2003 Rocca delle Macie Chianti Classico Riserva

A young red wine's mulberry purple color is here, it seems to me, just maturing past the cranberry of middle age and going on toward the deep purplish russets of -- well, I won't say old age, but rather classicism.

Delicious. An aroma of clean leather and olive brine, a taste of delicate fruits and a long, lightly prune compote-like finish. Did it explode, I wonder, with cherries and raspberries in its youth? -- or is this still its youth? The label says it may be cellared for 10 to 15 years, and I am drinking it only in its seventh. I do think it should go with a grilled (Havarti) cheese and tomato sandwich, don't you? How about two sandwiches, so I can have a second glass?

I'm delighted to be able to tell you also that Rocca delle Macie is a "young" winery by Italian standards, having only been founded in 1973 by the late film producer Italo Zingarelli. If you remember a film called Johnny Yuma, then you remember part of the Zingarelli oeuvre. If you remember sitting up late at night back in the '70s to watch television broadcasts of They Call Me Trinity, starring the terribly handsome Terence Hill (born Mario Girotti in Venice in 1939 -- who knew?), why then -- you remember the Zingarelli oeuvre even better. More power to it. It bought a nice winery.

Image of Terence Hill (shamelessly taken) from Gloobts.com


Delicious.
  
The more recent vintage of Rocca delle Macie Chianti Classico Riserva retails for about $20.

Apple ginger squash soup for Thanksgiving

This is a handwritten recipe from a friend, dating from the days when our group of young stay-at-home mothers organized toddler playdates and Christmas recipe exchanges. (And yes, tempus fugit and two of us are grandmothers already.) It's been tucked away in a binder ever since I tried it for the first time one appropriately wintry day, and found the combination of squash and fresh ginger too bizarre for my innocent tastes. Thank God, time flies -- looking over it anew, I saw how simple it was, and so made it for our Thanksgiving. As my friend wrote at the bottom of the page: "On Thanksgiving Day keep pot simmering -- keep covered -- on stove or in crockpot. Serve as a warm beverage in mugs. Adds wonderful aroma throughout the house. Really! Really! Wonderful!" And it is.

You'll need:

3-4 Tbsp butter
1 and 1/2 lb. butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut in chunks
1 medium onion (sliced)
1 large Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and chopped
2 cups chicken broth
1 sprig of thyme or 1/2 tsp dried
2 Tbsp fresh ginger
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup heavy cream

Saute the squash, onion, and apple in the butter about 5 minutes. Add the chicken broth and the thyme, bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer 40 minutes until squash is tender. Remove thyme sprig if using, and let soup cool.

In blender, puree soup in batches, adding the fresh ginger with each batch. Blend well.

Scald cream, and stir in the pureed soup. Reheat to a simmer. Ladle into mugs, and sprinkle with chives or scallion tops before serving. The recipe is rich but serves only six -- it could be easily doubled for a larger crowd.

When the White House served "Chateau Iquem"

Before we go a step further, let me say that in plunging into the White House Cookbook, we fully intended to make Lemon Dumplings with Wine Sauce, circa 1887. The book proved so interesting, however, that we got a little distracted.

The White House Cookbook first published in 1887 seems to have been something of a marketing scam, although it sounds rude to say such a thing of our upright Victorian ancestors. According to the good people at Feeding America, when Mrs. F. L. Gillette published the book, subtitled A Selection of Choice Recipes Original and Selected, During a Period of Forty Years' Practical Housekeeping, she included only a few pictures of First Ladies as frontispieces to justify the somewhat grand-sounding preamble to the title. Otherwise, the work had nothing to do with the White House.

How did she get by with it? Perhaps publishing firms were not too fussy about truth-in-advertising in those days. Or she may have thought it would be brilliant to associate her book with the White House because President Grover Cleveland, erstwhile middle-aged bachelor, had just married lovely, twenty-one-year-old Frances Folsom the previous summer. Such a romantic circumstance! -- the cookbook-buying public could perhaps easily envision the young bride needing household hints, or to the contrary, slowly civilizing her husband's tastes at table. These, it seems, cannot have been good. Today the White House's official site records a presidential complaint: " 'I must go to dinner,' he wrote a friend [in his single days], 'but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring, a Swiss cheese, and a chop at Louis' instead of the French stuff I shall find.' "

Image from Frances Folsom Cleveland Collection, Wells College

Cleverly ployed or not, Mrs. Gillette's book was popular enough to require later editions. They in turn came to justify the grand sounding preamble to the title because with them, she got herself a collaborator. White House steward Hugo Ziemann joined her, his name remaining on the title page, and his expertise gracing the interior, of new printings for years to come. Many a turn-of-the-(twentieth)-century bride, we are told, received a copy of this cookbook and household manual as she started married life.

My copy existed only virtually, downloaded to my Kindle from wonderful Project Gutenberg, until we found an ancient, real White House Cookbook in our favorite antique mall in Crown Point, Indiana. There inside the cover are Mrs. Gillette's and Mr. Ziemann's names; there are the photo portraits of First Ladies. There is the menu for General Grant's birthday dinner, and look, there is the menu for Mrs. Cleveland's wedding lunch, June 4th, '88.

The date is curious. Modern sources say theirs was an evening wedding, held at 7 pm in the Blue Room on June 2, 1886. Could a lunch on June 4, '88 have been an anniversary party? Or are the National First Ladies' Library and the White House's official site both wrong, and Mrs. Gillette and Chef Ziemann right? Someone must know. The nuptials seem to have amounted to one of those once-in-a-century media frenzies, not least because rumor had it the bride's widowed mother had expected the President, a longtime family friend, to propose to her. Surely some eyewitness would have written down the correct and exciting date on a piece of paper somewhere.

Anyway we mustn't get too distracted by this small puzzle. The lunch sounds good, if rather light, and more French than hearty American-Victorian. (Poor Grover.)

Consomme en tasse. Soft Shell Crabs. Accompanied by: Chateau Iquem.
Coquilles de Ris de Vean [sic -- read "veau"]. Snipes on toast. Lettuce and Tomato Salade. Accompanied by: Moet & Chandon.
Fancy ice-cream. Cakes. Tea. Coffee. Fruits. Mottos.

(What on earth were "mottos"?) The highlight of the meal must have been the coquilles de ris de veau, a concoction of veal sweetbreads, truffles, and mushrooms cooked, minced and bound together as little morsels, and then sauced of course. If you would like to see the authentic instructions in French for this recette traditionelle, all two sentences of them, you may go to Le Guide Gantie Provence-Cote-d'Azur 2010, and have at it.

Now we must note the two wines, Chateau Iquem (d'Yquem), and Moet & Chandon. The White House had good taste.

Chateau d'Yquem is a wine about which we mortals ought not to dare speak -- or so it can seem when we remember how much time we spend dealing in (and drinking) plain cabernets and chardonnays which shock us if they retail for more than fifteen dollars. The four-hundred-year-old Chateau, located in the Sauternes appellation of Bordeaux, makes a sweet white wine from semillon (and sauvignon blanc) grapes which have been shrivelled on the vine by the beneficial mold botrytis cinerea. The results go beyond legend. Golden colors, peach and chocolate flavors, tangy honey, caramel-vanilla, "rich, fragrant," raspberries and cream, "very rich," rich, rich, rich. All these tasting notes I have appropriated from Michael Broadbent's Vintage Wine (2002). He tastes so many extraordinary d'Yquems not only because he founded the rare and fine wine auctions department at Christie's in 1966  and so has access to a lot, but also because d'Yquems last forever. That mold concentrates the semillon grape's sugars as well as its acidity. Acid is a preservative -- think pinot noir and riesling, just two wines that people tend to classify merely as either "lighter" or sweet, but which they could lay down for a few years if they had a good enough sample -- and where Sauternes are concerned, oh my is acid ever a preservative.

Mr. Broadbent has tasting notes on d'Yquems from the 1780s. These are wines that the chateau records Thomas Jefferson as having ordered, for himself and for Mr. Washington, in wicker hampers of 50 bottles each. (The chateau, or other collectors, still had some in their cellars for twentieth-century auctioneers to try as late as 1998, it seems.) He has tasting notes on d'Yquems from the famous "Comet" vintage (1811 -- Abraham Lincoln was two), from 1814 ("picking commenced on 29 September" of that year), from 1834 and so on through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most of what he sampled remained excellent. Notes on the 1847 are rapturous. "Unquestionably the greatest-ever vintage ... immensely sweet, fabulous flavor, incredible finish ... superb ... faultless ... glorious." Six stars. Five is his usual limit.

The Sauternes appellation occasionally had problems, but they were and are the huge and inevitable ones of weather or war. As it happens, the 1880s, just the decade when President and Mrs. Cleveland would have been sitting down to their wedding lunch, was one of the worst decades in this chateau's history. (We can only surmise the White House steward would have made sure the "Iquem" came from a good old vintage). The root louse or "aphid-like insect" phylloxera struck then as it did all over France and Europe, devastating vineyards until farmers realized the way to fight this American invader, inadvertently imported by growers desiring to experiment with American grape varieties, was to graft European vines onto resistant American rootstocks. But what Sauternes always has on the plus side of its ledger, and the reason why it consistently produces wines of sheer legend, is what Mr. Broadbent calls its "perfect" combination of "site, soils, drainage, and cepages [grape varieties]." The thin-skinned semillon is susceptible to that good botrytis mold, which loves moisture and is in turn encouraged to form by the autumn mists that rise over a land dominated by a warm-water, tidal river (the Garonne) and a cool-water mountain spring (the Ciron). Swift-draining, gravelly soil -- we are in the district of Bordeaux called Graves for that reason -- completes the circumstances of perfection.  

Needless to say -- well, not actually, I had better say it -- Chateau d'Yquem was included in the famed Bordeaux classification of 1855, by which the wine brokers of the area affirmed the status of the seventy-three most outstanding chateaux there. All were and are located in four areas of Bordeaux only, all of them on the left bank, Atlantic-facing side of the Gironde estuary, which is fed partly by the Garonne mentioned above: the Medoc, Graves, Sauternes, and Barsac. D'Yquem was the only wine, red or white, singled out as "Grand premier cru" (or "Premier cru superieur," since wine writers disagree on the precise term), meaning great first [class] growth. This is a status that outranks even the "premier cru," first class growth, bestowed on other legends such as Chateau Lafite-Rothschild or Chateau La Tour, both of which are reds from the Medoc.

Yes, indeed the Gilded Age White House had good taste. Still you may pause here, consult the old menu again, and gape in disbelief, as I did too. A honey-sweet white wine with soup and then crab? Yes. Sauternes with fish was normal on Victorian and Edwardian tables. The people maintaining Chateau d'Yquem's website today confirm that the wine is so complex and glorious that it will flatter any food. Kevin Zraly, in Windows on the World, records that the first time he visited Sauternes and ate a meal at a chateau there, he was astonished to find the glorious local tipple served with every course except dessert. With dessert came a dry red Bordeaux. It made a pairing he didn't like.

As to that other wine served on a June day in '88, after all this there seems little to say about Moet & Chandon. A champagne, fabulous of course. Favorite of Napoleon, which is why the house eventually acquired the trademark "Imperial." Their famed White Star was only recently renamed Imperial, too. They make Dom Perignon as a sort of side line. 

All of this, as a preliminary to the lemon dumplings with wine sauce. They are very good. But we really must pause and draw breath, and continue later.

Meanwhile, do visit: Chateau d'Yquem and Moet & Chandon.

Chateau d'Yquem retails in the Chicago area for between $200 and $600 per 750 ml bottle, depending on vintage. Expect to find it mostly at downtown or north suburban locations. Moet & Chandon retails for about $45 to $70 per 750 ml, depending on style.

I am your ultimate Thanksgiving wine pairing guide

It is really all so simple. You must plan to serve more wine. At least four types, and preferably five or six.

Our ancestors would never have dreamed of forcing one or two wines to be all things to all guests at this, the most important meal of the year. Here is a suggested menu for Thanksgiving dinner, from the Boston Cooking School Cookbook, written by Fannie Farmer and originally published in 1896.

Oyster soup, crisp crackers

Celery, salted almonds

Roast turkey, cranberry jelly

Mashed potatoes, onions in cream, squash

Chicken pie

Fruit pudding, sterling sauce

Mince, apple, and squash pies

Neapolitan ice cream, fancy cakes

Fruit, nuts, raisins, bonbons

Crackers, cheese, cafe noir

Opulent as this repast is, it still does not constitute a "full course" formal dinner, which would have proceeded precisely and graciously from shellfish to soup to fish to roast (beef) to vegetable to sorbet to game to salads to jellies, puddings, ices, cakes, bonbons, and then the inevitable crackers, cheese, and cafe noir. As to the wines at either style of meal, full or not, Miss Farmer's advice is brief.

"Where wines and liqueurs are served, the first course is not usually accompanied by either; but if desired, Sauterne [sic] or other white wine may be served. 

"With soup, serve sherry; with fish, white wine; with game, claret [Bordeaux, e.g., a cabernet-merlot blend]; with roast and other courses, champagne."

That's all. Unless of course, you wish to add after-dinner cordials to the festivities.

"After serving cafe noir in the drawing room, pass pony of brandy for men, sweet liqueur (Chartreuse, Benedictine, or Parfait d'Amour) for women; then Creme de Menthe to all."

You'll be relieved to know that the very last thing "passed" was Apollinaris, sparkling water. And can it be that Miss Farmer did not much like Burgundy? For she seems to have forgotten it, whereas the table settings drawn up in the era's equally popular White House Cookbook make prominent room for it. To the right of one's plate at a formal dinner in Washington in Gilded Age days, one found six glasses, arranged in a sort of anchor pattern: glasses I, II, and III, the arms of the anchor, held Sauternes, sherry, and Rhine (German riesling) respectively; glass IV at the anchor's throat held water (thank goodness); glasses V and VI, making up the shank, held champagne and Burgundy.We know for example, from this same White House Cookbook, that General Grant's birthday dinner allowed for the serving of "Ernest Jeroy" along with filet de boeuf a la Bernardi. Ernest Jeroy seems to have fallen off the planet -- look for it in books in vain, google it and you will find it only turns up in retellings of General Grant's birthday dinner --  but it sounds like a Burgundy, doesn't it? The fact that it was also served at a state dinner to accompany saumon and then grenadines de bass leads me to suspect it was everything a supple, beef- and fish-friendly pinot noir should be. Perhaps Miss Farmer simply preferred her claret.

At any rate, the holiday wine and food pairing challenge is easy to face. Let our ancestors guide you. To each course, its appropriate wine. The good people at Epicurious appear to have some inklings. They suggest a trio of food pairings for each of several possible wines, based on the flavor profiles of some suggested recipes for the turkey, the stuffing, a vegetable, and so on. Chardonnay to match sweetness, a pinot noir to match anything herbal, a zinfandel to marry with Italian flavor profiles. All fine. But to General Grant, or Miss Farmer, I suspect such anxieties might have seemed rather mean. Rather too much concerned with efficiency and not pleasure. For heaven's sake, they might have said, all this has been thought out for you long since. Look at the six glasses beside your plate, and be glad to anticipate all the good, right things coming your way.

2004 William Hill cabernet sauvignon

What we wait for a nice, but by no means wildly boutique, cabernet to become. "William Hill" is code for Gallo, you know.

Cranberry in color, not the purple mulberry of a younger wine. Almost scentless, as cabernets tend to be -- a little clean leather, perhaps, certainly none of the hard green pepper smells of a young wine. The tannins have eased away, the fruit has thinned, and a little gentle acidity has remained. The result is a pleasant little glassful to accompany an ordinary weeknight dinner. (Salmon patties, anyone?)

You won't stagger off from the table in transports of delight, but you may muse that this is what you wish all yeoman cabernets could be, right now. And yet the Gallo people were anxious to pull this off the shelves, because the label art was out of date. And because "it's the 2004."

More recent vintages of William Hill cabernet retail for about $20.

2008 Vinum Cellars petite sirah

So very smooth, so lush and easy and slipping right down like fruity purple velvet -- I almost thought it was too smooth. Was I missing something as I gulped merrily along? Might the wine be characterless? But how silly. Imagine muttering "it lacks oomph" as you reach for your second or third pour.

I must admit I don't have a screamingly passionate interest in the flow charts, or the family tree, or what you might call the apostolic succession, of the California wine industry. Who apprenticed where -- whose ex-wife's maiden name still graces the secondary label -- who used to be a hedge fund millionaire -- who has moved on --- whose grandson sold to Constellation Brands. All very well; they make wine. But once in a while anyone may happen upon a factoid which fits into the flow chart, as I did a few days ago. A California bottle on our shelves, 2005 Used Automobile Parts (no kidding) from Don Sebastiani & Sons, credits winemaker Richard Bruno in small gold font on the back label. By sheer luck I see that Richard Bruno's name now appears on Vinum Cellars' website, as a helpmeet to this petite sirah. So by sheer luck I can inform you that he has moved on to a new employer.

And brought his style with him, perhaps. Sebastiani, a.k.a. Don and Sons a.k.a. The Other Guys a.k.a. Three Loose Screws, makes generally inexpensive, smooth, well-bred wines like Hey Mambo, Smoking Loon, and Pepperwood Grove, retailing for $6 to $12. Used Automobile Parts, at $50 to $60, was the companies' high end offering. So our Vinum Cellars petite sirah, smooth and well-bred and about $10, would seem to have the Bruno/Sebastiani touch upon it. Lots of wines, Talus, Vendange, Nathanson Creek, used to have the Sebastiani touch because they were Sebastiani products, until a grandson sold them to Canandaigua Wines. Not to be confused with Constellation. The flow chart it floweth every day.

The petite sirah grape seems to need a flow chart of its own. Descended from a mighty parent, syrah, petite sirah was bred in the 1870s by an amateur French biologist named Durif, who wanted to create a new vitis vinifera variety resistant to powdery mildew. He named his new vine after himself. The durif, however, did not catch on in its native Rhone valley. When it was brought to California in the late nineteenth century, growers embraced it, but also seem to have gradually forgotten its name. Who decided to rechristen it petite sirah from the start? There was already a "petite sirah" in California in the 1880s, when M. Durif was only just experimenting with his new fruit on the other side of the world. So what was that, and which was which? Incidentally, the French do grow a small-berried version of syrah, which they helpfully call "petite syrah."

Anyway, when durif arrived in California and got rechristened, it threw itself into the jumble of "field blends" with which growers made inexpensive jug wines before the days when an accurately identified varietal on the label mattered to consumers. Today, heroic researcher Dr. Carole Meredith at the University of California at Davis -- U.C. Davis, to wine geeks -- has shown that indeed, most of the state's vineyards labeled petite sirah are planted to M. Durif's baby. Other misnamed petite sirah vines, however, "have over the years turned out to be true Syrah, carignan, mourvedre, and grenache" -- all Rhone grapes -- and peloursin, which latter is durif's other, non-mighty parent. (See the New Wine Lover's Companion, by Ron Herbst and Sharon Tyler Herbst.) 

Returning to our rapidly emptying wineglass -- what surprises me about this example from Vinum Cellars is its smoothness and gulpability. Books and blogs will tell you that petite sirah makes a big, full-bodied, peppery, tannic wine; that it has long been added, field-blend style, to zinfandels to give them "zest and complexity." I would have thought zinfandels need no further zest, but then again, perhaps every one I have ever enjoyed has been secretly married to le Durif. In any case, big-pepper-tannic translates for me as difficult to like. Yet this one was easy. Do we see here the crowd-pleasing, Bruno/Sebastiani touch? Or do I suddenly like pepper and tannin?

The petite sirah is not a noble grape, but some people think it should be. They have a website, called P.S. I love you. And if you can't find Vinum Cellars at your local retailer, you might try the California Wine Club.  

Lemon syrup muffins

When it appeared in the Chicago Tribune some years ago, this recipe was titled "Double lemon muffins." Like any muffin recipe, it is basically simple -- be careful not to overmix the batter, or the results will be tough -- but it does involve a little extra preparation. I have taken the unheard of liberty of using different colored fonts in the attempt to keep things visually clear. If you love lemon things, all this is well worth it.

Start by making a lemon syrup. Have ready:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/4 lemon juice
• the zest of one lemon

Combine all the syrup ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, and boil, covered, for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

For the batter, combine in a large bowl:

• 3 and 1/2 cups flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 and 1/2 cups sugar

Mix well. Then, combine in a different bowl:

• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 eggs
• zest of 2 lemons (I peel the zest off in strips and let it steep in the lemon juice separately while I mix the eggs and milk; when I am ready to add in the lemon juice to this mixture, I pour it through a strainer to remove the peels)

Separately, melt 2 sticks of butter.

Now, quickly combine the dry ingredients, the eggs and lemon juice mixture, and the melted butter. Preheat the oven to 375. Spoon the batter into paper-lined muffin tins. Sprinkle each muffin with a little bit of sugar -- the original recipe calls for a teaspoon of sugar atop each, but that seems far too much. A dash will do.

Bake until golden brown and rounded, about 20 minutes. Remove from pans and cool on racks. The recipe claims to make 18 muffins, but I found it made close to 30.

While they are still warm, cut 3 or 4 narrow gashes in each muffin with a knife, from top to bottom. Spoon the lemon syrup over them. They are scrumptious right at that moment and excellent the next day, when the syrup has really soaked in.

As we like to say about very good things: ooh.

(Yes, it is good) 2008 Fogdog chardonnay

My, my, is it good. And I say this not only because the very kind people at Fogdog sent me a new bottle to replace my first, which was corked. I say it because it tastes delicious.

It has a light, beautiful yellow color, the color of pear flesh, a light scent of caramel and maybe nutmeg, a light rich flavor of caramel, just in the middle of your mouthful. And the rest is a splash of juiciness, in which you enjoy the rest of the dripping ripe pear. Can acidity be luxurious?

It seems to me that these types of chardonnays are the hardest to find -- those that achieve a lovely balance between banana syrup, Bit-o-Honey (read oak-loaded) thick sweetness, and those that are -- or that once seemed to me -- all steel-tank acids and high-alcohol "heat." (Would you care to trip down memory lane, and watch me cope with Kunde Estate's "Nu" chardonnay when I was still more clueless that I am now? No? Me neither. No wonder my anonymous commenter at the time was puzzled.) That most desirable chardonnay balance is, well, just like Fogdog's, I think. The lightest dollop of caramel, on the cut end of a fresh ripe pear. Alcohol, 13.5%, which strikes me as quite normal now.

And yet the vintage had fourteen months in French oak barrels, which strikes me as plenty of time in which to take up banana-and-Bit-o-Honey thickness. But wait -- of all Freestone vineyards' chardonnays, the 2008 Fogdog seems to have had the least amount of time in new oak. (The fresher the oak, the more pronounced the candylike effects.) Does that account perhaps for its lightness and, to me, balance, and does that also partly account for its price? It seems to be the least expensive chardonnay the estate offers. New oak barrels are dear to procure ....  

I wait anxiously for the Kunde Anonymous to return, and set me straight once more.

2007 Preston of Dry Creek zinfandel

A zinfandel for grown ups. Slightly smoky and brambly, refined fruit, tannins and acids that cooperate civilly on your tongue. Very good.

Fruit- or market-basket metaphors? None quite fit. It is itself.

Noble or common? Noble, certainly. Masculine or feminine? Not quite either, yet .... A teenaged boy, on his way to becoming something interesting.

And organic. Mercy, perhaps I'll become a believer after all.

Retail, about $35.

Preston of Dry Creek (Healdsburg, CA -- Sonoma County).

Gourmet's "island pork tenderloin"

I prefer to think of it as "Cinnamon pork tenderloin," because that name sounds prettier and is more descriptive. (The editors of Gourmet's superb 2004 cookbook explain that the recipe is "our spin on jerk pork," but if you don't know your Caribbean culinary traditions -- I don't, I merely guess -- such a reference may confuse you.) My photograph does not show the meat as internally juicy as it actually was; it tasted so good that we all ate lots of dinner first, and then I took some pictures.

First, preheat the oven to 350 F. Have two pork tenderloins, about 2 and 1/2 pounds total, unwrapped and ready.

In a small bowl, mix:

• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground pepper
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Rub this mixture over the meat.

Heat 2 Tbsp olive oil in a heavy skillet over high heat, "until just beginning to smoke." Sear the meat on all sides, about 4 minutes.

While the meat is browning, prepare a glaze of:

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp finely chopped garlic
• 1 Tbsp. Tabasco

Remove the skillet from the heat, but leave the meat in it. Pat the sugar glaze all over the tops of the tenderloins. Put the skillet in the oven and roast for about 30 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the pork shows a temperature of 160 F. (I take my cue here from Madeleine Kamman's New Making of a Cook, rather than from Gourmet. Their suggestion of a 20 minute cooking time and an internal temperature of 140 F, to safely rise 10 to 15 degrees after a few minutes' "resting," strikes me as a bit too sanguine. Literally.)

When the pork is done, take it out of the skillet, put it on a nice plate, and carve it in slices, pouring the pan juices over. Don't skip this step -- one look at the whole tenderloins just sitting there in their bubbling brown sugar drippings will make it clear why this has to be done.

It is very delicious. Good especially with that big, syrupy, cranberry-and-oak Marietta Cellars zinfandel we had been rather disrespectful of a short time ago.

Wines of Chile blogger tasting -- epilogue (the replacement bottle)

Or, "stop, you spoil me." Allow me to explain. May an epilogue have a prologue?

2007 Marietta zinfandel, Marietta Cellars, Geyserville, CA.  

Sugary texture -- cranberry sauce -- cough syrup.
Retail, about $19.

That's the prologue. Now let's move on.

2007 Emiliana Coyam, Vinedos Emiliana, Colchagua Valley, Chile (a blend of syrah, cabernet, carmenere, merlot, petit verdot, and mourvedre). On the night of the Wines of Chile live blogger tasting, this was wine no. 7. It slid out of the freezer and smashed all over the kitchen floor. The people who organized the event were gracious enough to send me a new bottle, which I have thoroughly enjoyed.

Like the other Chilean red blends of that night, Coyam seems to me a classy, masculine affair. Its puckery, refreshing acidity, many-layered dark fruits, and firm dense mouthfeel ask for a good meal, a leather armchair and coffee and a cigar (and probably a football game) afterward. The label tells us that coyam is a native Chilean word for oak, the wine being so named to honor both the oak trees surrounding Emiliana's vineyards, and the use of oak barrels in aging the product.

Certainly I perceive coyam in the glass, but if I had to guess I would say it was subtly done. What expert tasters can instantly recognize as a judicious use will give wine a savory harmony and lushness, rather than the oozy licorice and vanilla effects that (it seems to me) overuse can bestow. Sometimes red wines enjoyed over the course of two or three nights turn into essence of licorice, which is not at all a taste treat for me. Coyam, I'm glad to say, didn't do that. Oyster Bay merlot did; the Marietta zinfandel of our prologue got right to the point and started out that way.

Compare them all, and inexpert though you may be I am, an "Aha" moment may still timidly dawn, with regard to oak and to climate too. Of course the comparison is not entirely fair. A California zinfandel is one thing, a New Zealand merlot -- surely? -- another, a Chilean syrah-cabernet-carmenere-etc. blend a third. Not forgetting that nice Banfi Chianti with the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani on the label. A fourth.

But in thick, sugary-textured, and rather tiring cranberry sauce wines of 15 % alcohol, you can at least realize you are likely tasting hot weather, and grapes that grew fat and sweet on the vine before luxuriating in their oak barrel bath. Coyam, leaner, earthier, and subtler, and not turning to Good'n'Plenty in three days, prompts the guess that I am tasting a cooler climate. I am tasting fruit that hesitated on its way to ripeness, and so retained some refreshing acidity before dipping just one grapey toe in that expensive French barrique. (To be fair, Coyam's alcohol level was 15% too.) Does the fact that it seemed so much better, classier, really reflect all these oenophilic "Ahas," or have I been swayed, as I go nattering on, by the cool-climate sample's suggested retail price of about $30? Ten dollars more than Marietta. More than twice the price of Oyster Bay and Banfi.

Which glass you would more enjoy refilling is a matter of taste. Can the one wine spoil our interest in  the others? Possibly. Anyway these nice people, in California, in Chile -- they do spoil me.

2005 Izway Bruce Barossa Valley shiraz

Busy afternoon. Busy salesman, new product. Tiny, tiny plastic cup. "Older vintage. 91 points. You could sell it for $30 or $40. New vintage retails for $80. We just picked it up."

Tasted.

Ooh. Good, good, good. A younger shiraz' stand-up-and-walk-down-your-throat tannic stiffness has softened into a gently spiced, gently rich little fruitbowl. Sweet, yes, but fruitbombs are my friends. 

If you can find it -- these people are so boutique they don't even maintain a website -- well, --- ooh.

A little more about Izway Wines, here.

Retro hot dog and eggplant dinner, 1963

It's a dinner worthy of Mad Men, albeit so unattractive looking in its casserole dish that I feel deeply compelled not to offer a photograph of it, substituting instead an arty-looking snap of one-sixth of an eggplant against the background of a pretty (and yes, retro) plate.

Our source: the Good Housekeeping Cookbook of 1963. Our chapter: "The Story of Meats," its subchapter, Frankfurters, appearing to be from the pen of someone moonlighting for the Hot Dog Advisory Board. Or maybe, in a plot twist worthy of Mad Men, sleeping with someone on the Hot Dog Advisory Board. "Today's hot dog is one of America's finest meats," Mlle. Anonymous assures us. "It's a combination of tender, lean, juicy meats and aromatic spices ... as fine for children as for grown ups ... they supply the same high-quality protein and meat values as roasts, chops, and steaks and are a very thrifty buy."

So be it. Our recipe: the very first in the subchapter's collection. "Franks Italian." We'll need:

1 medium eggplant
1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/3 cup salad oil (olive oil)
8 franks -- [do splurge, and use good kosher ones]
2 (8 oz.) cans tomato sauce [I used stewed tomatoes]
1 cup grated cheddar cheese [and I omitted this, since it seemed a gooey bit of overkill]

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Wash the eggplant and cut into 8 half-inch thick slices. Coat each slice with a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper. In hot oil, in skillet, saute eggplant until golden on both sides. (If you omit this step, and simply proceed with the recipe, your dinner will of course be gluten free.)

Place 4 of the eggplant slices side by side in a greased 13 x 9 x 2 pan. Place one frank, sliced in half lengthwise, atop each. Spread with one can tomato sauce, and sprinkle with half the cheese, if using. Repeat layers.

Bake 30 minutes, or until cheese [if using] is bubbly. Top with snipped parsley.

This is one of those meals that you look at aghast on the page, thinking how decidedly un-French it is. No cream, no herbs, no braising of this and simmering of that. No stock, no wine, no garlic or fresh little haricots verts. Rather, hot dogs, good Lord, and eggplant [and cheese] all jumbled up together until they bubble.

But then you make it, reasoning that this is after all Good Housekeeping, and the magazine has long been known for reliable recipes. It's certainly easy enough for a weeknight. And after you make it and set it on the table, you find that you and the family eat it and keep eating it, and before you know it, you are looking for a second helping because this actually tastes pretty good.

What wine do you pair with hot dogs and eggplant? No, seriously -- what do you pair with them?

2008 Oyster Bay merlot (New Zealand)

It's very good -- bright clear garnet in color, a slightly smoky aroma, smooth, elegant fruit, mouthwatering acids. You should read the technical specifications -- 3 day prefermentation maceration, French oak barriques, tailored rackings, malolactic fermentation, 6 months in more French oak. I quote this not in a spirit of pop-eyed mockery, but to marvel at the work, knowledge, and care that go toward making wines which remain still modest enough to retail for only about $12 or so.

With its light piquancy, nearly un-tasteable tannins and all-around easy gulping, it reminded me for all the world of the most recent Chianti I enjoyed, Banfi's 2008 Chianti superiore. Could it be that a New Zealand merlot and a new-on-the-market Chianti, both of the same year, each represent the phenomenon that Michael Broadbent calls "the global red"? The publicity materials and label art seem to say yes. They seem to say, Don't be afraid...here are some beautiful women.

Image from Olga's Gallery