Dreams

Last night I had an extremely erotic dream. The dream started off with me in the kitchen making out with two of the most beautiful women I have ever seen (other than my lovely wife of course!). After a bit, clothing was rapidly being discarded and the party was moving upstairs to the bedroom. I remember grabbing an opener and a bottle of Pinot Noir as I left the kitchen and following the two partially clad vixens upstairs.

The next two hours (yes hours, not minutes!) were filled with so much lust, depravity and debauchery that Caligula would have been proud. The dream was so incredibly real and vivid it was amazing.

When I awoke this morning, my first thought was, “Pinot?!?! What the hell was I thinking?” First off, my better half would have killed me if I spilled red wine on the carpet or the sheets (never mind the two strange naked women in the bedroom) and second, Champagne, Cava or another sparkling white wine would have been much more appropriate than Pinot Noir in that situation…

Cheers!

Mark

Saturday Night – Marka Stewart - Part 2

Click here for Part 1

For the main course I had a huge beef craving and picked up four filets from our local butcher. I was surprised at the beef tenderloin selection as there were only two sizes – tiny and massive. Well, I did say that I had a huge beef craving so I ended up picking 4 of the biggest damn beef tenderloins I’d ever seen.

"Still drooling over how good this was!"

To give you an idea of the size of them, for normal sized beef tenderloin, I grill them for 10 minutes over very high heat and tent them for 4 minutes for perfect medium-rare. These ones I grilled for 21 minutes and tented them for 6 minutes to get that dead on medium-rare. The filets were topped with lobster meat, grilled shrimp, sugar snap peas and Béarnaise sauce. I also did some baby potatoes on the side.

"A new entry for the Top Ten Reds!"

Wine wise, I was in the mood for a premium Cabernet Sauvignon that I hadn’t tried before and selected a 1999 Beringer Private Reserve Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. I picked this wine up in NY state on special for $79.00 US (regular price was $99 US or about $125-150 CDN after duty and taxes).

"Oooo, I love Turtles!"

With this wine you needed less then 1 second of nosing it to tell it was a California Cab. The nose was a delightful combination of leather, smoke, cassis, blueberry and loam. The wine was a medium bodied, exceptionally balanced with very fine tannin. Black current and mild cherry were the two main flavours to the wine. This was not an overly complex wine but as Mick described it “It is what it is, but it’s really good at what it is…” which sums up this wine perfectly. It was stunning pairing with the meal.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick - 92, Mark - 92, Kathy – 91, Amy - 90, Overall – 91.25.

The 91.25 rating puts this wine firmly in the Zippy Sauce Top Ten Reds list.

Small side note - If I struck out with the carrot soup, I hit it out of the park with the main course as there were clean plates all round and the beef was just too good for words.

We finished off the evening with a Turtle ice cream cake but didn’t pair this with wine. It looks like next Saturday where Mick and Amy are busy so there maybe another lull in the blog for a week or so.

Cheers!

Mark

Saturday Night – Marka Stewart - Part 1

It was a cool New England day (in Southern Ontario), the sun was shining yet a crisp and cool north wind was blowing. The leaves on the trees were changing to vibrate yellows, oranges and reds. The table was immaculately set for four and I was attending to last minute details of dinner and I could almost hear Martha Steward in the background as I was chopping the chives to garnish the carrot soup saying “It’s a good thing”.

"At least it looks good!"

Mick and Amy were over for our should be usual but due to scheduling conflicts is now unusual Saturday dinner. It has been awhile since the four of us have gotten together and it was good to be back in saddle/kitchen again.

I picked a couple of old favourites for the courses but paired them with wines I hadn’t tried before.

The first course was carrot soup with fire roasted chilies which is a huge favourite of both Amy and my wife. Carrot soup means one thing – Zinfandel. I grabbed a bottle of Scott Harvey Zinfandel off the rack to accompany the soup.

"Nice nose... sorry about the rest of the wine"

I’d picked this up about a month ago. It was $23 and it was a California Zinfandel from a winery that I’d never heard of before.

The nose on the wine was very aromatic, my nose was a good foot and half away from the bottle and I could pick up raspberry, pepper and coffee from it. Unfortunately the taste was no where near as nice as the nose as it had a thin mouth feel with a sharp finish with predominate flavours of sour cherry and pepper. The wine was an OK match with the soup at best.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick - 83, Mark - 85, Kathy – 86 , Amy – 84, Overall – 84.5

Here is the LCBO Information on the wine –

Scott Harvey Mountain Selection Zinfandel 2006

Vintages 118752
750 mL bottle
Price: $ 22.95
Wine, Red Wine,
14.5% Alcohol/Vol.
Sugar Content : D
Made in: California/Californie, United States
By: Creative Wine Concepts
Release Date: Jun 20, 2009

Tasting Note - Deep ruby color. Salty roasted nuts, pepper, and blackberry aromas follow through on a supple entry to a dryish medium body with tangy fruity, vanilla bean notes and fine powdery fruit tannins. A nicely structured, claret styled zin for the table. Score - 90. (Tasting panel, www.tastings.com, Feb. 2, 2009)

The other disappointment for the night was the soup. This is going to sound odd describing a carrot soup but the carrot flavour was too strong. Usually this soup with the green chilies and onions in it has got a wide range of flavour but for some reason all this soup had was a super strong carrot flavour. I went over every ingredient in my head and the only thing that made sense is the carrot looked a little past their prime.

Thankfully the next course was better.

Click here for Part 2

Wine Club Bonus Tasting – Late Harvest Wines

We finished our 4th session of Wine Club last month but had a $300 surplus so we are using that money to do a couple of bonus tastings. The format of Wine Club is as follows, each member agrees to sign on for a 6 month session at $25 at month. We meet once month and I buy a case of wine and usually one comparison bottle for the monthly meeting. There 11 of us so everyone gets a take home bottle from the case and we split the 12th bottle and try it and the comparison bottle at the monthly tasting. The wines usually range in price from $13-25 a bottle.

The bonus tastings are a slightly different format as there is no take home bottle. The advantage to this is we can look at some higher price point wines. Next month we are trying 3 bottles of Pinot Noir and have $200 to spend on them.

This month we did a bonus tasting on Late Harvest Wines. I not a huge fan of Canadian wines but one of the items Canada and the Niagara region do very well is dessert or ice wines. Generally I find Ice Wines too sweet and syrupy for my taste but really enjoy their less sweet and much less expensive cousins – Late Harvest wines. Usually I go with a Late Harvest Vidal or Riesling as my grape of choice for these wines but Adam picked up a Late Harvest Cabernet Franc/Cabernet Sauvignon blend and a Late Harvest Pinot Gris for the tasting. Erik’s wife works at Fielding and he was nice enough to bring in some Late Harvest Gewürztraminer for us to try as well.

Here is a detailed listing of all the wines we tried –

Angels Gate Winery – 2007 Snow Angel Late Harvest Cabernet (51% Cab.Franc/49% Cab. Sauvignon), 750 mL bottle, $23.95.

Creekside Estate Winery – 2007 Select Late Harvest Pinot Gris, 375mL bottle, $23.95

Fielding Estate Winery – 2006 Gewürztraminer Late Harvest, 375mL, $28.95

Tracey brought in apple crisp to go with the wines.

The Angels Gate Snow Angel had the mildest nose of the three with aromas of strawberry and canned fruit. The strawberry nose carried through to the taste as well. This wine was at a bit of a disadvantage to the other two as it wasn’t as sweet and therefore didn’t pair as nicely as the other two did. On the upside, this wine was half or less than half the price of the other two wines and for that price point this wine was really good value for money.

The Creekside Pinot Gris has an moderately aromatic nose with a pleasing combination of nectarine and white pepper. Where this wine shined was the taste and the pairing with the apple crisp. The lively acidity balanced the sweetness of the wine just beautifully with a lovely flavour of apricot throughout. It was a perfect pairing with the apple crisp.

The Fielding Gewürztraminer had an absolutely incredible nose, big, powerful notes of apricot, lychee, clove, honey and some subtle floral notes in the background. The taste and structure of the wine wasn’t as nice as the Pinot Gris and I found that grapefruit seemed to be the dominate flavour to the wine. The grapefruit and apple combination of the wine and the apple crisp was ok but not amazing.

I’d like to thank Adam, Erik, and Tracey for their help in making this a great tasting and I’m already looking forward to next month’s tasting.

Cheers!

Mark

Zippy Sauce is now up to 6 readers!

I noticed that my latest blog entry had a comment on it…

http://zippysauce.blogspot.com/2009/09/saturday-night-down-under-part-2.html

I’ll be honest and thought it was a glitch as I usually don’t get much feedback on the blog but to my surprise it was a honest to goodness user comment –

dotfret said...

I love your honest approach to wine, and the way it complements food. There's a few things I have issues with in your writing - yeh, it's all geographical, and you can't help it.
So - a lot of dishes are better served with cider, especially spicy dishes. This side of the pond, you can serve a Vin d'Alsace as an alternative, but your wallet would heave at the extra expense over there (LOL it's bad enough here).
Concha y Toro are selling good Chilean alternatives to those Alsacienne wines - take a look.
But also look at good cider. Would I lie?

Thank you Internets, that bring my official readership up to 6 now :)

I hadn’t realized that my writing was as geographical as it was. The article that dotfret commented on contains references to both Tim Hortons (Donut/Coffee shop that is a Cdn. staple) and the LCBO (evil Ontario government liquor/wine monopoly), short of ending each sentence with an “Eh?” and making a hockey reference I guess it doesn’t get much more Canadian than that, eh?

We do get Strong Bow cider at the LCBO and I have enjoyed it with a spicy dish or two but just haven’t blogged about it as Zippy Sauce is a Food and Wine blog; I do however 100% agree with you that Cider and spicy food is an excellent pairing.

I did a search on the LCBO and the only Concha y Toro they had as a match is

Concha y Toro Winemaker's Lot No.11 Riesling 2007

Vintages 93922
750 mL bottle
Price: $ 14.95
Wine, White Wine,
14.4% Alcohol/Vol.
Sugar Content : XD
Made in: Chile, Chile
By: Concha Toro S.A.
Release Date: Jul 4, 2009

Tasting Note - An excellent value, this refreshing, single-vineyard Riesling is from Chile's cool Bio Bio Valley. Pretty peach and citrus fruit aromas and flavours are backed by vibrant acidity, making this a delightful wine to sip on the cottage deck all summer long or serve it alongside your catch of the day, pan fried with lemon and herbs. (VINTAGES panel, May 2008)

I will pick up a bottle and give it a try. Thanks for the tip dotfret… I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a Chilean Riesling.

Cheers!

Mark