Rosemount - Show Reserve

Producer: Rosemount

Name: Show Reserve Varietal: Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvedre Vintage: 2006 Region: McLaren Vale, Australia

So Leibovitz is $25M in debt and she’s got some old photos of Tiger taken a while ago… sounds like perfect timing Annie…

Over the holidays my aunt gave me a few bottles of wine to try. Which is great because she was diagnosed with stage three cervical cancer that moved into her liver and she was not expected to be with us. Fortunately, against the odds, she responded to the treatment and was able to join us for the holidays! Things are looking better each day and she’s on her way to full recovery. Very frickin’ happy!

Anyway, the wine that she gave me was a Rosemount that I haven’t tried before. It has a velvety thick texture and a dark rich purple colour. The bouquet smells of rich cassis, black currants and cherries with an intense brown sugar aroma. The palate tastes of dark fruit and subtle spice and oak with a surprising complexity and good integration of the varietals. Wasn’t expecting this to be decent because there are so many crappy Australian wines out now, but I mean, for the price it’s fairly good.

J

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Twenty-Ten. Food and everything else.

So the New Year has arrived. Happy Happy to you all.

I don’t really do resolutions as it makes me feel worse when I don’t actually achieve any of them. Instead I give my self a big pat on the back when I do anything of any worth, a pat and usually something sweet.

I would like to try and vaguely, maybe get a few things done in the coming year:

I am going to curb my expanding waistline. Of late I have seemed to have stopped doing all those other things that kept me naturally lithe and so will have to either cut down on the intake of large bits of quivering fat  - or just do some exercise.

There will hopefully be some cooking lessons for the Mrs. I constantly get in trouble because I don’t let her cook at home. The kitchen is most definitely my domain. The Mrs is a very capable cook – pre Mr and Mrs Garlic Confit she knocked up an amazing curry and had an Honourable mention on WNC – apparently it is intimidating to cook for me, piffle. It is only a little confidence with a knife that is needed and after that she will be top class.

Talking of WNC there will be a lot more. It has been a bit of a crazy year and both of the Alter Egos took a bit of a pasting. I will keep everything spinning as well as I can.

The only other thing that I really need to get sorted is this site. As I may have said before I am collating older blogs and writing into one place – tryityoumightlikeit.com is now gone and pointing here.

playingwithyourfood.com will still be teaching children around london how to eat and cook, but this year (our 5th) it will hopefully have the long awaited funding. The new branding site and so forth should be up and running by the start of Feb. In the meantime if you want to nominate a school near you or help us out with food supplies/ sponsorship or anything you can think of just drop me a line

So. That is actually a lot of stuff that I am going to try and do. hmm. lets hope for something sweet.

[Via http://mnaahs.wordpress.com]

Wine and Olives in Mendoza

On Saturday we went on a half day outing to visit some of the local wine and olive farms in the Mendoza area. Mendoza is famous for its wines, most particularly its Malbec wine. Mendoza has a very interesting geography which enables it to produce some very good wines. Technically the Mendoza region is a desert, approximately 3 – 5% of its land is arable and a lot of this land is used to produce wine or olives. The area only receives about 200mm of rain per year, so it really is dry in that sense. The interesting thing is that, whilst there is little rainfall, there is a fair amount of water because of the run off from the surrounding mountains and some of the water comes in from the Andes which are not far away. The city is surrounded by the gigantic mountains, and their snow capped peaks can be easily seen, even though the actual mountain is 150km away. So we began our tour at a small family run wine farm, the vineyards were about 40 years old and the farm produced red wines and only 1 white wine. We tasted both, the white wine was really very good, slightly dry, but a little sweet and very refreshing. The red wine was good too.

White Wine

American Oak Barrel

We then moved onto an olive farm. This farm produces 1 million litres of Olive Oil per annum and that means that they harvest 8 million kilograms of olives in a year. We were quite taken aback at these stats, the farm certainly didn’t look that big, but that was their production. Most of the process now is automated, but we were shown the old way of pressing olives to extract the oil, quite laborious to say the least. At this farm they produced extra virgin olive oil and we were given some to sample and it was really good.

Laur Olive Oil

Olive Tree

Our next visit was to another wine farm, they had produced and international award winning Malbec wine. This wine was made from a batch of grapes harvested in 1999 and the reserve made only 4200 bottles of which 166 bottles are left at the estate. The price for a bottle of this wine in Argentina would be the equivalent of R 580.00 and in the USA well over R 700.00 or R 800.00, needless to say we never got to have a taste of this. We did sample some of their red wine and Rose wine and both were really good especially the red.

Red Wine at the Granatas Farm

Wine Cellar

Our last stop was at a church in Mendoza called the “Church of the Vine” This church is mostly frequented by local farmers from the area and hence they pray that their harvests will be plentiful and so Mary is depicted on a wagon with the farmers offering her grapes as an offering. The interesting aside here is that in 1861 Mendoza was struck by a huge earthquake and 60% of its inhabitants were killed. Almost the whole city was flattened by this quake, but miraculously (according to locals) the Church remained standing and was unharmed. The Church has become somewhat of an icon in the area and so we stopped to look in.

Church of the Vine Courtyard

Church of the Vine

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An introduction to the Phenomenon’s totally non-condescending, yet humorous and incredibly thoughtful series of wine-related postings

As you have probably already figured out based on the title of this post, I plan on starting a semi-regular series of wine-related posts on this blog.  Before I start out, however, I thought that it would be polite to lay out the answers to the interrogatories Who, What, and Why, as they pertain to this series of posts.

Why:  As in, “Why are you blathering on about wine on this website?”  Well, to be honest, mostly because McHead keeps nagging me to post more on this blog.

But, why wine?  Well, it’s the one area from the world of “food and drink” where I feel that I could contribute the most to this blog. 

Although I still consider myself a novice with respect to wine, I have spent some time trying to learn about wine and hope that I can write something interesting.  About a year ago, I decided to make a coordinated effort to learn more about wine.  Since that time, I’ve read several books on wine and attended and/or hosted about two dozen tastings.

Who: As in, “Who is the intended audience for this series of posts?”  Basically, whoever comes to this blog, which I assume, for the most part, will be the friends and family of the blog’s authors. 

To extent that anyone comes here looking for in-depth analysis or information for expert tasters, they’ll be disappointed.  I’m just a novice trying to share some of the admittedly limited information that he’s acquired about wine.

What: As in, “What are you going to write about anyway?”

I plan on starting by doing some posts about white wine varietals — specifically, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay.  I’m going to taste one example of these three varietals with each of the other gourmands, and then I’ll  write a post about each example and my tasting with the gourmand.

For each varietal, I intend to select examples that retail for $60 or less and that should be reasonably accessible without too much effort. 

Once we have finished with the abovementioned white varietals, I hope to continue with a series of postings that focus on various red varietals or, perhaps, specific wine regions.

To conclude, I hope someone winds up reading these posts and enjoying them.  If anyone does read this and has questions, feel free to comment below.

[Via http://metrogourmand.wordpress.com]

iPhone Pics of the Day - Put a Cork In It

Happy New Year All! I’m posting these later than usual…but I think they are well worth the wait

How lucky are you…there are THREE pics today!!

This is what’s left from New Years…

[Via http://mpouliotphoto.wordpress.com]

Julia Child inspired lentil-kidney bourguignon

Neither of us have ever eaten boeuf bourguignon, but it sounds cozy and we love stew and Julie & Julia, and so on.  The Cinnamon Quill came up with an amazing adaptation for boeuf bourguignon, sans boeuf, which I was about to make until I realized how many steps were involved, and now many ingredients I didn’t have (dates, pearl onions, lots of wine). In true Beans, Figs and Katz fashion, I put this LARGE stew together.

1/2 TBL Earth balance

1/2 TBL olive oil

2 onions, sliced thinly

3 carrots, sliced

5 garlic cloves, minced

2 sweet potatoes, chopped into bite sized piececs

2 bay leaves

1 TBL tomato paste

1/2 TBL molasses

1 TBL balsamic vinegar

1 tsp turbinado sugar

2 bouillion cubes

1/2 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp rosemary

2 tsp paprika

1 tsp parsley

2 cups red wine (that’s all I had in a leftover container in the fridge. You could add more)

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

1.5 cups lentils

1 15oz. can kidney beans (with liquid)

1 TBL tamari

water to cover

salt and pepper to taste

Mushroom Sauce–to be added later

1 pound mushrooms, sliced

another 1 TBL tamari

additional 3 garlic cloves, minced or garlic powder

1 cup water

Yes, this is a ridiculous number of ingredients. In a stock pot, heat olive oil and Earth Balance, then saute oninions, garlic, and carrots on medium heat until the onions turn slightly mushy, about 15-20 minutes. Stir occasionally, and work on your other prep in the mean time. Add the remaining ingredients, except the mushroom sauce. Add water to cover and bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to simmer. Stir occasionally and cook 20 minutes. (Add a little more water if needed.)

Meanwhile, in a small pot, saute mushrooms in a small amount of Earth Balance until they release their juices, about 5-7 minutes. Add tamari and garlic. Cook another 5 minutes or so. Add water to cover (approximately 1 cup), bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for another 5 minutes.

Pour the mushroom sauce into the large pot and stir. Bring to a boil and then cover to simmer again, about 10 minutes.

Pour stew into a dutch oven (or two smaller baking dishes with covers), and bake at 325 for an hour or so. Add more wine or broth if needed.

[Via http://beansfigsandkatz.wordpress.com]

New Year, New Decade

Happy New Year!  I hope this one will be soooooooooooo much better than last– for everyone.

I hope that the new year will be a cancer-free one, spent with a good TSH range, and minimal health problems!

This commencement of a decade rises in my mind, something that will happen within this decade, something momentous and life changing (hopefully not just for me), and that is, that by the end of this decade, I’ll be a doctor.  I’ll be able to help fellow thyroid patients and give them the care they deserve… not the poor current standard.

Well, last night’s festivities left me with a couch and a computer that have a pretty strong wine smell and some empty bowls- I’m off to bring the apartment back into shape.

[Via http://hungryfortsh.wordpress.com]