huevos con vino

We were making a film for work, a vision piece on a new product that we’re creating.  I played the father of the family; we had a birthday party for “my” son.  At the party, I served some Chianti that came in a bottle wrapped with wicker.  The idea was that the mom (my “wife”) was feeling pretty worn out after the long day at the beach, etc., etc.  It was all in good fun…although the wine was real.

I love those wicker baskets of wine…to me, they symbolize a good time, a good meal, and totally standard, fairly spicy wine.  I also love going to Italian restaurants where they hang the empty wicker/glass wine bottles from the ceiling.  I believe The Cellar does a bit of that, actually.

I think if I could run a cult winery somewhere, I’d like to produce a “low-end” wine that costs about $30/bottle and comes in a wicker basket of some sort.  Maybe a Sangiovese or something.  I think I’d call it “Candy Is Dandy, but Wicker is Quicker.”  Wait, that makes no sense…my apologies to Ogden Nash.

I was a bit naughty last night: Rather than drinking some wine with an eye toward describing the experience here, I had a couple of other drinks instead.  In the Seattle area, you have a handful of choices if you want to drink a real Belgian beer on tap:

• Brouwer’s - A great but expensive place if you go at the right time; otherwise, you are assaulted with terribly loud music and annoying patrons who think “Budvar” is a Czech soccer player
• The Stumbling Monk - The best place for a glass of real beer in Seattle; small joint, but well selected beers on tap and by the bottle
• The Taphouse - Very expensive, wide selection, terrible ambiance, worse service, tasty sushi

I go to these places infrequently these days…my fiance doesn’t drink beer, and I’d rather spend $6/glass on something else.  I did have a terrific Brasserie de Abbaye du Rocs Grand Cru last night, which had body and aroma that would make most other beers shrivel and dry up.

Why do I bring this up here?  Well, as I’ve said before, I think Seattle needs more wine bars.  More to the point, Seattle needs more wine bars that do not try to cater to 23-year-old bachelorettes and frat boys.  Portalis does a decent job, but they’re nearly alone in their efforts.  I’ve heard good things about other places but the clientele tends to put me off, which may or may not be the fault of the owners.

So which places in Seattle DO I actually like?  Good question.

I like Liberty.  It’s a bar on Capitol Hill near the Sonic Boom record store.  It has nice decor inside, with good seating (big leather couches, some tall tables, a bar) and a perfect assortment of alcohol.  It also has a sushi bar, which is usually a reason to run away screaming, but they actually do a good job.  And if you want a glass of wine, they pour generously and they have several bottles open at all times, with a sizeable wine rack next to the bar.  Overall, it’s quite a classy place with good ambiance and a decent clientele.

I went there last night for an hour or so.  My friend had a glass of 14-year-old Oban and a pint; I had a Hendrick’s cucumber martini with a splash of Pernod.  I drank about half of it before I spotted the Pyrat XO rum and wished I had ordered that instead.  After the Abbaye du Rocs I wasn’t interested in wine…I needed something with a bit more oomph, if I can use that word in a wine blog.  I thought about a glass of Booker’s bourbon, but I can only handle one of those every month or so.

So, if someone could open a wine bar in Seattle that functioned a bit more like Liberty and a bit less like Coyote Ugly, I’d be happy.

As my blog begins to attract more visitors (we’re up to 4 per month, yeehaw!), I really need to start working on the quality of my post titles.  This one, for example, is terrible…but at least it conveys my topic: We had some Odisea Tempranillo last night at the Cellar Bistro.

A few friends and my fiance and I went out to the Cellar.  I brought one of my three bottles of “Temporary Insanity” (TI) Tempranillo, which I have been carefully storing for the right occasion.  All of my friends who went to dinner last night were either from Europe and in town temporarily, or were moving from Europe to Canada and were here temporarily.  Therefore, it seemed like a good time to have a bottle of TI.

In addition to my desire to impress my friends, I also wanted to bring a wine that would stand up to, say, saltimbocca and gorgonzola and scallops in white wine (all of which were on the table).  That’s quite a mix of tastes, so I left the Domaine Drouhin Pinot Noir at home and brought the TI Tempranillo.  I’m extremely glad I did.

From my limited perspective, I think a good tempranillo tastes somewhere between the complex black fruit of a cabernet sauvignon and the hot roasted meat of a shiraz.  Odisea makes a tempranillo that fits into the range perfectly: The 2004 TI has a lot of blackberry, cassis, and bramble aromas and flavors, but with an undercurrent of barbecued meat, fire-roasted peppers, and smoke.  It’s quite a complicated wine for $25, to be honest.  I’d pay $50 for it and it would be well worth it.

In the end, the TI went well with everything the Cellar threw at us.  Everyone loved the wine, which impressed me quite a bit as it’s rare that 5 people all really enjoy the same red wine with different entrees.  One friend said it was the best wine she had tried while staying in Seattle, and that’s after 3 months with me.  So here’s to Odisea: Keep making those great wines!

When I’m not drinking wine, I also enjoy good beer (or bier, as I prefer to call it).  A few of my favorites are:

• La Trappe Quadrupel
• Gulden Draak
• Alaskan Smoked Porter
• I could go on all day, actually…

Why bring this up in a wine blog?  Well, I went to a place called Die BierStube last night.  While they serve plenty of good German beer, they also had several bottles of wine by the glass.  I thought that was a bit strange for a place that specializes in beer (and delicious pretzels with mustard), but I guess it makes sense.  I can’t think of many people who would casually drink a liter of dunkelweizen as I am prone to do, but I do know lots of people who would love to have a glass of Chardonnay as they watch me try to drink a stein of dunkelweizen.

My only problem with wine by the glass (and this deserves a separate post on the subject) is that the wines I want to try are never available by the glass.  Most places seem to have a couple of house wines, one or two slightly better wines, and then a bunch of stuff by the bottle that I would never purchase at a restaurant.  I wish more places, even beer-centric places such as Die BierStube or Brouwer’s, would serve more interesting wines.  It’s a bit ironic that a place would focus so much on offering interesting, rare beers and then wimp out when it comes to serving interesting, independent wines by the glass instead of the typical mega-producer wines.

But perhaps it’s just the Erdinger talking at this point!

As I posted yesterday, I have decided to become a member of the Odisea “Journey Membership” wine club.  The membership is limited to 75 people, it costs $75 every 3 months (including shipping, which is key for me), and as a member I’ll receive some wines that non-members will never get to try, or buy for that matter.

Now, as I’ve said before, there are only a handful of wineries that I think deserve such a high level of patronage.  This winery is one of those places.  I want to see Odisea succeed for the same reasons why I hope Bokisch, Abacela, and some other US wineries keep producing wines: I enjoy wine that isn’t homogeneous.  Stated differently, I don’t want to see a whole bunch of the same type of wine whenever I go to the store, or shop online.  I love the fact that Jessie’s Grove make a Carignane, or that Carmenere is out there for sale in 100% varietal form.

I’m somewhat of an individualist, and an idealist, and maybe that’s why these tiny curio shops, so to speak, appeal to me rather than the major corporate wineries.  Even some of the smaller producers that only make Cabernet Sauvignon begin to bore me a bit.  I love Cabernet Sauvignon, but there are plenty of producers already.  The same cannot be said for American Tempranillo growers.

So we’ll see how things go with Odisea.  That means I’ll be a member of the wine clubs associated with Domaine Drouhin and Odisea.  I wish I could more, but it’s far too expensive for me.  Also, I have no more space, a common refrain in this blog, I know.  I’ll just need to keep bringing wines to dinner!