Yearly Archives: 2011

It may surprise some of you (family especially) to learn that when I open up a bottle of wine to taste for this blog, I do not usually finish the entire thing. I love to have a glass or two while cooking and a glass or two with my meal, but I can usually down half a bottle at best. What to do with the rest?

I used to try to save wine by simply putting it in the refrigerator, but after 24 hours (or even 12), the wine oxidizes anyway and becomes unpleasant. Realizing the folly of this technique, for a time I attempted to drink all the leftovers. Waste not want not! But though the wine was not wasted, I certainly was.

Finally, some patron saint of the liver introduced me to inert gas. Of all the ways to preserve wine after it’s been opened, inert gas works the best. With an inexpensive spray can, you can replace most of the air in the bottle with a blanket of argon, carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The gas blanket is heavier than air, preventing oxygen from reaching the wine and significantly slowing the process of oxidation.

Even vacuum pumps, which purport to suck all the air out of a bottle, always leave some oxygen knocking around, and there is nothing to prevent it from interacting with the wine. The notes on the back of my Private Preserve canister add that vacuum devices “strip out bouquet (volatile esters),” though I’m not convinced inert gas preserves the bouquet entirely intact, either. Even so, it’s the best choice we’ve got.

Recently, I left a half-filled bottle of Von Stiehl Cabernet Sauvignon on the counter for a week, since I was out of town and unable to finish it. When I finally did pour myself a glass, the wine tasted surprisingly good. It didn’t reach the heights of flavor it hit when I first opened the bottle, but it was perfectly adequate to sip while attempting my first cassoulet.

If you find from time to time that you have some wine left over, don’t leave it alone in the refrigerator without any protection, condemning it to death by oxidation. Lead your wine into a gentle slumber under a comfy blanket of inert gas.

I love when out-of-town friends come to visit, giving me an excuse to splash out on a fancy restaurant or two. It’s especially fun when those visitors happen to be from New York — a city known for thinking it has the best of everything — because Chicago’s culinary scene officially rocks.

Mercat a la Planxa, an upscale Catalan (tapas) restaurant in The Renaissance Blackstone Hotel, has been on my list for a couple of years. The food and wine from Catalonia in northeastern Spain almost never fail to impress me, and I wanted to see if Mercat did this region proud. The food indeed delighted us both, particularly the eye-rollingly delicious rabbit-filled agnolotti topped with roasted chestnut purée, brandied cherries and brown butter (pictured). But I must admit I failed to order a single Catalan wine from the by-the-glass list.

Only two were offered, one of which I already knew and loved, the floral Viña Esmeralda by Torres. I opted instead for a 2010 Finca Os Cobatos Godello from the Monterrei D.O. (Denominación de Origen, or Orixe in Galician). Completely unfamiliar with either the Godello variety or the Monterrei wine region, I had no idea what to expect. The wine had a fresh, green aroma, and it tasted juicy and a bit floral, with food-friendly acids. Had I been served it blind, I might have guessed it was a fun Sauvignon Blanc from some New World appellation.

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Dave of H2Vino with some Mallorcan Callet

Though I don’t do it as often as I’d like, it can be surprisingly easy to go to wine tastings. Many wine shops and liquor stores host them on weekends, and even grocery stores occasionally offer samples. Tastings are a great way to get to know new wines and try things you would never consider buying a whole bottle of. More important, when you try an array of different wines in rapid succession, it becomes much clearer what kinds of wines you most prefer.

My favorite wine shop, In Fine Spirits, offers wine tastings Saturday afternoons, but every once in a while they’ll put together a big wine tasting shebang. Recently, they hosted a wonderful “Rare Vines” event focusing on limited-production wines, an exciting opportunity to try a wide range of wines made in batches of less than 1000 cases (most were under 500).

For just $10 per person — less than the price of a glass of wine in many restaurants — we sampled more than 30 wines and took good advantage of the gourmet cheese tray. (We should have taken better advantage of the spit buckets, however.)

Here are the wines I found most exciting:

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Edie explains the bottling machine

Returning to Chicago from a stay in Door County, Wisconsin, my husband and I decided to stop for a couple of nights in Algoma. This lakeside town may not exactly be synonymous with wine, but since activity options are relatively limited, we took a tour of the historic Von Stiehl Winery.

Built in the center of town in 1868 as a brewery, the winery’s main building features an attractive tasting room and atmospheric aging cellars. We ended up enjoying a private tour of the facility with Edie, a memorable guide who used to perform from time to time on Hee Haw.

Back in the tasting room, we selected a range of mostly dry wines to sample. As we tasted, we looked at each other, perplexed, trying to understand the unusual journey of the wines. “Ah,” my husband exclaimed, “the wines come to a point at the end.” He was exactly right — rather than expanding at the rear palate, several of these wines tightened up and focused. Fascinating!

We expressed our thoughts to Edie, who politely nodded in agreement. Noting we hadn’t selected any of the sweeter wines to taste, she insisted we try a little of this and a little of that, and before we knew it, we were stumbling to the cashier with a few bottles of Lakeshore Fumé. I also had the good sense to buy a bottle of the non-vintage Cabernet Sauvignon, made from “California and Washington State’s finest fruits.” That was in 2008, and the bottle has mouldered on my wine rack ever since.

I decided it was high time to open this buckaroo. While making my first-ever batch of homemade tagliatelle, I took  a wine break and poured a glass, expecting something drinkable (perhaps) but past its prime.

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