Food, Wine, Good (and Evil) Spirits

Which foods pair best with rosés? The question is almost beside the point. Rosés are made for warm summer evenings, dinners outdoors with friends and laughter. Serve dishes that fit with that kind of setting and you're on the right road.

Think of summer foods, like tomato salads, olives, salumi, vegetables right off the grill. Rosés love brash flavors: salty, a little spicy, redolent of summer herbs like basil and oregano, and, of course, garlic.

Olives, cured with cumin and garlic or baked with herbs? Of course. Prosciutto and melon? Perfect. Toasts with tapenade? Even better.

Pork sausages right off the grill are terrific with rosés, and so are grilled vegetables, such as peppers, zucchini and eggplant, seasoned with handfuls of basil and moistened with good olive oil. 

To my mind, there is no single better match for a dry rosé than a good aioli. Mash garlic and a little salt in a mortar and pestle. Beat in a couple of egg yolks, stirring until they're lemon-colored. Very slowly, a drop at a time at the start, stir in olive oil and maybe a little lemon juice, depending on your preference (I think it helps match the wine better). It should be the consistency of soft mayonnaise.

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I love California wine and I'm not afraid to admit it. More than any other region and, through extensive wine classes, I've tasted them all. And I'm tired of people (OK, mostly other writers) bashing the wines from my adopted state for being what they mostly can't help being - big, bold and some claim overly-alcoholic. We have sun here, a lot of it, and it shows in the wines we make. That's called "terroir" people. If you don't like it, there are now hundreds of thousands of choices from almost every country in the world. Take your pick. Stop complaining and drink what you like.

Personally, I like to taste more fruit than dirt in my glass so I'm perfectly content right where I am. Can I agree that California produces a preponderance of wines that show little character and that bludgeon your taste buds with too much of everything? Sure. On the flip side, low alcohol wines can be thin, insipid and too acidic all in the cause of being opposite. Having travelled up and down the state, I know there are many, many, many winemakers out there trying to make the best wines from their land (or purchased grapes) that focus on all the right things: balance, fruit and complexity.

That's all I ask for. Depth of character. Whether light-bodied or full-throttled, taste like something other than grape juice and oak. Subtle doesn't have to mean boring and intensity isn't always overwhelming. Balance is the key. It certainly begins in the vineyard with a myriad of farming decisions, but actions in the winery also play an important role. When the right winemaker finds the right grapes, it is magic in the glass. This idea became In Pursuit of Balance, a movement created three years ago by Jasmine Hirsch of Hirsch Vineyards and Rajat Parr of Michael Mina and Sandhi Wines to support wineries striving to craft balanced Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in California. I'm not sure this concept really needs a "movement", but I found a lot to love at their recent tasting in Los Angeles.

Marylou’s was a New York restaurant that closed in 2001, but in its day was a real gem. Located in a brownstone in the West Village, the restaurant’s great food and atmosphere attracted a list of celebrities that included Jack Nicholson. Co-owner Tommy Baratta, Marylou’s brother, not only became good friends with Nicholson, but became his personal chef as well – and wrote a cookbook with Marylou titled Cooking for Jack.

My most vivid recollection of Marylou’s takes me back to 1986. I was having dinner with a woman whose raven hair was in perfect contrast to her radiant smile, when Jerzy Kosinski approached our table. His intent was not to dazzle us with his fame nor with a story, but, instead, with a series of photographs.

From the North Coast Journal

It happens every year about this time, in magazines and newspapers, online: an outpouring of effervescent enthusiasm for holiday sparkling wine bargains. "The best of West Coast bubbly has rarely been better," trumpets San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. The online wine merchant www.novusvinum.com features the "Top 20 American Sparkling Wines," from a modest $19 for Francis Coppola 2008 Sofia Blanc de Blancs to a staggering $100 for Schramsberg 2002 J. Schram. Words like "festive" and "elegant" promise a transcendental experience.

They lie. Well, they pretty much have to lie. No one would be long in business selling wine or print ads if they told the truth: American sparkling wine at its best is not in the same class as even the least expensive imports from Champagne. The fact is, it may never be.

The world of cuisine is fertile ground for happy, often accidental inventions: the 18th century discovery that oil and vinegar could, by careful blending with egg yolk, be emulsified into Sauce Mayonnaise. Peking Duck: an ancient dish, eaten by wealthy Chinese, consisting of just the crisp skin of a fattened duck, slowly roasted to a glossy brown in a long process taking a whole day. Distilled spirits, a byproduct of 8th century alchemy that produced what an Arabic poet described as, "a wine that has the color of rain-water but is as hot inside the ribs as a burning firebrand."

But the ultimate adventure may have been the one that produced gold from straw.

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