Daily Archives: July 16, 2010
Four Gates Shabbos, Willm Riesling, and Tal Ronen’s fantastic vegan paella
On June 4th, 2010 we found ourselves being driven to Benyo’s Four Gates Winery for shabbos by friends of ours. I brought a bottle of wine with me, and we did have it for Shabbos day, but before that we went through a bunch of wines that are either not yet for sale, or ones that should have been sold long ago. Before shabbos started Benyo went into his cellar and looked for bottles that he was unsure about, and it was great trying them all, but no wine notes available – sorry.
Benyo was super gracious as always, and made tons of food and served tons of wine and it was really a nice enjoyable shabbos. I did bring a bottle of white wine with me – a bottle of 2008 Willm Riesling. Willm is a winery in the famous Alsace area of France. Alsace wine is famous for its oily, petrol, and perfumed wines, and there have been few of them that are kosher out there. I have had Abarbanel Alsace wines and none of the Herzog Alsace wines. The Willm wines, and there are many of them, are nice, so I recommend trying them out. The wine note follows below.
After Shabbos our friends drove us back and we were faced with a not so usual problem, we had nothing to eat for the week. You see, we make a large amount of food for shabbos, and normally eat it for supper the rest of the week, or most of it anyway. However, because we spent a lovely shabbos at Benyo’s we had no leftovers. So I used it as an opportunity to finally make a recipe from Tal Ronen’s awesome cookbook – The Conscious Cook. All of his recipes are long and complicated, but the flavors are fantastic! The recipe we chose is called “paella with ‘sausage’, nori-dusted oyster mushrooms, and wine braised artichoke hearts. The recipe requires many pans, lots of time, and crazy amount of prep work. But in the end, the flavors and texture were so good, maybe some of the best stuff I ever made, and my wife loved the stuff as well. Two notes about the book, the book is a cookbook for vegan minded folks, and so one would think it is 100% kosher. Unfortunately not, besides the wines that he recommends that are not kosher, the gardein product, take on ”garden proteins”, is not kosher. Also, the vegetables and salad he uses are kosher of course, but please be very careful to check them all well for bugs. That is a reason why we skipped many of the wonderful recipes, because besides the crazy amount of work for each recipe, we were not ready to clean the ruffage as well 
Lentil Rice Pilaf, Lemon & Pepper Roasted Chicken, and Borgo Reale Chianti Classico Vespertino
On the week of 5/28/2010 we were again staying low, after having had a previously hectic week. So when lying low, we always go for lemon roasted chicken and rice. However, like I stated in my previous post, I had bought some pilaf mixture at a spice store in the famous Jerusalem shuk of Mahane Yehuda. The mixture (from what I can tell) was made up of olive oil, raw lentils, dehydrated raw onions, and a couple of spices. The spices were not initially obvious, but the ones I could pick out were curry, cumin, paprika, and maybe cloves or ginger, though I could not be sure.
This time I poured the rest of what I had (a cup or two) of the pilaf mixture and two cups of brown rice into a pan. I let the lentils and rice soak up the oil that was in the pan, and then hit it with a cup of white wine, and three cups of water. The rice came out nicely, and we had a fresh green salad to go along with it.
I was in the mood of a red wine, so we went with the Borgo Reale Chianti. I must say that when looking for kosher Italian wines there are really only two options; Borgo Reale and Cantina Gabriella. They are both fine wine procurers and are almost always have a high QPR (Quality to Price Ratio). The wine was a bit weird I must say out of the bottle, but with time it got better. I would recommend opening the bottle and trying it, and then making sure to have drunk enough to lower the level below the shoulder (wide part of the bottle), let it air for a few hours or more and try it again.
The wine note follows below:
Whisky Braised Ribs, Lemon/Red Pepper Roasted Chicken, and Four Gates Wine
On May 21st, I found myself driving back from Four Gates Winery, where I crashed a wine tasting of Alice Feiring and Benyamin Cantz, and came away with a couple of bottles of wine to boot! My wife made her usual Lemon & Red pepper roasted chicken, and we had leftover ribs from Shavuot. We made some fresh green salad and Quinoa, to go along with the meat.
To pair with the meat, I had used the two wines that Benyo so gratuitously let me have; a 1996 non-sulfite Chardonnay and an N.V. Pinot Noir. The Pinot Noir tastes consistent with the last time I tasted it.
The wine notes follow below:
N.V. Four Gates Pinot Noir, Santa Cruz CA – Score: A-
The nose on this ruby colored wine, with a hint of orange, is rich with oak, raspberry, Kirsch cherry, coffee, and a hint of plum. The mouth on this medium bodied wine rounds out nicely, after an hour of air, and the tannins are nicely integrated, giving the wine a full velvety mouth. The mouth is also concentrated with a lovely tart cherry, raspberry, and oak. The mid palate is balanced with nice acidity, integrated tannins, oak, and coffee. The finish is super long with tart Kirsch cherry, along with acidity, oak, coffee, and lovely tannins. A rounded flavor of oak and tart Kirsch cherry lingers on the palate long after the wine is gone.
1996 Four Gates Chardonnay – Score: B+ to A- (not for sale but great wine all the same)
The nose on this cloudy gold colored wine was hopping with bright summer fruit, melon, lemon, sweet oak, and crazy amounts of butterscotch. The butterscotch was so powerful – I thought someone had opened a box of butterscotch candies. The mouth on this full bodied wine is hopping with oak, lemon, butterscotch, and melon. The wine is concentrated with these flavors and fresh. The mid palate flows nicely from the mouth with more oak and lemon. The finish is super long and lovely with oak, lemon, and butterscotch. A wonderful wine that is special and different and one that only comes with time in the cellar and good structure.
Wine Tasting Crasher – Alice Feiring style at Four Gates Winery
On May 21st, the day after Shavuot, I found myself driving the winding hills of Highway 17, that lead me to the even more bewildering roads of the Santa Cruz Mountains, to go see Benyamin Cantz and Alice Feiring at the Four Gates Winery. Alice was in the area, and called up Benyamin to ask if he was up to a visit by herself and her colleague, Jose Pastor, Benyamin said sure, and so the game was afoot. I of course also asked Benyamin if I could attend, and he graciously allowed me entrance – but ONLY if I would be at my very best behavior. I have had a deep interest in meeting this women, after reading her book; The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization. Here is a women with a great palate, wine lover, Jewish, and a person with a keen understanding of the madness of living the “frum” life, as is visible from her blog, and the three-part article on Benyamin and Four Gates Winery (yes that is me in the third installment).
I arrived at Benyamin’s house, where the wine tasting was taking place, just after the 2006 Four Gates Cabernet Franc was opened, which Alice seemed to like. Benyamin had already shown Alice and Jose the grounds, vineyard, and winery, and was now sitting them down for some wine tasting and up close and personal examples of life on the farm (read the blog post). I started to talk with Alice and Jose about her book, blog, and Parker – the single palate for the world. I have slammed the single palate a couple of times here and here, and other places on Rogov’s forum. After that, Benyamin opened a bottle of N.V. Four Gates Cabernet Franc (1999/2000), it was soft, full in the mouth, with bright acidity, bing cherries, oak, raspberry, with a hint of chocolate. A nice bottle for being 10+ years old, I would have loved to hear what Alice and Jose thought of that one. My notes from a year ago, when we did a Four Gates Vertical of his Cabernet Franc wines – can be found here. While we were enjoying the wine, I kept asking questions, yes that is what I do. I asked Alice where her fascination for natural wine comes from? She was honest and clear, that she has no interest in changing my drinking habits, but she does want people to know what is out there, and make them realize what they are missing. I asked that the hallowed DRC uses oak, why is that OK? I also stated that I understand that coffee and vanilla and the such are not a natural part of the wine, but can we really say that they do not add to the wine experience? Her answer was fair, in that oak is not offensive, but it is when it is overused like so many do, or when it defines the wine, rather than helping round the wine, or allowing the wine to show its better characteristics.
Benyamin then opened his N.V. Pinot Noir, which was tasting exactly as my last notes here show. Alice commented on the N.V. label, which Benyamin went on to explain was nothing more than the a great example of “the whole being greater than the sum of its parts”. They then went into wine and winery talk for a bit, which was fine, as I was feeling like I was a bit too talkative, and I was after all crashing the wine tasting. It was at this point that Benyamin remembered having made a basically natural wine, or as natural a wine as he could make, other than his one and only natural wine that he made (or God made), which was used under a wedding canopy (story in Alice’s blog). The wine was a 1996 un-sulfited Chardonnay (yep 14 or so years old)!!! Are you kidding me! The wine was OFF the charts! It was packed with lemon, oak, butterscotch, some melon, and yep some more oak. That said, the wine was super full in the mouth, still ripe and alive, and so crazy fresh, that I begged for the left overs to take home, which Benyamin was VERY kind to give up. Finally, Benyamin opened a yet to be released red wine blend, that tasted much like I tasted it the last time, but it needs a bit of time to reach its true potential. I think Benyamin is almost ready to release it, though when, is beyond my knowledge.
After having met Alice and seen her in action, I can see why she so deeply wishes for natural wine to be more prevalent in the market place. She is a woman endowed with a keen palate, and a great understanding of viticulture and its abilities to influence wine making. She must be screaming from the top of her lungs – “can you not see what you are missing”? It is a cruel double edged sword to have such a gift and wonder why the rest of the world is so blind to the reality of wine in its natural state. Clearly there are times when we all can see how the viticulturist has purposely modified the fruit to meet the needs of the post-Parker world. There is a story in her book where a wine maker described how he made his wine. He started with grape must, added in tannins from nuts, oak, and G-D only knows what else and then let the concoction ferment and age, and then slowly, filtered out what he did not like until he had a true Parker styled wine. That is not wine making that akin to beer making. That is using science to be 100% accurate in the reproduction of a wine target, no matter the grape state – which is what beer making is except with different ingredients. When Joe the Plumber wants to kick back and pop open a cold one, he expects that beer to taste just like it did yesterday, or the day before, or the week before, or the year before – simply stated 100% reproducible, no matter the state of the grain, hops, or water.
But that happens only when I taste an over the top Cabernet that is coated in oak and fat with plump fruit that is so ripe, it almost tastes oxidized. Yes, that is egregious, and unacceptable. However, many other wines taste fine to me, some taste awesome to me, and they are not natural. I guess I will leave it with the fact that I was humbled in her ability to appreciate and understand the true nature of the grape, vine, and wine, and that maybe one day, I will be able to get to the point of seeing what I am missing.
I want to thank Alice for letting me crash her wine tasting, and Benyamin for letting me enjoy more of his wonderful wine, hospitality, and down home cooking (that too is in Alice’s third part of the article).
