He Was Right

One of the wines we tasted during our last visit to Chrysalis Vineyards was the ’06 Rubiana.  Grape Envy Guy took one sip of this blend of 52% tinta cao, 31% nebbiolo, and 17% fer servadou and then turned to me and said that the wine would pair beautifully with out deep and dark pizza.  GEG typically leaves food pairings to me, but he was completely certain that this would work, and I was intrigued.  We left with a bottle.  Unfortunately, life got in the way, so months passed without this pizza actually getting made…until recently.

So, you might be wondering what this deep and dark pizza is.  It’s a deep dish vegetarian pizza (yes, you can have amazing pizza with no meat) made with a hearty olive oil dough – trust me, the dough needs to be substantial.  The pizza has the requisite tomato sauce and mozzarella, but it also has fresh and sun-dried tomatoes, pepper jack cheese, onion, garlic, red peppers, and black beans.  It’s then seasoned with taco seasoning and cumin.  (I may be missing something, but this gives you the idea.)  We’ve got a lot of great pizza recipes, but this really is one of my favorites.  It is not, however, a pizza I normally think about pairing with wine.

Now, about that wine…  When I tried it on its own, I noted lots of dark fruit and some light oak and the nose and plums and warm spices on the palate.  I kept thinking about a winter fruit compote.  As for the pairing with the pizza – the title says it all: he was right.  The spice in the wine played well with the seasonings in the pizza.  Unfortunately for him, GEG is now going to find that I’m going to pawn of food and wine pairing onto him more often now that he’s proved himself so capable.

 

Plans? Who Needs Plans

Some nights when Grape Envy Guy or I go searching for a bottle of wine, we approach our wine racks with a well formulated plan.  We know we’re pairing a wine with a particular recipe or in the mood for a particular grape, etc.  Other times, we just know we want to open a bottle, but have no real structure to help us narrow down our options.  Back in the days when we typically had a case of wine or less on hand, this was not a big deal.  We’d look at the handful of bottles and open the one neither of us objected too strongly to.  These days our collection has grown significantly.  We’re starting to age some bottles and feel financially able to buy more than we can drink (the only way to ever start amassing options).  The only problem with this is the sense of being overwhelmed when faced with the array of options available to us on a given night.

Recently, we decided that we were in the mood for a red, but we wanted something a bit different – we weren’t feeling the love for a go-to cab franc or chambourcin the way we normally do.  We headed to our “unusual reds” and “red blends” section of our racks to see what we could find.  After debating the relative merits of a few different bottles, we decided to go with a bottle of ’06 Ruby from Hillsborough Vineyards.  The back label indicated this was a blend of tannat and petit verdot, although we learned during our visit that this wine is actually a blend of tannat (50%), fer servadou (30%), and petit verdot (20%).  Since we don’t drink a ton of tannat and fer servadou will give us another grape for our century club quest, it seemed like just the think we were looking for.

On the nose, I got an immediate impression of chocolate covered cherries.  I also noted some smoke and tobacco elements.  I honestly wasn’t loving the hint of smoke, but the rest of it was working for me, so I was able to move past it.  On the palate, I was first confronted with a ton of black cherry along with some plum as well as some hefty tannins.  Don’t get me wrong, this was not exactly a tight wine, but it sure was a big one that would work plenty well with a chunk of animal protein (likely wild game).  I also noted some pepper – mostly white but there may have been some sharper black pepper in there as well along with a touch of something herbal and some anise on the finish.  There was a lot going on in this bottle of wine, and I greatly enjoyed the experience of sipping, savoring, and exploring.

Since this was an impulse pull off our wine racks, we didn’t have a particular meal planned to pair with it, but I’d definitely recommend venison, bison, or great local grass-fed beef if you have a bottle you’re looking to open.  The wine was quite enjoyable on its own, but there’s just something about tannins and protein – I’m sure a food scientist and/or winemaker will chime in on the details….