huevos con vino

I had a very strange Friday.  We went up to the Salish Lodge in Snoqualmie for our friends’ wedding, which was absolutely beautiful.  But my wife came down with a very nasty stomach ailment right after the ceremony, so we wound up spending the rest of the evening in our room.  I spent most of that time trying to keep her comfortable while course after course arrived from the dinner reception going on elsewhere in the Lodge.  It’s really odd to receive an amuse bouche while your wife is doubled over in the hotel bathroom.  The waitstaff didn’t seem to mind, bless their little uniformed hearts.

Anyway, I decided that the only appropriate way to celebrate the wedding without actually being at the reception was to get some champagne.  So I ordered a half-bottle of Veuve Clicquot Demi-Sec champagne, one of my favorites.  The wonderful service staff at the Lodge showed up rather quickly with a bucket, some ice, and two glasses, although the staffmember already knew that my wife was feeling terrible.  An amusing discussion ensued before I sent away the staff and got down to the enjoyable task of opening the bottle myself.

Typically I love to shoot champagne corks as far as possible, but this champagne is too good to waste like that.  I carefully opened the bottle and had no spillage of the precious, precious champagne.  I did get a pleasing sound from the cork, though.

The champagne was terrific, as usual: Very sweet (it has a lot more added sugar than a Brut, for example), lovely with food, lots of biscuit, hay, and green apple aromas.  A delicious champagne.  I was very pleased to discover that it made the green apple sorbet even better, too!  One of the wedding meal courses was a martini glass filled with green apple sorbet.  I poured some champagne over the sorbet and the whole thing tasted about ten times better, which is saying something.

In the end, I drank the half-bottle on my own while my wife watched.  She really wanted me to enjoy myself, and she felt terrible about feeling terrible, which is always a fun personal guilt trip for one’s self.  I wound up feeling gnarly the next morning, mostly because I got dehydrated after all that champagne and sugar.  Plus, I ate most of my wife’s meal too, so I ended up having about 13 courses of food the night before.  Yikes.

The moral of the story?  Demi-sec champagne is terrific, but find a partner to share your bottle.

The movie Sideways seems to have started something in the wine industry.  Pinot Noir is the favored wine in that movie, and at this point Pinot Noir seems to be in great demand among those people who, like me, are relatively new to wine collecting.

Why do I say this?  Well, it’s quite simple: All you need to do is track the value of the 2004 Sea Smoke Ten Pinot Noir and you’ll understand my point.  At 1,100 cases produced, the 2004 Ten release is not necessarily rare.  I’d define “rare” domestic Pinot Noir in terms of 2003 Domaine Serene “Monogram” Pinot Noir (100 cases, $200 list price), or 2004 Domaine Drouhin Louise Pinot Noir (189 cases, $85 list price, available only to DDO Direct members).  Those two Oregon Pinot Noirs are pretty darn rare; I haven’t even seen a bottle of Louise (from any vintage) on the aftermarket in over a year.  Privé is another major rarity on the aftermarket too.  All great wines, by the way, even if they’re a little expensive up front.

As for the 2004 vintage of California Pinot Noir, there are a ton of rarities to choose from, including luminaries such as Hirsch and Aubert.  These guys clearly make awesome wine.  They get top ratings in the big publications.  So what makes the 2004 Sea Smoke Ten such a valuable wine?

Maybe it’s the movie Sideways and the exposure that Sea Smoke received during the dinner scene.  Maybe it’s the buzz generated among youthful wine connoisseurs who equate screen time with quality wine.  I know I made that assumption last year.  Maybe people just want to buy into something that sounds good and that they think will appreciate.  If that’s what you think, you’re quite close to the truth, I suspect.  Check the numbers from wine retailers:

• The wine entered the market at $69/bottle in late May 2006.
• By October 2006, the average cost of a bottle on the aftermarket was $110.
• At the start of 2007, the average cost was up to nearly $165/bottle.
• As of June 22, 2007 this wine costs an average of $242.50 on the aftermarket.
• Wow.
• Don’t forget, that price has escalated despite the availability of 1,100 cases of wine!

Think about that for a minute.  In about one year, this wine has appreciated 250% from the original asking price.  Although it is possible to obtain bottles for less money through person-to-person auctions at winecommune.com, I’m not as interested in those prices because they do not reflect actual store prices.  Granted, you don’t need to spend $242.50 to taste the Ten.  But you do need to spend over $100 for a second-hand bottle.

Is this the Sideways effect?  Or is something deeper at work here?  I don’t know.  All I know is that I have 1 bottle of 2004 Sea Smoke Ten, and I plan to drink it with dinner in a couple of weeks.  I will have a couple of friends there too, of course.  But I might have the sommelier pour a bit more for me….

Recently my wife and I went over to our friends’ house.  You know, the friends with half my wine in their basement?  Anyway, we went over to catch up after a couple of months had blown by…funny how that happens.

The first stop for me was the wine cellar.  It was funny because, as I entered the cellar, I let out a big sigh.  My friend chuckled and said, “Home again, eh?”  Definitely.

We put away his bottles of 2005 DuMOL and we added a few bottes of 2004 Clearwater Creek to our burgeoning “community” section of the cellar racks.  And then we got down to the serious business of selecting a wine for the evening.  Actually, this serious business took about eight seconds: We both acknowledged that we wanted a wine with a little more age to it.  It just so happens that my friend bought a case of 2000 Silver Oak Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon a while back (over a year ago, actually).  We honed in on that wine immediately and pulled a bottle from the rack.

June 2006 was the last time we drank a 2000 Silver Oak Napa Valley release.  The 2000 vintage is actually still available from the winery; this link shows the price as $110, along with their official tasting notes.  When we drank this wine before, I had the following comments about it:

• Solid, tannic wine that is also smooth…almost too smooth, as it tastes so refined that it vanishes from your palate quickly.  Lots of fruit aroma and essence, particularly blueberry.

Two thing stand out to me from those notes: The wine was smooth but perhaps a little lacking in the flavor profile, and the blend had not yet become integrated in the bottle, so to speak (the blueberry was too pronounced).  Also, we drank the wine with a good dinner.

This time, we had already eaten dinner.  We cracked open the bottle and decanted the wine for about 20 minutes, which was all it needed (there was a trace of kirsch on the nose at first, but that blew off quickly as the wine aerated).  Here are my detailed notes:

• Aroma: An array of lovely fruit, including black plum, black raspberry, blackberry, a touch of blueberry, and some red cherry (particularly right after pouring); also some smoky, burnt sugar and coffee/dark chocolate essence in the background.  Quite complex and inviting.  Really lovely.
• Flavor: As smooth as any wine I have had, a velvet pillow of supple tannins and vibrant black fruit perfectly integrated with a hint of oaky vanilla.  Wow.  The oak is extremely mild in this wine, almost non-existent by now.  Somehow rich and smooth at the same time, which is impressive to me as you are not overpowered by the flavor.
• General impression: Incredibly good.  I was very lucky to try this wine again, and I was blown away!  It’s drinking perfectly now.  I wanted a whole lot more.  Quite good without food, but surely would be better with a nice steak.

Clearly this wine has evolved over the past year.  The flavors are better integrated, the body is there, the bouquet is so nice…what a good wine!  At $80/bottle minimum online and $110/bottle factory direct, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility for most wine connoisseurs.  But I am glad my friend had the foresight to buy a case a couple of years ago.  This Silver Oak has made a believer out of me!

A great theme once again: “Passionate” Spanish wines.  Nice!  I love Spanish wines and I am looking forward to seeking out a worthy bottle for this tasting.  This time the host is Wine-Girl.net, a good blog with a great wine rating system.  Head over there and check it out!

The stipulations for WBW #35 are few but noteworthy:

• Less than $10/bottle is a primary goal, and I will do my best to adhere to this goal
• Wine from a region other than Rioja is a secondary goal (lesser-known regions deserve attention too!)
• Red or white, it doesn’t matter…or perhaps a rosé is just the thing

I am leaning toward an Albarino such as the one from Serra da Estrela, which I already know I like quite a lot.  But I need to pick something new, and I know just the place in Seattle to look for a good Spanish wine: The Spanish Table.  This place has a great selection of Spanish wines, red and white, many at budget-conscious prices too.  Plus, I need some more Matiz smoked sea salt, and TST has the stuff at a decent price.  Talk about a secret weapon in the kitchen….

Anyway, I think I’ll pay a visit to TST on my way home tonight to see what sort of selection they have for strange Spanish white wines.  A rosé is tempting too.  We’ll see what they have.

The deadline is July 11, which is also my wife’s birthday.  I guess I had better get that review done early…again.

Let me preface this post by saying something obligatory about sake.  I know it isn’t “wine.”  People call it “rice wine,” but sake ingredients and manufacturing processes are quite different from winemaking ingredients and processes.  Still, sake has alcohol in it, so I think it’s okay to talk about it here.  Also, I like sake and this is my blog, so buckle up.

I have consumed more sake than normal lately, in part because I got a bottle of my favorite sake as a birthday present.  Ken, my favorite sake, is fragrant and delicious, and I usually cough up the $10 per glass to have some at Nishino.  But when you can get an entire bottle (720 ml compared to 750 ml in a wine bottle) and enjoy Ken at home…well, that’s just lovely.  It turns out that my WineKeeper “Keeper” works out just fine for big bottles of sake, so I am able to keep my Ken preserved and cold until I’m ready to have some.

But what is sake, exactly?  I’ll use Ken as an example.  Ken is a dai ginjyo sake, which means the rice is polished to within an inch of its life: 50% or more, to be exact.  Every grain of rice contains starch, protein, oil, and other stuff.  The polishing (or milling) process removes these external elements of the rice grains, leaving behind a purer, starchy bit of rice.  At least that is my understanding of the process after reading a bunch of vague sources.  But trust me, you don’t want to taste albumin and lipids in your cup of sake.

First-class sake is served chilled or possibly as warm as room temperature, but never hot.  Imagine serving hot Chateau d’Yquem in a mug.  Not quite what the French had in mind, I suspect.  Sure, mulled wine is good, but you would never boil really good or expensive wine.  I hope.  If you do, remind me not to come over to your house for dinner.  Anyway, the point is that hot sake is usually tasty, but it’s not the best grade of sake available.

As I said earlier, sake shares little in common with wine.  One big difference between the two is something you might not have heard of before: Aspergillus oryzae.  The Japanese call this stuff “koji.”  Technically a mold, this little fungus is responsible for the “saccharification” process that occurs when people brew sake.  This is the process by which the starch in the rice is converted to sugar, which is then converted to alcohol thanks to the sake yeast that is added soon after saccharification.  Multiple fermentations occur, another key difference from the winemaking process.

In the end, sake is really a combinaton of rice, koji, water, and yeast.  Sometimes small amounts of alcohol are added into the final blend or bottling of sake to enhance the aromas.  I think sake is a fascinating form of alcoholic refreshment, and it’s certainly one of my drinks of choice when I eat Japanese food.  It goes well with other foods too, but I typically drink good old-fashioned wine with other national cuisines.

So how does really good, chilled sake taste?  It’s really damn good.  For example, Ken smells of apricots and cherry blossoms, among other delicate bouquet elements.  The taste is ethereal: The flavor shifts to match the food you happen to be eating at the moment.  On its own, Ken is quite good, but it certainly tastes best when paired with food.

As another example, I recently shared a bottle of Mu (”nothingness”) with some friends over dinner.  This sake is sweeter than Ken, with a slightly more pronounced flavor profile.  Sake is measured in terms of its sweetness or dryness; in the industry, they use a scale from about -20 (very sweet) to about +10 (very dry), but the ends of the scale are somewhat arbitrary.  Ken is probably a +1 or +2, maybe, straddling the line between sweet and dry nicely.  Mu is a +2 so it’s also not as dry as some other types of sake, such as Harushika or Katana.  I prefer the slightly sweet and slightly dry types of sake when I eat sushi.

The next time you find yourself at a good Japanese restaurant, and if you’re in the mood for something different, I recommend trying a chilled junmai dai ginjyo.  It’s worth the cost, although if you want something cheaper I recommend Kurosawa sake.  It’s a good standby and you can find it for about $20-$25 in stores.