Organic Wine and Food Matching

The author with Kermit Lynch at Chez Panisse in Berkeley Collette wrote of France’s Jurançon:  when I was a young girl, I was introduced to a passionate Prince, domineering and two-timing like all great seducers… My lifelong affair has been with Domaine Tempier’s Bandol rouge , which began in the early 1980s, when I was first introduced to the French imports of Kermit Lynch. In the beginning, I did not understand the compulsion: It was a red wine that always seem to have a spirit – whether it was in the mysterious, earthy, scrubby, leathery notes that often seem to engulf the aromas of berry liqueurs in the nose, or the slightly sparkly, lively, lilting quality in the texture of the wine itself, almost belying a meatiness of tannin and dried grape skin flavor. Colette, 1904. Bandol is, after all is said and done, a wine that never seems light nor heavy, lean nor fat, zesty but never sharp, delicious with a stew of meat, and delicious with a stew of fish. In short, a perfe...

  The biodynamically farmed Maysara estate in Willamette Valley's McMinnville AVA When Oregon’s “Papa Pinot,” the recently departed David Lett of Eyrie Vineyards, planted his first vineyard in 1965, he settled in the Dundee Hills just south, towards west, of Portland, where deep, red clay soils on bedrocks of basalt have yielded the type of gentle yet generous, red berryish, fruit driven red wines that have come epitomize Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.  During the past twenty-five years, a number of other little pockets of Willamette Valley have been successfully planted by winemakers, five of which have been identified as sufficiently unique to merit their own official AVA ( American Viticultural Regi on ) designation.  Among those “other” regions: the McMinnville AVA, located a good twenty miles southwest of the Dundee Hills AVA; closer to the Pacific’s maritime influence, and tucked into coastal mountain hillsides where slightly dryer weather and brighter days are off...

Cooper Mountain Vineyard. Gus Clements on Wine. In the movie Sideways Miles talked about finding the Holy Grail of Pinot Noir in Santa Barbara. Unfortunately, if you ask any Oregonian, he was about 900 miles off the mark. The fact that Oregon’s Willamette Valley shares the 45 th Parallel with Burgundy in France – the Pinot Noir grape’s native habitat – is just one of the reasons why Pinot-philes flock eagerly to the Beaver State. The other is climatic (downright cold compared to most of the California coast, making for longer ripening towards more intense Pinot); and the other is the abundance of higher elevation, moderately fertile slopes allowing vines to “self-regulate” (that is, expend less energy on growing canes and leaves, and more on fruit flavor and extract). Dr. Robert Gross in the early 1980s. Let’s get to the wine: The 2006 Cooper Mountain, Reserve Pinot Noir (about $25) is a classic Oregonian. Very delicate, moderately extracted, and neither overripe in th...

Morgon in Beaujolais. Ah, 2009… I’m already feelin’ it. Maybe it’s because of the wine and meal I had yesterday, when I was still feeling the previous day’s bloated repasts, nevertheless in need of sustenance, physically and spiritually: a Beaujolais with eggs in balsamic vinegar and butter. Then again, the 2006 Jean-Paul Thévenet Vieilles Vignes Morgon is a wine that would make any jaded wine dude feel that way. This is real wine, and I’m not just blowing smoke. First, it’s red, which is a good start. Second, it tastes the way it’s supposed to; meaning: 1. Morgon is a Beaujolais  cru , a village producing richer, broader, denser styles of reds than “regular” Beaujolais (which are usually light, limp, almost watery). 2. Yet it’s still a Beaujolais, made from the Gamay noir à jus blanc grape, which will give a softer, rounder tannin feel than, say, most Pinot Noir based reds, even in the higher ranked Beaujolais crus . 3. It’s a vieilles vignes – from “old vines” (a...