Game of Thrones and Oceans of Wine
Posted on | March 26, 2012 | Written by Janice Cable | No Comments
I was in Italy for a lot of the first HBO series, so I missed it. I have been making up for the lost time. While I started reading the first book of the series in June, I didn’t finish it until February when I was felled by a particularly aggressive flu. Since then, I have finished that book, read the second, and am nearing the finish line with the third. The fourth is queued up on my iPad. And I have watched the series on DVD. Thus, I can say with full knowledge that there is a lot of wine in Game of Thrones. I would venture to say that there’s even more wine than blood, which is saying something.
Characters drink wine at celebrations, at dinners, around the campfire, on horseback, at breakfast. They drink it hot with spices, out of mugs, from wineskins, and from barrels. They drink sweet wine from Dorne, strong wine from Dorne, summerwine from Dorne, and claret from…somewhere. Apparently, Lys and Myr are also winemaking regions; Dorne, however, reigns supreme. Wine is the vehicle for assassination of characters, but folks also heat it up and pour it over wounds to clean them. So I guess it’s an ouroboros kind of relationship with wine. The wine giveth and the wine taketh away.
George R. R. Martin seems to have really taken his ventures into medieval scholarship to heart; he uses words and phrases that haven’t seen the light of day since well before Guttenberg got all fancy with his press. “Craven” and “wroth” are used a lot; so too are “destrier” and “courser.” Suffice to say that the stories center on a lot of knights, ladies, kings, dragons, wildmen and banners. Many, many banners and many, many families. I read and let the details wash, really, but a few have stuck, and one is the wine. I mean, kids drink it at breakfast; it’s difficult to lose details like that, even as ones like which family has the black and silver banner with the squid and the toad, and which has the pink and gold one with the flowers and the badger. Modern research suggests it was really beer that Iron Age folk drank. The books also champion mead and beer because you really can’t do faux medieval times without mead, but in these books, wine wears the iron crown.
So large is wine with Game of Thrones, and so large is Game of Thrones with its fanbase (despite its turgid D&D fanboy prose), that a couple of cookbooks have sprouted up (even Tom Colicchio has created recipes), both of which include recipes for mulled wine. Indeed, one fan website is entirely devoted to the foods detailed in the novels (the novels go for the food baroque–there are a lot of Lannister swan’s tongues, but there’s also a fair amount of roasted auroch, sausages and goat); you’ll find a bunch of recipes (some look really good) for food and a fair amount of wine-based recipes as well. Because you can’t do Game of Thrones without wine.
The next season of Game of Thrones begins on April 1 on HBO, which may mean it’s too warm for The Old Bear’s Hot Spiced Wine (this recipe is based on an actual medieval recipe). Perhaps I’ll find a friend and watch it with a Roger Sterling Manhattan instead. In the meantime, I’ll curl up with my iPad and let these wine-besotted tales wash over me.
Tags: Game of Thrones > medieval wine > science fiction and fantasy
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Playing “What’s That Note?” With Italian Varietals
Posted on | March 22, 2012 | Written by Will Di Nunzio | No Comments
Without a doubt, there is a connection between grape variety, wine varietal and aroma. You can always expect to find specific scents in specific wines based on their grapes 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 many experts have pointed out, taste is smell, so you’re not necessarily tasting; you might be 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 wine 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?
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Three Truths About Wine, Considered and Validated
Posted on | March 21, 2012 | Written by Francesco Vigorito | No Comments
Today on the Wine Spectator, Matt Kramer wrote a post called “The Three Truths of Wine,” and I read along finding myself agreeing wholly.
The first truth, Kramer says, is that “All Good Wines Can Age (But Not All Can Transform).” It’s a hard fact, but not all wines transform into something special. I once aged a bottle of Beaujolais nouveau for over three years and let me tell you it was awful. Yes, it aged and yes it transformed, but not into something special. Now, take a bottle of 1997 Flaccianello and let it age for 10+ years and you will have something special. Only about 10% of all wines in current production will be able to transform into greatness.
Truth #2, Kramer asserts is “All Good Wines Work Wonderfully With Any Food That Is Remotely Plausible for Them.” I agree with the truth that all great wines pair wonderfully with any food that makes sense for them. In other words it wouldn’t make sense to pair a Grand Cru White Burgundy with a 28-day-aged T-bone, but pair that with a Grand Cru red Burgundy and you will be in heaven. You do have to use a little common sense, but a great wine is definitely more flexible.
The last truth is a little more personal. Kramer says, “All Wine Drinkers Get in a “Taste Rut.” Having been in retail for over two years now, I have come to see many people ask for the same wines over and over again. Of course, when you find something you like, you should indulge, but it is also important to keep and open mind. The wine world is very expansive and there are many regions that produce fantastic wines that no one knows about. True wine lovers love wine because of the diversity that exists and the experiences that they instill.
Tags: palate fatigue > Three Truths About Wine > wine aging > wine pairings > wine ruts
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Go-to-Wine Tuesday
Posted on | March 20, 2012 | Written by Evan LaNouette | No Comments
The wine is Borgo dei Santi 2010 Pinot Grigio – Friuli Grave, and we are the only merchant in the USA that has this bottle. The classification tells me the grapes are sourced from the Udine region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and is likely a regional blend of Pinot Grigio from different vineyards. Knowing this, I was enthusiastic to learn more about the producer and their story, but found very little information available in our digital world. When I say little, I must correct myself. Rather, there is literally no information out there on the producer, a very strange occurrence considering our ever-expanding global market. After this discover I knew Sergio had found something very unique for us to experience, and I grabbed a bottle to taste at home this week.
My eager suspicions were gratified. This is a delicious Pinot Grigio–more Chablis than Loire, more flinty complexity than raw fruit; all of which was supported by nice ambient perfume and flowers. This wine delivers like very few can in the price point of $19.99, and it had a finish in the range of premier cru Chablis. Interestingly, the acidity was not sharp. For an elevated region, this is a sign of great forethought. The true sign of a wine having balanced acidity and tannins is you don’t need to drink water after you have the wine, and with Borgo dei Santi (English: “Village of Saints), it is nearly as refreshing as a glass water with a touch of lime. It does not bite whatsoever, but rather it glides its full-bodied aromatics across your palate, the sort of delicious, roll over the palate that everyone enjoys.
To say the least I was impressed. It’s great see something so mysterious and undiscovered in our cellar, and at the same time a wine any level of enthusiast or connoisseur should appreciate. Whether you’re coming in to grab something quick to drink with dinner, or put in the cellar for a party Borgo dei Santi 2010 Pinot Grigio – Friuli Grave is an option worth your consideration. Salute!
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A Tale of Two Winemakers
Posted on | March 19, 2012 | Written by Janice Cable | No Comments
Happy olive trees at Fontodi
This week, we’re running a special of six Tuscan wines. They’re all good wines (I’ve been lucky enough to drink them all), earthy, vibrant and real, wines that speak articulately of the place where they’re from, but I’m not writing here to sing the praises of those wines. I’m here to recollect two of their makers, and in doing so, to marvel a bit at the difference of the people who dedicate themselves to making wine.
This time last year I was traveling through Tuscany, visiting two, three or four vineyards in a day. It sounds very idyllic—and I suppose it really was—but as I was immersed in this driving slog, I was also doing everything I normally do as IWM’s marketing writer. I had one leg in Italy, one leg in New York, and I often felt pulled between the two places, especially when it came time to sleep. Therefore it’s not terribly surprising that a lot of the month of March in 2011 feels like a blur, almost Cezanne-like impressions of geography and meals and people and places and lots and lots of wine.
Pietro Baricci
Despite that impressionist blur some things have retained solidity, and two of them are visiting the Baricci family in Montalcino and the Fontodi estate in Chianti. The Baricci family is terribly humble, their winery incredibly small. They make only about 12,000 bottles a year, and their entire 2010 harvest was held in three shining stainless steel tanks the day I visited. Pietro Baricci, the father, is a gaunt man with a generous spirit. His family transitioned from sharecroppers to winemakers as post-WWII low-interest loans gave them the ability to move from “fame di fama”—or in English from hunger to fame, and so Pietro’s attitude of gratitude makes a lot of sense.
The Baricci estate in the rain
When I visited the Baricci estate, it was drizzling with a foul intensity. Rain dripped from the eaves and the trees, and the ground was sucking mud. It was cold, unpleasant, and depressing weather. It was hard to understand why anyone would want to be a farmer, which is essentially half of Pietro Baricci’s job description. But Pietro was warm and inviting, and rather than merely taste his wine in a sterile tasting room or snuggled around the botti, he invited Eleanor, my guide and translator, and me to the family’s dining room table, where we drank his rustic, umano Brunello with fennel sausage that his wife had made. Pietro apologized for not having roasted a cinghiale for us. He’d not had enough time to prepare, he said, and he felt bad.
Fontodi has a lot of stainless steel
If Baricci is small, humble and unprepossessing, an estate that is also home to hunting dogs and a chicken coop, Fontodi is large, gleaming and shiny. Everything about Fontodi is shiny. The weather was shiny. The olive trees gleamed. The stainless steel tanks shone. The man who showed us around the estate, Silvano, even has a shiny name. It’s a big, shiny, happy estate filled with busy, busy people doing what they need to do to make Fontodi’s really great wines.
Silvano, our guide at Fontodi
Where Baricci was a few tanks in a little building, Fontodi had a giant room filled with stainless steel. You walked around it on a little catwalk because the estate is built on the gravity principle to make wine more gently. The aging room is huge; barrels and barrels roll out before your eyes. When I was there, the estate hadn’t finished building the addition to its cellar, one that holds a giant tree at its center, growing in the living earth, a symbol for the estate.
Tuscan pansies bloom at Baricci
But as different as the two estates are and as divergent as their appearance, size and methods may be, it’s really clear that people are at the center of each. You can’t take the Baricci out of its wine; likewise, worktables all over Fontodi were covered with pictures of the workers’ families. “We are the terroir,” Silvano said placing his palm against his chest. So too are the Bariccis. And for those reasons, no matter the size of the estate or the number of bottles it makes, these two winemakers are related, under the skin.
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