Louis M. Martini Cabernet Sauvignon Sonoma County

A very yummy and versatile wine with a strangely storied history with me over the past few months.

I first tried Louis M. Martin Cabernet Sauvignons a few months ago at a large tasting with Natalie MacLean. I generally go through thirty or forty wines during one of these, and always remember stand-outs. At this particular even, a Louis M. Martin Cab Sauv was definitely one of them. It was amazingly good for what I thought was a $20 wine. I actually went as far as selfishly trying to hunt down a case of it before raving about how good it was before raving about it online.

It turns out that Louis M. Martin has several version of their Cab Sauv, and I'd tried the more expensive version.  Thus ended a potential "unicorn hunt" where I try to find a $20 wine that tastes like a $40 wine. It's not unheard of, but it's difficult. When I discovered my mistake I picked up a bottle of each. This review is actually for the cheaper of the two. While it's not as good as the more expensive version, it's still quite a good wine.

It's a deep ruby wine, tending towards garnet. The aromas centre around the fruit, with black cherry, plum, and cassis, but are closely followed by cocoa, dried leaves, tobacco, and tar.  Great complexity, and it does open up quite well, so decant for about an hour if you have the time.

The taste is mainly tart black cherry with a touch of plum. There's a nice level of tannins that are a touch young and might improve with a little ageing. The finish is medium tart cherry with the tannins showing nicely as well. Going from memory, the big difference between this and the more expensive version might be that this has a very slight touch of vegetal taste, but is missing a touch of mint in the aroma. Check back later when we try the upscale version.

We paired this with leftovers. Specifically, leftover roast beef done in a pressed panini, with a Jalapeno Jack cheese and "brocoslaw". It was a good pairing, but not exceptional. After dinner, we tried the remaining wine with some Costo chocolate truffles that had been hanging around since Christmas. Desite violating the general guideline that your wine should be sweeter tan your dessert, the pairing was very good. The cocoa aspect of the wine matched the dusted cocoa of the truffles, and the acidity of the wine was a perfect offset to the fattiness of the truffle. I highly recommend it.

Borsao Bole

Medium purple with rich aromas of ripe cherries and black plums, followed by a little vanilla, baking spices, and earthiness. The taste is ripe blackberry and cherry with some spice and a medium acidity. The finish is mirrors the taste but tends towards the blackberry. A well balanced wine for stews, pork, or sipping, and a great value.

$15.95 at LCBO

Lazy Sunday Dinner - Couscous, Chicken and Wine

It was a busy day in our house so dinner was a quick toss together. It was well received.

Couscous with lemon, mushrooms and spinach and oven roasted chicken thighs, paired with a Casas Del Bosque Reserva Sauvignon Blanc (available at your local LCBO).

Wine Notes: Paper white with wonderful aromas of lime, gooseberry, canned green beans, tropical fruit, especially mango, and lemon. Zippy acidity and flavours of lime and gooseberry.  The aromas seem especially affected by temperature. As the temperature rose from our serving temperature of 8 degrees Celsius, the vegetal aromas were replaced by more of a tropical fruit aroma. All were quite wonderful, but keep this in mind when serving.




Recipe (of sorts) for the couscous:

In a medium saucepan, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Toss in 1 cup medium couscous, heat a couple of minutes until it smells nutty. Then pour in 2 cups water (or broth if you prefer). Bring to boil, remove from heat and set aside.

While couscous is absorbing the water, saute half a dozen or so sliced cremini mushrooms in a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Part way through the saute, add one clove garlic, finely minced or through a garlic press.  Toss in a couple of handfuls of washed, baby spinach. Cook until wilted. Season with black pepper.

Fluff the couscous with fork after water is absorbed. With a rasp, grate the zest from one lemon into the couscous. Fluff again and add to pan with sauteed mushrooms and spinach. Toss together and you are ready to serve. Slice your zested lemon into sections and serve with the couscous. A fresh squeeze of lemon juice really makes this couscous pop.

Pisano Cisplatino Pequeña Reserva Tannat Merlot 2012

Deep purple with loads of smokey blackberry, plum, blueberry, as well as a touch of earthiness and mint. The taste is big and well structured thanks to the Tannat, and has flavours of blackberry, plum, and cherry. Great value in this wine. Pair it with rare red meats or hard cheeses.

We need to see both more Tannat wines, and more from Uruguay.

$15.95 @ LCBO

Bodegas Carrau Reserva Tannat 2013

Deep purple with aromas of blackberry, plum, earth, and a little eucalyptus and dried herbs. Velvety in the mouth, with nice structured tannins and medium-high acidity. The flavours are plum, blackberry, and raspberry, and the finish is medium slightly tannic blackberry.

I'm a fan of fairly tannic wines, and I don't think we see enough Tannats in general. I'd pair this with charcuterie or hard cheeses. Also just a great wine for sipping in front of a fire on a cold winter night.

$15.95 at the LCBO

Wine and Cheese Pairing

At my last wine tasting with Natalie MacLean, we were given some cheese from a local producer and were challenged to find a good Ontario wine pairing. Here's my choice.

This cheese is great on its own, so I thought going "like for like" would be a nice approach. I wanted to try a find a good red wine pairing for this, and after trying a few potential wines, the Henry of Pelham 2012 Pinot Noir jumped out as a great match. The smokiness and light tanginess of the cheese blended in to the smokiness of the wine, with its added bright fruit characters just adding the right amount of sparkle without taking anything away.

I tried some bigger wines and was surprised that the best pairing was a Pinot. I think in this case, the body, flavour, and tannins are all at just the right level for this cheese, enhancing it without overpowering. Once again, Henry of Pelham doesn't disappoint. If you're a red wine fan, this is the pairing for you.

Fiddleheads!

Forgive the tardiness of this post but it seems the "eat" half of this blogging duo never got around to actually publishing this post. So, better late than never! Correct?

Back in early Spring here in Ottawa, fiddleheads made their usual appearance at our favourite local grocery store, Farm Boy.

Having never cooked or even eaten them before, I decided it was high time to give them a try.

Our friend Google told me over and over to clean them, steam them and then saute them with a bit of butter and the taste would be reminiscent of asparagus. Sounded good to me so that's what I did - with a sprinkling of some lemon & herb seasoning (next time - fresh lemon!)

Here's dinner!

Sauteed fiddleheads, pan-fried haddock and couscous made with a touch of orange juice and a few chopped dried apricots. Not too shabby for a mid-week dinner if I do say so myself.

Now, what does a certified sommelier pull out of the wine fridge to pair with tonight's meal? He chose this Jean Geiler Réserve Particulière Riesling 2013. 

I'm hoping to be a little more consistent with posting over the next little while - I have a little project that's been sitting in the back of my head as a fun little way to work my way through my vast cookbook collection. Hope you will tune in to see what I'm cooking up!

The Black Chook Woop Woop Wines Syrah Shiraz 2013

I really love that many Aussie vintners are adding some Viognier to their Shiraz. Even just a little adds a lot of depth to the wine. In this case we get a big juice wine with lots of interesting aromas; cedar, blackberry, black cherry, tar, smoke, black pepper and mint. The taste is tart and black cherry with the high acidity coming through nicely. Long juicy tart cherry finish. This would be a great burger wine, but makes a wonderful sipping wine as well because of the depth.

Elyssia Cava

An extremely fresh, crisp, and tasty Cava, presenting aromas of apricot, green apple, and biscuit. The taste is brightly acidic and adds fresh lime to the equation as well. This is a perfect wine to have before dinner, with green salads, or all on its own. I also find the bottle and label very 'classy', making this an exceptional idea for a hostess gift, especially or those that appreciate a great sparkling wine. Cava is the Spanish name for sparkling wine and is generally less expensive than the equivalent (Champagne) from France, not because of quality, but because of the cache in the name "Champagne".

Laboratory Beaker Wine Glasses

From Periodic Tableware come these awesome wine glasses. They're dishwasher safe borosilicate and are graduated to 200 ml (but will hold 300ml).

In Canada, a 'standard drink' of wine is 142 ml of 12% ABV wine, so this should help knowing how much more than that you're drinking.

Middle Earth Sauvignon Blanc

A great example of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc with the usual grassiness, canned pea and gooseberry aromas, as well as lime, and more pineapple and honey than many other Kiwi Sauvignon Blancs. The mouth feel is also a little rounder than most but the high acidity is not sacrificed. A great summer sipper, although at 14% ABV, you'll have to pace yourself.

LCBO Vintages

Klein Bottle Carafe

Awesome, yet not overly functional wine carafes for the math fan.

KleinBottle.com

From Wikipedia:

In mathematics, the Klein bottle /ˈklaɪn/ is an example of a non-orientable surface; it is a two-dimensional manifold against which a system for determining a normal vector cannot be consistently defined. Informally, it is a one-sided surface which, if traveled upon, could be followed back to the point of origin while flipping the traveler upside down. Other related non-orientable objects include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary (for comparison, a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary).