November
1, 2007
A few weeks back we mentioned a review in The New
York Times of a little known Portuguese wine we carry. Eric Asimov’s opinion carries a lot of weight
and many of you came into the store to try out the $8.99 bargain called Padre
Pedro.
Well guess what? This week the same writer in the
same newspaper published a piece entirely on the red wines of the Douro region
of
Rather than simply copy and paste the information
from The New York Times article (which you should read for yourself, and check
out the tasty sounding recipe too!) I have re-purposed some of my own previous
notes on these wines to give you a little more perspective on these delicious
and interesting wines (many thanks to Eric Asimov for doing my job this week in
addition to his own).
Vinha da Palestra 2003 $11.99 The “best value” candidate from
The New York Times article is this wine. We featured it in our wine club
earlier in the year (wine club members are ahead of the curve yet again). This
is a young Portuguese wine from D.O.C. Douro composed of roughly equal parts Touriga
Franca, Tinta Barroca and Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo by another
name) that offers a gentle glimpse at the powerful
The Times
reviewed the 2003 vintage which was the final year for this wine. Going forward,
Sogrape has rebranded the wine as Callabriga and it is now produced in a
Quinta dos Quatro Ventos Reserva
2003 $22.99 This
reserva level Douro red , composed of a blend of Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz and
Touriga Nacional sees 14 months of barrel age in a combination of French
and American oak. Dark garnet color with concentrated berry aromas and flavors
augmented by spicy tannins and earthy foundation.
Vertente
2004 $27.99 In
the Douro valley in
Casa
de Casal de Loivos 2003 $35.99 Looking for a well
priced, small production wine from the Douro region in
2004 Quinta Vale D. Maria $43.99 Cristiano Van
Zeller is a pioneering winemaker in the Douro Valley .He was the former
enologist and owner of the famous Quinta Do Noval Estate, best known for the
production of Port wine. Starting in 1996, he began to produce table wine as
well in small quantities. This wine is made from a long list of typical
Portuguese grape varietal including but not limited to Rufete, Touriga Nacional and
Tinta Amarilla. 21 months of barrel age lend tannic complexity to this
elegant, concentrated red wine.
2002 Pintas $43.99 Jorge Borges and Sandra Tavares
da Silva are the husband and wife team behind Pintas. Jorge has close ties with
Dirk Niepoort (See Vertente above) and Sandra has worked for many years with
Cristiano Van Zeller (see Vale D.Maria above). This well connected couple now
makes their own wine (in miniscule quantities) called Pintas. Dozens of
regional grape varieties, many of them from old vines combine to create this
opulent, balanced wine that features the combination of poise and power that
typify the best of the
November
8, 2007
Yes, my friends, it is that time of year again. The
eating season is fast approaching, so it’s time to start thinking about big
family meals, gift giving and general holiday merrymaking. Thanksgiving is just two weeks away, with the
rest of the annual end of year festivities following close behind.
At this time of year visiting family, friends and
business associates all demand more than just your time and attention. They
also want to be fed, and alongside something tasty to eat they will want a
refreshing glass of something festive with which to toast your
hospitality. With this scenario in mind
I offer you version 1.0 of our holiday wine buying guide. As the season
progresses we will offer updates and new suggestions, always with the aim of
supplying you with the best wines for whatever holiday plans you may have.
This week we focus on some basic requirements for
the season; sparkling Cava and top shelf reds.
Cava is such a welcome and well priced wine that I
feel it would be a disservice to you if I do not suggest that you pick up a
mixed case of this Spanish bubbly to have on hand for organized as well as
impromptu holiday get togethers. The prices are right and the wines go with
just about anything.
Also popular at this time of year are rich red
wines from top notch producers. Few gifts are as welcome as a great bottle of
excellent red wine and bosses, clients, coworkers, friends and family members
will well remember your thoughtful generosity long after the bottle is empty.
And, if you work it right, you may even get to share in the joy of consuming
these critically acclaimed celebrity wines (I suggest showing up for dinner
with the wine in hand).
Meanwhile, here is a little recipe from my new
favorite cookbook to get you warmed up for even more fun in the kitchen as the
season progresses.
Calabaza
Rehogada-Fried Pumpkin (adapted from 1080 Recipes by Simone & Inés
Ortega)
Serves 6
as a side dish
3 medium
sized leeks
3 lb.
pumpkin or butternut squash
1 cup
extra virgin olive oil
3-4
slices of bread
3
cloves garlic
Salt
Cut
leeks into 1 inch pieces and rinse well to remove sand. Peel and deseed pumpkin
and cut in 1 inch cubes. Tear bread into 1/2 inch pieces. Cut garlic cloves in
half. Simmer pumpkin in salted water until tender. Heat oil in large cazuela
and fry bread until golden brown. Remove bread from oil and drain. Pour off all
but a few tablespoons of oils and reheat cazuela. Add garlic and fry until
brown (but not burnt). Remove garlic from oil and discard. Add leeks, pumpkin
and fried bread to cazuela and cook over medium heat stirring often until leeks
have softened and pumpkin starts to brown. Remove cazuela from heat, adjust
salt and serve.
Cava:
1+1=3 Brut $14.99 A traditional blend of Parellada, Macabeo and Xarel-lo grapes creates a crisp
sparkling wine with yeasty aroma and bright citrus fruit character. This wine
with a funny name is a bit richer in fruit than some (though still a dry wine)
which makes it particularly well suited to serving with food.
Montsarra Brut $15.99 You may be familiar with this
wine as served by the glass since it has long been a favorite of local
restaurant and bar owners (they know quality when they taste it). This
traditional Cava offers rich, leesy complexity at a very reasonable price.
Assertive bubbles, toasty aroma and bright acidity are what you want in a top
notch Cava and this one has them all in abundance.
Big Reds:
Alto Moncayo 2005 $43.00 Garnacha is the most widely planted red grape in Spain but you
won’t find many as good as what Alto Moncayo makes in D.O. Campo de Borja just
south of Rioja. Deep ruby color, extracted aromas of ripe berries and a bright,
spicy character that is a perfect match for red meat. Parker gave the 2004 a 94 point score, but
has not yet reviewed the new vintage. Tanzer gave the 2005 a 92(+?) point
score. Her at The Spanish Table we don’t
do point scores, but we do rate this one as muy
tasty.
Alion 2003 $75.00 Vega Sicilia Unico is THE iconic
Spanish wine from D.O. Ribera del Duero, but with the current 1996 vintage
clocking in at $387.00 many of us will never try it. On the other hand, Vega
Sicilia also makes Alion, and the new 2003 vintage of this wine is stunning.
It’s rich. It’s earthy, it’s complex and powerful and balanced. Parker gave this wine 94 points and Tanzer
gave it 91. You can decide for yourself since we just got the wine last
week. It’s waiting for you.
Termanthia
2005 $195.00 This has to be one of the biggest of the big reds
of the season. The 2004 vintage received a perfect 100point score from The Wine
Advocate, a publication known for its appreciation of big red wines. The 2005
has just been released and, due to high demand, we got just a precious few
bottles for our modest little store. Think single small parcel of 100-150 year
old ungrafted Tinto de Toro,
miniscule yields, extensive barrel age (20 months) in new oak and you start to
understand what’s going on here. The 2005 vintage produced just over 4000
bottles of this wine, so demand will be high and quantities will be scarce. Act
now if you want some.
November
15, 2007
We are very excited to announce the arrival, just
in time for Thanksgiving, of some spectacular new wines from the tiny Ribeira
Sacra region in northwestern
De Maison Selections, the same intrepid importers
who bring in many of our favorite Basque Txakoli wines, have been very
successful at finding lesser known Spanish regions that produce unique and
delicious wines. Andre Tamers, the President of De Maison Selections has this
to say about their newest project.
“One of the most stunning landscapes in
D.
Working
these lands is extremely difficult as the terraces in some areas are so steep
that all the grapes have to be brought in on a hoist.
In
addition to an organic approach to farming, winemaking has also changed. Only
indigenous yeast is used to start fermentation. None of the wines are filtered
or cold stabilized. Lastly, the maturation of the grapes is watched carefully
to insure that the grapes are fully mature when harvested.
There
are currently three vineyard sites. Two border the River Sil and one borders
the
I am particularly happy to receive these wines
right now because they are, I feel, particularly appropriate for Thanksgiving.
These are medium bodied wines with no oaky overtones to mask the vibrant fruit
character and the fine minerality of these low alcohol (12.5%, also a good
thing this time of year!) wines. Any of them would be a perfect match with turkey,
dressing and the rest of a traditional Thanksgiving meal.
Additionally, we also have some white, rosado and sparkling wines that have
been well received in past years and are back again to add a bit of lively
Spanish character to your Thanksgiving table.
Avinyo
Vi D’Agulla 2006 $12.99 This lightly effervescent white wine made from Petit Grain Muscat is floral and
aromatic like a Moscatel, but only
gently sweet. The light bubbles lift the scent and give the wine a lively,
fresh character. The prickly effervescence is what gives the wine its name.
Serve Vi D’Agulla as a welcoming cocktail to your dinner guests and watch the
smiles spread with each sip.
Reymos
Espumoso de Moscatel $11.99 Sweet sparkling wine from D.O.
Valencia. Rich Muscat grape scent, honeydew
melon fruit character and light but persistent bubbles. A mere 7.5% alcohol
makes this the perfect end-of-meal wine. Serve alongside a slice of your
favorite pumpkin pie.
Valduero
Rosado 2006 $14.99 If you can’t choose between serving red or white, here
is your solution. This unique rosado is
made in the Ribera del Duero region from
Tempranillo grapes. This dark, spicy rosado
will compliment rich, sauced dishes such as salmon in a pastry crust or turkey
and gravy.
Odysseus
Rosado 2006 $23.99 Composed primarily of the same Garnacha grapes that go into the
Odysseus Tinto, plus smaller amounts of Cabernet
Sauvignon, Cariñena and Touriga
Nacional (a traditional Portuguese variety), the 2006 is the darkest and
ripest Odysseus Rosado so far. Fresh berry fruit character is rich and
mouth-filling, balanced by moderate acidity. Not a light back porch rosado,
this wine calls out for candied yams, cranberry sauce and creamed pearl onions.
D.
D.
D.
November
29, 2007
This week finds us in a brief lull, an intermission
if you will, in the holiday frenzy.
With Thanksgiving all finished except for the
leftovers, everyone takes a quick breather before heading into the whirlwind of
holiday office parties, extravagant meals, traveling to see family and/or
having family travel to see (and stay) with you. In this brief in-between period (just barely a
week) I want to share some newly arrived wines with you that will ease you into
the rest of the holiday season in style, as well as leaving you with plenty of funds
for gifts, decorations and other seasonal accoutrements.
Here in the Berkeley store we have been having fun
trying out the recipes in the classic Spanish cookbook 1080 Recetas de Cocina by Simone and Inès Ortega, newly translated
into English and available now in a big hardbound edition for $39.95. Last
night while out at Bar César for an after dinner drink, I saw that Chef Maggie
Ponds is also celebrating the arrival of this most popular of Spanish cookbooks
by including one dish from the book in her ever changing menu. Her version of Dried
Plums Stuffed with Blue Cheese and Pine Nuts was a deceptively simple small plate
with five bite sized mouthfuls of the most explosive flavor imaginable. I had
to look it up in the book so I could try and recreate this knock-you-back-in-your-chair
appetizer. It is really quite simple but the combination of ingredients is a
complex and vivid mixture of flavors, aromas and textures.
Prunes
stuffed with Valdeón cheese and pine nuts.
(adapted
from 1080 Recipes by Simone and Inès
Ortega)
Serves
4
¼ lb.
Valdeón cheese (or other aged blue cheese)
12 pine
nuts
12
raisins
1
tablespoon sweet Moscatel wine
¼ cup
cream
12
pitted prunes
In a
mixing bowl, mash blue cheese with a fork and mix with cream and sweet sherry.
Roughly chop pine nuts and raisins and add to cheese mixture. Stir to combine
everything. Fill each prune with a small spoonful of the cheese mixture and
seal with a toothpick. Allow 45 minutes for the flavors to blend before serving
alongside small glasses of the same wine used in the recipe.
Siete
2005 $12.99 A blend of 80% Garnacha and
20% Tempranillo made in the historic
wine town of
Navarro
Lopez Old Vines Crianza $13.99 In the Valdepeñas region of
southern Spain (a region with many centuries of wine making tradition) Bodegas
Navarro Lopez crafts a range of wines from the local Cencibel (Tempranillo by
another name) grape. This wine is made from old vine fruit and aged for 6
months in oak (mostly American) before bottling. Bright fruit character and
toasty oak mix to create a lively red wine that will compliment meals based on
traditional Spanish flavors
Navarro
Lopez Old Vines Reserva $18.99 The Reserva version of this
traditional red wine from the Valdepeñas region in southern
Familigia
Bianchi Malbec 2006 $15.99 Three successive generations of the
Bianchi family have been making wine in the
Elsa
Malbec 2006 $9.99 Bodegas Valentín Bianchi, one of the oldest
wineries in
Casta
Diva Cosecha Miel 2006 $28.99 It’s the time of year when a
little late harvest sweet wine is particularly appealing. The new vintage of
the celebrated Casta Diva is a lush Moscatel from the
Ochoa
Moscatel 2006 $23.99 In the Navarra region of