Red with Fish?

-Red wine with fish.
-What? No. Ever drank wine with food? Get outta here!

I dare you to try this great bordelais dish but with some improvising.
This dish is about river lamprey(nahkiainen, lamproie, カワヤツメウナギ) and red wine.
This darkening Autumn has created a great food sensation with such a simple ingredients and such a great match! All you need is (cold) smoked lampreys and a gamay from Beaujolais or more specifically Morgon Cotê de Py 2008 by Jean-Marc Burgaud.

Did Burgaud have lamproie when he made this wine? The Perfect Match in a long time. But if you don't have lampreys I think eel would work as well. If you don't drink when eating leave the bottle to mature for awhile.

Yeast

Iphone blogging rules or not?

I got myself thinking about yeast and decided to post my irrational thoughts.

First things first. It is common to use non-commercial yeast to make wine typical of its origin or better stuff than the commoners buy...

Why beaujolais nouveau has banana and other weird aromas? Gamay? Not the carbonic maceration either but the commercial yeast type playing the lead main role.

Let us go back to the naturalistas. Would go full monty if you happened to have the banana under your trousers? That's what I thought. It sure is more awkward if it's artificial than the real thing. But in wine even the realest must fix the the landscape because vine doesn't equal to wine without intervention. To shoot the pistol or to choke the chicken. Errrr. What?何?

Is modern style valid anymore?

I'm drinking this Chateau Berrye 2003, a Saumur rouge made from cabernet franc, and my short tasting note would read out like this: A ruby red of medium intensity, very intense nose of wooden spices and red berries, palate has lot's of wooden tannins with medium high acidity as well as alcohol and a fruit forward style wine.  A structured wine with interplay with fruit. A Modern Wine. Le vin moderne shortened to vin merde.

Is this valid anymore? Modern has been modern for ages. Should we move to post-modern wines which I would suggest the natural movement to be or define modernity again?

Speaking of which. I find going back to the roots like going back hundreds of years very modern in contemporary thinking about wine, food and life.

Loire Whites

I recently had a blast at the current world's best restaurant and it got me thinking how little I know about wines from my favorite country. A good Loire is just so hard to find. I knew one or two of these producers. That is I knew the name, maybe once tasted his product. Dang!

Philippe Tessier

Domaine du Petit Coteau

Damien Laureau

Château de Passavant

Vacheron

Gourdon

Domaine des Sablonettes (Christine & Joël Menard)

Back from Hiatus

Summer is almost over. Still 2 weeks vacation left. Next week to Noma. Here's something I've done this summer.

Vin Rosé

Recently, I had two to start up the summer which has yet been rather cool one. The first was from legendary AOC Tavel which I would classify near Provence or is the Provençal style is close to Tavel: Low acidity, high alcohol level with intense fruit. The other rosé style is more about the crispness that is gotten from the high acidity and not trying to stuff too much fruit in to the wine. Maybe it has something to do with the cepages as well.

Chateau de Ségriès from Tavel can attract people. A very modern touch. It has an intense pink color with strawberry aromas as intense as the color. Well made wine. A bit lazy I think. I'm getting tired of these modern fruity wines but still I rather liked it.

Jean-Marc Burgaud's Rosez! was a post modern one. Elegant light color just a dash of reddish. The intensity of the fruit is light with more about minerality and crispness than fruit. Complexity was revealed gradually. Which, combined with the lightness and high evaporation made you want to take another sip before it would disappear! A beauty.

Imitating or hoaxing

German riesling

What makes wine spoofed? Comparing riesling to pinot noir can I claim that riesling is more spoofed wine? It has to be filtered and heavily sulfured to avoid unwanted secondary and/or malolactic fermentations in bottle. The suggested maximum yield is much more higher for riesling than pinot noir. What about the style wanted? Does riesling have too many styles? Does it need so many styles? Can the kellermeister or weinmacher believe they can produce 6 or more different styles of wine from the same riesling, vineyard, year alternating the hanging time of the grapes. Is there a style that is better than the rest? Can you make good spätlese trocken in Mosel? Is this varying styles spoofing also? Should we just drink traditional Spanish reds from old vines and pruned to natural low yield combined long aging to reduce the needs to manipulate the wine.

Is riesling morally better than Bordeaux?

Yesterday I had a middle aged spätlese trocken from Kesselstatt from Piesport Goldtröpfchen of Mosel. It was definitely well made wine but something normally associated to other german wine regions. An imitation,show off or just marketing? World of riesling is complex but somewhere inside lies the fascination but it's a very spoofed but what isn't.