or six years.” Still, in a Wine News article just last month by Susan Keevil, she describes the “ugly mounds filled with blue plastic rubbish sacks, used batteries, cigarette packets and other debris… possibly even heavy metal contamination” still noticeable in Champagne’s vineyards and predicts “the pollutants will certainly take some time to leach their way out of the ecosystem.” What I witnessed on my vineyard strolls in July backs her up.
So one worries. Can the vineyards of Champagne recover?
Sam Heitner at the Office of Champagne in Washington, D.C., claims they can—and in some cases already have. He believes the attitude toward the environment in Champagne has undergone a massive shift, in large part because the French are starting to realize their vineyards are a valuable natural resource. “Every time I go back, I see and hear about more estates going organic,” he told me in a phone interview last week. That movement has included a clean-up of existing pollutants, as well as the avoidance of new ones. “They’re coming to realize that Champagne is a very special terroir.”
Some change is coming from the producers themselves; some has had to be mandated from the top down. A February article by Rupert Joy in the British wine magazine Decanter reports that in 2001-2003, in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions throughout Champagne “…the CIVC (Comité Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne) carried out an extensive analysis of the environmental impact of Champagne production, from initial clearing of vineyard land through to bottling. A series of guides on reducing pesticides and other treatments, and managing waste and winery effluents were sent out to Champagne’s 15,000 producers.”
What the growers have chosen to do with that report has been voluntary thus far. But such research is clearly being driven by the European Union, which means legislation is likely coming soon, not just to Champagne but to many wine regions, on CO2, pollution, chemical fertilizers, and similar problems. One Champagne producer I spoke with is experimenting with growing cover crops like grass between his vine rows in anticipation of the coming laws. “It will be compulsory in five years anyway,” he shrugged. Better the grass he can control than the weeds he can’t.
To be realistic, it must be stated that Champagne will probably never be a bastion of organic viticulture. The vagaries of the weather and thinness of the topsoil there make vine-growing without some sort of human help impossible. Biodynamics is almost out of the question (although four or five intrepid producers are pursuing it with seeming success, so maybe I’m being a naysayer). Still, there are degrees of help and degrees of hurt. The elimination of a nasty process like composting with inorganic garbage is a decidedly helpful move. If the vignerons can find nontoxic, ecologically sustainable ways of replacing it as fertilizer, that is surely a large step toward healthier vineyards—and, most important, toward the production of better wines.
{While the conditions mentioned in this article are already familiar to many in the wine industry, newcomers to the organic wine world should be interested to learn about these previous practices and their lasting effects.}
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