InterWined.com

Liquid Refreshment

Browse

18

Jun

Getting Rid of Goulash

Jacob Gaffney  in Red Wines, Organic, Cabernet Sauvignon, White Wines, Chardonnay , , , , , ,

Today marks the first and, hopefully, last day I eat Hungarian Goulash.
Now, in a completely unrelated matter, two wine reviews for one Spanish producer. Actually the second wine would pair nicely with Goulash, I suspect. But I’ll never know (see first line of entry).
Family-run wine producer Albet i Noya has been around for awhile and […]

Keep reading...

2 comments

19

Mar

The Best Italian Wines Start With ‘B’ – Part 2

Jacob Gaffney  in Red Wines, Nebbiolo , , ,

This time around, InterWined are going only about ten miles away from last week’s Italian wine Barolo. That’s right we are going a bit closer to the sea with Barbaresco — the Nebbiolo-based wine that is often lighter and easier to drink than Barolo.
In this case, 2001 Cuscina Surio is a great example. It’s more […]

Keep reading...

Comment

15

Nov

An Ending to My Boy Jack

Jacob Gaffney  in Red Wines, Merlot, St. Emilion , , ,

Earlier this week, InterWined was asked to name the perfect wine to go with the Daniel Radcliffe vehicle, My Boy Jack, directed by my friend Brian Kirk.
While there may be numerous excellent pairings, the best choice seems to be the 3 de Valandraud 2001, St. Emilion Grand Cru. The wine is a classically […]

Keep reading...

1 comment

3

Aug

Pear & Sage-stuffed Chicken with Hazelnut Crust

Sean Sellers  in White Wines, Chardonnay, Blow the Bank, Meat & Poultry, Cortese (Gavi) , , , , , ,

InterWined Food
InterWined.com loves food almost as much as it loves wine, hence, its new weekly feature ‘Blow the Bank’.

Every Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine that exceeds the normal £10 ($20) threshold with one great meal, prepared following the instructions of some the Internet’s best food blogs, and picked for easy preparation.

This week’s ‘Blow the Bank’ comes courtesy of Johanna at The Passionate Cook.com and a delicious Viennese-inspired Pear & Sage-stuffed Chicken Breast with a Hazelnut Crust.

Chicken with Hazelnut Cooking

It’s a cliché of the modern world that the most ubiquitous of domestic birds and Burgundies should pair so well. But cliché or no, chicken and Chardonnay do generally compliment each other better than most. In fact, InterWined finds itself asking what wines other than Chardonnay were paired with chicken before their inexorable rise in popularity beginning in the mid-20th Century. The answer probably rests with Beaujolais (made with the Gamay grape) — an excellent partner for roasted chicken, which one suspects was the most often prepared form of chicken prior to the advent of modern cookers and the mass farming initiatives that gave rise to battery farming, a theory InterWined intends to test in a forthcoming segment of ‘Blow the Bank’.

Johanna’s Pear & Sage-stuffed Chicken is a kind of Austrian cousin to the great American-style fried chicken. But, where a good red wine may serve as an excellent partner for the kind of fried chicken that John T. Edge celebrates in his new book The Southern Belly, most reds would likely overpower the subtly of this more delicate and grease-free recipe.

Thus, bearing in mind that it all comes down to a matter of taste, as outlined in the first ‘Blow the Bank’ last week, InterWined turned its attention to a Chardonnay blend, specifically the blend of Chardonnay and Cortese (the grape found in Gavi) produced in the 2001 Alteserre Montferrato Bianco from Bava, £13.99 from Oddbins/$30 from Winerx.com and Tewksbury Fine Wine in North America.

(A quick glance on the Web proved this wine pretty impossible to source in Australia and New Zealand. As such, antipodeans might consider the Lost Valley Cortese, purportedly the only winery outside of the Piedmont to grow the Cortese grape.)

Straw in colour with a subtle creamy butter flavour, it complimented the pear (a common flavour note with Gavi) and sage very well, without clashing with the fried breadcrumb, hazelnut crust of the chicken. However, as with last week’s Canederli allo Speck, sage is the real essential flavor partner and one that goes well with Chardonnay. And, while somewhat of a predicable choice, it works nonetheless.

Johanna’s Recipe in Full

Pear & sage-stuffed chicken breast with a hazelnut crust, courtesy of The Passionate Cook.com
(serves 4)

Click on the post to view and download the recipe.

Keep reading...

3 comments

27

Jul

Canederli allo Speck

Sean Sellers  in White Wines, Semillon, Blow the Bank, Meat & Poultry , , , , ,

InterWined Food
A great meal deserves a great wine…

And, while InterWined.com prides itself on discovering great wines that don’t cost a great deal, sometimes it’s nice to ‘Blow the Bank’ on something special.

So every Friday, InterWined will pair one great wine that exceeds its normal £10 ($20) threshold with one great meal. And if it inspires you to do the same, leave a comment and share it.

This week, InterWined.com wanted a quick dish for a Friday night — date food, ideally — something simple but impressive. Thus, InterWined turned to Rubber Slippers in Italy and Rowena’s fantastic-looking Canederli allo Speck (Italian bread balls with bacon — more or less).

Canederli allo SpeckSpeck Ingredients

No matter how experienced the sommelier or posh the restaurant, paring food with wine remains a skill most often complimented by a measure of inspiration and a dollop of simple, dumb luck. External factors such as the differences in years and yields, vintages and winemakers, the quality of produce and ingredients, cooking times, and countless other little things will always make certain the inexactness of food & wine pairing. Simply put: sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. And, while some wines compliment some foods better than others, there are remarkably few real rules that govern the relationship between food and wine. Essentially, it’s a matter of taste — both in terms of personal preference and the tongue.

As schoolchildren across the world can attest, there are five sensations that inform our sense of taste: sweet, sour, bitter, savoury, and salty. All serve to describe the flavours associated with wine, bar one. Wine can do many things (inspire poets, help the heart, and so on) but it cannot do salty.

So, when pairing wine with salty foods, like the speck featured in Rowena’s recipe, it’s important to try and find a wine that will enhance or compliment some of the more subtle flavours on offer in the food.

Fortunately, the 2001 Mount Pleasant Elizabeth Semillon from Hunter Valley in Australia, £13.99 from Philgas & Swiggot, managed superbly. Semillon is a wine grape with poor reputation that rarely gets much press. Most is blended with Sauvignon Blanc or else exposed to noble rot and found principally in Bordeaux and Sauternes in France and the Hunter Valley in New South Wales.

The McWilliams’ Estate’s Mount Pleasant is kind of a wonderful exception. Like several Hunter Valley Semillons, the Mount Pleasant is oak-matured. The 2001 Elizabeth’s toasty flavour and subtle sweetness made a perfect partner to the sautéed onion, sage butter, and bread. The toasted quality of this particular Semillon also surprisingly helped to compliment the smoky flavour found in the speck, making the wine an all around match for the entire dish: 8.9.

This wine’s price might not technically ‘Blow the Bank’ but it might well prove difficult to find for readers. In which case, InterWined would recommend looking to winemaker McWilliams’ other wine labels, of which there are a great many (some such as their Semillon Chardonnays available in the US from Wine Chateau), or to another Hunter Valley oak-aged Semillon.

Rowena’s recipe in full:
Canederli allo Speck served with Sage brown butter, courtesy of Rubber Slippers in Italy.
Serves 2

Click on the post to view and download the recipe

Keep reading...

3 comments

28

Aug

A Matter of Taste (Part 3)

Jacob Gaffney  in Red Wines, Cabernet Sauvignon, White Wines, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Sauvignon Blanc , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The 2004 Grove Mill Sauvignon Blanc is a stunner, £7. Good with anything, even spicy sausage: tropical fruits on the nose; dry finish, light on the tongue. Two days later, the wine had mellowed to being almost buttery. It was smoother than Brazilian legs during Carnival. 8.5.

2001 was not so good for California and Bonterra’s Cabernet from that year shows it. Watery and thin, little identity, no wonder many bottles of it are available to buy now – though it’s not a complete wash-up. It was drinkable as a table wine. Serve with dinner. 7.7

Same for 2004 Valdevieso Merlot. It holds it own, but can’t hold your attention. 7.7.

The ‘Taste the Difference’ 2003 Connawarra Cabernet from the grocer Sainsbury’s was on sale for half-off, £4.

The fumes alone are flammable. Hard to taste anything else when a wine is pimped out with so much silly sauce. A day later, ripe fruits, mainly blackberry, tinge of oak, still strong. Price was right though. Eight pounds would be a joke. 7.0.

Finally the 2003 Heartland Petit Verdot from the Limestone Coast of Australia…The Heartland gave off wild aromas violets, black cherry but still very rustic, like an old leather belt that will never give up holding onto pants. Also a bit of rust and a hint of mint.
8.9 points, mainly for controlling a late harvest grape most people won’t bother with.

Keep reading...

Comment