Korkin: the wine blog for the unsnobs

Some "weird" ones

2009-10-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

I happen to love lesser known grapes. But it is mindblowing. In Itally alone there are literally thousands of grape varietals.
What is a varietal? It is simply a slightly different flavored/colored grape. The difference between a red and green apple, for example. Grapes have a full range of styles just withint heir genetics, and of course like most produce, there have been man-made varietals from hybrids.
One of these hybrids I just recently discovered is Marselan. Marselan is a French-born hybrid made from Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache, which is another lesser known varietal to beginners. Cabernet is known for its full body and Grenache is known for its finesse and peppery finish, so the two of them together make a bold, fruity, peppery wine. It's sweetness and spice would lend itself to make it a great pairing with barbecued or grilled foods, spicy chicken or pork dishes or smoky cheeses.
Another of my favorites is Tempranillo, a Spanish grape that is completely pedestrian to anyone familiar with Spanish wines, but for some reason Spain does not get the attention that France, Italy and California do. It is almost impossible for me to describe how Spanish wines distinguishes itself. I can say that Spanish wine to me tastes subtly more savory, generally medium bodied, and almost always very easy to drink. Their wines tend to be more earthy as opposed to fruity. I would pair Tempranillo with some great spanish staples, like dishes featuring chorizo, manchego cheese or meat with romesco sauce. It would also be a great goulash wine, accentuating wonderful Spanish smoked paprika.
Finally for the white grape team I'd like to discuss Chenin Blanc, a velvety, sweet and fresh tasting little white grown mainly in France and South Africa, although not always known by its varietal name. In France, in order to obtain the highly coveted label of quality (more on that later) wine must be called by its region rather than its varietal, so French Chenin Blanc is nearly always known as Vouvray, where most of it is grown. In South Africa it is called Steen, and I would really only recommend this if need a cheap drink (sorry if you drink it). Vouvray is excellent with tangy cheeses like soft goat cheese, spicy thai curries and refreshing salads, especially those featuring fruit.

On taste

2009-09-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

Flavor is very funny. Most of what we taste we are actually smelling. Our tongues can recieve sweet, bitter, salty, sour and savory (or umami). A balance of all of these sensations make for an outstanding wine or food. And yet even wines that have achieved an ideal balance have their own flavors that distinguish it among others. All the evocative adjectives we give wine come from the aroma.
In order to really taste a wine you have to smell it. I noticed that I started to sniff everything: my food, the air, flowers, etc. and it helped me to start to notice other aromas in wine. Aroma can be picked up better with airflow, which is where the swirling ritual comes from. When a glass of wine is swirled it releases and carries different flavors. Swirling can also help you study the color and texture. Color can help you establish a pattern of flavors you like. The viscosity of wine is very subtle, but if you notice when you swirl it that some of it lingers along the edge of the glass, the wine will feel more velvety smooth or crisp and clean depending on its thickness. I think there is a time for the full range of texture, but you can study and find out what you really like.
My challenge to you this week is to order or buy a wine you have had before and really study it. Put your nose in the glass, swirl it, check the color and thickness. See if you can find things about the wine you never noticed before. Also see if you like the wine better right out of the bottle, after it has been sitting out after half hour or an hour. If you do let me know what you noticed and whether or not you enjoyed it.
Cheers!

A beautiful pan sauce

2009-09-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

A good value wine makes for wonderful sauce. Any chef will tell you not to cook with anything you wouldn't be willing to drink. That means cooking wine is out. Cooking wine is not only sub-par in flavor but is also loaded with salt, which means you have little control over how salty your dish is. You don't have to spend a ton of money either, a $6 Pinot Gris/ Grigio will usually make a fabulous white wine sauce for shrimp or pasta, and about $10 will get you a good enough red for a purely sumptiuous sauce for meat. Hopefully you'll want to drink them both with dinner, but if not, you can either reduce the whole bottle and freeze some sauce for later use or refridgerate it for up to a week for future cooking endeavors.

My favorite wine sauce meal is any variation of the classic French Steak au Poivre. Start with a lean steak, such as strip, or tenderloin. Season the steak with salt and pepper and let it stand for about ten minutes (to take the chill of the fridge off). Put a very thin coating of oil (I like half vegetable and half olive oil) into a pan and get it screaming hot, just before smoking point. You will notice the oil will start to ripple slightly if you move the pan, or you can throw a drop of water in there and a fierce sizzle will let you know it's ready. Place the steak in the pan and let it sear for about 2-3 minutes on each side. Don't move it around while it's cooking, the goal here is to develop a deep brown crust and the more you achieve without overcooking the better. Pull the steak out with tongs or a spatular (don't pierce the meat, it will dry out) and set on a plate then cover with foil.
Dust about 2 tsp of flour to soak up any leftover oil and stir it around until it is saturated. Now comes the wine, about a cup (or half a cup and half a cup of unsalted beef stock) Bring it to a boil and season with with salt and pepper. Throw the steak back in and let it finish cooking for a few more minutes. You still want your steak medium rare in the middle, since you are a using a lean steak it will be way too tough to eat if cooked well done. If you like it well done, use hamburger, it's much more affordable and is much tastier well done. Once that's done you can add just a splash of cream or butter to make it really rich and wonderful. Of not, it's delicious without it too.
Drinking the wine with the sauce will make a lovely meal. If you want it gluten free you can throw some chopped mushrooms in place of the flour to soak up the oil and meat flavor and add some lovely earthiness. You will have to reduce the sauce longer if you use mushrooms, don't add the steak back in until it is slightly thickened.
I hope you try this method of cooking. It can also be translated into chicken or veal marsala, shrimp scampi or shellfish. The method is similar, you just change up the ingredients. Enjoy wine with and in your food.

Red vs. White

2009-09-06T14:32:00.001-07:00

There is a sort of "one or the other" attitude about red and white wine. Up until a year ago, I was a red wine drinker. Then I read this fabulous book called What to Drink With What You Eat and noticed one sommelier point out that it drove him crazy when people refused to drink white wine. Now just because this guy says so doesn't mean you have to start drinking it. My point is that this particular statement sort of broke me from thinking that I was bound by loyalty to the red grape. So I experiemented. And I found that in the at the time in Georgia heat, a cool white wine became very welcome. On the whole, I still generally prefer red, but it depends on my mood and what I am eating.
Typically I like to pair my food, but I will talk about that later. More importantly, it's about what you like. If you are eating shrimp scampi for dinner and you want to drink Cabernet, then do it. The wine police won't arrest you. But I will say that a nice Sauvignon Blanc might be worth a taste in that case. If you are already a white drinker, you may find that your Chardonnay is hard to taste next a big heavy steak. But that doesn't mean it's less refreshing.
White wine drinkers are in luck for price points, because you can drink rather cheaply. I personaly have to speand more on white than on red before I like it. I'm not entirely sure why this is, I find value reds more complex and satisfying than value whites I suppose. But of course, there are some winners in the white department that I love. Oregon Pinot Gris are usually wonderful, as well as dry German Reislings from Mosel or Chilean Savignon Blanc from Casablanca Valley.
And let's not forget the bubbly. Sparkling is absolutely my favorite, and it will justly recieve it's own blog in the future. All in all, I have found there is a time, mood and meal for just about any wine, but of course personal preference will always come into play. So two things really: drink what you like, but at the same time stay mindful that what you think you don't like may be keeping you from an ethereal experience.

Grape of the Month: Pinot Noir

2009-09-01T16:19:00.001-07:00

As Summer winds down and the temperatures get cooler but not yet cold, no wine could better represent autumn than a good earthy Pinot Noir. The star grape in the French region of Burgandy, Pinot Noir (which is its own, independant grape varietal) has spread into most wine growing regions, standing out in particular in Oregon's Willamette Valley. This is my personal favorite for Pinot, though many would remain faithful to the French Pinots, which are nearly always bottled as part of a blend, meaning the juice of several different types of grapes go into the wine making process.
Pinot Noir is one of the lightest red wines you can get and is highly recommended for novice wine drinkers. They can range in flavors that remind of earth, moss or mushrooms all the way to strawberry, cherry and currant. These adjectives mean nothing of course to an untrained palate. I often can't pick up everything the label says I am supposed to. What I mean by these words is that each bottle of wine has subtle aromas that you can smell from the glass or gently pulling air into your mouth while sipping. They may not taste exaclty like the assigned adjectives, but I find that the best way to describe wine's taste is to compare it to some other common taste or smell.
It is also considered dry or "off-dry", which is the opposite of fruity or sweet. The word dry can often be associated with bitter or tannic, and dry wines usually have a slightly higher alcohol content than sweet wines. A good rule of thumb when determinign dry or sweet is by the alcohol percentage. A very dry wine will be about 15%, while a sweet wine can be as low as 10 or 11%. Pinot Noir is in the middle, and makes for the lovely complexity of a red wine without the aggressiveness.
Good food pairings for Pinot Noir are salmon, pork or duck with a fruit sauce, mushrooms, veal marsala, bitter greens or creamy mild cheese such as brie or muenster.
Here are my picks for excellent value in Pinot Noir, all under twenty dollars (except the splurge), with a range in flavors.

Best Fruity Value: Scarlet of Paris, France, 11$

Best with Food Value: Aquinas Napa Valley, 12$

Best Complexity for your Money: Soiree, Willamette Valley, 17$

Splurge, if you like Pinot already: Plowbuster by Carabella, Willamette Valley, 27$

If you want to impress someone: Patricia Green Cellars, Willamette Valley, 32$ Talking Point: Patricia Green's estate backs into Beaux Freres' land and their Pinot retails for over 80$ a bottle. Patricia Green is producing equally fine grapes for almost a third of the price. But grab it while the current vintage lasts, the estate was just leased to a Texas wine producing tycoon. That can only mean two things: huge price increase or huge loss in quality.

Ten Tips to becoming a "Wine Person"

2009-08-31T17:44:00.000-07:00

If I had a dollar for everytime I heard "I'm not a wine person," I could have self published my novel by now. That's fine if you really don't like it, but I would venture forth to say that if you really like food, you'll really like the right wine. I hate to use the beaten to death phrase "it's an acquired taste", but it truly is. I'm supposing that if you are reading this than you want to be a wine person, are one already, or just an over-polite friend of mine. So, here are my top ten suggestions for making wine your hobby and discovering what you like.

1. Find a store that specializes in wine. Independant wine shops in particular will give you the oppurtunity to ask questions. Do not, I repeat, do not be embarrassed to ask them. I promise you nearly every wine retailer will be ecstatic to help even the most unknowledgable wine drinkers. Don't know what to ask? Say so, they will probaby ask you a few.

2. Attend tastings. You can find tasting through your local wine shops or through Wine Society tastings. Most reasonably sized cities have a wine society.

3. Host a wine tasting party. Send an invitation to your friends (I like evite.com) and ask each person or couple to bring a bottle of wine. Put a spending cap of 20 dollars so no one spends too much money. Then serve appetizers and enjoy!

4. Ask for recommendations at restaurants. Don't be afraid to explore the by the glass list at restaurants. If your server seems helpful or classy at all, ask what they like. If you want to pair, a general rule of thumb of mine is to match the color of the rine with the food. (i.e. heavy red with beef, crisp dry white with seafood.)

5. Take notes. I know this sounds nerdy, but it is vital to remembering what you like. I have had volumes of customers come in to try and describe a wine they tasted at a friend's or a restaurant and cannot remember the name. There are too many wines to narrow it down at the store. They don't need to be fancy. I write down the name, the vintage, two or three adjectives of my own choosing, and a rating on a scale of one to five.

6. Be fearless. Never heard of Malbec, Carmenere, Tempranillo or Montepulciano? Forget about it, drink it anyway.

7. Links- Search for wine networking sites and see what others have to say. I like Corkd.com.

8. Books- If you're not sure if you're serious, go tot he library and check out Wine for Dummies. Don't be embarrassed, I still read it.

9. Food and Wine Magazine. Subscribe. It rules. Cooking Light is also featuring more wine, and both magazines have great tips on travel, recipes, restaurants and kitchen gadgets.

10. Read my blog! Ask me questions. More info to follow.

Wine, an introduction

2009-08-30T09:24:00.000-07:00

The first taste I had of wine was in, dig this cliche, a Paris basement restaurant where it was served in large carafes and promptly inticed me to dance the can-can witht he rest of my tour group. As a well behaved 16 year old American girl, I was intrigued by this ellusive forbidden fruit and found it enthralling. But I also remember the taste. The soft, velevty feel of French Burgandy paired with rich creamy sauces. Moderately bitter, but also fruity. I knew nothing about words like tannins, mouthfeel, or the sorts of adjectives that are compared to the taste of wine. I just knew it was love at first sip.
Since then I have moderately explored my tastes but staying within the three big grapes that most Americans recognize: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay. Last year I landed a job in a wine shop and walked in thinking I knew a thing or two.
I know absolutely nothing about wine. What do the names mean? What do the labels mean? What is sweet versus bitter? What are tannins anyway? Does it taste like chocolate because there is actually chocolate in it? What does old world versus new world mean? Do you get what you pay for?
All of these are questions I was too embarrassed to ask on my first day of work. So I broke Wine for Dummies when no one was looking, and started to learn from my manager and our good customers. I still like my knowledge is small, but it is enough to help people who want to venture into the world of wine but don't know where to start. That's why I loved working in a wine shop. Being able to make someone's night with the perfect bottle of wine and to hear them tell me about it was so satisfying.
I think wine has caught a bad reputation in this country. It's getting better, but for the most part people see wine as elitist, complicated and intimidating. Walking into a wine shop is like going to the book store where the books are all sealed in plastic wrap. It's overwhelming without help. But do you know what to ask? What you like? Whether or not you want to try food pairings or just sip?
Hence the blog. I want to tell you what I know about wine, my picks for good buys, and find out what you want to learn about it. Let me know if you have any questions about wine, I will do what I can to provide the answer. In the meantime, I will post on my favorite topics.