Odd Bacchus

I needed something to pair with the game of Bionic Woman we were sitting down to play. For such an obscure board game, only an especially oddball wine would do; I uncorked a 2009 Espirito Lagoalva, a blend of 50% Touriga Nacional and 50% Castelão from Portugal’s Tejo region. It proved to be delightful, fortifying us as we saved joggers from angry mountain lions and brought runaway hot air balloons under control.

Jaime, had she been a wine connoisseur as well as a superhero, would have been very surprised to find us drinking a dry Portuguese wine. Until relatively recently, Portugal was known only for Port and Madeira, both of which are sweet, fortified wines. But nowadays, “Portuguese winemakers have…woken up to the tremendous potential of the terroirs and native grape varieties that their country offers, making it a hotbed of innovation,” according to The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia.

The Douro Valley (where most grapes for Port are grown) and the Dão region just to the south produce many of Portugal’s best vintages, and I’ve rarely been disappointed by a dry red wine from either of these regions. They tend to be fantastic values for the money, probably because the grape varieties are unfamiliar to non-Portuguese. They are actually not all that hard to find anymore. Keep an eye out for them.

But this wine comes from Tejo, a region just northeast of Lisbon that I had a devil of a time finding anything about. The problem, I discovered thanks to Wikipedia, is that Tejo was called Ribatejo (translated as River Tagus) until 2009, when the name was changed to hopefully appeal more to the international market. I haven’t seen much of an international rush to Tejo wines, but I suppose Mendoza used to be just as unknown.

Unfortunately for Tejo, the most of the grape varieties grown there don’t come as trippingly off the tongue as Malbec. I mean, what the heck are Touriga Nacional and Castelão?

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Experimenting with mixology is great fun, but with the vast array of booze and mixers at our disposal, it can be daunting. I floundered for years in the cocktail creation department, because I had no idea where to begin. I still flounder a bit today, honestly, but my experiments taste a heck of a lot better than they used to.

There aren’t any strict rules, but if you’re an aspiring mixologist, your cocktails have a much greater chance of being palatable if you keep a few basic guidelines in mind:

1. Start with a key ingredient. It can be almost anything, really. Often, my key ingredient is something I need to get rid of, like a week-old lemon, or a bottle of mango juice taking up space in the fridge, or some fresh basil that didn’t make it into my marinara. Sometimes the key ingredient is a liquor or liqueur I want to try. Or maybe I just feel like having a cocktail with tequila (or whatever) in it.
2. Decide on a main spirit. (If your key ingredient is a liquor, move on to #3.) If your key ingredient is herbal, bitter or floral, the botanicals in gin might complement it. If it’s sweet, using a sweet liquor like rum or tequila might be too much. If it’s citrusy, well, that can go with just about anything, including whiskey and cognac. If all else fails, choose vodka.
3. Add something sweet. (If your key ingredient is sugary, move on to #4.) Some cocktails work very well completely dry, like a gin martini, but most drinks taste best to me with some sort of sugar, like fruit juice or simple syrup. It doesn’t have to be much. Like salt in your food, sugar helps bring out the other ingredients’ flavors. Without it, a cocktail can feel unbalanced or flat.
4. Consider texture. Adding something sweet will tame the burn of a liquor, but usually that’s not enough to create a pleasing texture. Compare, for example, the texture of a vodka cranberry with the texture of a Cosmopolitan. It’s night and day, because the fresh lime juice in a Cosmo balances things out. Any fresh-squeezed citrus can serve this purpose, or vermouth can also be useful to round out a drink.
5. Consider depth and complexity. If you taste your concoction and it seems too bright, add a dash of bitters. Bitters can do wonders to ground a cocktail. The wonderful Pegu Club would be a bit abrasive without bitters. Amari (bitter Italian liqueurs) have become very popular with bartenders as well. But it need not be something bitter. In the Cosmopolitan, Triple Sec rounds things out. Without this sweet orangey liqueur, a Cosmopolitan would seem too pointy.
6. Work in small batches. In order to not waste booze when experimenting, I use a tablespoon as the measure of one part, rather than a shot glass. Once the proportions are to my liking, I scale up to proper cocktail size.
7. Be brave! Work with fresh herbs, fresh fruits and unusual juices. Try infusing vodka with something. What’s the worst that could happen? After all, by the third or fourth sip, whatever you’ve made will taste just fine.

So there you have it — the basic formula: A main spirit, something sweet, something sour, and something round or bitter. Of course, there are countless ways to come up with a fine cocktail, but I find these guidelines invaluable.

I would love to hear about your own cocktail experimentation. Feel free to e-mail your recipes to [email protected], post them to my Facebook page, or just write a comment below.

Happy mixing!

A fantastic article by Lettie Teague in today’s Wall Street Journal served as a reminder of why I love drinking the unusual and obscure in the first place. And in 150 posts to this blog, I’m not sure I’ve ever made that truly explicit. There’s the fact that I find oddball wines and spirits thoroughly fascinating, but I suspect that if I were fermenting in vats of cash, I would be drinking far more famous Burgundies and Bordeauxs than Moschofileros and Macabeos.

Honestly, a big reason I gravitate towards the unusual and the obscure is simply price. It’s right there, in big letters on page D6: “The obscure and the uncurated will almost always cost less than the well known and well placed. If you don’t know what a wine is, you’re unlikely to pay a high price for it.”

If you, like me, have to buy wine on a budget, you will frequently get the biggest flavor bang for your buck by buying something without a major name. I’ve reviewed a lot of delicious wines on this blog, and though there are exceptions, the majority cost less than $15. You don’t have to be rich to drink fabulously. Just a little adventurous.

Do check out Lettie Teague’s excellent article in praise of the “Miscellaneous” or “Interesting” section on the wine list. She makes some tempting recommendations, and more important, she reminds us of the joys of drinking fearlessly.

4. JEFFERSON VINEYARDS: In this pretty piece of Virginia countryside, Thomas Jefferson planted the first commercial vineyards in Virginia and probably the first in the entire New World. His viticultural efforts generally failed, unfortunately, but nowadays, Jefferson Vineyards produces some very tasty wine indeed. The reds here were particularly appealing.

The light-bodied Cabernet Franc (a blend of 2010 and 2011 vintages, since the 2011 vintage was marred by Hurricane Irene) had an aroma of dark fruit and iron, and it tasted fruity and earthy with some good structure. Jefferson Vineyards was the first to bottle a varietal Petit Verdot in Virginia, and the 2010 vintage continues that proud tradition. It had a jammy nose and plummy, meaty flavors with juicy acids and a touch of tobacco in the finish. And the rich Meritage (rhymes with “heritage”), a Bordeaux-style blend, smelled marvelously rich and had a palate to match: jam, vanilla, balanced acids and a chocolatey finish. Delightful.

3. PIPPIN HILL FARM: The wines here tasted just fine; a through-line seemed to be rather limey, occasionally pointy acids in many of the whites and some of the reds. I’m not necessarily dying to try any of them again, but I would kill to be back on the gorgeous terrace outside the tasting room. My stars and stripes, what a view! Vineyards, farms, mansions, the Blue Mountains in the distance…

It’s truly spectacular. A glorious place for lunch and a glass of wine.

2: BARBOURSVILLE VINEYARDS: One of the first modern wineries in Virginia, Barboursville was founded in 1976 by the Zonins, a renowned Italian winemaking family. As you might expect, you’ll encounter several Italian varietals here, such as a richly fruity Sangiovese, an earthy Barbera and a tightly wound Nebbiolo. The sharply focused Viognier Reserve, austere Octagon (a Bordeaux-style blend) and Sauternes-like Malvaxia Reserve also made quite an impression on me.

Because the tasting room can be quite crowded, especially on weekends, I recommend trying the wines paired with some wonderfully delicious Italian cuisine in the adjacent Palladio Restaurant. The Caprese salad with perfectly ripe heirloom tomatoes and sumptuously creamy burrata cheese haunts me still. Work off lunch with a stroll past the vineyards to the ruins of Governor James Barbour’s mansion, dating from the early 19th century.

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