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Be it “Right Bank” Bordeaux US-grown clones, Merlot goes great with lamb. Tonight I’m enjoying a glass of Shinn Estates’ “Red” (which is so very obviously at least 60% Merlot… wait, let’s look it up… 75% Merlot!); the glass of wine by itself is forgettable, but the same glass of wine paired with a lamb stew, is fantastic!

Merlot can taste like a ridiculous number of fruits, but its claim to fame in my mouth is that it covers your mouth with flavor without covering your mouth with meal-disrupting tannin. Yes, it *can* age for 50 years when done “right,” or you can mistake its burliest examples for a well-made Cabernet. No, you can not count it out when you make something that needs wine paired with it.

Merlot comes in as a meal-savior when Cabernet presents its more-usual-than-I-would-like-it-to-be problem of being so often made for point scores and not for enjoyment. Cabernet gets covered in oak and tannin to impress critis, and Merlot quietly scoots by with a slick and creamy, yet still uplifting, palate of black and red fruits dusted in chocolate, bacon fat, and even green olives and tobacco.

Unless it’s December and you own a Kobe beef ranch, you should probably look to Merlot for your dinner parties before you look to Cabernet… if only so that you don’t get embarrassed when that’s what, I, your wine-snob friend brings for you!

California, France, Merlot | No Comments

We travel to Corbieres, a little region in the south of France, to taste a wine with a big reputation for “funky elegance.” Click here to watch the  Corbieres video.

Wines tasted: Cuvee Alice from Ollieux Romanis 2006

France, Grenache/Garnacha/Cannonau, Old World, T.B. Ackerson Wines, Wine Videos | No Comments

Drinking wine without food changes every parameter I have for judging how “good” a wine is. With food, I want a strongly flavored, complexly structured, and …well let’s not split hairs… a SERIOUSLY FUNKY wine.

Tonight though, I’m tasting without food, and it’s throwing me for a huge loop. Every flavor I usually love in wine (dirt, leaves, and animal furs), is making me upset that it’s covering up the raspberry jams and black currant juice that’s hovering at a low altitude in the bottle.

How do you guys do it?! … and I KNOW you do do it because when I ask you “with food or without food” almost everyone answers, “without food!”

Does that make my amazing ability to pair top-notch wines with exotic foods completely irrelevant, or should we just learn from this experience that WINE SHOULD BE SERVED IN MOVIE THEATRES?!

Wine Pairings, Wine Questions Answered | No Comments

who cares what you’re drinking and eating if you’re drinking it out of plastic cups and eating it off of styrofoam plates?

The biggest factor in what type of wine you should be buying should be how much attention you’re going to give to the wine. If you’re going to decant the wine, pour it into Riedel glasses, and sniff it for five minutes before you drink it, then I don’t care if you’re pairing the wine with a Krusty Burger feast, I am going to make sure you walk out of the wine shop with the best bottle of wine that I can afford to give sell to you.

If you’re pairing it with foie gras, cooking it with Charles Kinbote, and serving it to Nelson Mandela, BUT you’ll be drinking your wine from red plastic cups, then I will still refuse to sell you that $300 bottle of 1972 Red Burgundy.

So, please, instead of being the fifteenth person to ask for “something that pairs well with roasted chicken,” tell your wine shop dude exactly how much time your guests and yourself are going to use sniffing and loving the wine you’re going to buy.

Wine Pairings, Wine Questions Answered | No Comments

The wine shop where I work sits awfully close to an awfully good BYOB (for now) hummus restaurant, and at least, ten times a day I get asked “what wine goes with hummus?” There are two answers to this question- one that people want to hear and one that would make people run away screaming from the wine shop.

Mimi's Hummus in Ditmas Park

What people want to hear is that the type of wine that they like is the type of wine that goes with hummus, and by “hummus”  what they really mean is a melange of complex, savory, and sweet flavors that go way beyond mere hummus and could delve into any number of combinations of lamb, lemon, nuts, peppers, cucumbers, and more.

What type of wine do people like? Malbec, Rioja, and cheap Pinot Noir. Do these go with the melange of flavors served at the hummus place next door? No. These are categories with flat, simple flavors that,  surrounded by a plate of Middle Eastern food, won’t do much other than quench one’s thirst like a warm glass of water.

What will both battle against and dance with puissant melange of Middle Eastern flavors? … wines with searing acidity and many folds of aroma. The best example of these are Rieslings and Valpolicella Classico. A good Riesling’s acidity will almost chew the food for you, and the tart, shrubby red fruits of Valpolicella will make sure to assert themselves strongly enough that you taste the food and the wine at once.

Of course, people who like Rioja, Malbec, and cheap Pinot Noir also are people who hate acidity and complexity because well… you can’t chug acidity and complexity.

Malbec, Riesling, Rioja, Uncategorized, Wine Pairings, Wine Questions Answered | No Comments