Wednesday, February 27 2008

Can You Hear Me Now?

Where's the view of those cats?

Pink 'n' red, both delicious

In the last week I've had some very nice wines. Monday was meat loaf day, and I opened a bottle of Selection Estate Series Crushendo Montagnac Vieux Chateau d'Oc from 2006. Unfortunately, by the time I finished reading the label, my dinner was cold. Still, it was delicious, and the heavyweight tannins and rounded fruit were exactly right for the spicy lamb/veal meatloaf.

Sunday, when the day was sunny and the patio beckoned for the first time this year, we roasted a wonderful chicken and I decided it was time for a Rosé. The chicken was done with slatherings of herbs, lemon, and garlic and served with crusty French bread and some cheeses and a nice crunchy salad. What else but Rosé? I chose a Marqués de Caceres Rioja. Darned if it wasn't full of strawberry, raspberry, grapefruit and a wee hint o' tannin. A lot of folks won't drink pink wine. I'm awfully partial to pink myself, but since many rosés are very sweet (cf, white Zinfandel, etc) they polarise tasters. A good dry pink can be drank chilled and refreshing like white wine, but has weight and length like red. Too bad you can't give 'em away in the wine kit business. Sigh.

Tonight with my dinner (semi-traditional Bolognese ragu–I don't add milk–with homemade linguini) I opened a bottle of Zestos Especial, from Vinos Sin-Ley. It's an interesting concept: Sin-Ley means 'outlaw', because the blend and the vinting methods are outside of Spanish denomination laws, and the idea is that they'll make the wine they want from the grapes they want, and sell it outside the country if they have to. This only works if the wine is actually good, and fortunately it is. A blend of Tempranillo and Syrah, it works beautifully. Usually cheap wines taste really cheap, and the majority of bargain wine I've had out of the New World in the last year has only been good for sluicing the drains. This stuff? You could fool people into thinking it was worth three times the price, with dark stone fruit and just enough of the Syrah blueberry/blackberry thing to keep the Tempranillo from being a bit dull (as it sometimes is). Nom!

Life, she is good. Tomorrow it's barbecue. Well, sort-of: it's actually kalua pork, a recipe adapted to my home oven. I had a nice piece of bone-in pork leg that I rubbed with brown sugar, salt, pepper and liquid smoke. I double-wrapped it in tinfoil and put it into a dutch oven with the lid on, and cooked it at 250 F overnight. The fat rendered into the meat, and it's as tender as oatmeal. Tomorrow I'll pull it apart with a fork, souse it in barbecue sauce and serve it with cornbread, mustard greens and coleslaw.

Wine? I dunno. Barbecue sauce, vinegary and sweet, usually doesn't take too well to red or white. Maybe I'll make some tea tonight for iced tea tomorrow. The only problem is to decide whether it's sweet tea (sometimes called 'Southern Table Wine') or reg'lar. Decisions, decisions . . .

Posted by Tim AT 6:20AM

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