The Iron Chevsky Wine Blog

Mission : find a wine pairing for a creamy mushroom beef stroganoff. I cook a particular type of beef stroganoff - "triple mushroom medley" - as I call it. It's a combination of shitake, button and oyster mushrooms, browned and then sauteed in sour cream broth with shallots and thin strips of short rib meat until the meat is tender, and all the flavors fuse into a deliciously creamy mushroom beef stroganoff. I enhance the flavor of mushrooms with a pinch of nutmeg, savory, and parsley. Served on top of linguine pasta. The perfect side for this kind of Russian dish is pickled tomatoes and cucumbers, to balance out the creaminess of the main dish. Analysis : I needed a wine that was earthy (to match the mushrooms) with some age (for slightly oxidized, pickled effect), soft, with medium body so as to not overwhelm the mild and creamy texture of the ingredients. It took a little bit of thinking... I happened to have a prized bottle of 1996 Lavaux St. Jacques (1st Cru) fr

When our friends Junaid and Asma invited us to a neighborhood barbecue party, we knew we couldn't miss it because they make the world best grilled lamb-chops (as well as amazing grilled chicken), the Pakistani style. The challenge Junaid gave me was to come up with a wine match. I had just the answer! I stopped drinking Zins several years back, and only occasionally would pop one open for my friends who enjoy jammy California wines. That's why when I saw Gary Vaynerchuk rave about the 2005 Shifrin Howell Mountain Zinfandel  on his show, I was intrigued, because I generally tend to agree with his "old world" palate. And given that he was running a "free shipping" promotion, I took a chance and ordered a bottle. Gary Vaynerchuk on Wine Library TV - Episode 586 The grilled lamb chops marinated in a variety of Pakistani spices finally gave me the excuse to try it. Right from the first sniff, this Zinfandel was different. The nose was almost Bordeaux-like - dr

Last night I skipped Jon. Jos. Christoffel Erben Riesling Spatlese, 2005, in the line-up at Vin Vino Wine . Today, I took out a bottle of the 2004 Kabinett version of the same producer and the same vineyard to wash down some Chinese food my wife cooked up for dinner. She made basa fish fillet in spicy sour pickled cabbage soup, and sweet-and-sour lotus root. The food was amazing. The wine - NOT. Same impression as from the line-up last night -- thick apple wine cooler. A lot of apple juice and grape juice flavor, some minerality, almost no petrol / rubber tire (which perhaps would come with aging). The wine was fat, flabby and not refreshing, failing to extinguish the spice in the food. The moral of the story for me? Don't take your Riesling for granted -- so far it seems most of them do not deliver! The food was great though, especially the lotus root with tomato-ginger-garlic sauce! She is good.

Just back from a 2005 and 2006 German Spatlese Riesling wine tasting at Vin Vino Wine wine shop in Palo Alto. For those not very familiar with Rieslings, they come in 6 levels of sweetness - #1) kabinett - the least sweet; #2) spatlese; #3) auslese (typically this and further levels are dessert wines); #4) beerenauslese; 5) trockenbeerenauslese; and finally 6) eiswein (ice wine). The prices start at kabinett and progress upwards toward the sweeter wines. After having had a very nice spatlese (1996 Bert Simon Spatlese Serriger Wurtzberg) several days ago at a neighbor's all-boys night, naively I was expecting similar goodness out of the entire line-up today. After having tried 7 wines tonight, boy, was I unimpressed. All but one tasted like varying degrees of apple cider, mostly cloying and flat. (To be fair, I skipped Jon. Jos. Christoffel - #7 in the line-up, since I already have it in my wine cellar). Of the rest, the only one I liked (really liked!) was Hexamer Schlossbocke

Tonight my wife and I had the pleasure of dining with Alex Bernardo, the owner of Vineyardgate wine shop in Millbrae, who brought a bottle of 1982 Chateau Pavie from his stash. Chateau Pavie, of course, is one of the great chateaux in Bordeaux, from what's known as the "the right bank" in the commune of St. Emilion. This chateau is classified as Premier grand cru classé B level . 1982 was one of the top vintages of the 20th century for Bordeaux, and this wine did not disappoint, as even after 26 years it was still going strong, but ready to drink now.  The fruit was a combination of sour black cherry and blackcurrant, a bit of pickle, cured meat and tartar sauce (due to aging), a bouquet of autumn (as Alex summed it up, reflecting upon the wine's age and the images it evoked in his mind).  The wine was medium bodied and elegant, with good fruit still coming through, accompanied by some pleasant earthiness, gaminess and herbaceous note, though it did not seem to hav

Just wanted to once again point out how great German Rieslings are with Chinese food. My wife cooked a best-ever dan dan noodle for lunch, and gave me another excuse to pop a Riesling I had not tried before - Selbach-Oster Kabinett, 2005, from Zeltinger Sonnenuhr vineyard in Mosel. The noodle was amazing - mixed with home-made spicy chili oil, preserved mustard greens, fried ground pork, shredded cucumber (personal touch from my yard), and home-roasted and ground sichuan pepper, and half dozen salty, sour, savory sauces, including sesame oil.  The wine was a disappointment unfortunately.  Although it tasted like a typical Riesling, full of apple, peach, a little tangerine, minerality, rubber tire and petrol -- it was rather flat, and lacked the focus and brightness I tasted in other German Rieslings .  Still, it made an amazing complement to the spicy sichuan dish.  The sweetness calmed the heat, and the acidity (though somewhat lackluster in this particular wine) refreshed the palate.

Just had 2005 Poggio Belvedere by Ardnaldo Caprai from Umbria (Italy) for the first time - 80% Sangiovese, 20% Ciliegiolo.  I picked it up from Alex Bernardo over at Vineyardgate in Millbrae - one of my favorite wine shops in the Bay Area (talking to Alex is always a fun and educational experience, but that's a subject for another post).  Normally, I wouldn't pay much attention to yet another Italian red, but this time Alex snuck it into his Saturday tasting line-up.  The wine is only $13 (i.e. a type of wine one can afford with an everyday meal), and it was an amazing match to the food.  I had it with pasta and prawns in red sauce (with garlic and herbs from my garden).  Typically, I would have a Chianti (or maybe a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo) with this type of food.  In a Chianti, as in most inexpensive Italian reds I try, one would see a ton of acidity dominating the fruit.  But this fresh light-to-medium body wine was singing as a perfect duo of juicy fruit and zingy aci

Last night I prepared an ex-Soviet themed dinner for our non-Russian friends, trying to open their palates to some traditional and very good Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Central Asian foods.  Sausages and kvas (drink made from rye bread) for pre-dinner snacks, Borscht (cabbage and beet soup), pickled veggies and two kinds of pilafs - lamb and beef - for main course, and sour-cherry filled blintzes for dessert.  That's me on the photo, painstakingly filling the blintzes. Which of these wines do you think paired best with the main course? The wine line-up: White Rhone from Pierre Gaillard ( Viognier and Roussanne blend ), 2006 Hermitage from M. Chapoutier ( Syrah, Northern Rhone ), 2000 Bourgogne blanc from Domaine Denis Mortet ( Chardonnay ), 2006 Two big Oregon Pinot Noirs from Pheiffer and High Pass Winery, 2005 and 2002 Bourgueil from Domaine Breton ( Cab Franc from Loire ), 2007 Montes Alpha "M" Chilean red ( blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (80%), Merlot (10%), Cab

This was the second year in a row that my wife and I hosted the "day-after-Thanksgiving" party for our friends at our historic home in Palo Alto - hopefully two years in a row means "tradition". This time we focused on making the juiciest turkey possible (free-range willie bird from AG Ferrari that we brined for 24 hours in salt-herb-and-spice solution), stuffed with oranges, lemons and herbs from our garden, accompanied by home-made gravy (infused with Pinot Grigio) and oven- and grill-roasted autumn vegetables (beets, carrots, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, shallots, brussels sprouts with sea-salt and dressing drizzled on top). Our friends brought various appetizers and desserts: home-made cheese spreads (zesty!), marinated cooked grapes (tasty!), crab cakes (always satisfying!), pickled veggy salads (interesting), bean & walnut salad (yum!), stuffing (of course), pumpkin cheesecake (delicous), pecan pie (sweet), and more things I can't remember. So it

Wow, what an experience last night.  It was the first time I came to a Ross Bott tasting event.  My wine friends have been telling me about these Ross Bott events around the Palo Alto area, and finally I emailed Ross to add me to the list, and so it began.  Ross Bott is a Bay Area wine guru, who has been running a wine tasting group in Palo Alto probably for the last 30 years.  His tastings are rather serious events, with wine geeks getting together with their own glasses, and quietly tasting 8 wines blind, taking notes, and finally ranking the wines in the order of preference.  Ross then collects the individual rankings and computes overall rankings, etc, and then announces those.  Each participant then sees how far they are from consensus.  Really entertaining and educational exercise.  Ross supplies the wines from his allegedly enormous stash, and everyone pitches in to cover his cost. A lot of the time these tastings (which usually run twice a week)  focus on New World wines (Calif

Vinography blog -- http://www.vinography.com/archives/2008/11/2004_e_guigal_chateau_dampuis.html

For those who don't know -- Torrontes is the white wine of Argentina, and their answer to Sauvignon Blanc. I had never tried Torrontes until several days ago. Since this grape was in my WSET training materials and came up at the WSET exam I had taken a week earlier, I finally decided to dig into it a bit further, and picked up a bottle of 2008 Crios de Susana Balbo Torrontes for $11 from a local Costco. BTW, spending $11 at Costco for a little-known grape variety from Argentina is not cheap (it's $13 at K&L Wines) - so I expected a fairly ok bottle of wine. An excuse to drink it presented itself the next day, when my lovely wife and I settled for some simple lunch at home, consisting of turkey avocado sandwich, eggs, and home-made fries, with a little spicy sauce for dipping. Seemed like a refreshing bottle of white could go with that. First thing I noticed was the color -- very light lemony. But the alcohol on the bottle says $13.5%. So clearly this was not going t

Recently, thanks to my wine-loving friends, I had opportunities to drink several moderately aged wines: a 2000 Burgundy from Corton (Grand Cru), paired with beef bourguignon a 1998 Rioja, paired with Spanish tapas a 1995 Burgundy from Pommard (1er Cru), paired with short-ribs and suckling pig dishes from Manresa . As my palate has been evolving quite rapidly away from big fruit and more toward complex non-fruity flavors, I found myself enjoying these moderately aged wines tremendously. Obviously, these must have been well-structured well-made wines to last even 10 years. But drinking them 8-13 years after the harvest reveals velvety smoothness and slight oxidation that makes these middle-aged wines sophisticated and intellectual. Due to age, they no longer boast huge tannins, sharp acidity, or juicy fruit -- they have no sharp edges, but those structural elements are still there just less aggressive and more polished, in harmony, accompanying delicious (non-vegetarian) meals with co

It increasingly amazes me how many people I meet who say that they love wine and they drink a lot of it, and they are "into wine", and yet their palate and their knowledge are incredibly limited. I find folks around me all the time with what's known as "California palate" -- they love oaky jammy fruit bombs (I must admit I liked those too when I just started my wine odyssey, but I grew out of that rather quickly), and that's mostly what they drink all the time, for years. Those wines are easy to drink (like juice) and thus are very approachable, but without acidity and minerally/earthy flavors they are really not food-friendly, and are boring. I cannot convince someone who is into those wines that they are wrong -- all I can say is - please listen to Gary Vaynerchuk's video blog (ignoring his over-the-top exuberance, and focusing on the information he delivers and his tasting notes) at the Wine Library TV and expand your palate!

German Kabinett Riesling from Mosel (Maximin Grunhauser Abtsberg 2007) + Mapo Tofu == perfect match. The acidity in the Riesling cuts through the oil in the food, and the slight sweetness in the Kabinett level wine complements the spiciness perfectly. I have tried many whites with Chinese food -- Chenin Blancs, Chardonnays, Gewurztraminers, Pinot Gris, Albarinos -- none match as well as German Riesling (apple, peach and mineral flavors). Though many people recommend a Spatlese level Riesling with Asian cuisine, I prefer Kabinett level (lowest level of sweetness in German Rieslings, but still plenty sweet for me).  And this particular bottle of Riesling was a really great example of what I expect from this grape. Try it instead of the more traditional drinks such as beer, green tea, or prune juice with Chinese food, and you will be delighted!