Fondue! (and the wine that goes with it)

In an a rare moment of retro chic, I bought a fondue pot. We had one growing up. It was that burnt orange color so common in the early 70s (or at least that's how I remember it). As the years went by, the regular presence of a flame underneath discolored the burnt orange to something more like burnt umber. There were forks with wooden handles and colored discs at the end. Why the forks deserved color-coding I never understood. It's not like you left them around--you were too busy spearing bread chunks with them!

My excuse for this purchase was the two bottles of wine already in my cellar that came from France's Savoie region. One, a red--the 2007 Charles Trosset Vin de Savoie Arbin L’Expression de Terroir-- came from Garagiste and cost around $24. Sadly, it's not available anywhere now but it was delicious. The other, a white, is available for under $15. Once you add the fondue pot, these turned out to be pretty expensive bottles of wine. However, if you already have the fondue pot then the white was an especially good bargain!

The 2009 André et Michel Quenard Vin de Savoie Les Abymes is purity in a bottle. (purchased for $14.99 from domaineLA; available in the market for $11-$15). Made from the region's own Jacquère grape, it is THE wine that goes with the region's trademark cheese fondue. Clean mineral, mint, and stone aromas remind me of snow--or at least that highly-oxygenated sense of cleanness you feel when you are tromping around in freshly fallen flakes. There's more of the same crisp cleanness in the flavors, accented with a creamy lemon note. It is a great white for cheese, and appealing because of its clarity and lightness. Excellent QPR for a wine that delivers a lot of adventure and refreshment for relatively little money.

The obvious thing to have with a white wine from Savoie is fondue. I used this recipe from Saveur, which produced a nutty, fragrant, and gooey dinner that took me back to my childhood (don't omit the Kirsch, and don't use pre-ground nutmeg!). In addition to cubes of bread I sliced some apples for dipping into the cheese, and we gobbled them up, too. With all that cheese, you really need a clean wine and the little licks of citrus and stone were a bright, welcome note.

No fondue pot and no plans to repossess the one in your parents' basement or garage? This wine would also be excellent with delicate fish, shellfish, or just sipping on while you serve some cheese and crackers before dinner.

New Grape of the Month: Jacquère

For a grape I've never heard of before, Jacquère certainly has a lot of synonyms and variant spellings.

What is Jacquère? It's a white grape grown in the Savoy region of France. (photo from Charles Neal Selections)

Where is the Savoy, you ask? It's tucked up next to the Alps. And though the region makes good wine, most of it never leaves the area's fondue parties and ski lifts. Nevertheless, I've been trying to get to know the wines of Savoy a bit better, and while they can be hard to find they tend to be very good value when you manage it, and pair nicely with food, to boot.

Turns out there are lots of Quenards making wine in Savoy, as the signposts to the right indicate. The Jacquère I tasted was the 2007 Jean-Pierre et Jean-Francois Quenard Vin de Savoie Chignin Anne de la Biguerne ($12.93, Garagiste; for more information on purchasing, contact the importer at Charles Neal Selections)

The wine was surprisingly hard to describe based on the usual fruit and flowers vocabulary. Instead what I tasted was "clean," followed by "snow." It was very fresh tasting, with faint, pure lemon and mineral aromas and flavors if you dug under the clean snow to find them. For under $13, this was excellent QPR.

What to have with your Alpine Jacquère? Something gooey and cheesey (fondue, grilled cheese, Croque Monsieur) would be lovely. But if you really want a treat, pair it with shellfish. That's what we did recently, when we stopped into the Four Seasons Biltmore Resort on the Santa Barbara coast in Montecito. They have a Thursday night seafood buffet that is a far cry from most sad buffets you are now thinking about with horror. The Biltmore's tables were loaded with fresh shucked oysters, snow crab legs, sushi, lobster, and grilled fish. And they don't charge corkage at the Thursday buffet, so I brought along this bottle and the clean-tasting wine was just perfect with the clean-tasting shellfish. All in all, an excellent value in food and wine in pricey Montecito.

Sitting by the ocean on a beautiful Santa Barbara night, sipping Alpine Jacquère, all I could hope for was that somewhere in Savoy someone was cuddled up to the fire keeping warm with a nice bottle of Central Coast Pinot Noir!