Cheap wine from a good winemaker

Friends have sometimes asked me over the years how to pick a 'good' wine when confronted perhaps by a confusing restaurant wine list, since 'good' usually means an enjoyable wine that doesn't cost the earth my usual advice is "Always choose a cheap wine from a good winemaker".
My rationale is that 'good' winemakers put the same care and attention into all their vineyards, all their wines benefit from the same skill and expertise in the winery and any 'bad' or faulty wine would do untold harm to their hard won reputation.  That said a winemaker often has wines that will not command premium prices - perhaps it does not meet the appellation rules because the vines did not grow in quite the right place or maybe the blend contains unapproved grape varieties.  Some winemakers (especially of the 'old school') often make a simpler wine that is sold 'locally' without the expensive marketing and distribution that is aimed at 'sophisticated' (and more affluent) consumers.
The "Coudoulet de Beaucastel" (left) is made by the famous Perrin family of Beaucastel, however the vines grow on the wrong side of the N7 to be included in the Chateauneuf appellation, actually the terroir is almost identical but the wine can only be sold as a Cote du Rhone and therefore not at stratospheric Chateauneuf prices.  I bought this bottle of 2005, maybe not at the winery but somewhere locally for €13.  You can frequently find the Coudoulet on wine lists where the owner knows his wines and it will be a fraction of the price of a good Chateauneuf du Pape.  If you see it try it, it's an outstanding wine that you won't forget - and you can afford!

Here is another example from the Faravel family of Domaine Bouïssière, one of my favourite Gigondas producers.  "Les Amis de la Bouïssière" which is sold as 'Vin de France' instead of Gigondas, probably because it contains a little Merlot, not one of the approved varieties for the appellation, but in every other respect it is a great Gigondas!
I'm not going to tell you how much this excellent wine costs or you'll all be buying up my secret supplies!

With perhaps one or two exceptions I am afraid that the "Cheap wine from a good winemaker" strategy only really works with Old World wines.  New World winemakers are not encumbered by appellation rules (for good or ill) so these bargain outsider wines do not exist.  There is also a widely held belief (in USA for example) that higher prices indicate higher quality and this drives producers to price their wines to meet market expectations.  'Cheap' wine in USA is usually just that, cheap plonk - unless of course it comes from a 'good' Old World winemaker!

Asparagus al Dente

I'm sure some of you will have been following Dominique's excellent posts (see below) on how to cook 'cordon bleue' asparagus - or maybe I should say asparagus "à la Flamande" - whatever you call it it's delicious.
Being a Brit I've always preferred green asparagus and that's the only kind that I have ever attempted to cook - except for one grimly memorable occasion when we entertained the Bauer family to dinner.  Knowing that they would prefer the white variety I attempted to serve that, cooked the way I always cook green asparagus, just microwaved to perfection in a couple of minutes  - unfortunately with white asparagus that just produces twigs possibly suited for firelighters but not anything else.  I tried more cooking, and more ... eventually I served the inedible stuff which we all laboured (silently) to consume.
Later Rita explained to me very discreetly that with white asparagus one has to peel the stuff first, a crucial step of which I was completely ignorant!  Here (below) Rita shows us how to prepare white asparagus for cooking!

'Amuses' with scallops and asparagus à la flamande

Another happy Sunday in Le Temps des cerises, today with a variety of amuses with scallops and once more on general demand a classic with asparagus: asparagus à la flamande.

The first amuse is made with peas, cream, a bit of olive oil and orange zest. The scallops are baked very briefly in butter, with a bit of piment d'espelette on top (by the way, they sell piment d'espelette at the tea market stall in Sainte Cécile) .

Ingredients: peas (about 250 grams), vegetable broth, cream, pepper, salt, scallops, butter, piment d'espelette, a few slices of smoked duck

Recipe: Boil the peas in vegetable broth. Blend them with a bit of the broth and a bit of cream. Add pepper and salt. Done! Bake the scallops very briefly in hot butter, add a bit of piment d'espelette.  Chop the slices of smoked duck. Dress the plate as follows: see photograph

The second amuse starts off like the first one, only you have to add more broth (not too much, it is still a velouté), sieve the peas (in order to remove the skins), warm up the liquid again and add Roquefort cheese that immediately melts in the hot velouté.

Ingredients: peas (about 350 grams), vegetable broth, Roquefort or another blue cheese, scallops, butter, salt, pepper.

Dress as per photograph (right)

Our main dish today was Asperges à la flamande, served with butter, parsley and boiled eggs. You first have to prepare the asparagus and boil them in salty water. When the asparagus is almost tender, remove the water and let the asparagus stir for a bit longer in butter (see photograph). Mash the boiled eggs, add parsley and the butter you used for the asparagus.

Dress the plate as per photograph (left)





Our aperitif today was a sparkling rosé wine Les bulles sauvages (grenache, syrah, muscat, méthode traditionelle) from the Pays du Ventoux, from the Domaine du bon Remède: absolutely excellent: dry, yet fruity and brisk, with a long aftertaste and beautiful flavours!

Our white today was an absolutely fantastic Riesling from one of the top domains of the Pfalz: Von Winning. Astounding, as always.

Signs of life ...

Here's an encouraging sign - the pizzeria opened up, for takeaway only, about three weeks ago.   Claude delivers pizzas that have been previously ordered by 'phone though the window - no customers go inside.  Business is not that brisk yet but Claude is having the garden area tidied up so that he can serve diners out there in a few weeks when no doubt there will be more tourists around again.

Sunday lunch at Le temps des cerises

Dear all!

Every Sunday I try to cook something special to go with the right wine. Because we are now in the middle of the white asparagus season, that is a bit of a regional specialty over here, I'm preparing either an entrée or a main course with 'the white gold' while the season lasts. This Sunday I did asparagus with smoked salmon, honey-mustard vinaigrette and North Sea grey shrimp.

Recipe

Peel the asparagus and boil it in salted water

Prepare the vinaigrette: mustard (about a teaspoon) + honey (about a small tablespoon), add wine vinegar, stir until the honey dissolves, add olive oil (softens the taste) and majoram. Make sure the vinaigrette is not too acid or too sharp.

Put a slice of smoked salmon on a plate, sprinkle with the vinaigrette (this really gives a very fresh, somewhat sweet-sour touch to the salmon, but don't overdo, otherwise you risk ruining the delicate taste of the asparagus).

Arrange the asparagus on the plate with the shrimps on top.

Wine

Very good wines to go with white asparagus are Grüner Veltliner (Austria) or dry Riesling (although the list of suitable wines does not stop there of course).  These past few weeks we have been enjoying some excellent Austrian Riesling, apart from the Grüner Veltliner (see picture).

Our main dish today was something quintessentially Flemish, involving (obviously) beer, pork cheeks, a slice of bread with mustard and a bit of brown sugar! : 'Pork cheeks stew with Rodenbach'. Rodenbach is a pretty unique beer, that is hard to catalogue. It also has a 'grand cru' version, and rightly so! A bit acidulous and yet also with a touch of sweetness, it has great gastronomical potential!

Recipe

1 liter of Rodenbach

1 kilo of pork cheeks

1 bouquet garni (thyme, laurel, 1 clove)

parsley

1 onion

1 garlic clove

pepper & salt

a slice of (white) bread

mustard

2 tablespoons of brown sugar

Slice the onion. Bake the sliced onion and the garlic until the onion slices turn glazy and the aromas have sufficiently come out. Put aside and bake the pork cheeks on all sides (so they remain juicy when they are slowly cooked in the beer). Remove the cheeks (still raw inside) from the pan and put them in a casserole with the onion and the garlic. Meanwhile pour the beer in the hot pan in which you baked the meat, so the flavours of the meat can be absorbed by the beer. Pour the beer in the casserole, add the bouquet garni and the parsley and two tablespoons of brown sugar and put a slice of bread with mustard on top. Close the lid and let the stew stir for about two hours at a low temperature (slow cooking). Season with pepper and salt and serve! (with fries, puree, gratin....). The meat will be so tender you can 'cut' it with a teaspoon! 

Wine

A Stew like this one is often served with beer, the Rodenbach grand cru for example, but as this is a pretty tertiary recipe, there are loads of tertiary wines to choose from that go perfectly with it, like for example a beautifully aged (8-10) years Chianti Classico

Going for Growth

It seems as if the virus has infected everyone with the kitchen gardening urge, almost everywhere I look our neighbours are raising pots of tomatoes and lettuces while tiny patches of garden are sprouting beans and peas.

All this despite the fact that Gigondas is a compact little village that still follows the original medieval street plan so gardens are a rarity and most of this horticultural bounty is appearing on the streets in front of the houses.  As you can see from the picture (left) I am not immune - I think these are tomato plants of the variety "optimist" - I'll keep you all updated on the crop if they survive the voracious French snails, the howling mistral and the cats sleeping on them in the hot weather!

Actually my own efforts began right back at the start of lockdown, but without garden centres where I could buy plants I had to try raising them from seed, unfortunately seeds that were left over from previous gardening enthusiasm at least ten years ago.  The results were predictably disappointing so now that lockdown has been eased a little I have started again with nursery grown plants.

I do wonder just what has inspired all this gardening enthusiasm?  Boredom maybe?  Surely we have not fooled ourselves that a few tomatoes and peppers will make us self sufficient and able to avoid those risky trips to the supermarket?  Maybe this is the 21st century version of "Digging for Victory"?
Perhaps it is more likely that we want reaffirmation of nature's power to bounce back, a need to cultivate a little growth and fruitfulness to confound the Grim Reaper?

Whatever the motivation I also felt the need to broadcast a message of recovery by bringing some colour back to the permanent flowerpots in-front of our house, pictures right and above left.

Considering Beauty’s “Objective” Nature [Sociology w/photographic evidence]

We’ve always been told, “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder”; i.e. a subjective, personal, internal state. While that’s “true” there is more to it — maybe the most important part, beauty’s objective nature. 

Sociology

This blog offering is plagiarizing the scientific principles of Sociology to support the concept that beauty is also objective; i.e. create a hypothesis, predict behavior, observe repeated behavior patterns as objective evidence, and the evidence either supports or refutes the hypothesis.

Hypothesis

Beauty is a common, near universal, repeatable cognitive experience that people, in significant numbers, find esthetically pleasing and will seek being exposed to — will seek experiencing. 

The hypothesis can be objectively tested by measuring human behavior, without reliance on having to measure anyone’s internal subjective state. We can see and measure the behavior of people seeking beauty. 

Test Sample

Our test sample of beauty is randomly eroded rock [see previous blog post for evidence].  A benefit of this test sample is that it is not beautiful as the result of a deliberate human act. We can assume the randomly eroded rock did not consciously create itself for the pleasure of humans; i.e. there’s no bias in the test sample. 

[BTW in the case of human observed randomly eroded rock beauty, synonyms for beauty include awe, wonder, splendor, etc.]

Sociology: observed behavior as objective evidence

Humans stumble on beautiful randomly eroded rock, recognize it as a kind of beauty that will be widely appreciated, and create national parks such as Zion, Arches, Bryce Canyon, etc.  The confirmation of their hypothesis is the measurable behavior of millions of people showing up to experience the beauty. 

And the visitors are so confident in their good taste and the surrounding beauty, that they take selfies to send back home to family and friends.

Selfies with Randomly Eroded Rock Beauty

When I Google “the most beautiful national parks” I get answers such as…. https://travel.usnews.com/rankings/best-national-parks-in-the-usa/
“Today, 61 national parks in the United States draw more than 300 million visitors a year to unique natural wonders and unforgettable terrains.”

The objective nature of beauty is also important to artistic effort. Because of beauty’s objectivity, artists are able to [at least partially] predict and take advantage of a viewer’s reaction.  This is true even when the artist innovates beyond current “critical standards” of beauty; e.g. Vincent Van Gogh. 

And so on. Point made. 

Ooops, there’s more….

Sunsets

One of my fav sociology examples is people who go to the coast to watch the sunset.   

Sunsets include more than mere beauty.  They include a sense of ending/beginning, cosmic connection, transition, transcendence. 

Maybe it can be asserted that all natural beauty has a touch of the transcendent to it.  Yet sunsets seem more insistent about it.  But we’re here for beauty.  [Thoughts on transcendence may be another blog.  Maybe not.] 

People are drawn to sunsets regardless of their complexity.  They’ll show up for ho-hum sunsets.  So it seems like just the idea of a sunset is enough. They’ll walk to the water’s edge or out to the end of the pier to get “closer” to the sunset.   

Sunset viewers at the end of a tall pier

Actually, how close you are to the sunset is controlled by geometry: the curvature of the earth and the altitude of your eyeballs.

BTW when standing at water’s edge the horizon and therefore the sunset is about 3 miles away.  For some reason I was hoping it was farther away, as if farther away added to the grandeur.   

Hopefully that factoid doesn’t dull your response to your next sunset. ;--)

Cheers, Kurt