California Wine Dinner

Back last December, with an eye towards propping up our favorite airline and earning a few miles… we found ourselves in San Francisco, or to be more precise, the San Francisco airport, with a few hours to kill. Now we and the Chef Cousin are always looking for an excuse to degust wine, and, although we find many, we find fewer to do so with California wines. So we decided to use our time in SFO and locate some drinkable wines to port back to Paris.

Not knowing the airport, having no real memories of what boutiques are available to travelers there and having decided not to exit security, we set off on a stroll through the terminal. The first thing that struck us was the art on display. We all know about art in public places and the lowest common denominator factor that seems to determine its choice. (Real New Yorkers among the Loyal Audience will recall the falderal over Tilted Arc in Federal Plaza and how the uproar over having to walk around one of the greatest pieces of public art in NYC caused it to be removed and cut into pieces, effectively destroying the work.) As a result, we were pleasantly surprised by what we saw immediately – a big David Smith sculpture – and soon after, prominently displayed, a display filled with brochures outlining a walking tour of the art in the terminal.

A big fan of monumental 60s & 70s contemporary art, we were more than happy to follow the tour figuring that if a wine boutique existed, we would find it under a large painting! To plug the airport and its art advisors just a bit more, the tour took us through a temporary exhibition that actually 1) had enough space to show a sufficient amount of work to make a point, 2) appealed to children (of all ages) and adults, and 3) was relevant to an airport. Impressive, no?

Sure enough, two and a half hallways later, we found the grail – Wine Wisdom, Terminal 3, Gate 85. We feel obliged to give them a plug as well and suggest strongly that you, Dear Reader, next time you find yourself in SFO leave time for a visit. The husband and wife team owning the store are knowledgeable and honest. There is a wine bar (!) where six or seven wines are available by the glass and a large selection of California wines available. Best of all, as Wine Wisdom is behind security, you can take the bottles directly onboard with you, just don’t open them in the plane; that is against FAA rules!

Back at the boutique, we noted a small selection of foreign wines, but do not disappoint us, Brave Followers, and buy anything produced outside of California in this store. Additionally, do not open your credit card portfolio for that grade of California wine found easily in East Coast wine shoppes. Both of these pearls of wisdom are dropped before you, Reader, with the warning that to the propriétaires of this fine establishment, you are a captive audience. Translation: it’s not as if you can change your mind and go down the street to the competitor’s shop; you are paying a higher markup than you would have paid at that last San Francisco Internet hook-up’s Noe Valley neighborhood wine store. Therefore, shop here if you did not find time to slip away to your favorite garage wine maker or to that little vineyard whose Zinfandel makes your knees weak, but you still want a souvenir you can share happily with friends (see the above reference to Noe Valley).

We were carrying some light reading along and used that as a starting point for our search. It was the end-of-year issue of Wine Spectator that, handily, included a list of the 100 best wines for 2008. Unfortunately, none of those wines were available, but the owners were willing to listen to my litany of wants and don’t-wants long enough to lead me around the shop and recommend or negate some bottles.

We call it the 40-Questions Game but it establishes the parameters. In this case: single cepage rather than Bordeaux-style blends, traditional California grapes – Merlot, Zinfandel, Chardonnay – but no Pinot Noir, none of the over-oaked Chardonnay and not more than $40 per bottle, were the rules. At the end we left with four bottles:
Grgigh Hills Estate Fumé Blanc 2006
Trefethen Family Vineyards Estate Chardonnay 2006
Trefethen Family Vineyards Estate Merlot 2005
Rockpile Road Vineyards Estate Zinfandel 2005
in a nice carrying box as we sipped, oops, zipped off to our flight.

The wines had a lovely temperature-controlled furlough in NYC before winging their way on to Paris recently. Note to file, Dear Reader: if you are travelling some distance, in any mode of transportation, be sure to allow your wine time for repose before uncorking. Offering up your prize bottle to the not-easily impressed in-laws after a four hour plane ride won’t win us any points if it is poured at the first meal shared. You’ll be more impressive if you further offer, after the luscious gift is unwrapped, that it will be best enjoyed after a few days of R&R on its side in a dark closet (the bottle that is).

Once in Paris, our well rested wines were to be the centerpiece of a multi-course dinner, the better to properly taste each and every one. Additionally, we had down in the cave, a bottle of Porter Creek Timberline Ranch Viognier Russian River 2004, and had received as a gift, a Stags’ Leap Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2005. Naturally, dinner invitees needed to include the Chef Cousin, La Serveuse and the Prince Consort; additionally critical mass had to be obtained so that 6+ bottles of wine could be consumed. We padded the guest list with His Nibs, Princess P’s Sister, and a seventh.

Luckily the guests were not foolish enough to bring wine, but we did receive some Champagne, which was opened first. Of note, was a bottle offered by the CC, a Brut Carte d’Or from Vély-Rasselet. We’d tasted another Champagne in the range produced by Vély at the Salon des Vignerons Independents in Paris last autumn and were very impressed. That one, also non-vintage, had a memorable finish of slightly sweet toasted hazelnuts that struck us as particularly beautiful. This Carte d’Or was fruitier and lighter in the bouche but in the finish remained the slightest hint of the toasted nuts, more a whisper but noticeable. This domain represents a great value scoring high on the price/quality ratio.

Avid Reader, you can follow our wine tasting notes at The Insiders’ Wine Club; here we wish to dwell a bit more on the food served. Since we could not pop the corks on these bottles to provide insight into the appropriate food with which to pair it, we had to guess. Two years earlier we had drunk a bottle of the Viognier and based on that decided to serve it with the hors d’œuvres – specifically, Pizza Savoyards. Invented by His Nibs, this pizza takes its name from the region in which the cheese used is made. On top of pizza dough, apples (or this evening, pears) are sliced thinly to cover, over that, red onion sliced into arcs, and Tomme cheese sliced thinly over all. We then sprinkle a bit of thyme and/or rosemary on top. Into the oven until the dough is cooked and the cheese well melted, about 12-15 minutes and you have a new appetizer that pairs well with wine. The Viognier worked excellently with this.

Naturally, prior to table, it is not necessarily possible to pair exclusively a wine with a food, so tailing onto the Viognier, we planned bite-sized Asparagus Mousse on Chinese spoons. Light, fluffy, clean and easy was the image so fixed in our head that even when the whipping cream would not peak and it took two blancs d’oeufs to achieve a whipped state, we held that picture. Unfortunately, at time of service, on the first Chinese spoon, our lovely Asparagus Mousse looked like what Parisian pigeons do all over parked cars in the spring when they have been eating leaf buds off trees.

Quick change of plan and the mousse was more appropriately served, a mid-sized soft quenelle, in a champagne coupe, garnished with asparagus tips. It looked beautiful, but no one guessed it was asparagus! Unfortunately, the recipe called for scallions which don’t really exist in Paris and we substituted the next best thing, ‘green onions,’ as they are called here, which look like overgrown scallions. With size comes gusto and what we learned is that these onions verts have much more umphff than scallions. Our guests thought they had been served a light onion mousse! But they liked it!!

Oh well, time to go to table. Here the plan was to start with the Grgich Hills Fumé Blanc paired with a Christmas Lima Bean Salad with Lemon and Cumin. We had found the dried Christmas Lima Beans in NYC and purchased them because they were so beautiful. You can see them here in this Washington Post article, but we substituted them into a recipe from Epicurious and served the room temperature salad in avocado halves. No last minute surprises here, but we found the limas a bit too al dente even though while cooking them they seemed to be loosing their skin with the color, and I think more olive oil could have added more moisture. The Fumé Blanc was beautiful and we recommend it highly.

Next up on the menu, a fish course to serve with the Chardonnay. Finally we settled on poached salmon flaked on to a bed of pureed artichoke hearts with a thin couche, a layer, of tarragon cream between the two. This was lovely, but as with each course, His Nibs had some criticism which we have now dismissed. Sadly the Chardonnay did not hold up. It exhibited all that typical over-oaked, overly sweet California Chardonnay taste that we hate. Best described as “oak chips in a stainless steel tank,” these wines constantly disappoint us even though we continue to try them in hopes that one will hit the mark and reveal why so many people will pay such ridiculous amounts of money for these concoctions. This bottle sat, unfinished, on the table.

Now for the meat course – pork roasted with purple potatoes and chunks of an orange autumn squash the French call potiron – very colorful and simple and easy. With this we’d chosen to serve the Merlot, another disappointment. It was red, it was wine, made from grapes, and drinkable, but not good, and certainly not worth $40! We’ve decided to avoid Trefethen Vineyard wines.

Cheese course!! One of the most important aspects of a French dinner, ours was served with the Zinfandel. Glorious, beautiful, yummy and appreciated by the French!! Rockpile Vineyards – find it, buy it, drink it!

Dessert was Galette des Rois, a flat round flakey pastry with a layer of frangipane, almond paste. It is produced traditionally for the religious holiday, Three Kings Day, in January. A favorite of the Prince Consort, the galette could have been served it with the CC’s Champagne but, as that was gone, we instead tried another wine also brought by him. It was a red Côtes-de-Provence. The region, mostly known for its rosé drunk in the hot summer, is itself hot and dry. This red wine was full of fruit and its terroir was expressed with a finish of grapes ripening in a hot Mediterranean field. Too bad it is not imported to the US.

Next up…dinner at the In-laws!