Champagne and some more Champagne and some thoughts on Wine Jargon

   Wine people just looooove wine-speak, right? You know what I'm talking about; it's all those words and descriptions that make all the rest of you non-wine people intimidated and unsure of yourselves. In the know folks like Robert Parker say things like: "This wine tastes of blackberries, currants, scorched earth, road tar, cedar, truffle, and smoke, with an undercurrent of sage and mineral on the finish."

   But here's the truth about wine, and the grasp of this reality could make any human being who can appreciate something as simple as the difference between a red delicious apple and a granny smith into a "wine person": Wine is an agricultural product, above all else. Just like an apple, a pear, a peach, or a stalk of asparagus. Granted, there is human manipulation involved, but at the heart of it, its a fucking fruit. You like fruit, right? If you can bite into a strawberry or a tomato and tell if it's ripe or not, you can be a wine person.

   Let's forget, for a moment, all that scorched earth. Let's rethink wine tasting. Rather than putting our noses in the glass and trying one up each other on who can get the most detailed, minute, arcane impressions from a few whiffs, let's instead ask ourselves: Does this wine taste good? What kind of fruit am I tasting? (and believe it or not, we do not have to be specific here...a color will work fine. Red fruit. Black fruit. Blue fruit. Yellow fruit. Green fruit. Get it?) Is this wine in balance? This last question is really the most important. What we are looking for is a balance between sugar/fruit and acid. Balance is the single most important factor in what makes a wine great, no matter how humble or highfalutin it's origins. And while Winespeak is fun, and can be a big part of the pleasure for some of us, it's certainly not required.

   It wasn't always like this. Rather than being entities composed of strings of adjectives, wines were described in terms of body, fruit, acid, and overall balance. Many of those adjectives are subjective, anyways. Truth be told, I don't want to be cerebral about my beverages all the time. Sometimes I'd just rather be hedonistic.

omfg i love champagne so much

   I am reminded of these sentiments every time I open a bottle of what has to be my favorite type of wine: Champagne. Not Cava, not Prosecco, not methode-champenoise from anywhere else. I will be a wine snob on this point. Champagne is actually just better, and thats why it's expensive. That's why we can't have it all the time, and why opening a bottle for a special occasion is the occasion. I've had crazy dreams of standing in Champagne vineyards that were WWII battlefields (historically accurate) and looking down to find that the ground was soaked in blood and Champagne. I think that, in a past life, I was a bottle of Champagne. I'm a little nutty about Champagne, but can you blame me? It's Champagne, after all. I try to have some every few months or so.  

Which brings me back to my original point. The wine I love the very most is also the wine to which I have the hardest time applying my hard-earned Winespeak. Who can really describe something as ethereal as this lovely beverage, with it's perfect tiny bubbles, astounding richness of fruit and acidity, and delightful feel on the tongue? (Not to mention it's heady after effects, which are pretty much guaranteed to put my notoriously moody Bigsy in a great and goofy mood.)  Not that we won't try to describe, of course.

On Saturday, at the end of our shift and the end of our twice-yearly Sale Week, Eb opened, as seems to be the tradition, a bottle of Champagne. (I had already picked out a bottle that was waiting for me in the wine chiller.) This time he opened the lovely Billecart-Salmon Brut Rose NV, which is considered by many to be one of the finest examples of Rose Champagne available. It was delicious, practically weightless but packed with flavor, and possessing the most delicate red fruit aromas. The nose reminded me of Strawberry mousse (Eb said Raspberry), and that finish just sailed on and on and on and on.

After sharing a toast with my co-workers, Bigsy and I headed home, where I promptly opened a bottle of Pascal Doquet Grand Cru NV and parked my tired butt on the porch for the foreseeable future. The vineyards for this grower champagne are located in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, a village of Grand Cru standing in the Cotes-de-Blancs sub-region of Champagne. Pascal and his wife Laure farm the soils biodynamically and all the grapes are hand-harvested. In the cellar, it is aged in both tank and cask before it sees at least two years resting on its lees, sometimes as many as three (far more than required by law), which help to impart it's notable richness and body.

And what richness. What body! This was the wine equivalent of that buxom secretary on Mad Men. Opulent aromas of toffee and vanilla were gently layered over a zesty core of ripe stone fruit and mineral. Damn, baby. Damn.

Bigsy and I sat on the porch, talking and enjoying a welcome drop in temperature as the sun went down, with the kitties lounging at our feet, watching Montford strolling by in it's summery short-shorts. And we drank some Champagne, down to the last shimmering, glorious, bubbly drop.Then we ordered cheap delivery pizza, because we were tired and hungry, and I suppose you can't be fancy all the time.

Koko insists that the Champagne must be grower. I won't argue with him.

Loire Cab Franc & Duck Breast with a Cherry Reduction

As is often the case with me, my dinner decision started with a wine decision. Milling about the market at the end of my Saturday shift, pondering what to take home for the all-too-brief weekend before the busiest week of the year. (Mid-July sale week, which means about 60 hours of hard physical labor under the guise of Your Friendly Wine Steward) But I digress. I spied a bottle of Loire Cabernet Franc that had recently snuck its way onto our shelves without my knowledge. I love Loire reds, and with the weather actually taking a turn for the cooler, this is the perfect opportunity for red wine and a meatier meal in contrast to all the couscous and eggplant and rose I've been consuming as of late. After a brief discussion with the boss-man, I discovered this wine demanded something pretty hearty. His first suggestion was duck. Hmm. Maybe. I bought a back-up bottle of Beaujolais just in case duck was not, in fact, in my future.
Turns out it is.
After reading a bunch of recipes online (I've never cooked duck myself before!), I settled on one involving roasted grapes and creme fraiche. But once at the grocery store, I discovered the gorgeously ripe and sweet cherries they had on sale. Cherries and duck, that's classic, right? So I swapped the grapes for cherries and headed home. Now what to do with the creme fraiche...

This is the part where we reflect on our wines.

 The Wine: Clos Cristal Saumur-Champigny 2009, from the Hospices de Saumur. Antoine Cristal labored tirelessly in his vineyards for the last 30 or 40 years of his life, working to create a name for the red wines of Saumur at a time (around 1900) when it was known exclusively for it's Chenin Blanc based whites, before bequeathing the property to the local hospital in 1928. Also worth noting is the ingenious method of grape-growing developed by the late Cristal. He built three kilometers of walls (the Clos of Clos Cristal) around which, and through which, the vines grow. This produces an ambient source of heat, especially after the sun goes down, which helps the grapes ripen in this cool climate. This is same principle of terroir surrounding the large stone galets that sprinkle the vineyards of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. The soils at this organic and biodynamically farmed estate are sandy, atop a table of tuffeau (sandstone) at varying depths below the surface, which causes the vines to struggle and take longer to root down. The average age of the vines is 45 years old, with some as old as 80.    

In The Kitchen:  I scored the skin of the breast, then seasoned it with juniper and thyme. I seared it, fatty side down, in my cast iron skillet for a few minutes then flipped it and finished it off in the oven. This was my first time cooking duck, so I relied heavily on recipe times for each step of the duck. We served it on a bed of arugula and Israeli cous-cous alongside some simple steamed green beans from Jean's garden. Topping off the dish was a beautiful savory cherry sauce - fresh cherries that were chopped in the food processor and cooked down with a touch of red wine, onion, garlic, and homemade chicken stock, then finished with a healthy swirl of creme fraiche. All in all, the cherry sauce was the only triumph. Word to the wise: Don't buy duck breast from Greenlife's freezer. It was really just a poor quality product. I overcooked the duck a little, but, even recognizing that, I think, in the future, I'd be happier to shell out a little more money for something good and fresh. Oh well, live and learn.

In the glass: Immediately upon pouring, Bigsy and I were both struck by the color: Dark, almost black. The black theme continued in an array of lush black fruit: plum, blackberry, boysenberry, and black cherry.  Also immediate was the firm acidity of the wine, a good backdrop for the fatty duck. Alas, I really should have decanted this. Some very interesting notes emerged with exposure to air: the trademark sanguine iron minerality and tobacco leaf, but also black olive, truffle, and after even more time in the glass, an herbal chord, almost minty. In retrospect, I think lamb shoulder rubbed with anchovy and rosemary would've been a better choice. Although the wine was not particularly tannic by Bordeaux or Napa standards, it was still awfully big. That being said, it possessed no hard edges and definitely caressed the palate with a lovely, softly velvety mouthfeel. Getting to the bottom of the bottle as I write this, there is a good bit of sediment in my glass. If I had to sum up this wine succinctly, I would say: Obviously Loire Cab Franc but burlier. Also, not a wine for beginners.
That being said, I loved it.

Vines trained through walls. Ain't that some shit?

Introducing...

This is Hazel, Sam Cooke wrote a song about her called "Lovable." (or at least that's what I tell her.)

Hazel enjoys group snuggling, putting her paws on things, sleeping in windowsills, and long walks on the beach. Turn-offs include cigarette smoke and large crowds of strangers.

If Hazel has a choice, she would be Bigsy's cat. She loves to stick her nose in his armpit. She loves him so much.

This is Koko. He also goes by Kokes, Shimmy, Sir  Kokesalot, Choh-Choh, Choche, and "Hey, you cat stop fucking biting me!"

Koko enjoys the company of ladies, hanging out with everyone on the porch, being the official pretty-girl- walking-down-the-sidewalk greeter, and waking me up to force me into snuggling at 5:30 am.

Koko loves me best. The rest of you are fresh meat.