Birds & Pinot

So as the weather becomes a little cooler into fall my mind intuitively switches gears and starts thinking of my favorite red varietal pinot noir.  The birds that naturally pair well with pinot noir are squab, quail, chicken, pheasant, and so on. 

Squab is hands down my favorite eating bird, but for some reason, Americans give the pigeon a bad rap.  I think it has something to do with Central Park—they are not flying rats!  They are rich and meaty with a distinctively squabby flavor, and delicious. If I was allowed to in public parks, I would trap them, just as the residents of Dijon did during Nazi occupation in their town square, and then eat them with pinot noir.  Here are two classic dishes that pair well with pinot that is quintessentially, American.

Coq au Vin, “rooster in wine,” is a traditional peasant dish of Burgundy.  It is essentially vegetables, mushrooms, and whatever random chicken cuts around roasted and braised with red wine and herbs.  Naturally, since Burgundy is the motherland of pinot noir, pinot is drunk with this dish.  I prefer a rustic style that is earthy and seductive.  The more dirt I taste the better.  Volnay is a good commune to look for in the Côte de Beaune of Burgundy.

Pekin Duck

Duck à l’Orange is a French dish popularized in the 1960’s most likely by the influences of Julia Child, the Pekin Ducks raised on Long Island, and emergence of Haute Cuisine in Manhattan—Lutèce, Four Seasons, etc.  The orange sauce, Sauce Bigarade, which usually has an addition of sugar, is the origin for the modern day gastrique sauce that is prevalent in modern day restaurant menus.  (Sweet and sour sauce is another theory.) Naturally pinot noir is the perfect match for it—its acidity cuts through the rich sweet sauce.  I like a powerful style of pinot with good fruit and some muscle.  I like a nice Pommard from Domaine Parent in Burgundy or a Santa Barbara County pinot noir—grapes sourced from the Bien Nacido Vineyard stylistically work quite well.  Some producers I enjoy from Santa Barbara are Foxen and Au Bon Climat.

Willamette Tour Part 2—Smell the Soil

I first stumbled across the sub-AVAs of the Willamette Valley in 2005. The real reason I went to the Willamette is to collect soil from all of its sub-AVAs. McMinnville, Eola-Amity, Yamhill-Carlton, Dundee Hills, Chelahem Mountains, and Ribbon Ridge—I think that’s all of them and I collected soil from them all—It took a couple days, wondering aimlessly from winery to winery.

At SugarToad, I have two mason jars full of terrior I am quite fond off to represent the Pinots from the 2008 vintage . The first is from the Red Hills of Dundee. The J. Christopher “Dundee Hills Cuvee” 2008 represents the volcanic red jory quite well. Dark Cherries with a barnyard to cedar quality is quite prevalent in the wine. In conversations with the winemaker Jay Somners, I learned how Pacific Northwest Salmon perhaps is not the best pairing—or maybe overdone—and the salmon brings out a metallic quality in the wine. A better fish pairing might be Alaskan halibut or diver sea scallops with a secondary pork element with pinot from Dundee.



The other mason jar consists of a more loamy soil from the Chelahem Mountains from the Bergstrom Winery***. Though the Bergstrom “Cumberland Reserve” Pinot Noir 2008 comes from several vineyard sites, one can definitely smell and taste the juicy black cherry to cola notes in the Missoula Flood influenced soils. (That childhood trip to Yellowstone is all making sense now.) After tasting this alongside some grilled blackmouth salmon, I found this to be a better salmon pairing then the pinots from Dundee.

***For sake of argument of the Armitage Crew, Bergstrom is Ubaldo's favorite Pinot of 2006-7.

Willamette Damm—it!

An infant sommelier once thought that wines labeled Willamette came from the North Shore of Chicago. It actually is in reference to a valley formed by the Willamette River in Oregon. It is a tributary of the Columbia River. The 2008 vintage has been declared the vintage of a lifetime by many. (Wine Critics say this every year—Sommeliers are not critics, but conscientious objectors of highly touted vintages—and for some strange reason, off-vintages seem to age better!). This sommelier will soon embark on a pilgrimage to unearth great Willamette Pinot Noir.

As the story goes, while at UC Davis, Vigneron David Lett had this crazy notion to plant pinot noir (Dijon Clones) in the Willamette Valley around 1966--give or take a year. A French Connection--Willamette shares a similar latitude with Burgundy, France, and is perfectly suited for growing this fickle red varietal, pinot noir. This cool climate grape loves the mild wet winters and warm dry summers the Willamette offers stretching about 150 miles from Portland in the North to Eugene in the South.

Willamette has some of the most distinctive terrior in the New World. Its Pinots are seductively earthy with many red to dark fruits, smell like a Northwest conifer to cedar forest at times, and are delicious with salmon. I will hopefully collect many soil samples in my travels, especially the red jory that gives Willamette Pinot such a rich earthy quality.

Stay tuned for the Willamette Valley Expedition version 2011.