Anobli 2008 from Alluviale, finally!

If you haven't yet tried this and manage to get hold of a bottle, don't hesitate. It's a NZ$41 / 375ml bottle, but certainly worth it especially compared to what's available on the NZ market (no offense, I surely haven't tried them all yet).

I'm quite a fan of dessert wine, at least i use to, as i haven't been drinking much of it for a while. Just always disappointed by the quality, I ended up abandonning dessert wine by frustration. Sad I know.

But my hope is back! I recently tried Anobli 2008 from Alluviale, a winery from Hawke's Bay. It is sauvignon blanc from gravels soils, fermented and aged in new french oak. 7 long months of fermentation, quite a long time to stress while something can go wrong, but hey it certainly didn't.

Everything I look for in a dessert wine is present: complex nose, great balance between the sugar and the acidity, and a fantastic length. I'm not even talking about the aromas, they are complex and layered whether on the nose, in the mouth of end of mouth. The wine opens up in the glass, changing slowly. I specifically love the balance, the complexity and the long finish.

There's a bit of experience there; the winemaker being producer in Jurancon, he might have few tricks to pull out. But good on him, it's great to see a beautiful NZ dessert wine!

Personnally i'll get few bottles and want to see this ageing... Great potential! Definitely the kind of wine i'd like to shout outloud to whoever wants to hear it: I love it, try it and tell me what you think! Or maybe: It's bloody good mate, try it!

http://www.alluviale.com/

W&F match - Spices experimentations, new track

I try here and there different W&F matches. One of the last ones that got my attention:
A dish with cumin (lamb) with a glass of 2006 sauvignon blanc from Marlborough. Obviously one of the sauvignon from that region that can gracefully age, nice minerality, but good round and weighty mid palate, with a slight sweetness most certainly enhanced by the roundness. Going quite well with the cumin, more than the lamb in itself actually. The sweetness was almost not perceptible when drunk on its own, but once matched, that's where it was revealed. Interesting. In terms of minerality, it was matchiong quite well, as it was not the fresh flinty minerality but more the warmer type (like chalk), therefore accompanying the cumin flavour rather than making a sharp distinction.

Maybe that is one of the new tracks i have to follow - matching spices with wines. Maybe they would somehow play the role of aromas in a wine, when the tannic structure, the acidity and the alcohol would have to be paired with textures, acidity of your dish.
Just random thinking, but i'll pay a specific attention to 'studying' that.

If you have some special experimentation on the way, or interesting W&F match experience, post them so we can share! We never learn better than when we can compare and talk.

The magic of wine & food matching

Have you ever experienced that perfect wine & food match? You've most certainly heard about it, and might even have doubt about the magic of it. Well, I was thinking exactly the same - right, red goes with meat, white with fish, light red on a salmon, tannic red on a game, try white wine with cheese, but red with a camembert, dessert wine on a blue etc. commun statements of wine & food matching (let's agree on the short W&F M). Never really convinced about the caracteres that could make it such a special thing. I also had in mind the fact that i needed great food and great wine, to achieve a perfect W&F M.

All wrong! I understood it that day, a day like any other day, when i had that wonderful surprise. The perfect W&F M. I was in a little cafe, nothing fancy about it, and i ordered a mud cake. As good as a mud cake can be, this chocolate cake from that little place had absolutely nothing special about it. To accompany it, i had a syrah, syrah from NZ not even from the region where i was or from a region known for its syrah - a simple syrah from Nelson, good, well made but nothing fancy about it, not the kind you would remember. However, i had a piece of that cake, and then a sip of that syrah... simply magic.
The length of flavours of the cake was melting with the mid palate of the syrah, and then the length of the syrah or end of mouth, melting with the mid palate of the cake, and one was calling for the other. And i could just not stop going from the cake to the wine to the cake to the wine, until both my plate and my glass were empty.
Flavours and aromas was just perfectly matching, the slight spices in the cake (cinnamon) and the spice of the syrah (pepper) were completing each other, the flavours were completing each other, chocolate on one side and cherries on the other side were meeting and joigning forces, the texture of the cake was helped by the sligt acidity and the soft although present tannic structure of the syrah, and finally the length of both were playing with each other calling for an 'encore'. Nothing was too much, nothing not enough. And the most surprising: the perfect match came from two absolutely commun products. Nothing wonderful about them when tasted on their own, but together it was a the perfect combination - a new ONE coming from two ones.

It is that experience that i want to live again and profoundly want to understand. In cooking, the idea is the same: take 2 products, as not noble as they can be, and combine them. If they flavour wise go together, if they are cooked to match their texture and their length in mouth... you obtain this magic combination. Molecular gastronomy explains you that in cooking. There is a way to explain it in wine and food matching, more cartesian that a simple description as done above. I'm not looking for a table of unbreakable rules, i'm looking for basic principles that will make people live that moment I've lived. The kind of moment that makes you forget time and space, and makes you feel excited and peaceful at the same time. Sounds crazy i know.

The Taste, definition in few words

The taste is the result of stimulations, starting from the visual to the final sensation in mouth:

1) Visual : a dish that looks nice already tastes nicer than the same dish that doesn't look as nice
2) Tactile: and maybe nowadays we forget about this perception a lot. Think about eating something with your fingers or with a fork. It doesn't taste the same because you in fact have that tactile sensation that gives you a complementary information
3) Olfactive: before you have it in mouth, the aromas gives you other information about what it's going to taste like
4) Taste in mouth, and after taste. In mouth, you have the flavours, the texture, the temperature...

The taste is therefore the combination of all these sensations, which once perceived physiologically is translated by the brain which then gives qualities to the taste, depending on your personal and social experiences. It is therefore not only defined by what you perceive when you eat, as each step before the food or wine etc comes in mouth has given an infomation about the flavours and have already been interpreted by the brain.

This interpretation depends on your individual or personal story: some aromas have strong emotions related to them (perfume of your mum, a cake you use to eat every sunday with your grand father, leaves you use to smell in your garden, smell of sweat when you were in the subway, smell of dust and humidity of your underground cellar...). There are also simply aromas you are more familiar with than others: if you were raised in a tropical country, you'll know about the natural taste of mango, palm tree oil, sweet potatoe etc., and maybe you will have a bit more difficulties with red berries, chesnut, camomilla etc.
Now the social interpretation: your social environment, the society you were raised in and live in formats your taste. A cricket is a delicacy in some places of Asia when it appears impossible to serve it in a restaurant of Europe. A thick crust pizza is generally not appreciated in Italy, when a thin crust doesn't appeal much to an American. Cheddar is commonly appreciated by an English when a French likes a stinky runny cheese. However, you will sometimes find a european liking insects, an American eating thin crust pizza and an English loving a reblochon.

We are therefore not equal in front of the taste, and the fantastic thing is that there is no box the taste closes you in.

Dusty box...

A summer later, a harvest in NZ later, few months older... well back to the keyboard. For no other reason that I have opened this box over which i had put tons of work, tons of excuses and finally far too much dust... what's in the box? Molecular gastronomy.

What's the relation, why coming from a simple love of wine to such a blurry concept of food?
Well, i believe that if on one side, chef and scientists can work together and find out about food chimical essence and reactions in cooking, then there is a concept to push with wine and food matches.

First understanding what's the taste/aromas, length in mouth, contrasts. The vocabulary in food and wine has lots of similarities, in the end we are talking about flavours, perception of the senses and emotional or sociological, textures...

Tomorrow we'll define the TASTE