Kermit Lynch Wine Trade Tasting: Highlights

From: http://www.winechillerwine.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/wine-tasting.jpg

Some highlights:

CHAMPAGNES: J. LASSALLE: Brut Réserve sans année (NV): Pale gold, with abundant, lasting bubbles, it offers full, fresh scents of apples with a pleasant overtone of cocoa. Toasted brioche, clean, fairly rich on the pallet. Zippy acidity and apple fruit combine in a creamy flavor and long, clean finish. Grapes: Pinot Meunier, Chard and Pinot Noir. They allow 2 years on the lees before release.

Brut Réserve ‘Préférence’ sans année: 5 years on the lees. A more sherry like nose (perhaps a bit of oxidation) on the nose. More concentrated than the entry level version. Weightier on the palat.

Laurent and Hélène Martelet of DOMAINE COMTESSE B. DE CHERISEY • Bourgogne • The Blagny vineyard is 60-80 meters higher in altitude than the villages of Meursault and Puligny. Hang time is longer, the slope of the hill helps eliminate rainwater; the soils themselves are poor, causing the vines to “not adopt a behavior of growth and development but rather an attitude of survival.” The plants generate all their energy to the ripening of seeds, and in turn, the grapes have to taste good for the birds or mammals to eat and spread them. Perhaps this means that in pain, there is beauty J 2007 Comtesse Bernard de Cherisey Meursault-Blagny Premier Cru “La Genelotte”: Creamy, with racy acidity. Balanced. Complex. Slightly bitter note (almond pith). Good aging potential. Puligny-Montrachet, Hameau de Blagny, 2007: light golden color, mild acid, creamy medium bodied texture. 2% milk. They brought two cellar selections: A Puligny-Montrachet, Hameau de Blagny, 2001 and a Meursalt-Blagny, La Genelotte. Both showed very well. Balanced, round, softer acid, but still there.

Hervé Dubourdieu of CHÂTEAU ROUMIEU-LACOSTE • Bordeaux • The wine maker (Hervé Dubourdieu) is a charming fellow. I would love to have him over to dinner.

Bordeaux Blanc (2008) from Chateau Ducasse: A blend of Semillon, Sauvignon, and a bit of Muscadelle. Slightly grassy, light golden straw color, soft green undertone, perhaps from it’s youth. Good, racy, integrated acid. Clean finish.

Bordeaux Blanc (2007) from Chateau Ducasse: Same blend as above. Very aromatic. Not quite as fresh as the 08 but still very tasty. Of the two, I would choose the 08. Better acid. Better food wine.

Sauterne (05 and 06) from Chateau Roumieu-Lacost: Both were delicious. The entry level versions are balanced, with good acid, viscosity and fruit and sweetness. However, the Cuvée Léon shines brighter. For the Léon label, the grapes are hand selected; the difference is noted in the concentration. The 06 was particularly intense and lingering on the palate.

Catherine and Didier Champalou of DOMAINE CHAMPALOU • Loire Valley • Vouvray, Sec Tendre, 2008: chalk, clay, aromatic, floral nose, medium body and finish. stainless steel.

Vouvray, Trie de Vendange, 2003 (only vinified in particular vintages): Lighter than I expected given the vintage, the age, etc.  Creamy texture. Sweet but not overly viscous. Would be lovely with pate.

Catherine Breton of CATHERINE ET PIERRE BRETON • Loire Valley • Organic viticulture, No systemic grape processing; Limited yields; Manual harvests; Winemaking using natural indigenous yeasts; Non-filtered wines; Little or no sulphites. They do however, add malo to all their wines.

Bourgueil 2007 – Trinch ! : Young 15-year-old vines. Gravely soil on the slopes of Bourgueil. Manual harvest in 10 kilo crates with pre-sorting. Yield: 45hl/hectare. 15 days’ low-temperature maceration, spends more time on the lees than other wines of theirs, Bottled in spring, Good fruit, grippy tannins, to be drunk young. From their information packet and website re. the word “TRINCH” means: A noise emerged from the sacred bottle. And then this word was heard: TRINCH! Trinch is a word that dictates to all oracles, a word that means ‘Drink!’ Drink a good chilled wine, for in wine lies strength and power. It fills the soul with truth and philosophy. In wine, there is hidden truth. The Dive Bouteille (Divine Bottle) urges you. Be your own interpreters of your exploits. Let us drink! -Pantagruel by Rabelais. Panurge’s meeting with the Divine Bottle.

From The Kermit Lynch Website

Éric Chevalier of DOMAINE DE L’AUJARDIÈRE • Loire: Love these wines. Cool and quirky guy to talk with…The estate is located about 1/2 hour from the ocean in the Western edge of the Loire. He gives the most energy to the vines, the soil, etc. Very little intervention in the wine making process. Aprox. 1 day of maceration. Natural yeast. No filtration. Pumps over.

Muscadet, Cote de Gran Lieu, (2008): Very light color. great minerality. Dry finish. Vin de Pays du Val de Loire, 2008: Softer than the 07. Very aromatic on both vintages. Good acid. Great zest. Balanced. Interesting Vin de Pays du Val de Loire, 2007: Pleasant bitterness, perhaps showing itself as the fruit softens with age and the terroir creeps in with more presence.

Reynald Delille of DOMAINE DE TERREBRUNE • Provence • The properties limestone soil forces the vines’ roots to go deep into the ground for nourishment, reflecting a more pronounced display of terroir on the palet. 100% organic practices.

Bandol Blanc 2008: Aromatic, zesty, light to medium body. Balanced. Good minerality. Yellow apple. Clairette, Ugni and Bourboulenc. (available summer)

Bandol Rosé 2008: Mourvedre (minimum 20%), Grenache and Cinsault. light color (approximately the same hue as the tampier rosé) classic rosé nose. strawberries, summer fruit. Dry finish.

To show aging potential the winemaker brought a 1994 rosé. It was drinkable but sherried….showing a little oxidation. A hint of petrol as well. Despite that, it was lively for such an old rosé.

All their reds spend aprox. 18 months in large oak barrels (50-60 hl); the vines are 20-40 years old.

Bandol Rouge 2006: (85% mouvedre, the rest is grenache and cinsault) Intense funky Mourvedre nose, with lots of mineral to balance the rich, elegant fruit. Earthy black fruit and licorice. Will need decanting at a young age.

Bandol Rouge 1987: Beautiful. Back then they only used about 50% mouvedre with the rest coming from cinsault and grenache. Smoky, roasted coffee beans, tabacco, still showing fruit. Tannins are subtle.

Better Butter?

Image from: wikimedia.org

The chef of a restaurant opening in Oakland is thinking about churning his own butter. He tasted various milks for flavor consistency throughout the seasons and found a farm with great year round cream. He will use the left-over buttermilk for house-made bread. I wonder, will it be cost-effective AND taste better than say, Strauss or other high quality butter from grass-fed cows? It is certainly a romantic and enticing idea. I guess only tasting will tell if the freshly churned stuff  has better texture and flavor. In the meantime, I thought I’d learn a little about how butter was made decades ago.

Photo of a 500 gallon revolving box churn, called The Key City King.  This churn was advertised in an 1893 dairy publication and was typical of the large size revolving churns used at that time. Image and information from: http://dairyantiques.com/uploads/099_0012c.jpg

The photo above is a Davis Swing Churn, patented in 1879 to Francis Butler, although some earlier literature referred to it a ‘Davis Oscillating Churn.’

How did it work? There were no paddles.  According to dairyantiques.com, “As the churn box rocked on the cradle the cream rolled over on itself to make butter.  The company said this gentle action did not injure the butter”

If you want more info http://www.ilri.org/infoserv/webpub/fulldocs/ilca_manual4/MilkProcessing.htm

1984 Bonny Doon Sweet Muscat Crap Shoot

Grape image borrowed from: www.thewinenews.com

A few months ago my husband and I were walking on Lakeshore avenue in Oakland, CA when we decided to pop into a liquor store and browse the selections. I headed to the back and let me eyes scale every inch until a few dusty, splits on the top shelf caught my eye. I got on my tippy toes and reached for the bottles. A 1984 Bonny Doon Sweet Muscat? Really? It was standing straight up in what was possibly the hottest place in the store with halogen lights beating down on it. Probably the worst environment one could imagine for wine. An old price tag said $19.95. I looked at a few of the other bottles: a sauvignon blanc from napa and some other rather uninteresting white. Only the Bonny Doon deserved pondering. I thought: if any wine can survive that kind of environment, it’s a sweet wine with higher brix because the sugar helps preserve. However, I did not want to spend 20 bucks for potential crap so I negotiated the price down to 10 dollars and left happy. On Tuesday, my husband and I went to dinner at Masa’s in SF. He suggested that we bring the wine to make the sommelier (Alan Murry) laugh and enjoy it with us in the OFF chance that it was any good. Alan wasn’t there but we did end up opening it. We asked Pepe to pour it into a decanter over cheese cloth (LOTS of sediment). The wine was SPECTACULAR!!! Beautiful dark copper color, gorgeous burnt caramel sweet almond nose and medium viscosity. And it still had acid! We shared it with every staff member and proceeded to have a series of deserts to match the wine. Delicious. What a find. Thank you Randall Grahm. From Bonny Doon:     

High Fructose Corn Syrup

(Image borrowed from: http://www.leftoverqueen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/hfcs_no.jpg

From the Washington Post (Wednesday, January 28, 2009):

Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply,” the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.

In the first study, published in current issue of Environmental Health, researchers found detectable levels of mercury in nine of 20 samples of commercial HFCS.

And in the second study, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a non-profit watchdog group, found that nearly one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury. The chemical was found most commonly in HFCS-containing dairy products, dressings and condiments.

But an organization representing the refiners is disputing the results published in Environmental Health.

————————————————————

My thoughts on the last line of this article:

Of course the refiners dispute the studies. They pump millions (perhaps billions) of dollars into deceiving the public about HFCS. Check out: www.sweetsurprise.com. A very clever group of marketing, truth twisting people put together a site that makes corn syrup look like a natural and healthy choice. The photographs and text are compelling to the uninformed audience. The website I mentioned was plugged in a recent commercial [Take a look: youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEbRxTOyGf0]

that made people concerned about HFCS look like uneducated idiots. Again, very clever marketing.

Being uniforned or misinformed about HFCS is easy because information about the dangers are not readily available for the mainstream. What’s more, as a fairly recent (mid 19th century) invention, it is hard to know the long term effects. However, some nutritionists have noted the increase in childhood and adult obesity and diabetes grow at an almost even pace with the expansion of products latent with HFCS across the globe.

All I know is that I avoid the stuff like the plague. In my mind, it’s poison. While relatively cheap now, we will pay for it later if we continue to feed products with corn syrup to our children in such alarming quantities. For a revealing look at corn syrup as a bi-product of the corn industry see the movie King Corn (http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/kingcorn/) and read Michale Pollan’s Omnivores Dilemna. Also worth reading: http://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html

What Milk is Available at Your Cornerstore?

A comment on one of my previous posts (about milk) raised an interesting point about product availability. At his (the contributor’s) closest food market–the corner store–Berkeley Farms milk is readily available. The person writing lives in West Oakland. He was unsure about the farming practices of Berkeley Farms dairy. I googled them, pocked around on their fairly standard corporate website and found the following under the “heritage” tab. Here’s what it says:

As California’s oldest continuous milk processor, we pledge to continue our commitment to provide customers with the highest quality products and services.

BERKELEY FARMS HERITAGE
Berkeley Farms has grown to become Northern California’s most popular dairy brand. For more than 90 years, we’ve been dedicated to making superior-quality dairy products for California’s families. Part of this dedication is exemplified in the 1998 opening of our state-of-the-art processing plant in Hayward, which replaced our 50-year-old Emeryville facility.

The $55 million plant, located on a 20-acre parcel on Clawiter Road, is the largest rBST-free milk processing plant on the West Coast and the most modern facility of its kind in the United States. The new facility fulfills a public commitment by Berkeley Farms to maintain its headquarters and milk processing plant in the Bay Area. Berkeley Farms is owned by Dean Foods, a Fortune 500 company and a leader in the dairy foods category.

OUR PROMISE

As California’s oldest continuous milk processor, we pledge to continue our commitment to provide customers with the highest quality products and services. The foundation of this pledge comes from the two pillars of pride and respect.

Delivering the finest products
We take pride in our ability to consistently deliver the finest products through our family farms and our advanced husbandry.

Respect for both our customers and employees
We respect our customers and their desires for a healthy, nutritious product and their concerns for the environment. We shall always place their needs first and strive to develop innovative ways to respond to them.

We respect our employees and recognize that no company can achieve greatness without its most important resource – the people who work for Berkeley Farms. We promise open communications with them and to provide opportunities for self-expression and growth.

Standard of Excellence
We pledge to make excellence the standard by which we judge our achievements.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Here’s what I think about this dairy:

Aside from pledging not to support rBST-milk, I don’t see a lot of information about specific business practices or field standards. The available information does not include mention of where in California the cattle are raised or how the milk is pasteurized and treated.The lack of information leads me to believe that something is either being hidden or is not known on a corporate level because the controls over the farming are not of primary concern. Of more interest is how to become the most consumed milk product in Northern California–a fact they boast on their website.

However, beyond their business practices, I think the most important part of this story is the question of waht’s availble in each of our local markets. What’s more, what can each of us afford. At this point it is a luxury of location and budget to eat the foods that are best for the planet and our bodies. How can we shift that paradigm?

Milk: Full Fat, Flavor and Nutrients

After reading Nina Planck’s book: Real Food: What to Eat and Why, my consumption of milk, butter and meat changed. No, I didn’t go on a diet, count my fat calories and worry about the cholesterol floating around in my egg yolks, milk cream or rib-eye steak. Quite the contrary: I embraced these things with more zeal than ever before. Now, I  don’t eat a whole stick of butter on my toast every morning. However,  I do enjoy these products frequently and delight in knowing that I am contributing to my long term health. I know that because I am careful about the ORIGIN of my fatty foods. I don’t drink commodity milk or eat meat raised in unthinkable conditions (at least not when I have a choice) or eggs from chickens who cannot move, eat the bugs or see the light of day. Rather, I buy Strauss whole, cream top milk and yogurt (from TJ’s…much cheaper) and eat meats from farmers I know and trust like Mac Magruder (N. California Beef) and Jude Becker (Iowa Hogs). To read a little bit of what Nina Planck has to say about milk in particular, read below:

by greenbabyguide.com

Whole Milk is Best

This ran in The New York Times on 12 February 2006.

Health officials in New York City are right. The typical bodega in the city’s poorer neighborhoods is not brimming with healthy foods, and the residents who rely on these stores suffer for it. The unhappy results are higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease among poor New Yorkers.

Thus the city is enlisting bodegas in central Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and Harlem (where obesity rates exceed the city average) to encourage the sale of low-fat milk. Participating bodegas offer discounts on low-fat milk and tout its benefits. ‘Moooove to 1 percent milk,’ say the T-shirts worn by workers at El Barrio Superette in Harlem.

And it doesn’t stop there. Earlier this month, city education officials announced that they had decided to remove whole milk from public school cafeterias.

Unfortunately, city officials have identified the wrong culprit in our health woes. Whole milk is one of the best foods in the average corner shop-and a vital part of a nutritious diet for public school children, who may not eat well at home.

Whole milk is what is called a complete food, because each ingredient plays its part. Without the fat, you can’t digest the protein or absorb the calcium. The body needs saturated fat in particular (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat can’t do the job) to take in the calcium that makes bones strong. Milk fat also contains glycosphingolipids, which are fats that encourage cell metabolism and growth and fight gastrointestinal infections.

The all-important vitamins A and D are found in the fat. Historically, whole milk and butter were the best sources of these vitamins in the American diet, which had up to 10 times more of both vitamins than modern industrial diets.

In skim and low-fat milk, the vitamins are removed along with the fat, so dairies add synthetic A and D. But Vitamins A and D are fat-soluble; that means they cannot be absorbed into the body unless they’re taken in with fat. Thus, even fortified skim and low-fat milk are not nearly as beneficial as the real thing.

What about recommendations that we should drink low-fat milk to prevent heart disease? A federal study released last week, the largest study of its kind, found that low-fat diets do not prevent heart disease.

Instead, scientists are increasingly finding that whole milk and saturated fats have been given an undeserved bad rap. Many experts say the evidence blaming saturated fats for heart disease is surprisingly weak. Indeed, the main effect of eating saturated fats is to raise high-density lipoproteins, or H.D.L., the so-called good cholesterol. And with H.D.L., the higher, the better. In 2005, researchers from Llandough Hospital in Cardiff, Wales, released a study of Welsh men over 20 years that found that subjects who drank the most milk (both whole and low fat) had a lower risk of heart disease than those who drank the least. ‘The present perception of milk as harmful in increasing cardiovascular risk should be challenged,’ the researchers concluded.

Nor does whole milk cause diabetes. Diana Schwarzbein, a doctor in California who specializes is endocrine and metabolic diseases, found that Type 2 diabetics got worse on the recommended low-fat, low-saturated-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.

Whole milk doesn’t make you fat. The main dietary causes of obesity are white flour and sugar. Sugar is stored in the body as fat. Even white bread provides a big shot of glucose-just like a sugary soda. In fact, the calcium in dairy foods enhances weight loss and reduces blood pressure (the calcium in tablets doesn’t have same effect). For most children, the best source of calcium is milk.

The health commissioner is right to discourage New York City restaurateurs from using trans fats, which lower H.D.L.; raise low-density lipoprotein, or L.D.L., the so-called bad cholesterol; and promote obesity and diabetes. The excess of omega-6 fats in corn, soybean, safflower and other seed oils, combined with a lack of omega-3 fats (which come from fish), lead to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

What New Yorkers need is a citywide campaign to shun foods loaded with white flour, sugar, corn syrup, corn oil and trans fats. Banning the sale of soda in public schools, as Connecticut plans, would be smarter than banning whole milk.

Meanwhile, if a bodega is your only option and you want to eat well, buy canned fish, beans, eggs, and whole milk. That’s what the health commissioner should encourage New Yorkers-rich and poor-to take home for dinner.

Bordeaux: worth the hype?

Bordeaux: Perhaps one of the most famed wine regions of the world. But why? Last night we tasted 14 bottles from almost every appellation in Bordeaux. The map gives a good indication of what that includes (taken from http://www.stratsplace.com/mappics/f_bordelais.jpg).

We tasted some amazing wines. The most notable of which were the following: 1994 Leoville-Barton, 1970 Beychevelle, 2004 Chateau Pibran and a 2005 Chateau Pibran. However, as delicious as these wines were, many agreed that the wines do not demand the big bucks so many of Bordeauxs require. One member of the tasting posed the question: if you were stuck on an island and could have one white, one rose and one red, what would they be? Not one person chose a Bordeaux for any category. So why do these wines command such high prices? It is not unusual for one bottle to cost thousands of dollars. My answer: history and smart marketing. The wealthy built their Chateaus along the river Gironde, planted grapes, classified one another as this class or that, created brand equity, perked the interest of the Brits, who then carried their love for Bordeaux to the New World, and there you have the basic equation: supply and demand. This all happened in the late 1800s.

Home Roasted

Yesterday I wrote about bananas and not eating them because of their social, environmental impact and frequent lack of taste. That last word–taste–is a key component of my eating philosophy. While I try to minimize the negative impact I have on the world with the foods I eat, I still LOVE food. To put this in perspective let me explain: I married a chef. We cook almost everything we eat from scratch, shop at the farmers market, buy artisan cheeses as often as possible and enjoy salumi with our cocktails on a regular basis. That said, I don’t eliminate the foods from far away, I simply try to buy the right ones. In that process, I consider, how delicious it is, the cost, the producer, the place, etc. Coffee is perhaps my most frequent indulgence. We buy green beans (fresh/unroasted) from Sweet Maria’s in Emeryville. They source directly from farmers around the world, keep a database of stories about the beans and sell them wholesale and retail for people like us who roast our coffee at home.Today I am drinking Ethiopa Kembata Grade 4 Dry-Process. If you want to know more about this particular varietal check out the section about Ethiopia in the coffee university library on http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.africa.ethiopia.php.

Gone are the bananas in my fruit bowl…

I am no longer eating bananas. Even organic ones carry such a high carbon footprint and often have a heavy social burden. By that I mean, the laborers growing the fruit are paid VERY little for their time and efforts yet we sell them in US supermarkets for .49 to 1.49 per pound. Most of that money goes to the big ag companies and supermarket chains. I am not interested in supporting their corporations. I’d rather eat what grows in my local community. What’s more the bananas are often shipped green and don’t taste good by the time they get to the United States. They are often watery, starchy and bland. I will save my banana eating for travels to countries where bananas are grown.

Bananas

Taste

Once a month a group of friends and I get together to taste wine and eat an eclectic dinner. We select a region and each buy a bottle or two from that place and bring a dish. It is an awesome way to learn about wine. The next one is Bordeaux. I’ll update after the tasting.