Rachel's Style Profile: Tempranillo

Tempranillo is referred to as Spain’s “Noble Grape.”The word tempranillo literally means “little early one.”This seems quite appropriate considering the grape’s short growing season and early ripening tendency. With Spain being the world’s third largest producer of wine, Rioja being its most famous wine, and Tempranillo being the primary grape in Rioja, one can easily see the importance of this grape to Spanish winemakers. Tempranillo is grown primarily in the Rioja Alta and Ribera del Duero regions of Spain. Although traditionally Tempranillo is blended with other varietals such as Garnacha (Grenache), Mazuelo, and Graciano, recently we are seeing a surge of pure Tempranillo wines coming out of the woodwork. As its popularity increases, Tempranillo is now being grown in California, Australia, and South America.

What I love about Tempranillo is that when it’s pure, it’s BIG and BOLD. Think of it as Spain’s answer to Cabernet. Tempranillo is medium to full bodied and rich. You get hints of dark fruit, such as cherries and plums, tobacco, leather, strawberries, and herbs. Higher end Tempranillos are aged in oak barrels, so there’s often an oaky presence going on as well. Tempranillo is higher in acidity and lower in alcohol content.You can easily sip it just for the sake of enjoying its complexity, or it makes a great pairing with food. I think it makes an excellent companion to steak or lamb, and you can never go wrong with Tempranillo if you’re enjoying some traditional Spanish tapas.

So yeah, it may be cold--that kind of non-motivating, debilitating, couch ridden, order everything delivery, so as not to leave the house COLD, but there’s nothing like curling up on the couch with a big glass of wine and avoiding it all. Read more...

Alcohol is Permitted at Your Campsite Only

It wasn’t exactly camping, when Mr. June and I sat by our green log fire in the Virginia woods. In fact, although the cabin we’d rented was drafty and ten feet long on any side, we’d bought a space heater from the Target in town, and fashioned ourselves an almost cozy nook. Nevertheless, the January temperatures, and frustratingly low wattage electricity left us scrambling for bits of twig and paper to fortify the damp logs we’d bought in from the campground store. With a half pint of lighter fluid we’d crafted a suitable excuse for a campfire.

On our drive down to Virginia the day before, which happened to be a Sunday, I was hit with a mild Northerner panic – just short of Philly – that we would not be able to buy beer in our destination state on such an utterly holy day. Stella was procured in Pennsylvania, and we still had a bit left over, as it was nearing unbearable temperatures for cold beverages. I was wrong about the Sabbath, of course, and not only were we able to buy intoxicants, we found wine and beer under the very same roof and that the campground store that furnished us with firewood would happily supply us with Natty Ice, Bud Light or even Miller High Life. But this was a vacation, and a celebratory one at that, so we sought a decent place to eat, and perhaps a bottle of wine that surpassed the convenience store variety. Something delicious and warming to toast the new President.

The wine store, however, was discovered by accident. On vague recommendations we’d found dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant not far from a Friendly’s and a Hooters in a dreary strip mall. The parking lot was speckled with large, dusty Suburbans and the lights on the storefront between the restaurant and the wine store advertised a
C lifo nia Tan. But the windows were clean and large, the display cases offered something that looked palatable, and I had once and for all proclaimed that it was far too cold for me to be drinking beer either out doors or nearly out doors.

The anti-beer sentiment lasted only as long as it took us to walk to the back of the well-lit space and see fridge upon fridge upon shelf of unique and tempting brews. The selection rivaled both our favorite secret bodega and the high rent craft beer salons back home in Brooklyn. Mr. June wavered through the English Ales then ran his fingers over Old Engine Oil and Belhaven’s Wee Heavy before settling on an Orkney Skull Splitter, something he’d been wanting to try but never had run into in New York. I, for my part, went directly to the Stouts, and did not pause until my hand rested on the very first bottle it happened to bump. It was a Milk Stout from the Lancaster Brewery, and because we’d just driven though Pennsylvania, I took that as a good sign. And because I still dreaded the idea of drinking cold beer on a cold night, I padded off to the Spanish reds.

The wine selection was just as overwhelming as the beer, so in a generalized state of panic I scanned the racks for a familiar grey label, though it had been ages since it had appeared, to save me from making my uneducated wine mistakes. “My wine”, which had been highlighted on the wine list of a restaurant I once worked at and, over the years, had been nothing but a spectacular hit at parties, and a luscious, deep, fruity sensation for myself. But it had been a long time since I’d actually found it in New York, and the sight of it, for a decent mid-range price, nearly startled the Milk Stout out of me.

Back at the campsite, feeling content that the eve of the inauguration would not go improperly celebrated, I snapped open the staples on the brown paper bag, and unwrapped our bottles from the tissue paper. I poured the wine into blue plastic cups, took a sip, and with disappointment discovered that it was, in a word, bland. Mr. June agreed, and suggested that we leave it to air a bit, while sampling our beers. The Milk Stout seemed to have a wide variety of spicy flavors, or it might have, but my butt was sore from the pile of fire logs, and my fingertips kept going numb from holding the bottle, then, after an incident with the lighter fluid, we returned to our beers to find they had sat too long, and, of all things, were warm. The Skull Splitter tasted like tepid hop soup, and the Milk Stout had to be put out of its misery quickly.

The wine never opened, because there were no rooms that had been heated to the level of “room temperature” to be found, so it remained cold and one dimensional, and although we finished the bottle, it was in the style of great gulps, sometimes wishing there were a nice bottle of cola handy to cut the biting alcohol. How I longed for a pint of Jack Daniels, or even Ten High, something cheap an effective. Something Joe Six-Pack would keep around for a special occasion.

The remaining Stellas offered a bit of consolation, but by that point we agreed that, in the future, all imbibing around campfires would be as cheap and local as possible. It is, after all, camping. And drinking while camping is designed to make the cold less cold (even three ice cold cans will get you there), and the bugs less bitey, and the money last longer. There is nothing un-celebratory, or, for that matter, un-American, about a bottle of Budweiser. Unfortunately the campground store closed at 7pm.





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Rachel's Style Profile: Champagne

There are a couple notorious types of wine drinkers…

First you have “The Wine Snob.” This person is probably an elitist, vintage Bordeaux-sipping “connoisseur,” if you will. They probably have an extensive wine collection valued at an amount that could feed a small village. They probably own monogrammed decanters, and discuss wine with an air of self righteousness. They may also possibly wear ascots.

Then at the other end of the spectrum, you have “The Wino.” This person doesn’t care at all about vintages, varietals, etc. Bring on the box wine, the Yellowtail, and the 3 Buck Chuck. If its fermented grape juice of any sort—it’s good enough for them. Sadly, this person probably also drinks their wine with ice cubes floating in it.

Everyone else is somewhere in between. They drink wine because they enjoy drinking wine. They can appreciate a nice bottle of something when it comes around, but they won’t drop a week’s pay on it. They can also go to the local wine shop, find a $12 bottle, and be totally happy with it. They can talk about wine intelligently, without sounding like a pretentious asshole. They do not, however, drink White Zinfandel, the Kool-Aid of wine. (See “the Wino.”)

“What is the definition of a good wine? It should start and end with a smile.”

-William Sokolin

We at HCAR tend to agree, and we’ll be exploring the world of wine with this philosophy in mind. It’s never a bad idea to kick things off with a glass of champagne, so thus begins our first wine profile…

~Champagne~

Champagne is composed of any combination of 3 grapes: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier. For Champagne to be called Champagne, it must be produced in the Champagne region of France. Anything else is technically a “sparkling wine.” Different regions may have different names for their own brands of sparkling wine, such as Cava in Spain, and Asti Spumanti in Italy.

There are 4 types of Champagne—Brut, which is the standard “dry” champagne, Extra-dry is ironically less dry than a Brut. Then you have Sec, which is sweet, and Demi-sec, which is even sweeter. Champagne can be white or pink. Pink Champagne is made by leaving the grape skins to ferment in the liquid for a short while, whereas they are completely eliminated in the normal process.

Champagne is classified as being Vintage or Non-Vintage. Vintage champagne means that all the grapes within the champagne were harvested during a single year. Vintage champagne must be aged for 3 years, and in any given year Vintage Champagne accounts for only about 10-15% of the total champagne produced. Non-Vintage champagne on the other hand, accounts for the remaining 85-90%. This type is composed of grapes from several different vintages, as opposed to a single harvest. Non-Vintage champagne tends to be much less expensive than its counterpart, and is referred to as “Classic Champagne,” because it was the only type made during the first 150 years of Champagne production.

And how did Champagne come about in the first place? Legend has it that in the mid 1600’s the Benedictine monk, Don Pierre Pérignon accidentally invented champagne when experimenting with different forms of fermentation. “Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!” is the famous quote associated with the monk’s alleged discovery. Historians now credit English scientist, Christopher Merret with “inventing” champagne 30 years before Perignon. Perignon is credited, however, for refining the Méthode Champenoise, which is the secondary in-bottle fermentation process by which champagne is made.

The taste of Champagne varies widely depending on the maker, the soil, the age, and many other factors. Champagne can be sweet, dry, nutty, fruity, minerally, chalky, creamy---pretty much anything goes. When one hears the word “mousse” it refers to the appearance of the bubbles in the glass and the feeling that they leave on the palate.

And finally, a few random fun facts…

• A quarter of all Champagne sold every year is sold in the week between Christmas and New Year’s
• A cork can escape a bottle of sparkling wine at speeds of up to 40 mph.
• Legend has it that the traditional shallow champagne glass was modeled after wax molds of Marie Antoinette’s breasts.
• Champagne is traditionally used to christen ships on their maiden voyage by smashing a bottle over the ship’s hull. If the bottle doesn’t break, it is considered to be extremely bad luck.

~Happy Champagne drinking from HCAR~

Editor's note: Due to timing and technological complications it fell upon me, the Colonel, to place Rachel's writing upon the computer web. Fear not, the lovely redheaded oenophile and I are indeed separate entities, not some monstrous scientific abomination out of Victor Von Frankenstein's dream.

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