Hungarian Princess Wine

Wine lovers know Hungary as the source of Tokají, the legendary sweet wine made from botrytized grapes. But the country makes dry wines as well. After all, Hungarians have to drink something before they get to dessert! We just got a new dry Hungarian white in the store... now take a deep breath and say it with me: 2007 Matyás & Zoltán Szöke Mátrai Királyleányka. No, I don't speak Hungarian either, but as far as I can tell:

• Matyás & Zoltán Szöke are the father and son who make the wine, and Szöke is their surname.
• Mátrai (or Mátra on the front label, or Mátraalja on the wine maps), is the region in northern Hungary.
• Királyleányka (Kee-rye-lay-ohn-kha) is the grape variety - probably a cross between Kövérszolo and Leánykaname according to http://www.chew.hu/kiralyleanyka.html, in case you were curious. Kati, our wine rep from Blue Danube, says that the name means "princess" in Hungarian.

So I'm just calling it Szöke's Hungarian Princess wine for now. It's mineral and floral rather than fruity, with some body and a nice, dry finish. It works as an aperitif, it worked last night with a motley dinner of gouda, tomato bruschetta, and a green salad. And it's way cheap for the quality of the wine: $11.99. Remember: You don't have to be able to pronounce it to enjoy it.

Green Food and Green Wine

"If it grows together, it goes together" - this wine pairing maxim expresses the empirical observation that the wines grown in a region often go well with the foodstuffs grown there and the local preparations of those products (given sufficient generations of local winegrowers, other farmers, and cooks to work things out, of course). The colors of last night's meal gave rise to a a different and more fanciful maxim: "If it glows together, it goes together". In this case, it's true!

Green vegetable flavors like fava and green bean, and especially the more aggressive artichoke and asparagus, are tricky with wine. My top three pairing picks: (1) Ligurian white wines, including vermentino and pigato, (2) Austrian grüner veltliner, and (3) sauvignon blanc, especially from the Loire Valley. Besides the subtle green tint of each of these types of wine, they all includes aromas and flavors that echo those "green" flavors - in a subtle way of course; too much green-ness is obnoxious in wine!

(1) Ligurian white wines: Liguria is the home of basil, pesto, artichokes, and all manner of other greennees. The vineyards clinging to the rugged Ligurian hills are green. The bottles are green. The labels seem to feature green. It all grows and glows together.

(2) Austrian grüner veltliner: It's a little like sauvignon blanc, but to my palate spicier, tangier, more multi-dimensional.

(3) Sauvignon blanc: I'm not particularly fond of the bell pepper - tomato plant - green bean thing that comes from a naturally occurring compound called pyrazine that's present in the sauvignon blanc grape variety and in some green vegetables. For that reason I drink more grüner veltliner and Italian white wine than sauvignon. But that's a preference rather than a pairing warning - a small amount of that assertive greeness in sauvignon is fine by me, as long as it's balanced by stronger mineral and maybe fruit flavors. Many people can tolerate a larger hit of pyrazine, and in any case, it indisputably makes for a good pairing with green vegetables.

And speaking of green, both the vermentino and the favas from last night's dinner were organically grown.

Lovin' Liguria

Liguria is my second favorite Italian region - after Piemonte, of course. Maybe it's the contrast from Piemonte - sea and seafood and vegetables and everything light and lithe. Tonight: Green Risotto with Fava Beans and 2007 Santa Caterina Colli di Luni Vermentino ($18). I've been drinking this wine once a week lately, whether at home or at Adesso wine bar. Ligurian Vermentino is perfect with all kinds of green vegetables, not to mention with fish or simply as an aperitivo. Fair warning: the 2007 vintage is almost gone. I hope that the 2008 arrives soon and is at least three-quarters as good.

This wine comes to us thanks to Ernest Ifkovitz, a former PMW employee who now imports a great portfolio of mostly organic, biodynamic, and sustainable Italian wines under the name PortoVino. Come in and ask us to show you some of the other groovy wines that Ernest has discovered.

Albiker is back

I sang the praises of Bodegas Luberri's Rioja Joven 'Albiker' 2004 in August 2005. When the 2005 vintage landed a couple of months ago, it was a little discombobulated, so we haven't had the wine since then. But we retasted the 2005 today, and it's back in form (wines, like people, often need some time to grow up). This is a positively slurpable red, all fruit and no oak, plenty of acidity, and just plain delicious. It's hard to imagine food that it wouldn't accompany gracefully, and it plays particularly well with spicy dishes (including tonight's spaghetti all'aglio e olio, which I laced with extra pepper flakes).

In August 2005, I asked, "So where the hell does the name 'Albiker' come from?" Our distributor for the wine, Sean Diggins, set me straight. The winemaker' s two sons are named Alberto and Iker, and he came up with Albiker as a name that gives each of them their due. For most Americans, the name probably suggests a guy named Al who rides a Harley. For me, however, the name will continue to call to mind an Arabic member of Hell's Angels ("Al" being the Arabic definite article: "The"). Yes, a little learning is a dangerous thing. But a little Albiker is a wonderful thing, and a lot of it is even better.

Filippo and Ronfranco

My father, Ron, turned 70 this year. He enjoys wine but doesn't share my predeliction for unearthing every conceivable detail about it. He also doesn't exhibit my intense tropism towards travel (although he's enjoyed himself when we've put him on the plane and taken him with us to Spain, Italy, and Portugal). So imagine my surprise when he asked to join my Piemonte harvest trip last month.

A year and a half ago, my father met Filippo Gallino, the producer of our best-selling barbera, when the Gallino family hosted a legendary dinner at their cascina (farmhouse and winery) in the Roero. Filippo subsequently came to California and had lunch at my parents' house in Sonoma. Filippo speaks no English and my father no Italian, but they managed to develop a non-verbal friendship through gestures and the occasional translated letter and e-mail message. As we made plans for the harvest trip, Filippo's family offered to put my father up in the family cascina.

So it was that my father spent 10 days living with the Gallino clan. He harvested arneis, brachetto, and barbera grapes with them, ate lunch in the vineyard, and enjoyed the dinners that Filippo's wife, Maria, cooked. He partook of the holy Roero trinity of wines that appear at almost every meal: Roero Arneis, Barbera d'Alba, and either Nebbiolo d'Alba or Roero (the area's best nebbiolo-based wine, and thus its namesake).

The lack of a common language made for occasional confusion when I wasn't there, but once again, gestures, guesswork, and goodwill overcame most of the misunderstandings. Some of them were humorous, as when he was introduced to Filippo's daughter's husband ("marito" in Italian), Giovanni, and thought for the first few days that his name was Marito. But my father asked questions, wrote down words, and gradually developed a small but functional vocabulary. He was quick to point out that the two most important possessions on the trip were his harvesting shears and his Italian-English phrase book.

"Ron" is not a recognizable name to Italians, and it became evident that "Franco", the Italianized version of my father's middle name "Frank", was easier for them to get their minds around. By the middle of the trip, we had settled on "Ronfranco" as a workable and stylish compromise.

It takes some daring for a 70-year old man to run off to Italy, change his name, and harvest grapes for the first time with a bunch of people whose language he doesn't speak. Come next year, my father will start to be able to drink the wines made from those grapes, as they make their way to the United States and into our store. For now, he - and we - can content ourselves with Filippo Gallino's Barbera d'Alba 2004 ($12.99). It remains my hands-down, budget-barbera favorite. I think Ronfranco would agree.

(Postscript: We recently got back in stock Filippo Gallino's Roero Superiore 2001. It's 100% nebbiolo and a steal at $18.00. )

Greek wine: Beyond Retsina

Today Ryan and I were tasting Greek wines and cheeses in preparation for the PMW / Pasta Shop class on August 24. Anyone who's read Homer or Plato knows that Greece has a millenia-long tradition of winegrowing and enthusiastic wine consumption. Yet its vinous history over the past several centuries has been sad indeed, thanks to domination by the Turks, various other political and economic woes, and the scurge of Retsina. The picture has been changing in recent decades, and we're now seeing excellent Greek wines from quality-minded producers. These are the three wines that we tasted today.

2003 Mercouri Foloï ($17)
Citrus, some night flowers (jasmine?), some spiciness, and a whisp of smoke. High acid and refreshing; very bright finish. It makes a mouth-watering aperitif, but I'd really love to try it with octopus. It went especially well with a wonderful Fetiri (Feta) cheese with wild Greek oregano and fresh mint.

2004 Gerovassiliou Malagousia ($22)
This wine is barrel-fermented and barrel-aged. It's richer, more exotic, with a hint of tropical fruits and that perfumed quality of a judiciously oak-aged wine. There's a smoky, crisp quality in the finish that keeps the wine from feeling heavy or over-ripe. We'll pair it with Manouri, a sheeps' milk cheese.

2002 Gerovassiliou Syrah ($27)
Superb syrah. It's a little less unique than the other two Greek wines here, but no less interesting or satisfying. (I remain convinced that syrah is the international wine grape par excellence; it seems to be capable of making characterful wines just about anywhere.) Reminiscent of Northern Rhône syrah: smoky, earthy, minerally, olive-y. This is a really classy wine. It didn't pair particularly well with any of the Greek cheeses that we tasted, but we're planning to whip up some lamb meatball kebabs for the class. I've had the wine with roast lamb before, and it was a brilliant combination.

Força Portugal!

Last month I spent two weeks in central and southern Portugal with my family. There we encountered, along with the full-bodied, rustic reds and sprightly vinhos verdes that seem to define Portuguese table wines in the United States, a remarkable range of well-made, well-balanced, and delicious wines from a bewildering array of indigenous Portuguese grape varieties. (One of the sobering joys of working in the wine industry is that one always has so much to learn!) We also found lots of older vintages for cheap, in both restaurants and stores. Not all of the wines were good, but many were excellent, a few were superb, and all were great value. And of course, as is true throughout most of Europe, the combination of local wine and local food was almost always immensely satisfying.

I was particularly impressed with some of the white wines that are less known than vinho verde in the U.S. So imagine my delight when I returned to PMW to find a newly arrived $9.99 Portuguese white: Quinta do Alqueve Ribatejo 2005. The region is Ribatejo (northeast of Lisbon). The grape variety is fernão pires (the most widely planted variety in Portugal; no, I don't know that, either!). The taste is fruity and gingery in the mid-palate, with a snappy, racy finish. I love this wine, and everyone I've served it to has remarked on how much they've enjoyed it.

So stretch out and try a table wine from Portugal. They may not have beat France - in wine or in the World Cup - but I'm now convinced that they're worth paying attention to.