Mouthing Off

Anfora, the new wine bar from the team behind Manhattan’s L’Artusi and Dell’anima restaurants, has become my new favorite place for stepping out of my wine comfort zone and experimenting with more esoteric, edgy bottles. Sunday night, sommelier Joe Campanale hosted a casual tasting with Frank Cornelissen, a pioneering natural winemaker from Mount Etna, Sicily. “Mount Etna is one of the most interesting places right now for winemaking,” says Campanale. “There’s a lot of terroir-specific wine and a lot of very natural wine, which I get excited about. Wine should taste of a place.” Cornelissen was hesitant to label his wines as natural and instead referred to them as “territorial” wines.

I gravitated toward the MunJebel Rosso, made with Nerello Mascalese grapes from various vineyards and various years. Equally fascinating, though a bit too edgy for my palate, was Cornelissen’s Rosso del Contadino, a blend of local grapes—both red and white—from different vineyards.

Cornelissen’s MunJebel Bianco, a blend of Carricante, Grecanico Dorate and Coda di Volpe, looked and tasted more like a craft beer. Cloudy and golden and served at room temperature, it was pure funky-ness. This was Campanale’s favorite. “It has the smokiness from the volcanic soil and an umami quality to it,” he says.

For a taste, head to one of Campanale's restaurants or wine bar.

This weekend I had a chance to eat, drink and see some phenomenal bands rock out in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park at the third annual Outside Lands music festival. Here, some highlights:

* Sampling insanely good food from the 34 stalls. Maverick went through 750 pounds of pig for its pulled-pork sandwiches! Other favorites included the barbecued oysters from Anchor & Hope and vermicelli noodles from Out the Door. Patrick Hallahan of the band My Morning Jacket was a fan of Namu’s Korean tacos.

* Cruising the Wine Lands tent with Outside Lands producer Rick Farman and Vintage Berkeley wine-shop owner Peter Eastlake, the wine director of Wine Lands. Eastlake lined up 25 top California wineries this year. There were 75 wines available by the taste or glass; my favorites included 2009 Wind Gap Trousseau Gris, 2008 A.P. Vin Kanzler Pinot Noir and 2008 Manifesto! Cabernet Sauvignon. (Kings of Leon were drinking Sinskey and Copain wines backstage.)

* Hanging with winemaker Jamey Whetstone (read more about him in the October issue of F&W). He was offering wines from his Whetstone and Manifesto! labels in Wine Lands, though he did manage to sneak away to see Social Distortion play.

* Watching Gogol Bordello while eating Hawaiian poke and Baja-shrimp ceviche from Pacific Catch restaurant.

* Checking out the on-site farmers’ market next to the stage where the Rebirth Brass Band performed.

* Going backstage after the Kings of Leon show for the late-night after-party, which included spiked hot chocolate and massive oatmeal-raisin cookies.

 

Last week I had a chance to talk to with Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill. The band is headlining the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco next weekend. In addition to a supertalented lineup of musicians, this year’s festival has an equally talented lineup of chefs and winemakers. I asked Followill if he was worried about the extra competition. If anything, he was more worried about how he’d be able to fit in all of the eating and drinking between sets. Here, his response:

“My wife and I are such foodies and winos. We were looking at the lineup of all of the bands, getting excited, thinking about who we were all going to see. At the same time she was also picking out different wineries and chefs and food people that are going to have setups that we wanted to check out.

I enjoy food and wine as much as I do music and I think they all share a lot of similarities. And, you know, hopefully this is the start of something great and long lasting and we can all get fat and drunk together while we’re listening to good tunes.

It’s going to be tough for us to balance the music and the food and the wine. But I promise you I will definitely have purple teeth by the time we take the stage on Sunday night.”
 

Chefs and winemakers are truly having their rock-star moments this summer as some of the country’s biggest music festivals have added stellar food, wine and beer lineups to complement the concerts’ real rock-star performers.

Earlier this year, winemaker Karl Wente of Wente Vineyards was cruising the shows at Austin’s South by Southwest festival in his Discover the Wine Discover the Music bus, pairing wines with emerging artists playing at the festival.

In June at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, not only was there a craft beer tent with 20 different microbreweries like Magic Hat, Asheville, Blue Grass and Ommegang, but beer sommelier Samuel Merritt of Civilization of Beer was running classes like beer history.

Chicago’s music-obsessed chef Graham Elliot has taken on the roll of culinary director for this weekend’s Lollapalooza concert. Here's a list of the killer local restaurants he’s gotten onboard to create food for the festival.

And the most ambitious of all might just be the upcoming Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco, which will have an entire wine tent, dubbed Wine Lands. The festival’s wine director, Peter Eastlake of Vintage Berkeley, has lined up some of Napa and Sonoma’s best wineries, including Robert Sinskey, Bonny Doon and Long Meadow Ranch. The food lineup, which will include dishes from Bay Area favorites like Maverick (they will be serving their barbecue pulled pork sandwich), was announced even before the music lineup. Are the musicians worried the chefs and winemakers are going to steal the show? I posed the question to Nathan Followill, drummer of the festival’s headlining band, the Kings of Leon. Check back tomorrow to see his response.

For now, check out some of F&W's favorite playlists:

For a small dinner party
For a birthday party
For a cocktail party
For a summer grilling party
 

The hottest scene in the Hamptons this weekend was Wölffer Estate winery in Bridgehampton, New York, where the temperatures were blazing for the James Beard Foundation’s annual Chefs & Champagne benefit. Temperatures hovered around the mid-90s beneath an enormous white tent where nearly 1,000 people showed up to drink great Champagne from houses like Lanson and La Caravelle and eat irresistible food from more than 30 star chefs, including Bill Telepan, Marcus Samuelsson, Michel Nischan and Todd English. Standout dishes included mini lobster rolls from Marc Murphy of Ditch Plains, garlicky shrimp alhinho with smoked pimentón from George Mendes  of Aldea and corn velouté with crab beignets from Gavin Kaysen of Café Boulud. Guest of honor Martha Stewart was a fan of Pierre Schaedelin’s tomato gazpacho.
 

I recently attended the WTF?! Tasting at Brooklyn Wine Exchange, hosted by a company called WineChap, which is known for its quirky, entertaining events like the astrology-themed Wines for Signs. We tasted six “boundary-pushing” wines, each breaking the mold of conventional winemaking in its own way.

NV Domaine Mosse Moussamoussettes Pétillant ($23) An unfiltered sparkler with no yeast or sugar added.
2008 Red Hook Winery The Electric ($45) The soul of a late-harvest Riesling in the body of a Chardonnay.
2002 Gravner Ribolla Gialla Anfora ($90) An “orange” wine fermented in underground clay amphorae.
2008 Domaine le Briseau Patapon ($28) Made from the rare Pineau d’Aunis grape, put through even rarer semi-carbonic maceration.
NV Pechigo Rouge ($22) An uncommon red blend from biodynamic winemaker Sylvain Saux.
2000 Domaine de Montbourgeau L’Etoile Vin Jaune ($71) An oxidized wine from the Jura, with fino sherry–like flavors.

The tasting booklet’s overall rating for each wine involved choosing its WTF?! Factor— illustrated with one to five unicorns—and came with photos depicting each wine’s wacky aspect (like a centaur for the unlikely blend in The Electric). You might love them or hate them, but you’ll never say they’re ordinary. One sip and you might blurt out…WTF?! 

It’s hard to think of a better chef-sommelier team than Eric Ripert and Aldo Sohm, the star cook and wine director, respectively, of NYC’s outstanding restaurant Le Bernardin. They can be very funny (they certainly were when Frank Bruni, with help from Ripert, punked Sohm for an F&W story, "World’s Best Sommelier vs. World’s Worst Customer"). But the two are never less than genius, and so they are in the just-launched Avec Eric: Perfect Pairings web videos. In the short, sweet videos, Ripert challenges Sohm to do things like pick a wine that goes with all the crazy flavors on a charcuterie plate (next week you'll see Sohm rise to that challenge, choosing a light but powerful 2006 Bai Gorri Crianza red).

The videos, a follow up to their popular Get Toasted series (love that name), also preview the Avec Eric: Perfect Pairings wine club inspired by Ripert’s PBS series Avec Eric. Of course, members get a couple bottles of wine a month (Sohm’s picks might include 2007 Pinot Noir Flowers Sonoma Coast, plus his tasting notes.) They also get Ripert’s excellent recipes paired to those wines and web videos that explain that (perfect) pairing. You can drink those wines while watching the Perfect Pairings series and/or while you watch Ripert be a phenomenal judge on Top Chef Season 7 in DC.

It's grilling season, and consequently I'll be appearing on Weekend Today tomorrow morning—Saturday—in the eight o'clock hour with some affordable wine recommendations for everything grilled. Malbec with burgers, albariño with grilled fish, zin with ribs, and one of my favorite dry rosés that I've tried recently—the 2009 Mulderbosch Rosé ($11), from South Africa—with grilled chicken breasts. If I don't run out of time (always a risk, since three and a half minutes goes fast), I'll wrap it up with a tangerine-and-peachy, lightly sparkling, lightly sweet 2008 Michele Chiarlo Moscato d'Asti ($14) to serve with grilled peaches. Should be fun, so tune in.

 

Manhattanites can live out their Napa Valley fantasies at the hip City Winery. Starting in September, Brooklynites will be able to make their own wine, too—all without crossing the East River. Brian Leventhal, Conor McCormack (the winemaker from San Francisco’s Crushpad and John Stires are opening Brooklyn Winery, an 8,500-square-foot urban winery in Williamsburg. Wannabe-winemakers can go through every step of the winemaking process, from stomping the grapes to bottling their wine with custom-designed labels in five sessions that can span eight months or longer.

Prices range from $3,550 for 150 bottles (a half-barrel) to $5,700 for 300 bottles (a full barrel). Those interested can already start signing up to make custom or community barrels here. A wine bar selling wine, beer and small plates will open at year’s end.

How many highlights do I have from this year’s Classic? A million. They won’t all fit here. But there were a few brand-new experiences that I hope become key to all Classics.

Private Bombardier Jet to Aspen
All I’ll say is that if you want to make the flight to Aspen one of your highlights, this is how to do it. See if Tom Colicchio, Dave Chang, Morimoto, Jacques Pépin, Joe Bastianich, Drew Nieporent  and Momofuku Milk Bar’s Christina Tosi can come, too. And make sure you’re open to drinking some Dom Pérignon.

Jean-Louis Chave Tasting
The legendary Rhône winemaker came to Aspen for the first time. And he brought his 2000 Hermitage Blanc and 2004 Hermitage Rouge with him (plus several other outstanding vintages). It was so extraordinary that Best New Chef 2010 Jonathon Sawyer had to be there—even though his BNC dinner was just two hours away.

Mario Batali’s Best of Ligurian Cooking/Charity Demo
So, Mario’s demos are always the best. But this year, he closed it out with an unprecedented double fund-raising event. KitchenAid auctioned off Batali-signed mixers in part for their Cook for the Cure (which supports the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation), and also for Batali’s newest cause: Help for Jose, which is raising money for his employee Jose Mendoza, who lost both his legs in a subway accident. (The good news: It’s not too late to send messages to Jose or to donate to the cause.)