Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ ends its month-long celebration of some of American cuisine’s greatest dishes from classic comfort foods to the unsung greats of American soulfood, with a decidedly European-take on a well-recognised transatlantic treat.

One word describes the 2003 Château de Fesles Bonnezeaux (12.5%) from the Loire Valley and available from Oddbins in the UK and Wine Chateau.com in the US (with numerous vintages available in Canada, New Zealand, and mainland Europe): smooth.

Made from 100% botrytis Chenin Blanc grapes, the Bonnezeaux screams smooth operator…not unlike the way Sade used to do on the radio. It has a fine golden colour with a rich, slightly creamy fresh fruit flavour with a hint of vanilla or nutmeg thrown in for good measure and makes for a stunningly attractive match to the smooth and silky mix of cream and fruit found in InterWined’s Own Pomegranate & Blueberry Cheesecake.

Like the hamburger and countless other “American” foods, the American cheesecake is rooted across the Atlantic in the kitchens and dinning rooms of a host of different European traditions. So what makes a cheesecake American? New Yorkers and Chicagoans might tell you it’s the baking.

But it’s not.

It’s the cream cheese. Cream cheese is a wholly American invention. Not until William Lawrence invented his now famous Philadelphia cream cheese in 1872 on his farm in New York State and its eventual owners, Kraft Foods, managed to manufacture a pasteurised version in 1912, did any cheesecakes resemble the stuff of today, whether or it was cooked as the New Yorkers and Chicagoans would recommend, or uncooked as the British and many others prefer. Before then, all cheesecakes were made the European way with a filling made of ricotta, mascarpone, quark, or Neufchatel cheeses.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the American preference for baking doesn’t continue. Indeed, outside of perhaps only a handful of US restaurants and cities, the cooked cheesecake remains the more time-consuming norm. And while InterWined hates to pick sides in this most delicious debate (both are great!), for the sake of time and convenience, why not throw American preferences to one side and enjoy the speed and ease of a simple, smooth uncooked cheesecake, such as InterWined’s Own Pomegranate & Blueberry Cheesecake.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

Pomegranate & Blueberry Cheesecake

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Each Friday and sometimes Saturday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ continues InterWined’s All American, a month-long celebration of some of American cuisine’s greatest dishes from classic comfort foods to the unsung greats of American soulfood, with InterWined’s Own New Orleans King Prawn Po Boy.

The Po Boy is something of a culinary institution in the city of New Orleans. And whether you believe its name comes from the Franglish quip “pour le boy” or a bunch of striking streetcar drivers, two things are clear. You will find it on the chalkboards and menus of corner stores and cafes, bistros and banqueting halls, across the city of New Orleans and the southern United States, and it is definitely not a submarine sandwich, hoagie, grinder, or Hero/gyro.

Leaving New Orleans for London in 1997, there are few things that leave me with greater nostalgia than the simple pleasure of a naked Shrimp Po Boy with hot sauce. My favourite Po Boys, from which InterWined’s Own recipe derives, came from a small corner grocery on Magazine Street, where the Vietnamese shop owner served them naked, or dressed on French bread stuffed with a choice of shrimp, oyster, or roast beef and covered in sauce or debris. For those unfamiliar with the lingo of New Orleans, dressed means with salad, naked without, and debris is a kind of hot gravy for roast beef akin to that found on a drip beef sandwich. (For those unfamiliar with drip beef, we’ll leave that description for another day.)

The 2003 Ronco del Gnemiz Sauvignon from Friuli-Venezia Giulia in Eastern Italy, available through Cadman Fine Wines and reviewed here and here is the perfect companion, ably managing to match the heat of the chilli pepper, paprika, and hot sauce with its “kick-ass hint of jalapeño pepper” as well as subtly of the king prawns.

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

New Orleans King Prawn Po Boy

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Wine number five from InterWined’s tour of Italian wines is the 2003 Feotto dello Jato ‘Rosso di Turi’ Monreale Merlot.
A plump little Sicilian number with surges of sugar plum. Sweet little California raisins here and there as well. This wine dances with black currant. Not very Italian, but still quite fun and bright. Many Sicilian […]

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The star so far on InterWined’s trip around Italian wine is without doubt the 2003 Barolo San Biagio.
Classed as a Piemont wine (from Piedmont, NorthWest Italy), this wine is made from the Nebbiolo grape. I recommend visiting Barolo San Biagio, only because the winery’s tasting note is so different from mine; a testament to […]

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My, aren’t decent Italian wines on the expensive side?
Well, if you are looking for some wines to move you to the point of tears, money should be no object, right?
The 2003 Laurentina Rosso Piceno ‘Talliano’ is priced at around £11.50. The wine doesn’t feel as heavy as I thought, as the 70% Montepulciano gives it […]

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Each Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you InterWined’s Own Seared Tuna Sweet Potatoes Anna.

For myriad reasons left unexplored here, potatoes Anna has something of a reputation for being a complicated dish. Yet, sometimes the most complicated seeming dishes are actually the most straight-forward to prepare. That’s certainly the case with InterWined’s Own recipe for Sweet Potatoes Anna.

Paired with InterWined’s Own Seared Tuna Sweet Potatoes Anna, the recently reviewed 2003 Ronco del Gnemiz Tocai Friuliano. While the wine received the poorest review of the Ronco del Gnemiz wines featured in January on InterWined.com, it proves a strong pairing partner to the seared tuna and sweet potatoes Anna. With its taste of honey, it makes a great partner for the sweet potatoes, while the flinty finish goes quite well with tuna too.

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For those of you who ran a little today…good work.
As mentioned yesterday, exercise should be taken, like a glass of wine, daily (according to the scientific definition). But here is a point to make: the term ‘daily’ in the medical world refers to five to seven times a week, so not necessarily every single day. […]

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Last week, InterWined.com posted a video review of the 2004 Sauvignon Sol from the Fruili producer Ronco del Gnemiz as part of its submission to Wine Blogging Wednesday and vowed to get better acquainted the wines of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
So, when we saw some more Ronco del Gnemiz offerings on sale at Cadman Wines for £11 […]

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If you look at the wine merchants list at the bottom right of our site, you will find a ‘UK-Zelas’ tag for a wine shop on Archway road in London, whose wine credentials InterWined recently ‘investigated’. All in an honest day’s work.
Good news is, it checks out. Even better, the shop may have one of […]

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Sadly, the aroma of this 2003 Les Ailes de Paloumey Haut Medoc (13.5%) is a little flat, which seems to be the norm these days for mid-priced Bordeaux, with a little liquorice.

The wine is nice and soft, but 2003 was a weak year for the region. In fact, you can taste all the rain. There is some tannin, though not enough for a good grip. This is the most understated of the wines and perfect for an easy drink by the Christmas tree on Boxing Day: 8.3 alone; 8.5 by the Christmas tree or in a mixed case.

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