Food and Wine Pairings

These days finds us trying to figure out what do make and what wines to pair with our New Year's Eve dinner with friends. So far, we know we will have champagne and since my husband recently figured out how to shuck oysters, part of our appetizer will be champagne with oysters.

But for those who don't like oysters with champagne, we have been pouring over our food and wine books to come up with the proper pairing. Stay tuned! I'll update. I've also been thinking of creating a new tab called "Food and Wine Pairings".

2012 La Battistina Gavi

After decades of trying to dine at Al Forno in Providence, we finally got in by making a reservation in October. Lucky for us, Al Forno will make reservations for a party of 6 or more, which we were. We decided to drink Italian wines for the perfect compliment to the Italian meal. We started our appetizers with this bottle of Gavi. We learned about the Cortese grape that finds it's best expression in Gavi and were anxious to try it. The bouquet was very floral almost reminiscent of Sauvignon blanc, but without the cat pee or grassy flavor. It went perfectly with the stuffed clams, Margarita flat bread and antipasto.
This Gavi is bottled by Araldica Vini. Araldica is a cooperative with 200 members who tend to around 900 hectares of vines. They grow native varietals such as Barbera, Dolcetto, Nebbiolo, Cortese, Arneis and Moscato as well as the less common Brachetto and Freisa. La Battistina is one of their more recently acquired vineyards. The chalky, mineral soil provides excellent drainage and the old vines, averaging 35 years adds complexity and weight to the wines. The wine proved to be an excellent start (we vowed to go on a wine hunt for Gavi) for the rest of the evening's repast which we paired with a Barbera and a Gattinara.

This culinary experience transported some in our group back to Rome, where they had been a few weeks ago. Not too shabby for an evening in Providence, Rhode Island.

Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC)

I thought I'd provide a blog with a slight public service announcement bent during this holiday season while everyone is merrily drinking. In digging through my notes from the U.C. Davis Introduction to Winemaking, I located the lecture on The Health Effects of Wine. In this lecture, we learned about blood alcohol levels and their physiological effects on the body:

More importantly, we learned how to calculate our own intoxication level based on our weight and the number of glasses of alcohol we consumed.

For example, for a hypothetical person who weighs 150 pounds and consumes 3 standard glasses of wine, the BAC will be (4 x 3)/150 = 0.08% or the criteria for being "under the influence". However, alcohol is being absorbed as well as metabolized and factors that affect the BAC include:

• food consumption reduces absorption rate
• higher alcohol concentration increases BAC
• sparkling wines increases BAC
• gender affects metabolism; women have lower gastric alcohol dehydrogenase levels which reduces metabolism

Alcohol is typically metabolized at a rate of 0.1 gram per kilogram of body weight per hour. Converting grams into ounces and pounds, a ball park figure for how much alcohol is being metabolized can be calculated from the following equation.

Therefore, our hypothetical 150 pound person will be able to metabolize 150/250 = 0.6 standard drink per hour.
Here is a link to an online BLOOD ALCOHOL CALCULCATOR
Have a safe and happy holiday!

Tasting Pleasure Confessions of a Wine Lover by Jancis Robinson

We picked up this book last week on a little jaunt to one of our favorite old bookstores. I immediately set about to read it. I found out that Jancis and I are chronological contemporaries her philosophy in life is similar to mine. At one point in her book she states that she never set out to be a wine writer, being reactive rather than proactive and things just turned out for her this way. (I never set out to be a farmer, things just turned out this way.) Her life's trajectories are captured in this book, arranged in decades beginning roughly in the 1970's and culminating in the late 1990's. She began her working life as a chambermaid in Italy in 1968, went to school at Oxford and then after graduating took a job with Thomson Holidays arranging packaged tours. Her first job in the industry was with Wine & Spirit in the mid 1970's and presciently began keeping a diary of her wine tastings. Imagine (I can only imagine) tasting 1966, 1971, and 1973 vintages of Grands Échezeaux, Richebourg, La Táche and Romanée-Conti as a young wine writer. That was Jancis's lot in life, that and becoming tasting buddies with the likes of Hugh Johnson, Michael Broadbent, Clive Coates in the home of Edmund Penning-Roswell. She also wrote about a tasting in 1986 organized by Hardy Rodenstock (The Billionaire's Vinegar) In the 80's Jancis balanced having 3 children, taking the Master of Wine exam and becoming one, buying a place in Languedoc, and (forgive me) etc. She was busy! A major mystery was solved for me when I learned that her name, "Jancis" is a character, beloved by her mother, from the book called Precious Bane written by Mary Webb.

1976 Auslese

Not too long ago, our friends shared with us this 1976 Auslese. Being 37 years old, the label had seen better days, but the wine inside was still alive and drinking well. The dessert of homemade apple pie paired admirably with the Auslese. Drinking the Auslese prompted a lively discussion regarding the classification system of wine in Germany. In thumbing through Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, I came upon an excellent explanation of the various categories of German wines.¹

According to the German Law which went into effect in 1971, German wines can fall into two main categories:

• Tafelwein or table wine
• Qualitätswein or quality wine of which there are two kinds:
(1) Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebite (QbA): QbA is a wine that comes from one of the 13 specified regions
(2) Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (QmP): QmP is a quality wine with distinction. It cannot be chaptalized. There are 5 levels of QmP wines and one way to visualize the increase in quality of the QmP wines is to depict it in a pyramid.

The above pyramid represents the increase in quality as you get toward the top. Because the QmP wines cannot be chaptalized (addition of sugar), the grapes in various categories are a reflection of the increase in sugar content.

• Spätlese is a wine made from late harvested grapes
• Auslese is made from grapes that are selectively picked from ripe bunches
• Beerenauslese is made from individually selected grapes from ripe bunches
• Trochenbeerenauslese is made from trochen or dried grapes and is likely to taste raisinated

Beerenaulese and Trochenbeerenauslese usually come from the Rhein or the Mosel and the best are made from the Riesling grape.
References:
1. Kevin Zraly, Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, 2009 Edition, Sterling Publishing, pg. 87-89.
2. UC Davis Online Course, Introduction to Winemaking, 092VID251.

Bubbles and Brie At The Wine Store

James Morrison hosted another tasting event at The Wine Store, this one was most appropriate for the season. It was a Champagne and sparkling wine tasting accompanied by brie and bread.

We tasted a Moet & Chandon Rosé Imperial, a Veuve Clicquot, a Chandon and a Cava from Portugal. Earlier, I blogged about Champagne: The Fine Print. My husband got into a conversation about négociant-manipulant (NM) and récoltant-manipulant (RM) with James and that prompted James to pull out a Louis De Sacy, which my husband thought was an RM but is really an NM, so we were able to taste that, too. We did end up purchasing 3 sparklers for the upcoming holiday festivities.

1997 Palmer Reserve Merlot

We had this 1997 Palmer Reserve Merlot last evening with our friends. My husband made a wild game cassoulet that paired excellently with this 16 year old wine. The color was tawny around the edges and some sediment had collected on the sides of the bottle indicative of it's age and the fact that it may not have been fined, which is fine with us. The fruit and acid was still going strong. The nose was of red berries and cherries with a hint of leather and had a long finish.
I wanted to know how the year stacked up so went looking on the Internet and found a vintage chart from Wine Enthusiast that gave ratings for vintages in the United States from 1990 to 2010. For a 1997 red from Long Island, the Wine Enthusiast gave that vintage 89 points. The sidebar also had color coded that the wine might be in it's decline and may be undrinkable. In the case of this 1997 Palmer Reserve Merlot, I would have to disagree. We procured about 8 bottles at possibly fire sale prices, which worked for us. We also looked again on the Internet and found that the winemaker was Tom Drozd who, as of 2006 is winemaker at Pelligrini.

Methoxypyrazine Biosynthesis in Cabernet Sauvignon

This morning, I am reading the article Determining the Methoxypyrazine Biosynthesis Variables Affected by Light Exposure and Crop Level in Cabernet Sauvignon in this month's issue of The American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.¹ Somewhere along the line, I learned that methoxypyrazines are responsible for the herbaceous, green notes that can plague the flavor of Cabernet sauvignon and Cabernet franc, as well as Sauvignon blanc. 3-Isobutyl-2-methoxypyrazine or IBMP is the chemical culprit responsible for this herbaceous character and studies have shown that the concentration of IBMP in grapes is influenced by many variables:

• Maturity
• Sunlight exposure
• Temperature
• Water Status
• Vine vigor
• Yield

The last step in IBMP production is known to involve the methylation of 3-isobutyl-2-hydroxypyrazine, IBHP. A methyltransferase gene (VvOMT3) was recently shown to be responsible for most of the differences in methoxypyrazine production among grapevine varieties. The chemical structures of IBHP and IBMP are shown below:

Two variables, sunlight exposure and grape yield, have a direct influence on IBMP concentration in grape berries. Both sunlight exposure and yield are easily and commonly manipulated in the vineyard by practices such as winter pruning, leaf plucking, and bunch thinning. The authors of this research conducted experiments with sunlight exposure and crop level to determine which variable had a more pronounced impact on IBMP production.
The primary aim of the sunlight exclusion experiment was to determine:
(1) if the treatments caused changes in IBMP concentrations
(2) if these changes were due to the alteration of either VvOMT3 expression or IBHP concentration. The authors found that light reduced the expression of VvOMT3 and the concentration of IBHP, suggesting that a combination of these factors reduces IBMP concentration when fruit has greater light exposure. Berry shading has a greater influence on IBMP concentrations in preveraison berries, when methoxypyrazines accumulate.
Cabernet Sauvignon vines with low crop level produced grapes with higher IBMP concentrations than vines with high crop level, however, the effect of crop level manipulation on IBMP concentration was not as great as the effect observed by the elimination of light exposure on bunches.
In order to minimize the impact of IBMP accumulation in Carbernet sauvignon, the authors suggest that canopy management regimes that result in exposed bunches very early in fruit development should be implemented. Altering canopy management after veraison will have less of an effect on IBMP concentrations.
References:
1. Jake D. Dunlevy, Kathleen L. Soole, Michael V. Perkins, Emily L. Nicholson, Suzanne M. Maffei and Paul K. Boss, Determining the Methoxypyrazine Biosynthesis Variables Affected by Light Exposure and Crop Level in Cabernet Sauvignon, Am. J. Enol. Vitic., December 2013, vol. 64 no. 4 450-458.
2. The structure of IBMP was found here: Chemical Book 3-Isobutyl-2-methoxypyrazine(24683-00-9)
3. All structures were drawn by the freely available drawing program from ACD Labs called ACD/ChemSketch Freeware.

Champagne: The Fine Print

My husband and I have been vetting a gift of DVDs about wine that we have purchased in order to determine if the contents are suitable for gifting or not. We have learned a few things in today's lesson. For example, Champagne (and tis the season for this libation!) can have on it's label, NM or RM. NM stands for négociant-manipulant, they constitute the large champagne houses such as Moët, Veuve, and Bollinger.

The NM on these labels may be very tiny. I had to prove it to myself by looking at a label of one of the champagnes that we already drank and have on our wall of fame. It was not visible to my naked eye. I took my camera with my macro lens and was able to finally make out the NM on this label.
RM, on the other hand, stands for récoltant-manipulant, a grower who makes champagne from his own grapes.¹ After today's lesson was over, I saw my husband go to our wine cabinet and check one of the champagnes that we have. It was an RM.

In doing some reading on the Internet, there is a small debate taking place regarding NM and RM Champagnes. In this day and age where a lot of stock is placed in handmade, artisanal anything, the RM Champagnes are getting some traction. You can read an article written by Bill Ward in the Star Tribune called Champagne: Tiny bubbles from tiny operations, he gives an even handed treatment of NM and RM Champagnes and suggests many RM Champagnes worth a try!
References:
1. Jancis Robinson, RM champagne no shortcut to quality.
2. The Beast, Champagne: Houses vs Growers.

Alicante Bouschet Parentage

Earlier, I blogged about Teinturier Grape Varieties as being a type of grape that has red colored flesh. Alicante bouschet is a Vitis vinifera and as such, is one of the grape varieties sanctioned by the French authorities for the production of wine. Today, I'm chasing down the genetic parentage of Alicante bouschet because I think it is quite interesting that there are so many red skinned grapes with white flesh i.e. Cabernet sauvignon, Cabernet franc, Pinot noir, Merlot, etc. so where did the red flesh in Alicante bouschet come from?
I found an article in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture called Garnacha and Garnacha Tintorera: Genetic Relationships and the Origin of Teinturier Varieties Cultivated in Spain. The researchers, lead by José Miguel Martínez-Zapater traced the parentage of the teinturier varieties using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and microsatellite markers on 65 samples. The researchers discovered the relationship between the 65 samples and provided this graphic representation:¹

Many of the teinturier varieties can be traced back to the crosses performed in the nineteenth century by Louis and Henri Bouschet. Louis Bouschet used Teinturier as one of the parents, a red-fleshed French variety possibly originating from the region of Orléans in northern France as well as Aramon noir to produce Petit Bouschet. Louis' son, Henri crossed Grenache with Petit Bouschet to create one of the many versions of Alicante Henri Bouschet or Alicante Bouschet no. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 12, and 13.² In their book, Wine Grapes, Robinson, Harding and Vouillamoz mention that there is a relationship between Teinturier and Savagnin, but both are derived from wild grapevines.
References:
1. José Antonio Cabezas, María Teresa Cervera, Rosa Arroyo-García, Javier Ibáñez, Inmaculada Rodríguez-Torres, Joaquín Borrego, Félix Cabello, and José Miguel Martínez-Zapater Garnacha and Garnacha Tintorera: Genetic Relationships and the Origin of Teinturier Varieties Cultivated in Spain, Am. J. Enol. Vitic., 2003, 54:237-245.
2. J. Robinson, J. Harding and J. Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes - A complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours, pg 32-34 and 1040-1041, Allen Lane 2012 ISBN 978-1-846-14446-2.