EverythingWINE
RSSComfortable Wines for Comfort Food
Is this rain relentless enough? After splashing through it all day, one can’t help but crave bulky comfort food to buffer the wet outside and warm up from the inside. Spaghetti with meat sauce is a classic comfort dish for days like this, with pasta providing the carbs, the meat offering protein. Throw in some salad, good bread and a bottle or two of full-bodied wines, and all can be made well in your world.
Sheltering from the storm, our friend Macy cooked up a delicious meal of fresh pasta with a Bolognese sauce featuring, ground beef and pork, and italian sausage. It was not heavy on tomato paste so I felt like we could go two ways with it. Whites before reds, we started with Tenuta Villanova ’08 Pinot Grigio from the Friuli region of Italy, source of some of best PG’s in the world. This estate does a pretty good job, considering they’ve been producing for only, what, 500 years?
This wine is crisp, but rich, with a nose of ripe citrus, melon, peaches, white grapefruit and flowers. In the mouth, we got pomello and lime with the pitty flavour of stone fruit. Lively acidity on the finish makes it perfect for cleansing the meat’s oil from the palate. Super well balanced and elegant, it stood up to the sauce with style.
On the red side, the No Time ‘08 Garnacha from Navarra, Spain totally complemented the meat and asagio cheese. It’s an almost opaque wine, with the bright purple legs of youthful vigor. On the nose it has deep, ripe black fruit mixed with chocolate, and the taste has the same succulent fruit plus some spice, pepper, and briary woodnotes. Kind of wild tasting, like something from the Languedoc, and it definitely responds to a good breath of air. The film noir-ish label design– reminiscent of Lo Tengo – looks very cool sitting on the table. And being named for a hit song from the Guess Who gives No Time’s long, fruity finish a sweetly sentimental edge.
Feeling a little sideways about American Pinot Noir? Come by Everything Wine on January 20th for a tasting that will feature Burgundian gems from California and Oregon. Vintages Room consultant Chris Sharpe will be leading intrepid enthusiasts on a stateside tour of this "heartbreak grape" which, by the way, is called that as much for making your heart go boom-boom as it is about vineyard fussiness.
Cheers!