Grape Variety #87: Zweigelt

Drinking Zweigelt is like drinking the color purple. There are flavors, to be sure, but those flavors are somehow all subsumed under the color purple.

This was my first Zweigelt, and the 87th grape variety towards my New Year's Resolution to qualify for the Wine Century Club. Zweigelt is an Austrian grape developed in 1922 when Blaufrankisch was crossed with another native variety, St. Laurent. I had Blaufrankisch a long time ago, and I remember it as a funky, pinot-like grape. I was eager to try the Zweigelt, and to see how much it resembled it's Blaufrankisch ancestor.

The 2005 Anton Iby Zweigelt Classic did indeed smell like a young, tight Pinot Noir. (K & L Wines, $11.99) It had aromas of sour cherry, earth, and just a bit of alcohol. As the wine sat in the glass the alcohol blew off, and the flavors were of pronounced sour cherry. The depth in the middle of the wine tasted like the color purple to me, and the finish was earthy and relatively short. Zweigelt doesn't have the silkiness of Pinot Noir on the palate, but otherwise it's very much like a pinot in character. And at this price, I think it would be a great substitute for Pinot Noir when your wallet is feeling a bit pinched. Very good QPR, considering the nice balance between earthy and fruity notes.

When looking for a food to pair with your Zweigelt, pork is an excellent choice. We had it with a roasted pork tenderloin and blue cheese polenta. The pork was topped with some mushrooms in a pan sauce, and the polenta and mushrooms had a nice earthiness that picked up those notes in the wine, while the sour cherry fruit and the blue cheese were super together. And because it was a Rachael Ray creation, it didn't take very long to make so it was perfect for an after-work supper.

If you haven't had a Zweigelt, try one. I think you'll find it's like a Pinot Noir--only purpler.

How I Cross-Trained My Palate

A month ago I reminded readers that they could be the unwitting victims of palate fatigue if they didn't remember that palates, just like everything else, need cross-training to remain sharp. I encouraged everybody to do something outside their wine comfort zone in order to get their palates tingling and ready for 2008.

What did I do? I turned to Cabernet Franc, which (like Gatorade) is my training liquid of choice. Why? Because nothing wakes your palate, and the aroma sensors that co-pilot it, like Cab Franc. It's not like other red wines, in that it often tastes green. It challenges you to think outside the fruit-forward box, and appreciate the herbal things in life. And it is grown in places as diverse as Bordeaux, the North Coast of the US, Hungary, and Argentina. It is one of the world's most classic, and least appreciated, grapes. And I don't drink it all that often, so it made it perfect for cross-training purposes.

What was it like? The 2004 Lang & Reed Red Shed North Coast that I opened met all of my cross-training expectations, since patience, persistence, and an open mind were required to fully appreciate this very good QPR wine. (domaine547, $17.99) It had pronounced aromas of aromas of green pepper and cassis upon first opening it, and these elements made up the dominant flavors, too. I immediately felt challenged. It was not Mt. Kilimanjaro, but it was like facing one of those rock walls with the fake toe-holds in it. Something scary and not scary at the same time. So I waited about an hour and tried again. A nice, silky plushness had emerged which helped to keep the green pepper (which hadn't gone away) in check. I tried it with food, and felt like I was beginning to hit my stride with this wine. It cried out for one of those louche meals of my suburban childhood: pepper steak with white rice. I had it with a burger instead, but I kept thinking of pepper steak.

I corked the rest of the bottle, and decided to try it again the next day. I didn't use any preservative or vacuum pumps, because I wanted this wine to get some air into it. I'm glad I did, because it was very different. One thing remained: that lovely plushness, which reminded me of an old silk-velvet opera coat that belonged to my grandmother: silky, soft, and deep. I tasted black currants and plum, and the pepperiness was more rich than green but retained a nice freshness. On night two I had it with a Rachael Ray chicken chili and it was a terrific pairing, with the wine standing up to the tomatoes and peppers in the dish without overpowering them.

After I drank my cab franc, all the white wines I tasted seemed fresher, the red wines fruitier. At the same time, I felt tuned into the herbal, grassy, and forest notes of these wines in ways that I hadn't been before. Instead of things tasting "green" they tasted of tarragon, thyme, and pine. My impressions were indeed sharper, and more specific. Cross-training is definitely worth it, based on this limited attempt.

Pronto! Italian Wines Calling

This year one of my resolutions is to learn more about Italian wines. I'm only ten days into the adventure, and I'm already finding out just how much there is to know. With twenty wine regions, dozens of native grape varieties found nowhere else, and a complicated system of appellations, it's enough to make anyone's head spin. (click on map from Siena Imports to enlarge)

Rather than tackling the situation from every direction at once, I've decided to focus on one or two appellations a month, and try to drink at least one red and one white wine from each region, as well as either a a sparkler or a dessert wine. What's up first? In January, I'll start out in the far north-east corner in Friuli-Venezia. For February we'll make a diagonal sweep to the south-west and visit Sicily. And in March we'll head north just a bit to Campania. Where next? Well, that depends. It's not that easy to find wines from Molise in LA, as it turns out, so the next stop will be determined by what I can get my hands on. As always, I'll be seeking out wines that are distinctive and show lots of varietal character but are less than $20. With the declining power of the dollar and the relative rarity of some of the wines, this may not always be possible--but I will try.

If you are also interested in learning more about Italian wines, here are some resources that I've found helpful the last few weeks:

1. Vino Italiano!, also known as the February Wine Book Club selection, is chock full of reference information, contains lists of Italian native grape varieties, and lists of producers. The chapters are very readable, too, so if you've been on the fence about joining in and reading along with the rest of us, I highly recommend it.

2. Two blogs are well worth subscribing to: Terry Hughes's Mondosapore, and Alfonso Cevola's On the Wine Trail in Italy. Both of these blogs contain lots of reliable information about the region's wine, but what's more they convey that in Italy, wine is part of life--not something for scorecards. If you can manage Italian, add Aristide, vino24.tv, and Vino al Vino to your reader while you're at it. Been planning to learn Italian? Here's your chance.

3. About learning Italian. Italian wine names can seem like a mouthful. Tasters A and B from the blog Smells Like Grape led me to an online Italian Wine Pronunciation Guide at WineIntro, as well as to a glossary of Italian wine terms. Kudos to the Tasters for finding these resources. Now everybody can go back to #2 and actually try reading some Italian wine blogs. Seriously, Americans are not the world leaders in foreign language skills. Why not TRY to expand your linguistic horizons, all in the cause of learning about some great wine?

4. Those labels. If you can figure out how to read an American label, you can figure this out, too. Wine Library has a great article that gives a simple explanation of the DOCG/DOC/IGT system of appellations and defines some common label terms. The Wine Lovers Page has a side-by-side comparison of US, French, and Italian labels so that you can see it's not that complicated, it's just different.

5. That appellation system. Yes, it takes a bit of getting used to, but there is a helpful article with diagram at Zigzagando. The reason it's a bit tough is because it's so quintessentially Italian, with lots of fuzzy areas and overlap, not to mention escape hatches for those creative individuals who don't want to grow approved grapes in their vineyards. This mixture of regulation, deliberate fuzziness, and creative side-stepping is what makes Italy great. How else did they manage to jumpstart the Renaissance? If none of what I just said made sense, go read the article. You'll come out realizing that great wines can be found at every appellation level, and you'll feel better about your chances of drinking great Italian wine.

So if Italian wines are calling you, don't get all anxious. Just shout "Pronto!" and get started.

Drinking Wine Before Its Time

Sometimes, you just gotta do it. You get a bottle of wine, you're dying to try it, you know it's probably too young to show itself at its best--so you open it anyway. We all drink wine before its time. What is important is to be able to drink it for what it is--a young wine--and to figure out what it will become if you give it some time to develop.

The 2005 Twisted Oak Syrah-Viognier ($24, directly from the winery) was just such a wine. I love syrah-viognier blends, with their spicy richness serving as a foil to delicate, often ethereal aromas of white flowers. I was dying to try it, and since I had two bottles on hand I decided to commit infanticide and drink one of them now. I couldn't wait.

What was it like? A teenager--all awkward angles and stuff that doesn't quite hang together. Yet. But who would want to be judged now on their 8th grade report card? So I kept careful track of its development as I drank it over the course of several days. I became convinced that in another 12-24 months this is going to be a bombshell of a wine.

The first night, I was struck by its dark, inky plum color and its huge nose of brambly berries and spice. Flavors of berries and pepper dominated, with just a bit of a lift in the mid-palate (that part of the wine's taste that comes when it rolls through the middle of your mouth). Nice, but it hinted at so much potential I didn't want to walk away from it yet. So I recorked it without any preservative, and left it on the counter overnight.

The next night, when I pulled the cork I found that the wine was already really opening up and developing as it got some more air. The viognier was much more prominent on the second night, with aromas of gardenia and jasmine dominant, rather than berries and spice. These syrah aspects were there, too, but the impression you had now was one of a spring garden, not a berry patch. The berries had become more distinctively huckleberry at the core, with the spice really coming through as you headed towards the finish line. Very good QPR, with its layers of fruit, flowers, and spice.

I liked this wine both nights, but the way that it bloomed in just 24 hours convinced me that it has great potential for short-term cellaring over the next 1-3 years. If you can't wait and have to open a bottle now, try decanting it or at least uncork it a few hours before you want to drink it. Like all teenagers, this deserves some time to grow out of its youthful exuberance and into a well-rounded and complex wine.

Wine Lovers: It's Time to Rethink the Little Black Book

There are lots of jokes out there about "little black books," the pocket-sized notebooks where you could list all your romantic triumphs, phone numbers, and seduction strategies. But I think it's time to rethink the little black book from a wine-loving perspective.

If you are a wine lover, you probably have wine information written on the back of your driver's license, on post-it notes, Trader Joe's receipts, ATM slips, and (if you are me) occupying lines in your check book that are supposed to keep a tally of your (diminishing) bank balance. What you need instead is a little black book that will become your mobile wine operations center and can be used to record everything vinous in your life.

It is imperative, I think, that the book be sturdy enough to survive being tossed into the trunk, your purse, or the stress of being sat on. It needs to be attractive enough that you don't feel like a complete dork carrying it into a tasting, and small enough that you don't leave it home rather than schlep it across town. I've found that the pre-fab "wine journals" never fit the bill, because they think I want to keep track of stuff I don't give a hoot about.

Instead, get yourself a Pierre Belvedere faux-leather notebook ($21.95 at Jenni Bick Bookbinding) which comes in a range of colors including (if you must) burgundy. Mine is black, and I carry it with me everywhere. This book is small without being minute at 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches. It has ruled pages that are relatively thick (no bleed-through), and the pages are perforated so that if you make a shopping list you can tear it out if you want to and throw it away. There is a handy little sewn-in bookmark to keep your place. And the covers are stiff without being bulky and slightly padded so they are easy to hold. This is a book that doesn't slip out of your hands.

What can you put in your little black book? Here's a sampling of what's in mine:

the number for the best local pizza delivery
menus and wine pairings for the week
a list of recipes I want to try from Nigella Lawson's Express cookbook
lists of wine moved up to Sonoma; list of wine moved to LA
wines I think I want to try from Trader Joe's to check on Quaffability
list of the next 12 wines coming up as "ready to drink" in Cellar Tracker
list of recommended champagnes
Wine Book Club ideas

The possibilities are endless, and once the book is filled up it can sit without embarrassment on your bookshelf, a permanent reminder of how far you've come in terms of your wine knowledge and enjoyment. If one of your resolutions for 2008 was to keep better track of your wine information, get yourself a little black book. If you use it faithfully, it will become the most frequently consulted "wine book" you own.