Mouthing Off

Had a fun time today, as usual, on the Today Show with Kathie Lee & Hoda. This time around the subject was wines to pair with takeout food, part of my secret plan (actually not so secret, given I'm blogging about it) to convince the world that wine (a) doesn't have to be fancy/elegant/effete and (b) that it goes with almost everything. You can see the segment here, but to give a quick rundown:

1) Unoaked Chardonnay with Sushi: 2008 Spring Seed Wine Co. Chardonnay ($15 or so, find this wine). My experience is that oaky whites don't do well at all with raw fish (or with shellfish, for that matter) but unoaked ones do. I could have used a Sauvignon Blanc, but from experience I know that Kathie Lee is not a fan—to say the least—of Sauvignon Blanc, so I opted for this tasty Australian Chardonnay. 

2) Gewurztraminer with Kung Pao Chicken: 2007 Hugel & Fils Gewurztraminer ($22 or so, find this wine). The oil and heat of some Chinese dishes can make them tough to pair; I find that Alsace Gewurz's substantial body and spicebox character works pretty well, especially drier versions like Hugel's. For even hotter dishes I'd turn up the sweetness on the wine, maybe to something in a Zind-Humbrecht style.

3) Champagne with French Fries: NV Henriot Blanc Souverain ($42 or so, find this wine). Basically, if it's salty and fried, Champagne is a good bet. And what's more fun that eating French fries and drinking Champagne? Only eating French fries and drinking Champagne while lounging in a bed in a stupidly expensive hotel room with a fantastic view of Paris.

4) Chianti with Pizza: 2007 Antinori Pèppoli ($22 or so, find this wine). Well, Chianti and pizza, right? But there's legitimacy to this beyond the sort of no-brainer cultural connection, which is that with something cheesy and oily (yep) like pizza really needs a red with firm tannins and a nice cut of acidity—which Chianti supplies quite well.

5) Pinot Noir with Tacos: 2008 La Crema Monterey ($19 or so, find this wine). I owe my sommelier pal William Sherer for this one. The reason it works so well is that Pinot's bright fruit can hold up to all-over-the-place flavors in something like a taco; but also, when you've got hot peppers/jalapeños/hot sauce, what you don't want is a particularly tannic red—tannins tend to amplify heat, rather than subdue it. Though, if you're one of those lunatics who likes chewing up scotch bonnets for fun, hey, pour a Barolo with your Mad Dog 357-smothered wings and go to town. 

I think the advent of September, and, thankfully, a breath or two of cool breeze in NYC, has gotten me thinking about Champagne. (Of course, simply waking up in the morning can make me think about Champagne.) In any case, lately when I think about Champagne, I tend to think about Peter Liem's extraordinarily informative website, champagneguide.net. It is the most in-depth compendium of Champagne info that I've ever run into, largely thanks to the fact that Liem knows more about the history, character, vineyards, soils, terroirs, and producers of this region than anyone else I can think of (save perhaps Tom Stevenson). Membership isn't cheap—$89 a year for a subscription—but when you consider that that's about the price of a single bottle of Bollinger Rosé, it starts to seem more and more like a wise investment.

You can get a free sample of the site's content here. If you have a Champagne lover you're thinking of holiday gifts for, a membership wouldn't be a bad idea at all. And while you're at it, you might check out Liem's entertaining and informative blog, Besotted Ramblings, as well.

I had a good time appearing on Today this morning, recommending wines for their "Made in America" Friday whip segment. (On the whip they run through four or so variations on a topic in a speedy way.) In this case "made in America" meant not made in California—which was a great chance to highlight some of the other great wine regions in the country. I brought along:

• The NV Domaine Ste. Michelle Blanc de Blancs ($12), a nice, creamy and fairly full-bodied sparkler from Washington State

• The 2008 A to Z Wineworks Rosé ($12), a fragrant dry rosé from Oregon made with (oddly enough) Sangiovese grapes

• A terrific, crisp, Kabinett-style Riesling from the Finger Lakes, the 2007 Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyard Dry Riesling ($17), which will also age beautifully if given the chance

• And one of my favorite Texan wines, the 2006 Flat Creek Estate SuperTexan ($19), a juicy, robust Sangiovese blend that I first ran into while touring around the Hill Country with my father, doing some barbecue research.

Plus, I got to see Al Roker sing part of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" from on top of a crane, which was definitely the sort of experience you don't get every day.

There's a remarkable article in today's Daily Mail, which I got to by way of my restaurant-critic pal Alison Cook at the Houston Chronicle, that somehow finds a charming note amidst all the horrorshow of the attacks in Mumbai (follow this link to Suketu Mehta's superb op-ed piece in the NY Times). The story involves a very lucky British fellow named Nick Hayward, five hours locked in a restaurant in the Taj Mahal hotel, some vintage Cristal, and a perfectly amazing headwaiter. And that's all I'll tell you, since anything else would wipe out the perfectly wonderful ending of the story.

But I will recommend a few Champagnes for the holiday season while I'm at it. These five are all grower Champagnes; I do intend, before the end of the month, to weigh in on a selection of more widely available brut Champagnes from the major houses—though we all know the road that's paved with good intentions (or with unbought stuffed dogs, if you're a Hemingway buff).

Without further ado:

Pierre Peters Cuvée Reserve Blanc de Blancs NV ($34, find this wine) Tree fruits such as white peach and pear define the scent of this lively, graceful Blanc de Blancs, made by a family who moved to Champagne from Luxembourg in the 1800s. Very graceful, svelte stuff.

Larmandier-Bernier Blanc de Blancs Brut ($45, find this wine) This all-Chardonnay cuvee has rapier-like acidity and focus, partly thanks to a very low dosage (the small amount of sweetened wine added after a Champagne’s second fermentation). It’s produced entirely organically by husband-and-wife team Pierre and Sophie Larmandier (who also just ran the New York Marathon together).

René Geoffroy Rosé de Saignée Brut NV ($50, find this wine) Luscious rosé Champagne,  produced using the traditional (and time-consuming) saignée method, in which the winemaker bleeds off the pink wine from the tank of fermenting Pinot Noir grapes.

Roger Pouillon La Fleur de Mareuil NV ($60, find this wine) Equal parts Pinot Noir and Chardonnay go into this complex, slightly honeyed, barrel-fermented Champagne, from a small, family-owned estate in the village of Mareuil sur Aÿ. I thought this wine was just wonderful when I tasted it earlier this fall—unfortunately, it's not exactly easy to track down.

Vilmart & Cie Grand Cellier Brut NV ($80, find this wine) Vilmart's full-bodied, powerful Champagnes are exquisitely creamy and rich, with a light oak barrel influence that’s unusual in Champagne, but characteristic of Vilmart.
 

Sometimes a wine is so good that you immediately have to get on a plane and fly to Italy for five days just to calm down, which is apparently what happened to me after I went to the Champagne Jacques Selosse dinner at 11 Madison Park about a week and a half ago. Now that the synapses are back in working order, here are a couple of observations.

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I had lunch yesterday with Ghislaine de Montgolfier, the somewhat impish but very elegant chairman of Bollinger, which has just released its first non-vintage rosé Champagne. Madame Lily Bollinger is of course responsible for the classic Champagne statement, "I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and I drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it— unless I'm thirsty." She also said, according to M. de Montgolfier, that rosé Champagne was the wine of the bordello, so Bollinger wasn't going to make any.

Well, things change. I don't know if they still serve rosé Champagne in bordellos, but Bollinger decided about six years ago that they would make some non-vintage pink bubbles. "Part of the problem," de Montgolfier said, "is that you need great red wine. The red wine makes the rosé. We have very low yields for our red, and use Burgundian techniques." Bollinger also, as the few and the lucky have experienced, makes a stunning red coteaux Champenois from vineyard in Aÿ, La Côte aux Enfants. I had it once, several years back; my memory is that it had Pommard-like muscularity, which surprised me. In other words, they've got no problems on the red wine front.

Anyway, the Bollinger NV Rosé Brut ($100) is very Bollinger—substantial generosity backed up with the spine to carry it off. The scent recalls wild strawberries and flowers; it's not a savory Champagne, more fruit driven, but the flavors are very pure. I liked it just fine, but it was overshadowed by the Bollinger 1999 La Grande Année ($115) that we also drank. Creamy and dense, with layers of flavor (sweet dough, apple, tangerine, spice, yeasty notes), this was simply stunning Champagne. So as much as the rosé is fun, I'd happily drop the additional bucks and drink the Grande Année. If I had the bucks in the first place, that is. Oh well!