Organic wine & food matching: Domaine Vigneau-Chevreau Vouvray and artisanal cheeses

Vouvray is like the girl with the Scarlett Johansson sweetness, Bette Davis wit, and knockdown Grace Kelly beauty that made all the boys in high school too dumbfounded to ever ask out (except for the dumb jocks, who’d never get a yes).

Vouvray is a thinking man and woman’s white wine because it takes brains to see through the flowery, intoxicatingly perfumed qualities of the Chenin Blanc (the required grape of this AOC), and look into the wine’s soul: the effortlessly acidic spine of the fruit grown in the Loire River Valley’s cold yet maritime moderated climate, and the deep, almost poetic substrata of flavor contributed by the soil (layers of flinty stone and clayish limestone over a plateau of solid limestone – the ultimate grape growing medium).

Earlier this month I ran into one California’s more intelligent, and artistically multiplisitc, winemakers named Larry Brooks (a founder of Acacia, former GM of Chalone, and now proprietor of Campion). I hadn’t seen Brooks in about six years, but the first thing he said to me was: “Everytime I see you, I can’t help but think of that incredible wine we shared, what, over fifteen years ago? I’ll never get that wine out of my mind.” Me, too. It was, in fact, a 1989 Vouvray Moelleux Cuvée CC by Champalou – a dessert style Vouvray exploding in a plethora of honey, scintillating acidity and minerality in spades– that will always bewitch both Brooks and me (and undoubtedly, is still doing that to wine drinkers today… I doubt that it would fade sometime soon).

Which brings us to our organic wine match of the day: the 2007 Domaine Vigneau-Chevreau Vouvray Sec Cuvée Silex (about $21; distributed by Andy Lum’s Unity Selections in Colorado). Sec refers to this Vouvray being “dry,” and Cuvée Silex refers to the flinty stones that make up a large part of the vineyard’s chalky soil, contributing a minerally, almost sea-briny nuance beneath the Vigneau-Cheveau’s honeyed apple aroma, wildflower fragrance, and mildly tart, lush, flowing, refreshingly balanced, medium bodied feel on the palate.

There is, in fact, a strong sense of terroir in the Cuvée Silex because this 69 acre vineyard has been cultivated more than organically, but also biodynamically for most of the past twenty years (receiving ECOCERT’S biodyvin certification in 1999); very much akin to the vivid, penetrating expressions of minerality and grape common to other biodynamic producers in France (some famous examples: Maison Chapoutier in the Rhône Valley, Domaine Ostertag and Marcel Deiss in Alsace, and Domaine Leflaive and Domaine Leroy in Burgundy).

Biodynamic viticulture demands turning vineyards into biodiverse farms, and applications of no less than nine specific herb and compost tea preparations in harmony with the natural rhythms of the earth, sun, moon, and seasons, observed as faithfully as the farmers who have followed the Old Farmers’ Almanac for over 200 years. But if there ever was ever any doubt about the efficacy of biodynamic growing, a simple comparison of Vigneau-Chevreau’s Vouvray with any number of other popular Vouvrays would put it to rest.

My culinary mantra has always been to fear no wine and food match: there is a perfect wine for any dish from any part of the world (I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a wine-unfriendly dish – only a lack of imagination and organoleptic openness), just as there is a delicious food match for every wine in the world. But with a wine as pure as Vigneau-Chevreau’s Cuvée Silex, I’d almost want to stick to an equally pristine, terroir expressive food match: like an artisanal, regional cheese. It needn’t be from the Loire Valley, although a Sainte-Maure de Touraine AOC goat milk cheese, coated in a slightly acidic, gunflint-gray ash, offers up an earthy purity of taste and zestiness in perfectly natural balance with this Vouvray’s earthy, crisp edged fruitiness.

Here in Colorado, I’d reach for a raw milk cheese like Windsor Dairy’s Melville; a cow’s milk cheese with a cider washed rind that positively bursts with fat, creamy flavors, with nuances of the native grass and wildflowers consumed by the Brown Swiss cows on this organic farm. Sprinkle a tiny bit of cumin on the Melville, with dabs of honey on the plate, and you’ll have wine and food match that doesn’t come down from heaven, but up from the earth so strongly expressive in both wine and cheese.

Otherwise, fresh, pearly white Chèvres like Colorado’s Haystack Mountain, Tennessee’s Bonnie Blue, Alabama’s Belle Chevre, and Georgia’s Sweetgrass Dairy (I guess you can tell that I’ve spent some time in the South in recent years) will all offer that combination of acidity and earthy, grassy fruitiness to effortlessly match this style of Vouvray. My only caveat: other than ash, steer gently away from logs crusted with pungent herbs or cracked peppercorn. You’ll want an unfettered taste of the terroir in the cheese; and generally, simple accompaniments like figs, champagne grapes, ribbons of dried apricot, or umami rich charcuterie like duck prosciutto and pork rillettes will do just fine.

Organic wine & food matching: Tres Sabores Porque No and pasta with giblets & mushrooms

Julie Johnson, winemaker/proprietor of her own Tres Sabores estate, located at the foot of the Mayacamas Mountains in the prestigious Rutherford Bench AVA of Napa Valley. Original co-founder of Women for Winesense. Former president of ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers). One of Napa Valley’s pioneers of certified organic grape growing (going back 25 years to her former association with Frog’s Leap Vineyards).

What has Johnson not done? Frankly, I can’t say, as she’s already inspired a generation of women and men devoted, as she is, to producing wines that express the “voice” (i.e. terroir) of vineyards; but even more amazingly, without a drop of self-consciousness, and with a ton of levity.

Perfect example: Johnson’s 2006 Tres Sabores ¿Porqué No? (about $20). The question, why not?, asked because, to Johnson and her cellar crew, it makes perfect sense to blend some of her certified organic estate grown Zinfandel (dominating this bottling) with invigorating if unconventional grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, along with some peppery Petite Sirah, if indeed it all adds up to perfectly delicious, wild, juicy party juice: bursting at the seams with black cherry and purple plum aromas and flavors punctuated by cacao, resiny herb and green chile-like spices, with sticks of cinnamon and cardamom thrown in for good measure.

Yes, there’s more natural flavor stuffed into a finger of ¿Porqué No? than in a gallon of Prego; only, with big, thick, plump red wine (i.e. beneficial alcohol and resveratrol!) flavors, complete with round yet sturdy, viscously textured tannins. How does that song go? Makes me want to shout!

Well, maybe that’s the wine hollering, as I’ve just consumed a bottle along with a dish taken out of Judy Rodgers’ The Zuni Café Cookbook: pasta with giblet-mushroom sauce, echoing the invigorating, chewy yet soft, multi-faceted taste of the ¿Porqué No?. An adaption of Rodgers’ recipe:

8 oz. chicken gizzards and hearts (duck or squab pieces also okay)
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 ½ cups chopped mushrooms (white buttons or a blend of wild)
¾ cup finely diced carrots
¾ cup finely diced celery
¾ cup finely diced yellow onions
1 oz. minced pancetta (or bacon, blanched for 4 minutes)
Salt
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 ½ cups canned tomatoes (drained to about half their juice)
1 bay leaf
1 dried chili (or few pinches of dried chili flakes)
½ cup full bodied red wine (like Zinfandel or Syrah)
A few leaves of fresh Italian parsley, coarsely chopped
Sugar (optional)
1 tsp. tomato paste (optional)
1 lb. pasta (spaghetti or wide egg pasta)
Parmigiano-Reggiano (to taste)

Rinse gizzards and hearts, then press dry between towels. Remove silverskin from gizzards, chop finely along with hearts.

Warm ¼ cup olive oil in 4 qt. saucepan over medium heat. Add gizzards and cook, stirring continuously, until they turn a little golden at edges (about 5 minutes). Stir in mushrooms, carrots, celery, onions and pancetta or bacon. Add few pinches of salt and enough additional oil to coat vegetables. When mixture starts to sizzle, reduce heat to low, cover, and stew for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Stir in garlic, tomatoes, bay leaf, chili and red wine. Bring to bare simmer, cover, and cook until bits of giblet go from chewy to tender (another 45 minutes or so). Stir occasionally, scraping bottom with flat edged spatula, and adjust heat as necessary to maintain low simmer. Taste for salt.

Stir in parsley and another splash of olive oil. Uncover and simmer a little longer to concentrate brothy juices. Sauce should be shiny, rich, thick and sweet (if taste is tart or lean, add olive oil; if not slightly sweet, add pinch of sugar).

Cook pasta al dente, drain, and fold into giblet-mushroom sauce. Grate Parmigiano to taste.

Organic wine & food matching: Quivira Sauvignon Blanc & fresh herb pastas

“Trying to uncover what a vineyard is trying to say,” says Steven Canter, winemaker of Quivira Vineyards in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley, “is like an archeologist brushing away the sand.”

Plucked by Quivira three years ago from the celebrated Torbreck Vintners in Barossa Valley, Australia, Canter is an American who had come to Sonoma in a roundabout way: first inspired by Kermit Lynch’s earthy, terroir driven imports from France, then wandering the world looking for the vinous meaning of life while picking up jobs as a cellarer in California, Oregon, Italy and South Africa.

The Quivira estate would make a particularly interesting Rubik’s Cube for any winemaker, as it sits on the gravelly, well drained yet fertile loam that has long made Dry Creek Valley a quintessential source of California style Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel and Petite Sirah. Planted and replanted over a course of fifty years, according to Canter, “we could see what people were doing in the ‘70s, the ‘80s, the ‘90s, etc.,” and Canter feels that he is just continuing this evolutionary process.

Grape varieties lower in pyrazine (the molecules that contribute the green herbal notes of wines like Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon) were retrained on heads to make a truer, umbrella-like goblet, establishing the dappled-sunlight combination of protection (from sunburn) and exposure Canter likes to see for grapes like Zinfandel, Syrah and Grenache. Older sections were pulled out and replanted with three times more plant density. A whole half acre was removed to make room for 500 cubic yards of compost, and no less than 120 raised beds were installed for cover crop seeding, herbs going into Biodynamic® teas, and vegetables to supply a number of local restaurants.


Quivira, in fact, became certified by Demeter USA as a Biodynamic® vineyard in 2005, and as part of this holistic concept, you’ll also find large contingents of chickens and goats doing their part; gobbling up pests and mowing down weeds, around and between the rows of vines, carpeted by rye grass, Austrian winter peas, beans, purple vetch, and (in beautiful bloom during our visit in March) calendula. In respect to Biodynamic preparations, Canter has transitioned Quivira even further; to the point where all the herb and compost teas are produced on-premise (including preparations 500 and 501 – from manure and quartz stuffed cow horns, buried in autumn/winter and spring/summer respectively), as opposed to being purchased from the Josephine Porter Institute in Virginia.

Aside from Zinfandel, Quivira’s piece de resistance has always been one of the freshest, purest Sauvignon Blancs this side of France. In Canter’s hands, the Quivira Sauvignon Blanc has evolved into a slightly crisper, citrus fresh white, with more distinctive bottom notes of minerals and stones in harmony with floral perfumes (the softer quality of the Sémillon grape has been eliminated, as this was one of the first sections of the vineyard to go upon Canter’s arrival). In current release are two lots of Sauvignon Blanc:

2007 Quivira Fig Tree Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc (about $18) – Fresh pear, green melony aromas tinged with fresh pea and wet stones; flinty dry on the palate, the melon and subtle pea-like flavors finishing with a citrusy snap in a medium sized (not light, not heavy) body.

2007 Quivira Barrel Complete Sauvignon Blanc (about $28) – From the same grapes going into the Fig Tree cuvée, only partially barrel fermented (40%) in new oak (half French white oak, and half Acacia; the latter from a French cooper, absent the strong vanillin flavor white oak contributes to wine); adding up to a moderately scaled dry white with a subtle creaminess and distinctively silkier texture enhancing the floral, melony, citrusy, minerally qualities found in the Fig Tree.

When it comes to food, Quivira Sauvignons make effortless matches in classic dry white contexts. But when I taste these pristinely fresh whites, I cannot help but think of fresh pasta drizzled with fruity green olive oil and a mix of leafy green herbs, emphasizing the organic qualities in the wines. Here’s an interesting concept I found in the archives of KitchenGardener Magazine: setting the table with plain linguine, and allowing guests to choose their garnishes (choices of chopped, Sauvignon Blanc-friendly chives, parsley and fennel, along with shaved Parmigiano).

The only thing I’d add to the pasta table would be the additional choice of Pecorino Romano, since this sheep milk grating cheese connects with dry whites like Quivira’s on two levels: the natural sharpness of the cheese balancing the crisp edge of Sauvignon Blanc, and the pungent earthiness of the cheese playing up the subtle, stony, leafy qualities of the wine the way Chuck Berry plays his guitar (like a’ ringing a bell).

Southern Oregon Is the Real Deal

A number of Willamette Valley's most prestigious winemakers -- like Ken Wright (pictured below), Lynn Penner-Ash (left), and Laurent Montalieu -- have been crafting Southern Oregon sourced wines for years.

You may think this has been just for "fun," but au contraire: these vignerons are dead serious about their belief that Southern Oregon is one of the greatest wine regions in the world... especially for Syrah.

To quote Pinot wine god, Ken Wright: Southern Oregon's Rogue Valley Syrah is "more Old World than New World, a delineated Syrah -- graphite, cedar, blueberries, raspberries, and very balanced, never over the top..."

Southern Oregon, in fact, is the real deal. For more details on the terroir and notes on current outstanding releases (Syrahs and Pinot Noirs) from this underrated region, please see this story penned by yours truly for the March 2009 issue of Sommelier Journal, and everything shall be revealed!

Organic wine & food matching: Pierre Morey Meursault & coq au vin blanc

For Pierre Morey – the former (and legendary) winemaker of Domaine Leflaive, and proprietor of his own Domaine Pierre Morey in Burgundy, France – farming biodynamically (his vineyards Biodyvin certified since 1997) is a matter of stewardship: turning over vineyards from one generation to another at the peak of health and productivity.

Morey is particularly known for his white wines, with family holdings in Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet in Burgundy’s Côte de Beaune, the original home, and center of the universe, as far as any producer of Chardonnay is concerned. But if you are drawing the conclusion that these white wines espouse enormous body, power and concentration of Chardonnay character, let me gently say: it is in the expression of the terroir, rather than grape, that the wines of Domaine Morey excel. As eloquently portrayed in this film, entitled Generations In Harmony:


Domaine Pierre Morey: Generations in Harmony from Wilson Daniels on Vimeo.

You may pay, for instance, about $94 (suggested retail) for a bottle of 2006 Pierre Morey Meursault, but what you get is not a wham-bam wine stuffed with “gobs” of sweet Chardonnay sensations, but rather a wine of uncommonly delicate, refined balance and texture; everything according to a moderately weighted scale to express fresh, honeyed apples, notes of mineral, slivers of toasted nuts, and a transparent, silken backdrop of mildly charred oak draped over a foundation of polished, stony dryness.

In other words, a taste of Meursault, not Chardonnay.

Coq au Vin Blanc

Which also happens to whet my appetite for this twist of the classic Burgundian dish – usually made with a red wine, but which we make with a white – that we call coq au vin blanc:

8 pieces chicken thighs (mostly) and legs (or one 5 lb. chicken, cut in serving pieces)
24-30 pearl onions
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
6 oz. bacon strips or slab, squared or cubed
8 oz. button mushrooms, quartered
1 tbsp. unsalted butter
1 bottle (750 ml.) white wine (inexpensive Chardonnay will do)
1 medium yellow onion, quartered
2 stalks celery, quartered
2 medium carrots, quartered
3 cloves garlic, crushed
6-8 springs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
2 cups chicken stock or broth

Cut off root end of each pearl onion and make an “x” with knife in its place. Bring 2-3 cups water to boil and drop in the onions for 1 minute. Remove onions from pot, allow to cool, and peel (onions should slide right out of skin). Set aside.

Blanch bacon briefly in boiling water; drain, and dice or cube. Fry to render fat; remove meat and set aside, and save fat for frying.

Sprinkle chicken pieces on all sides with salt and ground pepper. Place chicken pieces, a few at a time, into a large (1-2 gallon) sealable plastic bag along with flour; shake to coat chicken completely. Remove chicken from bag, and fry in bacon fat, just until crust is crisp. Set chicken pieces aside.

In same pan, add pearl onions to fat, sprinkle with salt and pepper, sautéing until lightly brown (approximately 8-10 minutes). Remove onions from pan and set aside. Transfer chicken into a 7-8 quart enameled cast (like Le Creuset) or cast iron Dutch oven.

Add mushrooms to the same 12 inch sauté pan, adding 1 tbsp. butter if needed, and sauté until liquid is released (approximately 5 minutes). Store onions, mushrooms and bacon in airtight container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Pour off remaining fat and deglaze pan with approximately 1 cup of wine. Pour this into Dutch oven along with chicken stock, quartered onion, carrots, celery, garlic, thyme and bay leaf. Add all of the remaining wine. Preheat oven to 325° F.

Place chicken in oven and cook for 2 to 2½ hours, or until chicken is tender. Maintain a very gentle simmer and stir occasionally.

Once chicken is done, remove it to a heatproof container, cover, and place in oven to keep warm. Strain the sauce in a sieve and degrease (discard carrots, celery, thyme, garlic and bay leaf). Return the sauce to a pot, place over medium heat, and reduce by 1/3 (depending on how much liquid you began with, this should take 20-45 minutes).

When sauce has thickened, add pearl onions, mushrooms and bacon, and cook another 15 minutes or until heated through. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary; remove from heat, add the chicken and serve. Serve from Dutch oven with either long grained white rice or lightly buttered egg noodles; and of course, with a classic white Burgundy such as Meursault.
Note: if sauce is not thick enough at the end of reducing, you may add a mixture of equal parts butter and flour kneaded together, starting with 1 tbsp. each. Whisk this in the sauce for 4-5 minutes, and repeat if necessary.