Organic Wine and Food Matching

Petite Sirah. Here on this historic day, I’m thinking about… John Wayne.   How true was John Wayne? He not only played plain spoken, hard drinkin’ sunuvaguns, by all reports he was one. Quoted in the late ‘60s, “I drink for comradeship, and when I drink for comradeship I don’t bother to count.” Heck, here’s a guy who was diagnosed with lung cancer in ’64, had his entire left lung secretly removed, then commenced to working, chewing tobacco and smoking cigars until a stomach cancer finally took him down in ’79. No matter what you think of his politics, that was some true grit . Giants of a sort: John Parducci and the Duke. So what’s up with this 2005 Parducci True Grit Mendocino Old Vine Petite Sirah (about $25), made by owners Mendocino Wine Company – a partnership headed up by Tom Thornhill and former Fetzer winemaker Paul Dolan that is also committed to sustainable grape growing, 100% green power (from solar and wind sources) and earth-friendly pac...

  There is a memorable story in Cervantes’ Don Quixote , told by the faithful Sancho Panza, of the great wine judges in his lineage; particularly, two on his father’s side who were once challenged to identify a wine from a barrel.  The first one brought the wine to the tip of his tongue, and declared the flavor of iron. The second one just needed to pass it under his nose before declaring a stronger flavor of cordovan leather. The owner of the wine protested, however, saying his wine was perfectly clean, with no trace of iron or leather.  Days later, though, after the wine was sold and the barrel emptied, cellarers found a small iron key at the bottom of the barrel, hanging by a thong of leather. The story of these men from La Mancha took place at the start of the 1600s, during the same period of time Cervantes wrote his epic tale. Sometimes we forget how old the fine arts – like literature, wine judging, and great winemaking – really are. There are written records fro...

Owner/grower Marilena Barbera One of winemaker Randall Grahm’s favorite ways of referring to the under-appreciated wine grapes of the world is as ugly ducklings . Or, if you prefer a word of the day:  heterodoxical – unorthodox to the point of making a point. In respect to wines: appreciation of lesser known grapes that challenge the orthodoxy of the current hierarchy (re Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay as the “king” and “queen” of wines respectively, with well knowns like Pinot noir, Merlot and Riesling heading up the rest of the aristocracy). Italy’s deeply pigmented, black skinned Nero d’Avola is one of those grapes. Despite being the most widely planted red wine grape in its native Sicily, there was a time, in the 1980s, when Nero d’Avola seemed headed towards demise. Some Sicilians seemed more interested in transplanting to non-native Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon.   But thank goodness for the rising tide of heterodoxy, as during the p...