We move on to football season! (Don't ask about my White Sox or Cubs.) And of course I want to drink more good red wine. So as long as the propane is flowing into my grill, I can keep the protein coming! Lately I have been trying to use less beef. I have worked on a recipe I truly love, using a deboned and butterflied leg of lamb, slathered in a multitude of fresh herbs and garlic. If that doesn't scream out for JUSTIN Savant or Syrah, I don't know what will.
Mind you, I'm not one for recipes too often. I see ideas in magazines (of which I get far too many) and then riff on them based on what I have in the cupboard. I am an undisciplined cook. But at least I know how to avoid burning it all up! And if something doesn't work, I can always resort to grilling a few encased meats.
Speaking of burning it up, I had the opportunity to again host several seminars a the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta at the end of September. (This immediately followed a presentation I gave on Paso Robles wines up at Willamette Valley Vineyards, in Salem, Oregon. Crazy itinerary as usual.) It's my favorite event of the year, with dozens of good local restaurants hosting dinners and demonstrations, and scores of very good wineries represented all around town. I had the pleasure of speaking about JUSTIN wines at La Fonda Hotel, hosted by Bert Leyva and the talented kitchen team of Lane Warner. The historic room was full, and full of energy. Somehow we found enough Isosceles 2005 to serve there, alongside several new releases, including Obtuse 2007. Although it's often difficult to match our wines precisely with food, most of them being red, we tweaked some menu items, like salmon, to be red wine friendly. Sometimes all it takes is a sauce modification, or the addition of a meat element. Vitamin "P" always works--Pork!--that is, a bit of bacon, pork belly, prosciutto, jamon, smoked butt . . . but I digress. In this case the added item was chiles! A bit of heat really picked up the spice of the Syrah as paired with a salmon terrine. Isosceles was served with a classic duo of beef preparations, one poached and the other in a slow barbecue preparation. Very fine indeed. And topped off by Obtuse with a banana flan and chocolate custard dessert. Mmmmm.
OK, so the surprise: After October trips to New Orleans, Dallas, Toronto, New York and Boston, I wondered if restaurants and the wine business are really hurting all that badly. New ones keep opening; our wines are allocated or sold out in many cases; and I see full rooms all around. The one sign that perhaps the glamour of trophy wine has worn a bit was the empty seats at some of the seminars at Wine Spectator's "California Wine Experience in New York" (confusing, I know). I was privileged to be part of the sommelier team there and tasted many grand old and young wines. As I got around the city to see a few dining rooms, no one seemed to be suffering. Perhaps I am deluded, and of course there remains high anxiety, but the city was its usual pulsing self, including the top dining rooms, from what I was hearing.
In any case, wine collectibles are vulnerable in a soft market, as most people in the auction business will tell you, and I suppose so are trophy wines--which is why I'm very glad that wines from JUSTIN like Isosceles and Justification and Savant are still reachable, valuable pleasures.
