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Food & Wine Wine Report from the Fort Lets talk turkey ... and what to pour with it!
Food & Wine Wine Report from the Fort Lets talk turkey ... and what to pour with it! | Lets talk turkey ... and what to pour with it! |
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| Written by Fred McMillin, Northside Wine Editor | |
| Monday, 31 October 2005 | |
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Turkey is essentially a blank slate, bland enough to go with anything. - Eric Asimov, New York Times So let’s see what some of the best publications recommend with the bird. Gourmet magazine – San Franciscan Gerald Asher recommends Beringer Nouveau. My Fort tasters agree. Wine Spectator – Harvey Steiman, whom I interviewed when he wrote for the SF Examiner, pours a Steele Carneros Pinot Noir. My picky panel likes it, too. Wall Street Journal – The very popular Dorothy Gaiter and John Breecher favor “a well-aged Cabernet Sauvignon from California.” The best we’ve tasted in my classes in some time was a memorable 1985 Beringer Private Reserve which I had cellared for a number of years with tender loving care. New York Times – Wine whiz Frank Prial boosts the Richard Sauret Vineyard Zinfandel by our local urban winery, Rosenblum Cellars. That was the first wine we recommended in last September’s column. He also wrote that a “robust California chardonnay is the perfect match for turkey.” San Francisco Northside – At our house, we offer two wines, a chardonnay (by Handley or Robert Mondavi) and a pinot noir (by David Bruce or Gary Farrell). ‘Tis the Season to be Jolly ... Take a wine class! My November wine classes at Fort Mason:
•Wines for Thanksgiving, Saturday, Nov. 9 Since a taste is worth a thousand words, we taste 20 in each class to find your favorites. Phone the SF City College office at (415) 561-1860 to enroll. Roman Holiday Our constant scanning of translations of ancient documents just turned up this about the Romans in Palestine when Christ was alive. Everyone drank the local wine, except a few Roman elite. They imported jars of wine from Naples; one had an inscription reading “massive excellent wine.” Sounds like a Napa cab! Our Wine of the Month ... by Jove Sangiovese means “blood of Jove” in Italian. Jove was the most powerful of Roman gods. And our wine of the month is among the most powerful of California Sangiovese ... an exciting purple powerhouse. Rodrique Mohlyneaux 2002 Sangiovese, Livermore Valley, 16.3% alcohol! Little sediment, decant. Limited availability, so phone (925) 447-4280 and plead. About $16. Credits: Edgar Vogt did a nice job of setting up the tasting panel, by Jove. What brand brings in the most holi-daze dollars? Mondavi and Beringer tied for the second most U.S.A. sales during the Christmas-New Year’s holiday last year. So what brand was #1? Selling over $13 million in three weeks was Korbel! How to attend a $2000 tasting FREE!! “At the home of Gordon and Ann Getty, America’s greatest wine critic, Robert Parker Jr., leads a tasting of his highest-rated wines ... $2000 a ticket..” I wrote that a year ago in this column. Little did I realize that one of my Fort Mason teaching team, Rob Ross, would taste Parker’s favorite wines free. Here’s how he did it. Rob volunteered to work at the 2005 Food and Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. (Yes, that’s where the Kennedys own a little lean-to.) The highlight was a tasting of Parker’s top wines. Rob said the selection was “truly from his ‘A’ list and not cheap substitutes. They blew my mind.” Included were two we’ve tasted in my past classes, a Chateau La Nerthe Chateauneuf-du-Pape and a Shafer Stags Leap district Napa Cab. There were other tastings with other wines that have dazzled my classes, including a Joseph Phelps “Insignia” and a Gary Farrell Russian River Pinot Noir, as well as dessert wines by Covey Run (a muscat) and an Inniskillen ice wine (our best wine of 2001 was their Cab Franc Ice Wine). All this at no cost. Way to go, Rob! Quiz: Can You Name the Country? This country is in a “pinot noir frenzy.” Here are three clues from wine experts: “It’s amazing how good this country’s pinot noir is, considering no one knows what they are doing.” - Russell Briggs, wine exporter “Our pinot vines are under snow in the winter.” - Roger Donaldson, Sleeping Dogs Winery “The best pinot noir can be grown only in a few places: Burgundy, Sonoma, Napa, Oregon and now our country.” - Richard Riddiford, Palliser Estate Wines Answer: New Zealand, the southernmost wine country on the globe. Credits: Corie Brown, Los Angeles Times. Research: Simone Laplante. Postscript – The best New Zealand Pinots we’ve tasted at the Fort were by Palliser (Importer: Negotiants U.S.A.), Te Kairanga Winery (Winesellers Importer), and Mills Reef (contact Jo Diaz, phone 707-620-0788). Watch for our Best 100 Wines of 2005 in December! A Final Wine Smile To start the wine course, I asked each student to tell us what they do. Larry said he had been a bush pilot in Africa. He was hired to move a small tribe 40 miles south over an impenetrable jungle. After 10 days of hard-flying loads of six villagers, he noticed he wasn’t reducing the population further. The reason? The folks were racing back north through the jungle to get another plane ride! Fred McMillin was voted one of the U.S.A.’s 22 best wine writers by the Academy of Wine Communications. If questions, phone him at (415) 563-5712. |
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| Last Updated ( Saturday, 19 January 2008 ) |
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