Blame it on Rioja

Roger flew into the kitchen around 6:15 to tell me that he was about to serve our wine and cheese tasting party their first wine, Pol Roger Brut NV Champagne, and I was a little worried. Champagne is so delicate and so subtle; it’s hard to find a cheese that won’t bully it. I tried it with a youngish raw milk French goat’scheese, Chabichou de Poitou, but it left the bubbly tasting bitter. Same thing happened with the cow’s milk great, Jasper Hill’s Constant Bliss. So, I decided to go with only one cheese, Nettle Meadow Farm’s Kunik, a triple-creme goat’s milk cheese from New York State, fortified with Jersey cream. With a little dollop of our pastry department’s kumquat marmalade, the trio turned into a perfect summer snack, like eating an apricot scone topped with clotted cream, followed by a sip of mimosa.

Next came both the Chabichou and the Bliss, as well as Tomme de la Chataigneraie (nutty, creamy, mildly goaty deliciousness from Auvergne) with an Arneis from Piedmont, from a producer called Pertinace, a white with both body and acidity.

Then we served duo of Pecorini (Pecorino Zaffrano from Tuscany, raw sheep’s milk, rubbed with saffron; and Pecorino Ginepro from Lazio, rubbed with balsamic vinegar and crushed juniper) with an unusual Italian red made from the Uva Rara grape (a.k.a. Bonarda), and the slight vegetal and earthy character of the wine met the cheese nicely.

My favorite pairing was the fourth: Tomme Crayeuse, Cabot Cloth-bound Cheddar Aged at Jasper Hill, and Chevrotin with the Cabernet-dominated Mas de Daumas Gassac 2004 from Languedoc, France. Wow. That one kinda floored us. The wine was so meaty and gamey; rich but not cloying; ripe but distinguishable from a New World wine. Cheddar tends to do well with earthy Cabernets; the other two, a cow and a goat from the Haute Savoie, both super mountainy, were in great form that night, and it took one look from Roger when we checked out the wine on his hunch to see that we were thinking the same thing.

Our couple decided to end at five cheese courses, and I can’t really blame them. (That’s a whole lotta cheese). But we were happy we had the chance to serve a Sherry, Gonzalez-Byass’ “Apostoles” Palo Cortado, and to pair it with the Comte-like Pleasant Ridge Reserve Extra Aged and Jasper Hill Farm’s Bartlett Blue, a lovely way to close any night. So lovely, in fact, that that’s precisely how I ended my night several hours later: copita in one hand, dense hunk of cow love in the other.

Got to work last night and learned just before service that a table due to arrive in twenty minutes had requested a six-course wine and cheese tasting. Master Sommelier Roger Dagorn and I had no choice but to figure it out as we went along. I don’t know if it was the arrival of the summer solstice or the pressure, but somehow we turned it out. My colleagues look puzzled as Roger and I snarfed multiple samples of cheese from the board between gulps of wine, but our table seemed pleased. Part of me wishes we were miked and filmed because we both knew that our crazy exercise, created in just ten or fifteen minutes of tasting and rapid fire brainstorming, produced some seriously delicious combinations, and it was fun knowing how we got there.

Next post: Our lineup of wine and cheese.

Chris Fleming, a freelance wine writer who works at Frederick Wildman & Sons (a fine wine importer) and who worked for a time at the Spanish wine-crazy retailer PJ Wine in Upper Manhattan, is doubtless one of the most knowledgeable and eloquent wine professionals I have come across in recent years. Chris has a particular passion for Spanish wines, and he recently published an in-depth look at a broad spectrum of Rioja wineries he has visited in the pages of www.winereviewonline.com entitled, “Rioja Renaissance: Six Exemplary Bodegas.”

Chris is a particularly keen observer of the fascinating interplay between old and new in contemporary Rioja (clearly one of my own obsessions), and presents here an excellent study of how the quintessentially French notion of terroir (terruno in Spanish)–the effects of soil, microclimate, topography, orientation to the sun, etc., on the quality of a given plot of vines–has influenced a new generation of winemakers in Rioja, this in a region where bodegas have historically sourced grapes from multiple growers in all three subzones to make a single bottling.

His profiles of RODA, Finca Allende, CVNE, R. Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia, Miguel Merino and Valenciso are likely to pique the interest of specialists and knowledge-hungry wine novices alike, offering as it does a lucid snapshot of what CVNE’s Jesus Madrazo calls in the article “the most exciting time I’ve ever seen in Rioja.”

On June 3, I finally got my wish to host a Sunday Salon at Chanterelle devoted entirely to the Spain, and I was blown away by the demand: we sold something like 80 seats before it even made it to the press, with around 60 folks on the waiting list. I mean, it’s not like tasting six wines and six cheeses in one of the most serene and beautiful dining rooms in the city for $55 is a hard sell, but still, I was flattered.

We started off with passed trays of food (serrano ham wrapped around Galia melon and mint; grilled shrimp with red pepper aioli; smoked trout “ceviche” on housemade chips) accompanied by glasses of Hidalgo “La Gitana” Manzanilla Sherry, that lean and almondy fino-style Sherry that screams out for food, one of the world’s best misunderstood wines. Some people loved it, others, I think, were a little confused at how I could profess my love to such a weird beverage.

Here is a list of our wine and cheese line-up, with my comments on the pairing in italics:

1. Tetilla (Pasteurized cow’s milk; Galicia) paired with Do Ferreiro Rebisaca 2005 Rías Baixas (made from the Treixadura and Albariño grapes, Galicia). This wine, one of many stunners brought in by importer Andre Tamers, was beautiful: with melon and citrus aromas and great acidity, which cut right through the fatty Tetilla.
2. Cabra Romero (Pasteurized goat’s milk; Murcia) with Ameztoi “Rubentis” Txakolina Rosado 2006 (Hondarrabi Zuri and Hondarrabi Beltza; País Vasco). Two unsual finds: the cheese is rather a nightmare to cut, covered as it is with endless slimy spears of rosemary, but quite lovely to eat; the wine has a beautiful color, a faint lemon/strawberry nose, and a grapefruit-like tartness. Together they worked well, aided by a little Star Thistle Honey from Colorado for sweet relief.
3. Garrotxa (Pasteurized goat’s milk; Catalunya) with R. López de Herredia Viña Tondonia Rioja Reserva Blanco 1989 (Viura and Malvasia; La Rioja) I have paired these two before, and it always seems to work. God, I love this wine. I think there were some in our (quite young) audience who didn’t get it, but I sure hope they do one day, it’s one of the region’s unique treasures: honeyed, nutty, citrusy, very unusual and heady in its subtle seductive power.
4. Mil Ovejas (Raw sheep’s milk; Extremadura) and Miguel Merino Rioja Reserva 2000 (Tempranillo and Graciano; La Rioja) Thanks to Max Schrem at Formaggio Essex for turning me onto this great Manchego-like cheese. Flavors of butter and herbs and faint citrus linger in the mouth long after you swallow it. The Merino Reserva was great, as always, with judicious oaky notes not getting in the way of a flavor that for me defines the entire country. Only caveat is that this wine needed decanting, as it was a little tight right out of the bottle. Its aromatics need some coaxing, which is to say, time and oxygen, perhaps a function of its vintage.
5. Uplands Farm Pleasant Ridge Reserve (Raw cow’s milk; Wisconsin) with Sandeman “Royal Corregidor” V.O.S. Oloroso Sherry NV (Palomino Fino and Pedro Ximénez, Andalucía). This crazy good aged Sherry is a match made in heaven for Gruyere-style, cooked-curd, pressed raw cow’s milk cheese, and Spain doesn’t make anything like it, so I turned to Wisconsin. Yum.
6. Monte Enebro (Pastuerized goat’s milk; Castilla-León) with Pedro Domecq “Venerable” V.O.R.S. PX Sherry (Pedro Ximénez; Andalucía) I sorta broke the bank with this very expensive aged PX Sherry but there was nothing we tasted that day to compare with the finesse and power of this miraculous pairing.

The lovely and eminently capable ladies over at Vibrant Rioja set up a Rosado tasting last night in the outdoor garden of Ono at the base of the Hotel Gansevoort, renting a little self-contained cabana and inviting a group of young journalists–one guy and six very attractive women–to taste through a selection of 2006 Rioja Rosados while tapeando un poco among platters of sushi, duck spring rolls, crispy risotto balls with porcini and white truffle oil, chicken satay with peanut sauce, and coconut shrimp.

I’ve always been a sucker for rosé, not the insipid sweet stuff that’s made gazillions for Beringer since the 1980s, but the pink juice with character: Bandol, Champagne rosé, Franciacorta rosato, and Rioja rosado. The best rosés have exuberant aromas of red berry fruit–think cherry and strawberry–but are not the least bit sweet. A clean, almost citrusy finish is what you want to quench your thirst on a hot day, maybe just a touch of what wine nerds like to call “grip”, which is to say, textural astringency that grounds the wine and makes it friendly with food, the result of minimal skin contact the grape juice–known as must–has with its red skins.

And then there’s the simple joy of merely looking at the wine in your glass–that beautiful color reminiscent of the first warm day of the year, when, blessedly, the women of New York city put away their overcoats and bust out those flowing dresses made of soft and colorful fabric, making summer in the East Village much more tolerable.

The wines we tasted last night are as follows (with approximate retail price):

Light and easy drinking - the summer sippin’ wine:

• Marqués de Cáceres 2006 Rosado ($9.99) This has the cleanest style - simple and thirst quenching, the aperitif Rioja Rosado

Fruity, fragrant and full - wines for an outdoor summer seduction:

• Faustino V 2005 Rosado ($8.99) - Bursting with gobs of cherry fruit, the favorite rosado of wine writer and Rioja expert John Radford.
• CVNE 2006 Rosado ($12.99) - Great color, mucho cherry as well, one of the crowd’s favorites.

Lean and herbaceous - wines that call out for food:

• Muga 2006 Rosado ($10.99) - The only wine with a white grape–Viura–in the blend. Most complex of the bunch. With a faded salmon color the Spanish call ojo de gallo (eye of the rooster).
• El Coto 2006 Rosado ($9.99) - Firm and “gastronomic”, as a Spaniard would say, another crowd favorite.

Foods to eat with Rosado: Paella, grilled salmon, cherry tomato salad with goat cheese, grilled razor clams with garlic and lemon, Peking duck, shrimp cocktail, pulled pork sandwich, fried clams.

A note on vintages: The 2006 bottlings for all of these wines will soon be on the market, if they are not already. Rioja Rosado–with the notable exception of the complex and delicious Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Rosado, whose latest release is a 1995–is meant to be drunk young, so look for the ’06’s. The Faustino 2006 was not available for this tasting, and the ‘05 showed some signs of fading.