Spookify Your Saturday… Oct. 28, 2023
I had more fun at the store this past Saturday than I ever have before… I also sold more bottles of wine than the managers had seen a sampler do in a long time!
We featured three very popular red wines, and one very divisive white wine. No matter the opinions of the wines, all four cheeses were a smash! Let’s dive into the shop’s selections, and I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.
2020 Jacob Heims Old Vine Riesling Kabinett – Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany | Paired with Port Washed Mini Harbison (Jasper Hill Farm, Greensboro, Vermont)
Graham Norton He-Devil Malbec - Mendoza, Argentina | Paired with Taleggio DOP (various producers, Lombardy, Italy)
2020 Bodegas Alceno Romeo Seleccion - Jumilla, Spain | Paired with Piave Reserva (Sapore del Piave, Oderzo, Italy)
2020 Windstorm Old Vine Zinfandel - Lodi, California | Paired with 3-year Canadian Cheddar (Old Quebec Vintage Cheddar, Quebec, Canada)
The first wine we sampled was Jacob Heims Old Vine Riesling Kabinett from Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, a wine growing region in Germany in the valleys of a few different rivers, most well known for its Riesling varietal. This Riesling was exceptionally sweet, and as someone who does not enjoy sweet wines, I didn’t care for it all that much. However it’s absolutely worth noting that I could appreciate how concentrated, balanced, and well done the notes all played together. Both my customers and I could tell that it was a high-quality wine, though unfortunately we didn’t have many sweet wine drinkers in the house! Here’s a tip for those among us who may not love sweet wine: try pairing it with sushi or Indian food, something with a lot of spice that all the sweetness will help cut through, without overpowering or contradicting. With notes of juicy white peach and even some tropical fruit hints, this sweet Riesling paired surprisingly well with the limited edition Port Washed Harbison mini that’s currently out from Jasper Hill, which is washed with Sandeman Port. This is a very special release in the cheese world, since regular Harbison has such a cult following in the cheese world. With all editions of Harbison wrapped in spruce tree bark and offering an ooey-gooey interior that you can literally dunk pieces of bread into (without baking it first!), Harbison is especially a holiday favorite. The Port Washed Harbison was a bit firmer as far as I could tell, though that could have very well been because my shop had gotten the shipment in recently and the wheels hadn’t been at their peak yet. Regular Harbison does have a bit too strong of a profile for my liking, but Port Washed Harbison was right up my alley! The port really gave it a fruity note that isn’t present in classic Harbison, and it had a sweeter finish than the classic. I really enjoyed it, and will definitely pick one up for Thanksgiving!
Next we sampled Graham Norton He-Devil Malbec, which is one of a few wines under the talk show host’s label. If you’re unfamiliar with Graham Norton, he has a very successful talk show in the UK with very famous guests, and during all the conversations, every guest has in front of them a…wait for it…glass of wine! This particular wine of his was gorgeous with dark plum and black currant notes, with a hint of baking spice. The tannins weren’t aggressive in the slightest, and in fact were very mellow on my palette. What’s interesting is that although the tannins were light, the finish lingered for quite a while, which isn’t something I come across very often. For me, the rule of thumb is that the softer the tannins, the quicker the finish. So if anything, I thought He-Devil was unique from that perspective. The light mouthfeel and lingering finish did spectacular things for the cheese pairing, Taleggio DOP. This cheese was presenting particularly well on Saturday, and it was truly at the height of ripeness. It was classically pasty and chewy, and beautifully runny in a way that younger Taleggios are not. There was the expected funk, but the age had taken a bit of the edge off and it was true perfection. I thought I detected a note of toasted nut on the finish, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.
Second-to-last, we tasted the 2020 Bodegas Alceno Romeo Seleccion, a blend of Monastrell, Syrah and Tempranillo from Spain. This wine had a 93 point rating from James Suckling, an authority in wine ratings, which I was a bit surprised by because blends tend typically not to make the cut. But after experiencing this wine for myself, I understood very clearly. This wine is fruit forward but still dry, with the most prominent note being black cherry. It also gave some nice hints of spicy clove and vanilla. My shop sells this wine for $12.99, which I think is a spectacular value. It’s full bodied enough to drink with a snack pairing or a full meal, but still light enough to drink on its own with no food at all. It was my favorite wine at the sampling bar for the day, and I did indeed take a bottle home with me! We paired this wine with 3-year Canadian cheddar, which was mellow, sweet, fruity, (or maybe that was just the wine!) and not very acidic for a cheddar of that age. This cheese finds its way to my New Jersey shop from the Saint Lawrence River Valley in Quebec, where cows graze on picturesque grasslands and produce some of the highest grade milk for production. This cheddar was creamy and mild, yet still sophisticated and definitely went well with the fruit-forward wine. In terms of food pairings for this particular cheddar, I’d go with a multigrain flax Firehook cracker, some apple cider jam or even a small smear of red pepper jelly.
Fourth and finally, we sampled out 2020 Windstorm Old Vine Zinfandel, from Lodi, California. This wine gave dark fruit, and a bit of a woods-y, forest-y vibe. This Zinfandel was actually very surprising, as I’ve come to know one of the hallmark traits of Zinfandel wines being a black pepper-type of spiciness on both the nose and in the finish. However this Zin gave very little black pepper, so little that I never would have thought it was a Zin! Only one of two of the nearly one hundred customers I’d poured it for this day said that they could have identified it as a Zinfandel, which I thought was very interesting. As far as Zinfandel goes, the alcohol content can reach anywhere up into the 16’s for the percentage. But Windstorm here was only (only!) 15%. The unlikely wine was matched with a Sapore del Piave, also known as Piave Reserva. Piave Reserva is a grainy cheese, with very little moisture. Out of all the 150+ cheeses we carry in the store, it’s the second-hardest cheese, coming in second only to Mimolette. I prefer to enjoy Piave or Piave Reserva grated over pasta, but it also is indeed yummy to snack on, especially with a full-bodied, big wine. Though the nuanced flavors of a cheese become more concentrated as it ages (which happens as the moisture ages out, very similar to when you cook down a sauce and you’re left with less water content and more flavor) this cheese definitely isn’t overwhelming, and can absolutely be snacked on by itself. It paired well with our Zinfandel because neither overwhelms the other, and both give a classic big taste.
