Baying for Bay

A couple months ago, I did something that I — and you — have probably done a million times: I opened a jar of bay leaves. I have dutifully done this whenever I make soup, stew, or any other long-cooking dish, but haven't thought much about it.

But when I gave the lid its last turn and lifted it from the glass, a powerful aroma poofed up at me. I had never really smelled bay this potent, and I found it transforming.

Suddenly, I was in love with bay.

And I was in love with it despite the fact that — judging by the long, dark green leaves — I had almost certainly come across a jar of California bay, which many deem inferior to European, or Mediterranean, bay. (The two are not just different species but different genuses.) As usual, a definitive article on the subject can be found in Ed Behr's The Artful Eater. Ed describes California bay with his typical flair: "A freshly dried batch of California bay I once had smelled rudely to me of bay plus particularly rank rocket (arugula) and bold nutmeg. A few weeks later it had subsided to nutmeg alone, distinct enough to recall eggnog."

The leaves in my jar hadn't diminished to pure nutmeg, but nor would you describe them as "subtle and submissive," as Ed says of European bay. They had a strong peppery and camphor character that, now that I was attuned to it, I could detect as a subtle taste throughout the stew I had cooked. Perhaps now that I've opened my nostrils to bay's character, I will appreciate the more delicate European leaf, but for now I'm enjoying the stronger form.

Bay of course shows up in a myriad of slow-cooked dishes, and Ed's essay suggests using it with tomatoes, potatoes, and as a seasoning in bechamel sauce. But in fit of diegogarcity, I've started seeing intriguing uses of it all around me. While interviewing June Taylor for an article, she had me try an in-progress Mediterranean bay-infused syrup that had all the fantastic bay character I had come to love. At a dinner at Eccolo to celebrate the launch of Novella Carpenter's Farm City, I tasted bay risotto and bay ice cream, each made with locally foraged leaves and having a very subtle bay character (just to confuse things, European bay grows here in California as well, so these may have been Mediterranean bay leaves).

Those creative uses have triggered my own creative impulses: Would bay leaf shortbread be good? Should I make my own bay leaf ice cream?

What do you like to do with bay?

Wine And Roommates

Some of you veteran OWF readers may dimly remember that I write for other publications. Some of you may also remember that I occasionally write for this one. Ha ha. Yesterday, my article about managing roommates and wine tastes appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. I had fun writing it and hearing the different stories of people who have had to wrangle wine interest into the already complicated dynamics of roommates in San Francisco. I also like the juxtaposition of this piece — almost certainly one of my most "wine light" wine articles — with a piece I have coming out in a couple of weeks for a different publication — almost certainly one of my most wine-geek-oriented pieces.

A Guide To Berkeley Wine Stores

The other day, I mentioned in conversation that I live within a short drive of four excellent wine stores. And while I often assume that every wine lover in the town knows every wine store, I've noticed that even the students in my Berkeley Extension classes — who are obviously passionate about wine — don't always know about all of these. Inspired in part by the "I love this town" vibe at the new In Berkeley blog, I'm offering my guide to these stores.

If you're not in the Bay Area, this post may not interest you. But no matter where you live, I urge you to patronize the small, independent wine stores in your area. This isn't just my normal plea about local businesses and community economies: This is about service. Get to know the staff at your local wine store, and you'll get better wine. You can tell them what you like and don't like, and they'll steer you to wines you'll enjoy and introduce you to new ones you might never have found. Want to drink well? Let a true wine merchant help. A supermarket or Beverages & More employee may also steer you well but it's less likely — s/he probably doesn't love wine the way a wine merchant's staff does — and s/he's not likely to remember anything about you the next time you go.

A lot of people are intimidated by wine stores, because speaking about wine still has a veneer of snobbishness. Here's how to ask for help in a good wine store: Go up to one of the employees and say, "I need some help finding some wine. I typically like <fill in wines you like here>, and I want to learn more about other wines that are out there." That kind of question makes a wine person's day, and any good merchant will take your tastes into account. They won't hand you a barnyardy, earthy Burgundy if you say you like Napa Cabernet. Buy a few of the bottles they suggest, try them, decide what you like, and then go back and say (ideally to the same person), "I bought X, Y, and Z from you last time, and I really liked X but I wasn't very keen on Y. I normally drink <fill in wines you like here>, but I'm curious what else you have that's like X." Do this a few times, and you'll be a regular.

Kermit Lynch, 1605 San Pablo Avenue
Easily the most famous of our wine stores. Kermit made his name in the early 1970s by championing and importing the artisanal wines of France, and to this day he carries French wines made with integrity and care. (There are some Italian wines in the store as well.) Domaine Tempier, and the entire Bandol region, became famous because of Kermit. So did true Beaujolais. So did Chinon. Several top Alsace producers grace his shelves as well. The list goes on and on.

I can barely move in the compactly arranged store without the urge to grab every bottle I spy and put it in my basket. But that brings me to the downside about Kermit's bottles: They tend to be a bit pricey. Not too much so, and there are, as he recently noted in his eloquent newsletter, 80 bottles in the store that sell for less than $20, but I don't have quite the budget to buy as much there as I'd like. That said, the annual "Get the old Burgundy off the shelves to make room for the new inventory" sale should not be missed.

Note that Kermit actively encourages you to develop a relationship with the salespeople in the store, many of whom have worked there for years.

Vintage Berkeley, 2113 Vine St. & 2949 College Ave.
I've been a fan of Vintage Berkeley since I walked through the door the first time. Owner Peter Eastlake focuses on quality wines from around the world that are under $25. He has a fantastic palate (I know this, I tell my students jokingly, because it aligns with mine.) I have never been disappointed with a bottle I bought from him, and even when I don't know the folks who are working, I can pick up any bottle with confidence that it will be a solid, enjoyable wine.

But do ask the staff their opinion: The Vine Street store staff can cheerfully talk about any of the bottles around them (the College store probably can, too, but I've been in there less often.) Or, if you're shy, read Peter's excellent and witty "shelf talkers" for the wines. They're well written and they never mention scores, Robert Parker, or Wine Spectator. He carries the wines because he likes them.

There are only two down sides to Vintage Berkeley for me. One, I don't get the chance to chat with Peter too much since he often seems to be at the College store when we're at the Vine store, and vice versa. Two, he sells his inventory quickly enough that if you find a wine you really like, you have to remember to go back right away and buy it: Otherwise, you risk disappointment.

There are free tastings on Saturday afternoons if you want to try before you buy.

The Spanish Table, 1814 San Pablo Ave
I hear that The Spanish Table carries a wide range of Spanish foodstuffs, cookbooks, and gear in the front part of the store. I wouldn't know: I always walk straight to the wine section in the back. Not surprisingly, the selection is largely Spanish, but Portugal is well represented, too. In general, if it's good and it's from one of those two countries, Kevin (the wine buyer, who's usually working there) carries it. And probably knows a ton about it.

Sure you can find wines from Spain's famous Rioja region. But you can also find cava, Txakolina, Vinho Verde, and more. There's a wall devoted to Madeira and Port. There's a long shelf devoted to different sherries. Right now, he's carrying a Basque cider which is a beautiful summer drink: 4 percent alcohol, $9 and a sherry-like taste. We've also seen Spanish beer there.

Spain is one of the top spots for value wines at the moment, and the store's prices are quite reasonable. Kevin even maintains a "house wine" area in the back where the bottles are $7 each. But even outside of that small section, it's not hard to find wines under $15.

Paul Marcus Wines, 5655 College Avenue
Paul Marcus is not in Berkeley. But it's so close to the border, and it's such an excellent wine store, I couldn't leave it out. It easily has the best Italian selection in the East Bay, but it's also got excellent coverage in Burgundy, Austria, Germany, the Loire, the Southern Rhone, dessert wines, and more. When we lived in Oakland, this was our primary wine store, and we know most of the staff well (they're one of the stores I usually hit up when I'm hunting for corked wines for class). Everyone there has a ton of knowledge and is eager to help you find the right bottle. In fact, they recently added a "staff picks" section where each staff member gets to call out a few favorite bottles.

Here's a quick tip if you're looking for values: Poke around in the front of the store, which is where they keep their more affordable wines.

North Berkeley Wine Imports, 1601 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
A friend of mine who seeks out good Champagne says that North Berkeley is now where he goes for his favorite Champagnes. But the store, which like Kermit Lynch imports its selection, brings in a wide variety of wines. I don't take advantage of this store as often as I should, mostly because it's not near one of our normal shopping destinations, but every time I've been in there, the staff has been helpful and knowledgeable.

Solano Cellars, 1580 Solano Ave
To be honest, I haven't been in this store much since Peter Eastlake, Vintage Berkeley's owner, bought it a couple years ago. But I know he's kept its spirit intact: It's a neighborhood wine store with a broad selection of good wines. Solano isn't on our normal shopping route, either, but the wine store has never had a real personality to me. (It probably has more of one now with Peter at the helm.) Still, for North Berkeley residents it's an excellent resource. Unlike most of the other stores on this list, Solano Cellars offers wine tasting classes that will give you a solid introduction to any given topic, and the store pulls out some nice surprises: I once saw Terry Theise there giving the crowd at the bar a splendid tour of his German wine portfolio.

Vino, various locations
When I speak of a wine store having personality, I often use Vino!, a local chain, as a good counterexample. Each store that I've seen has a good selection and a knowledgeable staff, but I never feel like there's a mission statement or driving passion behind the inventory other than just selling wine. This is no doubt unfair, but even though the one on 4th Street is on a normal shopping route, I rarely do more than just breeze through. It doesn't grab me.

My Granola

I’ve started making my own granola. Melissa likes to joke that this is a side effect of long hair and a Berkeley address — I hope she doesn’t buy me a tie-dye leotard — but it’s really because I developed a mild addiction to granola at my last job, where it was a common snack in the cupboards, and wanted to make my own.

I started by flipping through books on my bookcase. Surprisingly, given the large number of Bay Area authors and slight tinge of hippiness painted across my kitchen bookcase, I only found a few granola recipes. I started with the Grain-ola recipe in my friend Heidi’s Super Natural Cooking. That recipe also appears, with slight modifications, in my friend David’s The Perfect Scoop. This recipe produces a very good granola, but I wanted something a little different.

I didn’t know what it needed, though, until I tried the Killer Granola recipe in The Cheese Board Collective Works. That recipe produces a granola with deep flavor notes. But there were components of Heidi’s that I really liked (and components of both that I didn’t like: what’s with all the coconut in these recipes?). My favorite granola recipe thus became a hybrid of the two, along with some touches I’ve figured out on my own.

But a word of warning before you read my technique. You may think of granola as a healthy food. You wouldn’t be alone: It was created in 1863 by James Caleb Jackson as part of the “health food and religious purity” movement that would spawn graham flour, corn flakes, and a flood of enemas. If you view granola as a health food, good for you.

My recipe focuses on taste.

I imagine it’s healthy enough, especially compared to most commercial granolas, but that’s a side effect. A stick of butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, etc. You get the idea.

Giving a recipe for granola is a bit like giving a recipe for salad, since you can vary it endlessly without much problem, but this is the template I use. Let me know your own recipes and ideas in the comments.

Granola Recipe

1. Preheat oven to 325° Place a silicone baking sheet into a jelly roll pan.
2. Combine 3 cups of rolled oats, a handful or two of shelled sunflower seeds, and thin slices of crystallized ginger in a large bowl. Do not use quick oats: I did that once and the result was horrible. I add the seeds and ginger until they look right, so I can’t give precise amounts. Use your hands to mix the ingredients so you get an even distribution.
3. Chop nuts coarsely to end up with a pile that fits between your two hands. I usually use almonds, but pecans work as well and one of these days I plan to use hazelnuts.
4. In a medium-sized pot, melt a stick of butter over a medium-high flame. Add the chopped nuts and stir until lightly toasted. While most of the butter will coat the nuts, I like to see a thin layer of butter on the bottom of the pan. If I don’t, I add more butter.
5. Add 3/4 cup brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of honey to the butter and nuts, and stir until well integrated. Remove from the heat, add a splash of vanilla extract, and stir again to mix the ingredients.
6. Add the hot nut mixture to the oats and seeds in the large bowl. Use a wooden spoon to stir the mixture until it’s cool enough to use your hands. You want to spread the butter and sugar evenly through the oats and seeds.
7. Spread the granola onto the silicone-lined baking sheet, and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Stir the mixture to bring oats from the bottom up to the top, and cook for another 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and set the jelly roll pan on a rack to cool.
8. While the granola is cooking and cooling, thinly slice a mix of dried fruit. (For you Berkeley farmers’ market shoppers, Blossom Bluff’s dried fruit is markedly better than Frog Hollow’s.) You can use anything you like — we favor dried peaches and plums — as long as you slice them into inch-long, matchstick-sized slices. Dried fruit pieces that are too big create an unpleasant clash in textures. As with the nuts, I like to chop about two handfuls’ worth.
9. Add the dried fruit to the warm granola, and stir to evenly distribute. (If you add the dried fruit before the granola goes into the oven, it becomes too dry.)
10. Serve with yogurt. We’re fans of Redwood Hill’s goat yogurt at the moment.

I know I have a few programmers among my readers, so you may also like my new blog, An Obsession with Programming. It’s definitely aimed at a technical audience, but everyone is welcome.

Wine And Roommates

Hey, everyone. I'm working on an article about Bay Area folks who have to deal with disparate wine tastes among their roommates, and I'd love to hear your stories on the subject. Know a wine drinker who lives with beer fans? A wine snob who lives with White Zinfandel fans? How do they share their beverages? Do they hoard their wine or share it with roommates to enlighten them? How do wine drinkers — who often drink half a bottle with dinner and after — manage with light drinkers or teetotallers?

You can write me privately, and I'm happy to protect your anonymity if you want to talk about your current roommates but don’t want months of fights.

The Bookcase in the Pantry

I recently moved a bookcase into our kitchen. It’s a tall, skinny thing, all white. The friend who handed it down to me no doubt bought it from Scandinavian Designs or IKEA. It fits in a space about one foot wide next to the monstrous metal shelves that fill one wall of the pantry space off our main kitchen area. (It fits now, anyway; those shelves were about 11 1/2 inches away from the wall until I moved most of their contents to the floor, pulled them over about an inch, and then replaced everything I had taken off them.)

Once I moved the bookcase in, I had to figure out what to put in it. Books, of course, and food books at that. But which ones? My collection of food books sprawls far beyond what one slim little bookcase can hold, even with the books grouped by height and squished together for maximum efficiency.

Part of the answer was simple practicality. Certain books show up often when I’m planning meals, and it makes sense to keep them close by. Super Natural Cooking, which guides gourmets through a world of interesting grains and veggie dishes. The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, perhaps my very favorite cookbook, with its long essays about the simplest dishes. Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, the perfect book for slow cooker owners. Kitchen Sense, a good reference for all those classic dishes that I mostly know how to make but sometimes need a refresher for. The Art of Simple Food, which reminds me that sometimes a souffle or pizza is a great dinner.

Others are books that I use often, but less often than the ones above. The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion serves my needs when I need to look up a simple baked good. Bouchon occasionally scratches a food craving itch, and The French Laundry Cookbook provides inspiration for fancier meals. The Perfect Scoop gives me ice cream ideas. The River Cottage Meat Book provides a nice reference for uncommon meat cooking tasks. Mediterranean Street Food has a stellar collection of recipes that give variety during the week. The Cheese Board Collective Works has a smattering of bread recipes and, at the moment, my favorite granola recipe.

There are, of course, reference books scattered about the shelves. I almost never look at these books, but I like to think that I do, and so onto the bookcase they go. On Food and Cooking, the must-have encyclopedia of food science for laypeople (and lapsed science nerds like myself). The Elements of Cooking, a handy pocket guide to unfamiliar kitchen terms and proportions for common preparations. Culinary Artistry, a collection of voluminous lists of flavor pairings. Putting Food By, the classic book about preserving foods. Sauces, with its no-nonsense title and thick spine.

But there is a final category to the books I fit in to the little white case: guilt-inducing. These are the books I feel like I should be cooking from, but almost never do. Perhaps I hope that by placing them next to my kitchen staples, I will finally pluck them from their shelves and give them the attention they deserve.

Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes came out ahead in an illuminating survey of bread books done by James Macguire in The Art of Eating a couple years back (though “came out ahead” hides the fact that he skewered every bread book on the market). I’d like to make my own bread more. But we live so close to Acme Bakery that making my own seems silly.

Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East Vegetarian Cookbook is a thick sheaf of interesting vegetarian dishes from cuisines I rarely explore, and yet I haven’t cracked it open in years. The dishes are unfamiliar enough that I don't get a “Oooh, I want to make that” rush like I do when I flip through Zuni’s familiar French/Italian/California ideas.

Similarly, The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking promises to give me the basics of a cuisine I enjoy when I eat it, but know very little about cooking. I know it’s not hard. I know I could start with one or two simple dishes and add them to an otherwise European meal. Maybe I could make steamed pork buns for lunch. All good ideas that never happen.

The Whole Beast and Beyond Nose to Tail are witty, charming cookbooks that everyone should own. And yet I no longer make a point of keeping offal — the mainstay of the two books — in my freezer, and the meat vendors at the market don’t usually bring any. I know I could put in a special request, but that takes layers of planning that even I haven’t gotten around to yet. And so Fergus’s warm prose stays folded in the covers.

Charcuterie lives in this category. One of these days, I plan to set up a corner of my basement as a meat-curing area. I have everything I need, except a free few hours to plan it all out and set it up. And since I rarely have the extra meat on hand that would steer me to salumis and hams, I never get up the inspiration to set up my meat cave downstairs.

I’d really like to use Cooking By Hand more. The sprawling, in-depth look at making pasta is reason enough to pull it off the shelf. But I hate making pasta by hand. Its conserva technique is good, but I’ve done it enough times now that I don’t need to reference the book anymore. I’m probably missing yet more fascinating ideas simply because I never look to it for pasta suggestions.

But you know, I might start opening these books. Maybe I'll plan a vegetarian week that forces me to open Jaffrey’s book. Maybe I’ll make potstickers. Maybe, for real, I’ll make myself some pasta.

Or, you know, maybe not. But the books will sit there, right where I’m bound to see them, making me feel guilty for neglect.

Got any books you feel you should cook from more? Share your guilt-inducing cookbooks in the comments.

Almond Butter. What's Up With That?

At the Ferry Plaza market recently, I counted four vendors selling almond butter. At the Berkeley market, where we usually shop, I counted three. At the Temescal market, I counted two.

I bought some out of curiosity; now I’m a convert to its deep almond flavor. Melissa and I frequently have almond butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, and I made almond butter cookies recently by swapping it one-for-one with the recipe’s peanut butter.

Have I just been blind to this before?

In part, yes. Lagier Ranches has sold a range of almond butters for 10 years now, says Casey Havre, who manages the company’s livestock and the company’s subsidiary, Loulou’s Garden. Of the three types of almonds they grow, Lagier uses one, the Butte, only for almond butter. They use whole almonds, since broken almonds turn rancid more quickly. They know their almond butter.

But there has been a surge in almond butter at local markets. Massa Organics, best known among foodies for their flavorful, locally-grown rice, started making almond butter within the last year, says owner Greg Massa. And a quick look through Riverdog Farm’s newsletters shows that they started selling it at about the same time.

Probably everyone is selling it for the same reason: product diversity. Small farms succeed when they can sell a range of items. One crop pays the bills even while the market for another one tanks; one crop in season covers costs while another one lies dormant. “Almond butter for us was just a natural extension of getting into the almond business,” says Massa. “ In 2004, commodity rice prices were so low that we planted our first-ever almond orchard in an attempt to diversify our farming operation.”

It’s surprising that more farmers haven’t started selling almond butter before now. Almonds are everywhere here. California’s $2 billion almond industry is the only commercial one in North America, producing 75 percent of the world’s almond supply, according to the California Almond Board. Almond butter plays straight to our locavore crowd as a peanut butter substitute sourced from nearby. It plays straight to our gourmet crowd as an interesting, flavorful ingredient. And It plays straight to our health nut crowd as a “superfood,” a concentrated nutrition source.

But it doesn’t play to our budget-watching crowd, unfortunately. Almond prices are higher than peanut prices — though they’ve dropped off sharply this year — and almond butter reflects that cost. Most of the jars of organic almond butter I’ve seen cost about $1 per ounce, although non-organic brands seem to cost about two-thirds of that.

If you’ve got the budget, you can find Massa’s at the Berkeley market and the Ferry Plaza market. You can find Lagier at the Ferry Plaza, Grand Lake, Marin Civic Center, and Temescal markets. Any vendor will give you other ideas for using it beyond AB&Js and cookies. Massa likes his almond butter on toast with honey, but he also uses it in peanut sauce recipes. Havre likes it with her oatmeal, but she suggested a combination so odd I just have to try it: almond butter and homemade sauerkraut sandwiches.

Add your suggestions for almond butter in the comments.

1984 Terrebrune, Bandol

Two years ago and some change, Melissa and I went to Provence. Before we left, I booked us winery appointments in Bandol, saying that I was a wine writer but that I wasn’t on assignment. While the town itself is a checklist of Riviera requirements — a cycle of bedroom-sized creperies, souvenir stands, and Egyptian cotton sellers repeated a million times along the beach — the wine region is probably the best of Provence’s appellations outside of the Southern Rhône.

It would be hard to pick our favorite winery visit. At Domaine Tempier, the darling of Richard Olney, Alice Waters, and Kermit Lynch (who imports the bottles), the wine maker played "guess the age" with a bottle of Tempier from the early 80s (I guessed early 90s). At Chateau Pradeaux, we met the seemingly endless stream of dogs and walked in among the foudres in the old cellar. At Chateau St.-Anne, Bandol’s biodynamic estate, the wine maker drove us to a remote vineyard in the forest and then to a vantage point — complete with an old ruin — where he explained the different terroirs of Bandol by pointing to the streaks of color in the hills across the valley.

But our visit to Domaine de Terrebrune (also a Kermit Lynch import) may top them all.

Once we arrived, the wine maker’s assistant took us around the winery, explaining in slowed-down French how the winery works. She took us downstairs to show us the gravity-fed system, which was busy with staff handling the harvest. The owner came down and chatted with us about his farming philosophy and his thoughts on Mourvedre, the dominant grape of Bandol. He then suggested we eat at the restaurant on the grounds (he tried to pick up our tab, but I explained my rules about such things).

I will never forget that meal. A heavy drizzle of rain plopped and pitter-pattered just outside the restaurant. It was open to the elements at one end, but the crackling fire for cooking all the food warmed the room. The first course was a plate of mushrooms with thyme and a hardened streak of grilled ham. The second course was an arc of steak cooked rare.

I don’t mean rare the way Americans think of rare. It was arranged by doneness, and the most well-done piece on the plate was what a good American restaurant would call rare. (And many restaurants can’t even deliver on that: A “rare” order often comes out medium-rare.) I can still picture the plate and conjure the taste of each piece of that meat. We ordered a bottle of a decade-old Terrebrune to go with it.

After lunch, we stopped at the front desk to buy some wine. We’ve found that European wineries often have good prices on library wines. We had brought shipping boxes on the trip, knowing that we’d be buying wine, so we still had plenty of room for two bottles of the 1984 Terrebrune. Like most premium Bandol wines, this one is 95 percent Mourvedre, a tannic grape that benefits from a bit of age: Seven years seems about right for the wine to start opening up, but it will last much longer.

We opened the first bottle earlier this year. We took our friend Sean-Michael to dinner at Jojo as thanks for getting me the Maxis job. We knew he’d appreciate it. We opened the second bottle the other night, just because. I made a pot roast, mashed potatoes, and braised greens. We burrowed our noses into the glasses, inhaling the smell of lush violets and leather. The tannins had dissolved into nothingness, but the acidity and the fruit were still lively and invigorating. A decade from now, we still would have loved this wine.

But it almost didn’t matter what the wine tasted like. Every sip and every sniff brought us back to that meal, that tour, the wine maker, and his staff.

Yes, yes, I have once again been neglecting OWF. Let me give a word of advice to you relatively new bloggers: Don't stop blogging, because you'll find it hard to start up again. Nonetheless, I intend to get myself back in this habit.

UCB Extension Wine Class: Fundamentals of Wine Studies II

The latest UC Berkeley Extension catalog is out, and I am once again teaching Fundamentals of Wine Studies II, a class about the sensory analysis of wine. Unlike most classes, which talk about the regions, this one talks about the guts of describing wine. I love this class, and my students always get a lot out of it.

Here are my descriptions of an earlier incarnation of this class: Session 1, Sessions 2-4, Session 5, and Session 6.

Sign up early. Sign up often.

Real World Wine Pairing

My mom called me early on December 24th to brainstorm about wines for that night’s dinner. As I’ve said before, she and I have similar cooking styles, and she had planned a stunning feast. Fortunately, we were invited.

We were starting with a vintage Champagne, but then she asked about the crab bisque she had made. Crab is one of the few dishes that sends me hunting for the rich Chardonnays that we produce in California. You don’t want a lot of oak character for this pairing, because the tannins will smother your tongue and prevent you from enjoying the delicate crab. However, a little of the butter character that comes from malolactic fermentation (converting apple-crisp malic acid to creamy-soft lactic) goes nicely with the crab meat. After all, we dunk cracked crab into little pots of melted butter. But you still want some acidity: Avoid the flabby Chardonnays that winemakers so often produce here in the land of overripe fruit.

My mom had a slightly older California Chardonnay, and we pondered its potential over the phone. She read the label, which said that it had been made in the Burgundian style. Lots of people say that, of course, but the rest of the label, which at least implied that it had been aged in neutral oak, sounded promising. In the end, it proved to be exactly what we hoped. The age gave it an extra creaminess, but its Russian River origins gave it the acidity we wanted.

Then we talked about the main course. She was cooking Muscovy duck breast — rich meat even when it’s not magret, the fat-filled breast of a foie gras duck — and garnishing it with a pomegranate wine sauce. I like a jammy, opulent Syrah with this combination of rich meat and syrupy sauce, and I had just the bottle: Melissa and I had visited Ridge Vineyards during our Manresa weekend, and we had bought one Zinfandel and one Syrah. I don’t actually like jammy Syrahs in general, so this one still had a lot of acidity to combat the sharp tang of the pomegranate and cut through the fat of the duck breast. But, again, California wineries tend to produce heavier, jammier wines that can stand up to the weight of this meat.

Part of the challenge of real world wine pairing is that we don’t actually have a large wine store in our basement. We have to make do with what we have. But in this case, by combining my mom’s bottles and mine, we came up bottles that worked nicely with the dishes she served.