A dessert wine from Champagne! By Champagne I’m referring to the region in France famous for its sparkling wines, not any sparkling wine, as the term is often incorrectly used. As it turns out Champagne doesn’t just produce sparklers, they make a very interesting aperitif/dessert wine called Ratafia de Champagne. To make it, the winemakers make a sort of brandy from champagne grapes (mainly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir). They then blend it with unfermented chardonnay and pinot noir juice and then age it in oak casks for two years. The result is a semi-sweet, almost sherry-like wine. It comes with a champagne cork, but isn’t carbonated at all.

The wine itself is not necessarily rare – many champagne producers make one. What is rare is seeing any in the United States. To find this you usually have to travel to Champagne or perhaps a boutique wine shop in Paris. If your father is a wine lover this would make a great gift – he’s probably never had one before. I wish I had a picture to show you, but if you want to see if come into either kybecca store and ask to see the Fourny Ratafia de Champagne (or if you can’t remember that, just ask to see the Champagne dessert wine).

Yesterday I had the honor of being one of the judges for the 2008 Virginia State Fair wine competition. The fair isn’t until late September but the competition is held well in advance and then the gold medal winners are featured at the fair. There were 196 entries this year, of which I tasted about half. That’s a lot of wine to taste in one day (we spit the wine out, in case you’re wondering). I learned some interesting things from tasting all these wines. The most important thing was that Virginia wine has come a long way, and some of the best is good enough to stand up to good California or French wines. I also learned that there are still a lot of wineries making mediocre to awful wines, and that the industry still has a long way to go. We gave scores to each wine we tasted, and the senior judge advised us at the beginning that a score below a certain level meant that we thought the wine should never have been bottled. I gave scores below that threshold to probably about 1/6 of the wines, which is a lot but I had to be honest because they also advised us not to give preference to the wines because they are from Virginia. Here are a few specific observations I made:

– Why do so many Virginia winemakers insist on making a Seyval Blanc? Only a tiny handful are very good, and the best one that I tasted in the competition was only passable.

– The Merlots were surprisingly good

– The Cabernet Sauvignons were surprisingly mediocre

– In the next few years, look for more Virginia wineries producing Traminette, a Gewurtraminer hybrid that has a nice apricot-like flavor and tastes very good when slightly sweet. I tasted several and they were quite good.

– Virginia whites are, on the whole, superior to Virginia reds. I was around when somebody once asked a respected Virginia winemaker why that was, and his reply was that with whites you can make one or two mistakes and your wine will still come out okay. With reds if you make even one mistake your wine can be ruined.

I’ll let you all know which wines were the gold medal winners once that information has been made public

For those of you who may not know, the salami we have chosen to use on our wine bar charcuterie plate and sell in our retail case is one of the best available on the market. Fra Mani means “made by hand” and it is made by renowned chef Paul Bertoli.

We have had a couple of people take home these delicious products and then express concern because they unwrapped their purchase and it was covered in white mold…..not realizing that this mold is actually a part of the curing/aging process, being beneficial to the salumi.

“Bertolli produces his salami by first carefully grinding the pork. He then adds simple spices and seasonings, such as sea salt, black pepper, garlic, and red wine. Next, Bertolli packs the meat mixture as tightly as possible into all-natural hog casings—fastidiously washed portions of pig intestine that often have to be imported from Italy. Finally, Bertolli ties off each salami with natural twine and begins the months-long process of mold ripening (fermenting) and drying.”

Bertolli cures his salami naturally without adding nitrites.

Salami are cured in warm, humid conditions in order to encourage growth of the bacteria involved in the fermentation process. Sugar is added as a food source for the bacteria during the curing process. Lactic acid is produced by the bacteria as a waste product, lowering the pH and coagulating and drying the meat. The acid produced by the bacteria makes the meat an inhospitable environment for other, dangerous bacteria and imparts the tangy flavor that separates salami from machine-dried pork. The flavor of a salami relies just as much on how this bacteria is cultivated as it does on quality and variety of other ingredients. Originally, the bacteria were introduced into the meat mixture with wine, which contains other types of beneficial bacteria..

The curing process is determined by the climate of the curing environment and the size and style of casing. After fermentation, the sausage has to be dried. This changes the casings from being water-permeable to being reasonably airtight. A white covering of either mold or flour helps prevent the photo-oxidation of the meat and rancidity in the fat.

When you are ready to eat…brush off the mold, let it sit at room temp for about 30 minutes, slice and enjoy. Buonissimo!

My young daughters almost like broccoli. We’ve done the slow, patient approach – try it every time it shows up at dinner, and now it’s a familiar, if not requested, vegetable. Other than sugar-loaded snacks, just about everything a child eats is an acquired taste, isn’t it?

Look up “acquired taste” on Wiki. The page includes a crazy list ranging from things we love — wine, dark chocolate, coffee, seafood — to the exotic — insects, prairie oysters (bull or deer testicles), feet (cow, pig, duck, camel). Camel’s feet might be one of those “when in Rome,” situational ethics kind of foods.

What intrigues me is why adults would refuse to attempt a new food or beverage. My father is a meat and potatoes man. If it’s off the beaten path in even a Paula Deen cookbook, he balks. And I often hear “I don’t like white/red/sweet/beer” from both inexperienced drinkers and connoisseurs. Sometimes we limit ourselves to our favorite things out of a reluctance to spend $10 or more on an unknown bottle, or because we don’t want to experiment at a dinner party. Those are reasonable concerns, although new wines or beers make for a fun dinner party theme. Just remember how great it feels to take a chance and discover something new.

Baby steps, if you like. Next time you’re in kybecca, tell us what you love — perhaps it’s zinfandel. Request something similar, but new — a Spanish monastrell has the big fruit of a zin with a little warm spice on the finish. Try a new grape, a new wine region, a new beer every week.

Really — how can you go wrong?

We just received a shipment of some very cool glassware for beer. Below you can see pictures of a few of them next to a dollar bill for scale. Highlights include Dogfish Head 12 oz glasses, Lots of Belgians including Gouden Carolus, Delirium Tremens, and Kasteel, plus Schneider Weiss, Schneider Aventinus, and Eggenberg Pilsner glasses. I have one of each, it’s getting to the point where I don’t even need regular glassware at my apartment anymore. The other day I drank a glass of milk out of a Delirium Tremens glass. Yes, I know that’s weird but it was either that or wash a regular glass, and I am extremely lazy when it comes to washing dishes. Anyway, I digress. Here are some photos:

Or rather an existing pub will become a brew pub. From this month’s Front Porch Magazine I learn through Lyle Brown’s beer column that he and his son Kevin will be brewing beer for The Pub, which is located just across the street from the kybecca on Plank Road, in the same shopping center as Bloom Supermarket. I know Lyle and I can tell you I’m pretty sure I don’t know anybody who knows as much about beer as he does, so I’m willing to bet this is going to be some tasty beer. This area needs a brew pub too. Contrary to how it’s often talked about and reported, Capital Ale House is not a brew pub, they sell other people’s beer.

While we’re on the subject of Lyle and beer, some of you may be interested to learn that Lyle heads a group called the Fredericksburg Area Brewing and Tasting Society, which meets at the Plank Road kybecca once per month. Basically, the group tastes a series of beers under some sort of theme (this month’s theme is Summer Beer), and some members bring beer they brewed at home to try. If you are interested, their website is www.fabts.org where you can get more information.

The answer in my opinion is a Beaujolais. This is not to be confused with Beaujolais Nouveau, the wine released every November that’s known for being light and fruit. Year-round Beaujolais is the wine world’s best open secret. Most reds that we drink, such as Cabernets or Syrahs, or actually too heavy and rich for most foods we eat. These wines go better with steaks or equally rich foods. For everyday foods like pasta or chicken, a Beaujolais is perfect. It’s light to medium bodied, moderate to low tannins, fruit forward without being too much, and just enough acidity. It pairs with just about everything. Whenever somebody presents me with a tough pairing question I always go to the Beaujolais and it’s never let me down. Best of all, they are not very expensive. We carry my favorite Beaujolais, Chateau du Basty, which sells for $16.99 (and that’s considered a higher-end Beaujolais).

Beaujolais is a region in France, itself part of the Burgundy region. The grape used to make the wine is called Gamay, and is somewhat similar to Pinot Noir in its characteristics. If you are looking for something new to try, it would be hard to do better.

From the Free Lance-Star:“In a nearly hour-long interview in his campaign consultant’s Richmond office last week, Gilmore talked about social issues only when asked, saying that he has “shown a record of being concerned” about pro-life and pro-…

A couple of years ago I took a trip to Wales and decided to sample beer from the famous Brains Brewing Company, the unofficial national beer of Wales. But I realized I had a problem. I thought for certain the word Brains was not pronounced like I thought it was. You see, for those of you who haven’t been to the UK, many things, especially place names, are not pronounced at all like they are spelled and you have to hear somebody say it first. Common examples are Gloucester (glaw-ster), Nottingham (drop the ‘h’), Thames (tems, rhymes with gems or stems), Leicester (lester), and Edinburgh (impossible to explain in writing). I’d been burned many times before this Wales trip, so I was wary. It’s not worth the embarrassment of having everybody think you’re a dumb American tourist to risk pronouncing incorrectly (if you think I was being too sensitive, try spending a lot of time with British people as the only American). Not only that, but Welsh is even trickier because sometimes their words look like English words but are something else entirely. Anyway, I went a full day with no Brains because of this. By this point I had convinced myself that the traditional pronunciation could not possibly be correct, not only because it was too obvious but because what kind of a brewery calls itself Brains? I thought it had to be a Welsh word. Finally, on day two, I got to overhear a local ordering one. He pronounced it exactly as you would think, just like the internal organ. Well, at least I got to try it.

So is it any good? It’s okay. Their specialty beers are better than their plain ales. But who am I to argue with Welsh national pride?

There are three types of wine drinkers: those who only drink dry wine, those who only drink sweet wine, and those who drink both depending on the circumstance. I am in the third camp, and I think the first two camps are misguided.

The first camp, those who only drink dry wine, usually do so for a couple of reasons. One, there is a common misconception that sweet wine is inferior wine, not suitable for serious wine drinkers. Two, there is so much bad sweet wine on the market, these people have tasted a few that were horrible and concluded that sweet wine is bad. What I would say is that good sweet wine, such as some German Rieslings or Alsace Gewurztraminers, would not have the same flavor profile if they were not sweet. In other words, it’s not just a regular wine made sweet, the sweetness is integral to the wine, and if you removed it you would lose a lot more than just the sugar. As for reason number 2, here’s a good way to tell if wine is good sweet (and naturally sweet): check the alcohol content. It should be lower than dryer wines, for the most part. Remember that it’s the sugar in the grapes that has been converted to alcohol, so more sugar should mean less alcohol. Otherwise the wine has probably been sweetened with sugar or grape extract, and will likely taste bad.

Occasionally, but rarely, I have people tell me that they don’t like sweet. I just plumb don’t believe that. Unless you don’t like the taste of sugar, don’t drink sodas, and don’t drink cocktails, there is no reason to say that it’s the sweetness in the wine that turns you off. Also, remember this: the sweetness you taste in the wine (assuming it’s natural), comes from the grape. And the grape, in its unpressed form, is even sweeter than the wine! How often would you complain about a fruit being too sweet?

To those who only drink sweet wine, I would say this: try having wine with food. Dryer wines tend to be more food-friendly, and it’s only by pairing wine with food that you can develop a true appreciation for it. If you only drink wine by itself you’re missing out.

So, to the sweet wine skeptics: try a single vineyard German Riesling Spatlese, keep an open mind, and you may be surprised.