Sunday, January 23, 2011

What’s your inner grape?

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We all know wine grapes has its own unique personality and blueprint even with clusters grown side by side.  You can think of them as you would your family; father, mother, sisters, brothers, and cousins….all different…personality wise.  With this in mind I got to thinking about my own grape personality and style.  What grape matches me?  I think of myself as someone with quiet power, not forthcoming but having a knowing that I can shape events and impact change for a better understanding of our wine world.  Beneath this quiet strength is an elegance that has developed over time.  There’s no tooting involved here, I just know who I am.   With this in mind my personality matches with the Riesling grape….somewhat temperamental, flourishing when conditions are right, elegant in style and form, and gets better with time.  What’s your inner grape?  I have very good friends around me, one in particular that has been a friend since 1st grade.  She’s outwardly strong and totally supportive.  I see her inner grape as Petit Verdot, a strong backend support for the Bordeaux wine.  Sometimes it’s needed to bind and hold everything together and sometimes its not, nonetheless, always has your back.  More resent friendships include a Chenin Blanc, sweet as can be, multi-faceted, versatile, sometimes complex, and discovering who she is as time goes on.  I have a Chardonnay in my life….steadfast, predictable, and reliable.  My husband is a Nebbiolo strong and forthright when needed, and strong and subdued when needed.   We all have a matching inner grape….what’s yours?   The answer may require tasting many bottles of wine………oh well!

enjoy

Monday, January 17, 2011

Sangiovese

sangiovese grapes

With all of the excitement about Bordeaux wines each year, other prominent wine regions with expressive terroir get overshadowed.  I was reminded of this as I sipped a glass of Sangiovese wine last evening.  Italy, as a whole, is a wine region with appellations throughout that produce very distinctive fruit filled wines.  The Sangiovese I drank was generic but if I wanted to go deeper within the appellation I could have chosen a Chianti or Chianti Classico or a wine with more depth, a Chianti Classico Reserva.  All of these Sangiovese based wines are cherry laddend in flavor, but as you get more specific with terroir  the cherry becomes deep wild cherry or black cherry in flavor, surrounded with layers of tar, earth, and sometimes green pepper; each appellation offering a different expression of the Sangiovese grape.  Sangiovese to the 10th power would have to be Brunello di Montalcino.  I buy this as a splurge and take it into the closet with me.  Yes, this is an act of hording and non-sharing but I love to privately savor its layers of complexity.  Each sip brings a new awareness and insight into what the effects of land can do.  You know, the wine grape may just be the only food that takes on the characteristics of its land.  An orange is just an orange, a green apple is just a green apple…but a wine grape grown on different plots of land is as different as a fingerprint.  That’s what wine is all about.   One of my favorite Italian wine producers is Ruffino.  Ruffino anything will be good.  Also, here’s an Italian wine site I found so that you can learn more about the country, the food, and of, course the wine http://www.italianmade.com/wines/home.cfm

enjoy

Monday, January 10, 2011

French Country Comfort

DSCN1347 Our current snow storm has provided me the opportunity catch up on some wine reading (I’ve started reading The Great Vintage Wine Book by Michael Broadbent) and because I participated in the food shopping frenzy with the rest of the South, on Saturday and Sunday, I have plenty of delicious dishes to make.  Thus far, for breakfast, I’ve made homemade waffles with maple sausage and French baked eggs.  For lunch I made an assortment of Panini's with various cheeses; cheddar, gruyere, goat, and Swiss.  The Panini’s went well with my husbands creamy tomato bisque soup.  For a late dinner (go Auburn!) I’m making Fricassee of Chicken with Chorizo and Peppers paired with a Cotes du Rhone.  This recipe courtesy of Patricia Wells of “The Provence Cookbook” fame.  And as my icicled boys comes inside after hours of sledding, I have mugs of warm homemade hot chocolate waiting for them.  Yes, my family’s snowy day is filled with lots of comfort food, and judging from the weather the comfort will continued for the next few days because the snow and ice is expected to continue for that much longer.  Oh well!  Isn’t life great?

enjoy