That is to say that Tony Maws, proprietor of Craigie on Main, has shared a tasty sounding rack of lamb receipt. And speaking of places I'd rather be having dinner tonight, Mr. Dargis is ignoring the relative abstraction of weather in Southern California, and laying out a hardcore midwinter repast at Lou:
Citrus, avocado, and bacon salad
Pere Ventura Cava Rosé NVBraised Niman beef short ribs, creamy polenta,
roasted Romanesco cauliflower, red carrots
Flight of stick-to-your-ribs reds
Bobal
Antoine Arena Patrimonio Corsica ‘06
Morgon Chamonard ‘08Carrot ginger pecan cake,
crème frâiche ice cream, caramel sauce
Fontanel Rivesaltes Ambré
And if that makes you thirsty, they will be serving beverages, and some edumacation:
"Jules Chauvet was a French microbiologist, life long student of yeast, wineglass designer, and a vigneron. I never met Chauvet (he died in 1989) and never tasted the Beaujolais wine he made, and know his work only through the sparse translations that are available in English. Nevertheless, by tasting the wines made by a generation of vignerons who have followed Chauvet’s example, I feel that I know him well.
Chauvet argued that if you (a) farm responsibly, you (b) create conditions within your vineyard that will naturally sustain natural yeasts that (c) will create the most delicious and complex wines. Traditionally, vignerons will use sulfur to combat “bad” yeasts: Chauvet argued that if you start with clean fruit, you could dispense with sulfur, at least during the fermentation process. Without the mask of sulfur, Chauvet felt that a wine could better speak for itself. This is a somewhat controversial position both in France and elsewhere, where most winemakers continue to use sulfur, sometimes a great deal, because that’s the way they’ve been trained to make wine. No doubt, it is challenging to make a wine with little sulfur, and such wines are, sometimes, not microbiologically stable, but when a low sulfur regime works, it works very well.
We often offer Chauvet style wines at Lou: last year, we poured quite a bit of Jean Foillard’s Morgon, and the Morgon of his colleague and fellow traveler, Jean-Paul Thevenet. We are now pouring yet another Chauvet-style Morgon, this one made by Joseph Chamonard (or more accurately, by Chamonard’s daughter), again a colleague of Foillard and Thevenet. I find that wild yeast fermented Morgon like Chamonard’s, made with little or no sulfur, can be a paradoxical wine. It is a wine that sits very lightly on the tongue—not quite a gluggy wine, but one that you would nevertheless be glad to serve cool at a picnic on a warm summer afternoon. It is a wine that is light to medium bodied, but one with great concentration of flavor.
I am pairing Chamonard’s Morgon with a big hunk of Niman short ribs, a classic food and wine paring that, if you are a red meat eater, would have to be dead if you do not like."
Comments