Category: Food

Wines that help you dig in to the Mediterranean

The domestication of grapes and the production of wine have their roots in the Eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor as early as 6000 B.C. Through trade, the agriculture and imbibing of the fruit of these labors spread throughout the Mediterranean to the coasts of modern-day Turkey, Lebanon and ancient Greece. The Greeks, in turn, took their favorite beverage to southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and the southern coast of France and Spain as early as the eighth century B.C. with their establishment of trading ports. In this column we will explore a lesser-known white wine from Sardinia and a robust red wine from the Languedoc region of southwest France.

Our first wine, a 2019 La Cala Vermentino di Sardegna, by Sella & Mosca (originally $13.99, reduced to $11.99 at the New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlets), is a wine most associated with Sardinia. Known as rolle in southern France, and grown in several different regions in Italy, it has been cultivated almost exclusively in Sardinia’s Gallura region, on the northern tip of the island. The label of this wine includes the statement, “Denominazione di Origine Controllato, the most strictly regulated denomination in Italy – Vermentino di Gallura.” These grapes thrive in Gallura’s vineyards, buffeted by the strong cold mistral winds that originate in the Atlantic and North Sea, travel across France, then leave the mainland entering the Gulf of Lion in the northern Mediterranean. The name “mistral” comes from the Languedoc dialect of Occitan and means “masterly.”

Vermentino lacks the strong acidity of most Italian wines, and Sardinia’s vermentino runs the spectrum from round and tropical to linear and mineral. The differences depend on where it is grown and the winemaker’s style. Some use steel, although some also age in wood. “Vermentinos from Gallura are structured but elegant, with pronounced mineral, almond and balsamic notes. They also have a hint of saltiness, thanks to the vicinity of the sea,” says Emanuele Ragnedda, of Capichera, a producer in the region. This vermentino has a pale straw color. To the nose it has a very slight tropical pineapple note along with pear and a touch of lemon blossom. To the tongue it is fresh with citrus, with some minerality, ending on a crisp note. This is great aperitif wine or it can be paired with seafood.

Our second wine hails from the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the south of France. This spans the coastal region of France from the border with Spain to Provence. There are around 700,000 acres under vines, making it the single biggest wine-producing region in the world, being responsible for more than a third of France’s total wine production. Languedoc was first planted by the Greeks in the fifth century B.C., and along with Provence is the oldest wine-producing region in France. The region excelled in wine production from the 4th century through the early 19th century. The phylloxera epidemic in the late 19th century severely affected the Languedoc wine industry and the region faced economic difficulties well into the ’70s until outside investment and re-focusing production led to many good new single varietal and classically blended wines.

The 2016 Domaine La Rougeante Corbières (originally $35.99, reduced to $17.99 at the New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlets) is that classic blend of mouvèdre, grenache and syrah. The color is a dense, opaque maroon; the nose is of blackberry and plum with some dried herbal notes. These carry through to the tongue in a full mouth feel with medium leathery tannins, which call for air after opening. A long finish with these rich fruit notes ends in some minerality. This is a wine to be enjoyed now or cellared for three more years and paired with grilled red meat, a rich stew, or a hearty pasta. The local fare of the Corbières region that runs from the Mediterranean coast to the Pyrenees with its Catalan culture includes tomato, garlic, eggplant and artichoke. These are dishes rich in flavor, so the wine needs to be robust and hearty to stand up to the food, and this wine does just that.

These two wines differ markedly from the routine whites and reds consumed on a regular basis. They are worth exploring not only for their uniqueness but to honor their storied past. Take a virtual trip to the ancient Mediterranean with these two wines. Invite them to your next dinner on the patio.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

I understand that you’ve got a lot going on right now — a pandemic, work headaches, psychotic squirrels terrorizing your birdfeeder, etc. So it’s understandable if you’ve lost track of things and forgotten that it is Yachting Season. We’ve only got so much emotional bandwidth, and some things drop through the cracks.

Fortunately, Esquire has your back. Or at least they did in 1969.

The Esquire Drink Book from that year strikes a very particular tone. Hidden amongst the recipes for Brandy Daiseys, Black Roses and racially-insensitively-named drinks that were probably pretty good but have been ruined for us now are the cryptic instructions for an innocuous-sounding cocktail called the Connecticut Bullfrog:

“This cocktail must never be served on shore but always on a boat, provided that the boat is not over 45 feet long, and the owner is the skipper (no hired hand). The ingredients are awful but the result does have something. Here they are and you must have them on board:

4 parts gin

1 part New England rum

1 part lemon juice

1 part maple syrup

Shake these ingredients together until your arms ache. Then have someone else do the same thing with about 10 times the usual amount of ice.”

— Esquire Drink Book, Frederic A. Birmingham, 1969, E.P. Dutton & Co., p. 216.

Having all these ingredients on hand, and being emotionally and intellectually at sea, I felt the need to field test the Bullfrog. I am the sole owner of my entirely imaginary yacht — which, being imaginary, is infinitely less than 45 feet long.

Not surprisingly, the Bullfrog was problematic from the get-go. I filled the large half of my cocktail shaker with ice — about 11 ounces — and added the seven ounces of liquid ingredients, at which point the smaller half of the shaker would no longer contain all the components.

(This cocktail deserves a poster: “The Connecticut Bullfrog cannot be contained.”)

So, I switched — as you will have to, if you decide to dance with the Bullfrog — to a large, one-quart jar.

I told my digital assistant to start a stopwatch, and started shaking.

The jar got uncomfortably cold very quickly — cold, as in frosty enough to bond my hands to the glass. Once I was able to pry them loose, this was solved by wrapping the jar in a tea towel.

The next problem was an unexpected one. I was pretty sure that my arms would start aching fairly quickly. I am not terribly fit in a general sense, but a regular regimen of martial arts and cocktail shaking have apparently toned me in unexpected ways. I lasted nine minutes. I know this because I asked my digital assistant how long I’d been shaking this jar.

“Over an extended period, possibly;” she told me, “then again, maybe not.” This sounds philosophically important, but was not as useful in a practical sense as I was looking for in the moment.

It took another full minute of shaking to stumble on an acceptably worded command to find out how long this exercise had been going on.

As instructed, I handed the jar off to my teenager in the next room, who lasted two minutes, five seconds before losing interest and handing it back to me.

At this point, a reasonable shaker (in a cocktail sense; I’m reasonably sure a Shaker, as in the 19th-century furniture-making religious community, would not have found themselves in this situation) could be forgiven for thinking that this project’s glitches were more or less over. Unfortunately, physics had other plans.

Air — particularly moist air — expands when it is heated and shrinks when it cools. Home canners use this fact to hermetically seal jars of compote and … stuff. Apparently, the same effect occurs when you shake an icy alcohol solution in a wide-mouthed jar for 11 minutes. It took a rubber jar-gripper and a lot of swearing to open the Bullfrog jar.

Pouring the contents into a tall glass was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy in contrast.

So, is the Connecticut Bullfrog worth all the effort? Is it actually any good?

Almost disappointingly: yeah, it is. I really wanted to sneer at a cocktail designed to be drunk by investment analysts named Scooter and Bunny, but this is one of the most refreshing drinks I’ve had in a long time. The combination of gin and dark rum — I went with Myers’s — gives an almost whiskey-like background flavor, which plays well with the acid of the lemon juice. There isn’t enough maple syrup to make this too sweet, but enough that there is some body and depth.

I do feel that more experimentation is called for — specifically, subbing out juice and syrup for other, less 1 percent-y ingredients –— and, as a friend observed to me, given the sheer amount of shaking required by this recipe, the drink really ought to be called the Kinetic Bullfrog.

Featured photo: Connecticut Bullfrog. Photo by John Fladd.

Tart and refreshing for your taste buds

Whoa, it’s mid-August. When did that happen?

That can only mean one thing: Pumpkin-flavored beer is right around the corner.

Honestly, I’m kidding. It’s not right around the corner. It’s already on the shelves.

But let’s forget about pumpkin beer for a moment, shall we?

We’re still very much in the thick of summer. The temperature supports me. You still have time to get to the beach or the pool. It’s hot and it’s humid and there’s no reason to turn the page to fall. Pumpkin can wait.

I’ve found myself drinking a lot of session IPAs and a lot of Pilsners over the past month or so and decided I needed to shake things up. When it comes to beer, nothing shakes up your taste buds quite like a sour brew. And within the sour realm, nothing screams summer quite like a gose: tart, salty and refreshing.

A style the German Beer Institute says is about 1,000 years old, it is perhaps most defined by its saltiness. Food & Wine wrote in a 2016 article the brew’s name stems from the river Gose in Germany and that the beer’s original saltiness was probably a product of “mineral-rich aquifers” in the town of Goslar, where the brew originated. Today, though, brewers just, you know, add salt.

That characteristic tartness and salinity of a gose just wakes you up and kind of whacks you around — sometimes you need that, especially when it’s still blistering hot out.

In terms of summertime sours, it’s awfully difficult to beat Dogfish Head’s SeaQuench Ale, which is a session sour. The combination of bright and tart lime and sea salt just refreshes right to the bone and leaves you begging for another sip (or can). Paste Magazine refers to it as tasting “like a margarita without all the sugar and it makes me want to go straight to the beach.”

That is just a winning description and the beer really epitomizes what I’m looking for from a sour during the summer months: bright, tart, refreshing, flavorful and unique. Also, the gose style is typically brewed with a very low ABV, allowing you to enjoy a few without getting bogged down.

Here are a few gose brews to bring with you as you savor the remaining beach days.

Margarita Gose by Great Rhythm Brewing Co. (Portsmouth)

Apparently I have a thing for that lime-sea salt combination. This one also blends in orange flavor in an extremely light, very, very drinkable package. A perfect summer brew.

Poppy’s Moonship on Blackberries by Schilling Beer Co. (Littleton)

This is just an exciting brew. The pour is a bright red, and the blackberries add extra layers of richness and tartness. Despite the added richness, this is very sessionable.

Love is Love Gose by Great North Aleworks (Manchester)

There’s that lime-salt combination again. This “slightly tart” wheat beer is brewed with sea salt, coriander and lime. The brew screams refreshing. The super low ABV makes it OK to have a couple.

Sour Lime Ale by Portsmouth Brewery (Portsmouth)

This is another gose that relies on lime juice — and zest — to produce a thirst-quenching and tart brew. At just 3 percent ABV, well, I’m not going to tell you how many you can have.

E09 Blueberry Lemon Gose by 603 Brewery (Londonderry)

As much as I love the flavor of lime in a gose, the blueberry-lemon combination here works really well. This is a fun brew that will delight your palate.

What’s in My Fridge

Lemongrass Lager by Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers (Framingham, Mass.)
I had one of these after a particularly frustrating round of grass cutting on a hot day, and yeah, this was a winner. With fresh lemony flavor, this just slides right down your throat so easily, it’s a little scary. Great summer beer; great anytime beer. Cheers!

Featured photo: Summer in a can. SeaQuench Ale by Dogfish Head Brewery. Courtesy photo.