Yesterday we visited with several Pinot producers at Pinot Days in San Francisco,
www.pinotdays.com and tasted a few of their wines. (Podcast(s) soon!) Today I’ll fill you in on their food-pairing suggestions—and we’ll also tie up a few loose ends from earlier posts.
Let’s start with the pink stuff! Quite a few of the winemakers at Pinot Days also produce a rosé of Pinot Noir, and we all agree that it’s one of the most food-friendly wines on the planet. Milla Handley (founder/proprietor of Handley Cellars in Mendocino County and a frequent guest on CPN,
www.handleycellars.com) enjoys hers with everything from roast chicken to Asian food (“not too spicy!”) to pork to “just plain sipping with cheeses.” In the South of France, she noted about a recent trip, they drink their rosé with everything, including lamb. Her astute summary of Pinot rosé: “It’s the essence of Pinot without all the oak… you’re getting the fresh-fruit flavors of Pinot Noir, and it’s really versatile with a lot of things.”
Ramona Nicholson of Nicholson Ranch
www.nicholsonranch.com also makes a wonderful Pinot rosé—“delicious, refreshing, and dry,” and she too finds it tremendously versatile. With her husband Deepak, Ramona recently hosted a winemaker dinner featuring Indian food, and she singled out their pairing of tandoori chicken with the Pinot rosé. Although the wine isn’t actually sweet, it’s fruity enough to balance off the spice—“almost like chutney in a glass!”
While I was in between Pinot-tasting tables, I ran into Ty Mahler, the executive chef at Roy’s in San Francisco.
www.roysrestaurant.com We agreed that Pinot Noir is an excellent red-wine candidate for the Asian, East-West and “Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine” specialties that are the hallmark of the Roy’s “restaurant family.” Chef Ty made my mouth water as he described an innovative seafood entrée on his current “specials” menu, with a Bing cherry, goat cheese and Pinot sauce. Pinot is one of his favorite wines too; like me, he loves it with fish as well as meat, and we shared stories while we waited to taste at the next table.
There, Craig Haserot of Sojourn Cellars
www.sojourncellars.com described an “Asian spice” component in his Sonoma Coast Pinot. (Craig, like Milla Handley, is a CPN regular: see Chef Mark’s videocasts from Pinot Days New York, as well as several of my upcoming Welcome to Wine Country podcasts.) When I mentioned that I love to pair Pinot with Chinese take-out roast duck, he grinned. “Duck, as most of my friends know, is one of my favorite foods,” he said, agreeing that the Asian spice on the Chinese-style duck and the Asian spice “that’s (also) aromatically present in the Sonoma Coast (Pinot)” make a truly great match.
Now for the “loose ends.” First, about the food-pairing ideas from the SF International Wine Competition:
www.sfwinecomp.com In random conversations, several fellow judges and I kicked around some thoughts about what would taste good with the wines we were tasting. (At this point, you may recall, all we knew about any given wine was its varietal/vintage.) Rosemary lamb for the slightly herbaceous Cabernet. Meaty braised shanks in spiced tomato sauce for the brawny Petite Sirah. Duck with berry sauce for that jammy Zin. Steak with mushrooms for the black-peppery Pinot. (Guess we were hungry…)
The second loose end is Prosecco.
www.prosecco.it But instead of looking at food pairings for it now, why don’t we save ‘em for next Friday, the eve of Bastille Day—an ideal time to talk about bubbles. I’ll fill you in on some great matches for Champagne and other sparklers, including the tasty Prosecco that we’ve been enjoying together this past week. Meanwhile, as always,
Cheers,
Rosina
gilded fork,
wine,
wine writing,
Welcome to Wine Country,
Rosina Tinari Wilson
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