Monthly Archives: May 2011
Gourmet Underground Detroit's content archives are organized by date and catalog the aggregated content of our Features pages as well as our blog.
Tom Collins
Taking a page from the Gazzer here… re-working my Tom Collins, which I’ve always considered pretty bland, towards something a bit more vibrant. It’s still a super easy drink, but a few more seconds of prep can really make the difference.
Tom Collins
2 oz. Gin
4 slices Lemon*
1 tsp. Pure Cane Sugar
Drop the slices of lemon in the bottom of a Boston tin, pour the sugar on top, and muddle with abandon. I mean, muddle the sweet jebus out of that shit. Thence, pour in your chilled** gin, and a few ounces of soda. Give it a bit of a stir to make sure the bulk of the sugar is dissolved, and pour unstrained into a Collins glass (you may need to assist the crap with the spoon.) Drop in a Collins spear (aka Chesterton) and top with soda (if required), and serve with a stir straw.
The issue here is vibrancy. Muddling the slices of lemon makes all the difference, as you get that amazing lemon oil out of the rind that you just wouldn’t get if you only used juice. It takes longer, but it’s so worth it.
*You’re going for .75 oz of lemon juice, so use your judgment. Maybe even muddle a few slices and see how much juice it yields.
**If you’re not chilling your gin for things like G&Ts and Collinses, then we don’t have much left to talk about. However, if had to use warm gin – like if you were stranded on a desert island or something – then it would be prudent to shake it over a small amount of ice, before adding the soda and pouring, unstrained, into the Collins glass, over said ice spear. Theoretically speaking, of course.
Corktown Sour
This post originally appeared on The Sugar House blog of craft cocktails and tales of craft cocking.
I came up with this drink for my brother over Christmas. He likes whiskey sours, but as far as brown stuff I was down to Knappogue Castle, so I just whipped something up and it turned out pretty friggin’ rad. I actually served it at the Hostel Detroit party, and it’s a contender for the opening menu.
Corktown Sour
1.5 oz. Irish Whiskey
.5 oz. Italian Vermouth
.25 oz. Demerara (2:1)
.5 oz. Lemon
Shake, double strain into a sour glass, and garnish with a super long ass lemon peel, if you’ve got the stones for it.
Serious as a Cart Attack: A Look at Mark’s Carts
Delicious food has been available from mobile eateries for a while now in Michigan, and Detroit has long had its share of taco trucks. But ask anyone who’s had a little dumpling filled with fresh octopus or a bowl of impossibly good vegan stew from a cart no larger than a large hatchback automobile: There’s more to the current nationwide food cart trend than well-prepared Mexican snacks.
Japanese. Spanish. Vegan. Pork. Korean. Burgers. Brisket. Fish and chips. Every cuisine has a cart somewhere in the U.S. — a little restaurant with no building, low overhead, and plenty of hungry customers. All of this is true of Mark’s Carts in Ann Arbor, which opened earlier this month.
Standalone carts have been common elsewhere for a long time, and the concept of a place that serves cheap, crave-worthy food curbside is an inspiringly simple brand of genius.
But why stop there? Portland has been bragging about its diverse, courtyard-style approach for a few years now. I’ve seen the concept at work in Austin, and now it’s in Ann Arbor, satiating that quintessential American desire for choice.
Each of the carts has its own focus, and there are over a half dozen options. I would have written about Mark’s at opening, but given the variety, there’s simply too much food to sample for a single visit.
Among my first selections was a “headcheese hoagie” from the Humble Hogs cart. The proprietor is Keith Ewing, recently back in Ann Arbor from Houston. As I discovered in a brief conversation with him, he’s obsessed with pigs – history, farming, culinary uses, and everything in between. His passion is evident in his use of pasture raised animals and in the sheer deliciousness of the rich heritage pork in the hoagie, which is less a sandwich than a pile of moist, loose headcheese on a single piece of Zingerman’s Pullman Toast and slathered in onions and peppers. It’s an expensive plate for $6, but it’s delicious, the pigs are sourced well, and speaking from experience, it’s much more filling than it appears at first glance.
Taking a notably less carnivorous approach is The Lunch Room, a larger, well-organized vegan operation. Where Humble Hogs’ staff stands next to a pushcart barely larger than a beer cooler, the Lunch Room duo is tucked inside a small wooden hut that happens to have wheels, nicely outfitted and smartly covered in interchangeable menus, literature, and ads for branded goods like shirts and buttons.
On one trip, I ate the BBQ tofu sandwich, served on a whole grain bun, which was tasty but not as delectable as it looked. I found myself thinking, “This tastes pretty good for something so healthy” rather than “This tastes so damn good I’d beat that old man next to me to get the last one.” Still, I’m not a vegan, and I’d certainly eat that sandwich again, perhaps even aspiring to that level of quality in my own experiments with vegan cooking. Their slaw is also quite tasty, priced as a combo with the tofu at $5. And one can add a very well-made (and never cloying) cookie for only a dollar or a smoothie for only a few. Suck on that, McDonald’s Value Menu.
Immediately next to The Lunch Room is one of the newest additions to Mark’s Carts, an Asian-themed eatery called San Street tied to the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses. If you’re not familiar, Zingerman’s empowers its staff with viable, interesting business ideas to leverage the Zingerman’s name and to work with them to create these new companies based on their passions. In this case, said passion is Asian street food.
Their weekly offerings will change, according to the proprietors, but the other week, they were serving up pork buns, a la David Chang. The pork belly is tender but crispy on the outside, and it’s wrapped inside a nicely prepared steamed bun with sweet-and-sour pickles, some sort of relish, and optional siracha. Each sells for $4, so as with Humble Hogs, patrons are paying for the quality (and, let’s be honest, the omnipresent Ann Arbor mark-up), but I’ll certainly be back to try their other buns.
Interestingly, both San Street and The Lunch Room conduct all their business from iPads, using a small attachment to the top of the device to run credit cards and process all their transactions. While cash is handy (and, I would imagine, appreciated), it’s hardly necessary.
Visitors may also head to the far back to stand in some of the longer lines (thus far, at least) to eat from Darcy’s Cart, which seems to be doing a fair amount of business with its traditional cart fare: meat and kimchi tacos. But they also sell a breakfast burrito and a host of other options, each using local ingredients.
In fact, many of the carts, including Darcy’s, publish a list of their local food sources. Among some of the names one might see on any given day are Zingerman’s, Calder’s, Black Oak Farms, and The Brinery.
Another outfit with a similar approach is Debajo del Sol, for which the flagship menu item is paella. They describe their menu as tapas, and that’s somewhat accurate in terms of the small plates and heavy Spanish influence, though I don’t think anyone would mistake their smoky chorizo corn dogs for traditional tapas. Hand-ground and hand-seasoned, the chorizo is definitely a treat, and the corn dog batter is exceptionally rich. One crunchy, fluffy bite will leave your lips coated in grease.
The other cart at which I’ve had a chance to sample is Eat, which has been a staple of the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market in Kerrytown for some time. They’ve recently been preparing their classic pork and beef sandwiches, the latter of which is covered in Brinery kimchi, though the lamb “Sloppy Joe” with aggressive spicing – I want to say North African flavors – was a new treat to me.
The Mark’s Carts model isn’t without its flaws – namely higher prices than similar ventures I’ve seen in New York or Austin and a cramped space without much shade from Michigan summer heat, let alone the snowy eventuality of winter.
Shutting down for the colder months aside, the other problems are hardly insurmountable: Quality and sourcing of the food is justification enough for the extra cost. Why not pay $9 for three small, healthy, interesting items instead of paying $7 for a plate of frozen french fries and a mediocre Reuben? And the mediocre environs are only a problem when it’s exceptionally crowded or hot, and neither people nor the summer sun makes pork belly taste bad.
On the whole, it’s definitely a success. And as much as I think many people would have predicted a positive outcome, it’s actually a bit surprising considering the regional history with food carts.
As cited in a recent NPR story about food trucks and carts across the Midwest, Mark’s Carts is one of the few success stories near the Great Lakes. (Of course, not mentioned in the story is the fact that Mark’s also hosts a commercial kitchen next door for food prep, presumably to overcome the requirements of local laws.) Chicago has a twenty-year-old law that forbids the production of food on trucks. Even hot dog stands are subject to the rule. And Detroiters are certainly familiar with the battles fought by mobile and community eateries like Pink FlaminGO and Neighborhood Noodle in order to get their operations running within the confines of the city’s regulations.
Still, this was inevitable in Michigan. Like sushi a couple decades ago or natural wine over the last five years or craft cocktails this year, it’s one of those fashionable concepts that apparently takes a while to permeate our heartland sensibilities.
Indeed, trends tend to reach the Midwest pretty late. Overlaid on a map, any food trend might look a bit like an epidemic sweeping down the well-travelled, heavily populated coasts before converging inward, like a big national race to Dubuque.
Some people think these food fashions die out over time, but that’s never really true. The hype is what dies while the food lingers in our local cultures in its own way. The best trends – sushi, craft beer, good coffee, cocktail bars – all continue past the initial shock and awe inherent to their newness.
So it will be with high end food carts – at least if the early success of Mark’s Carts is any indication.
MxMo: Flores de Mayo
Mixology Monday (or MxMo) is a “monthly online cocktail party,” where each person brings a drink based on that month’s theme. Each month the host changes, and it’s up to him to pick that month’s theme. Then, by a certain date (in this case yesterday, by Midnight) everybody puts their drink up on their blog, and comments on the host’s blog, letting him know they are participating. And in a few days, the host does a really nice round up post, that features everybody’s submissions. Trust me, it’s not as complicated as it sounds, and it’s always pretty fun coming up with something based on a theme.
May’s host is Dave at The Barman Cometh, and as it happens, his theme was floral cocktails. Since I did a post about a floral cocktail yesterday, I went ahead and retrofitted it to comply with the MxMo guidelines, as I am a lazy, lazy man. But, I did go ahead and take a sexy new pic, complete with floral garnish.
So stop by Dave’s site and check out the round up post, which should be up in a few days, and maybe even participate in next month’s MxMo, if you’re into that sorta thing.
Spring Negroni
I’ve been working with a ton of Aperol lately – I just dig the stuff. It’s the perfect spring / summer liqueur; slightly sweet, citrusy and plenty bitter. And, I love me a Negroni – it’s one of my faves – so it was an obvious call for me to combine them and come up with a “Spring Negroni.” I went gin, Lillet blanc and Aperol (1:1:1). Great move… except it sorta sucked. I mean, it was fine, but not a revolution, and certainly not worthy of the Negroni namesake. A few weeks later, on a whim I threw dried lavender flowers into some gin, and whammy, it came together like… well… it just came together, okay?
Spring Negroni
.75 oz. Lavender infused gin
.75 oz. Lillet Blanc
.75 oz. Aperol
Spring Bitters
Stir & strain. I’m not garnishing this – I don’t think it needs it. The spring bitters are a really nice addition that actually came on the third pass. They amp up the bitterness and really compliment the citrusy component.
An Epiphany: Maison Surrenne
Several months ago, I was privileged enough to have a friend serve our dinner party a glass of a cognac with some lengthy barrel aging. I didn’t have much context for cognac: Other than Hennessey or Courvoisier, I’d never really had any French brandy. That first drink didn’t haunt me in continuous fashion the way my first glass of Talisker scotch did, but it definitely lingered in my mind, surfacing every month or so. It was enjoyable and unique. I thought I finally decided to do something about it.
Maison Surrenne is a large distillery, boasting eight cellars of brandy covering multiple regions of Cognac. I’d be lying if I understood the organizational structure and how the family history ties into the business and the region, but it’s worth noting that this bottler is apparently still family owned.
My first purchase was their unblended Borderies cognac, with Borderies being the specific sub-region from which the spirit came. Into my second glass, I can’t disagree with the notes offered on the bottle’s own label: Vines in the Borderies get more sun exposure, which deepens the flavor of the grapes. The single-vintage Galtaud has unusually rich fruit with the region’s typical attributes: profound volume with hints of violets and nut kernels.
Galtaud is the single-still distillery, founded in 1800, at which this cognac was produced. This particular bottling is listed as “Lot 1989: Casks 9, 4 & 16.” One of 1600 bottles produced, this is 40.5% alcohol by volume and was bottled in 2008. According to the Maison Surrenne website, the Borderies region is known for its rich soil deposited in years long past by the nearby Charente River.
This is all new to me, but you can certainly taste that richness and depth: Maison Surrenne is delicious stuff. It absolutely smells like violet, toffee (or perhaps nut kernels, a descriptor with which I’m unfamiliar), and even caramel. And on the palate, the floral, violent sensation absolutely hits me over the head. It’s incredibly noticeable, though refined and elegant. The finish is hot, spicy, and alcoholic, but it’s violet again and cocoa nibs that linger for me. There’s a moderate orange/apricot sensation somewhere in there that I can’t quite pinpoint. This isn’t a sweet spirit, but it certainly has a sweetness to it derived from the fruity and nutty qualities. Despite even that, it’s got a long, hot, dry finish full of flowers and alcoholic spice. How can anyone not love such a thing?
Regardless of what wine media-driven adjectives I could possibly ascribe, the bottom line is that this is one classy spirit. For the first time ever, I understand why the stereotypical wealthy baron of cinema asks people to retire to the study for some cognac or other brandy. This is good drinking. Great drinking.
Cognac at this level is, for me, a revelation. Further study is required, and I’ll be working a lot of extra hours to (happily) pay for that self-imposed research.
Julep Days
This post originally appeared on The Sugar House blog of mixed drinks and mixed emotions.
The mint julep is an institution – a classic – that has fortunately managed to eschew obscurity, as it remains the official drink of the Kentucky derby.
The word itself dates back to around 1400, when it was defined as “a syrupy drink in which medicine was given.” Herbs, spices and sugars macerated in water comprised a typical julep. Wherever the Mint Julep name came from (probably somewhere in Kentucky, around 1780), it was most like a bit of a jest. However, the name stuck, and here we are. So to describe the characteristics of a modern julep, we should say that it is a mixed drink that contains liquor, mint and sugar, over crushed ice, and served in a julep cup.
The Classic Julep
3 oz. Granddad 100 Bourbon
.5 oz. Pure Cane Syrup (2:1)
Four medium size mint sprigs
Before you get started, you’re going to need is a metric shit ton of crushed ice. There’s no making a julep without it. And you’ll also need a metal vessel – a julep cup if you’ve got one – or a copper mug. The bottom half of a small metal shaker is even acceptable, under the ‘stances. Once you’ve got those, you must adhere to the four steps of proper julep making:
Step 1: The Mix
Into the cup goes your bourbon, syrup and all the leaves from the bottom of the mint sprigs (save the tips for garnish). And with a bar spoon – or long rod – stir the mixture in a smooth and consistent manner. You may be tempted to muddle, or press the mint with your spoon to “extract the oils” – do not. Instead, just stir for about 30 seconds; the drink will be plenty minty, I promise.
Note: Some people subscribe to the mint syrup method… I’ve tried both, many, many times, and I prefer the fresh mint. Also, I usually use spearmint, but in honor of the day, I am going with a Kentucky Colonel.
Step 2: Dilution
Fill about a third of the cup with crushed ice, and stir again for another thirty seconds. The ice should be melting, bringing the temperature of the bourbon down to a good level, and slightly chilling the cup. Taste the mixture at this point – it should be minty, slightly sweet, yet still very bourbony. If it tastes out of balance, now is the time to correct it.
Step 3: Chilling
Fill the rest of the cup with crushed ice, but don’t pack it in there, just fill it up, and stir it again. At this point the whole thing should look like a slushee… keep stirring, and let the cup get a nice frost on it. After about 30 seconds, the cup should be frozen on the outside, which means the ice is going to melt at a much slower rate.
Step 4: Garnish
Finally, gently pack the rest of the cup with crushed ice. Take your leftover mint sprig tips, give them a good slap, and gently slide them into the edge of the cup. If you’ve got a julep strainer, now would be the time to insert it.
This may seem like overkill, but trust me, it’s not. It’s important to treat the mint gently, as it tends to release a bitter oil when muddled or torn, which pretty much sucks. And don’t short cut the method here; if you just pack the whole thing full of crushed ice, it’s gonna get so cold the cup itself will freeze, and none of the ice will melt. But the melting of the ice is what makes the drink; dilution of the bourbon and increase volume are the happy result.
Making Good Food Work
Conferences are generally about listening. At good conferences, one listens and learns. At bad conferences, one listens a bit and then watches the person one seat away play Angry Birds. Either way, “participants” are largely passive, absorbing knowledge through digesting lectures, presentations, and panel discussions.
Making Good Food Work was different.
Designed as a participatory conference, hosted in Detroit on April 19 through April 21, and organized by Neighborhood Noodle founder and Michigan State University Ph.D. student Jess Daniel, Making Good Food Work (MGFW) brought together food entrepreneurs, business owners, farmers, and other experts to work on projects and ideas that could shape the future of regional food systems.
While participants came from all over the country, not just Michigan, MGFW still felt like a Detroit event: After all, only in our uncommonly small, familiar community could an amateur like me learn about an event this specialized and actually attend alongside practitioners with interesting ideas for viable food alternatives.
The conference was purported on its website to be “a creative incubation laboratory, designed for doers.” After three days of working, talking, typing, thinking, collaborating, researching, and writing, I was exhausted. No Angry Birds, no checking email during lectures, no sitting in the back of the room bored. Just work.
Designed for doers, indeed.
Projects & Personalities
Things began in the ballroom of Detroit’s Atheneum Hotel exactly as one might expect: Introductory remarks, a few well-orchestrated exercises designed to break the ice, and plenty of hotel coffee. Where things began to diverge from the norm was when we really dug into this “incubation laboratory” concept.
Thirteen team leaders – all who previously had submitted business concepts, ideas for white papers, and projects of all sorts – took to the stage to pitch their initiatives. Each hoped his or her project would resonate with the right people, drawing them to participate in actually developing those initiatives over the next two days.
The 200 attendees split themselves into these teams to begin work. There were a set of teams dedicated to issues – creating toolkits for general use across the country, for example – but among the seven teams working on defined businesses, hubs, and co-ops were:
- COLORS of Detroit, a soon-to-be worker-owned restaurant in Harmonie Park that’s an extension of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC), which helps train restaurant workers for better positions in the industry. The restaurant will be both a training environment and a working restaurant featuring local foods.
- Delridge Produce Cooperative, a neighborhood food co-op that provides fresh, locally sourced, sustainable food to under-served, generally lower income residents in southwest Seattle
- The Arcadia Center, an effort to bring local, sustainably raised food to people via a mobile market near D.C in Alexandria
- Colorado Schools Food Hub, a project in which healthy, local food ends up in school lunches
As a newcomer to food systems discussions but a seasoned practitioner of the black art known as marketing, I chose to work with COLORS since they were looking to draw customers and attention to their restaurant, due to open this fall.
Brief introductions were all I needed to see I’d be working with an interesting team: Angela Newsom from Detroit Evolution was experienced in the local food market and insightful with regards to the Detroit customer base. Channon Mondoux of the Eclectic Kitchen in Kalamazoo was a chef, educator, and businessperson. Brother Barry Crumbley served as a farmer, activist, and food policy advisor. Kathe Piede worked at a co-op outside New York. Add to that another half dozen event planners, community organizers, and community garden workers.
Led by Minsu Longiaru, the project leader, and Cheryl Danley from Michigan State, our team facilitator, we had a great group. I didn’t get much exposure to other teams, but if they were anywhere near as diverse and brilliant as the folks I met, I’m sure every project leader went home with a suitcase full of ideas.
Before we really started to discuss the project and our team leader’s goals, though, we were treated to lunch – and a few guest speakers.
Dr. Kathleen Merrigan is the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and as one of the keynotes, she talked generally about the importance of local food systems and some of the challenges the effort faces. She has been the person behind “Know your Farmer, Know your Food,” which illustrated to me a sad truth about our government and our food. Merrigan clearly has been an advocate for alternative food systems, but she also noted – mostly when answering pointed questions from an expert audience – that there are times when the USDA is obligated to allow certain foods (e.g., genetically modified alfalfa) to market unless it meets very strict legal criteria.
What went unsaid was that none of those problems will ever change until the massive amounts of money invested by companies ranging from Monsanto to McDonald’s gets out of government.
After Merrigan finished her interactions with the crowd, Senator Debbie Stabenow delivered a thoroughly generic address and left without taking any questions. It was nice of her to show support for real food, but as it turned out, the extra half hour would have been helpful in working on our projects.
We closed the first day defining some parameters for our project with COLORS, including the need to create a marketing plan.
Getting to Work
Obviously, one of the advantages of being a marketing guy was that I had a few consulting documents and marketing plans I could use as templates. I pulled one out and started re-writing it with COLORS in mind, incorporating the ideas generated by my teammates as I went along. 10 pages, 20 pages, 30 pages. We were machines.
Something that should have been immediately obvious eventually struck me as the discussion evolved: We all shared a love of good, honest, real food. Admittedly, my interests have been rooted in hedonism and an intellectual love of the historical and cultural aspects of cuisine, tea, wine, beer, et cetera. And theirs were rooted more in economics, social justice, policy, agriculture, and business.
Nonetheless, that shared love should elicit smiles from anyone interested in food – because it illustrates something that I think a lot of people don’t understand about food as a hobby or even as a profession.
Specifically, being a “foodie” isn’t just about watching Iron Chef; it’s about understanding and intellectualizing something vital to our existence. I might be more interested in reading about famed bartender Jerry Thomas than I am about the particulars of what House resolution is up for a vote or what the latest heirloom seed protected by the government might be, but at the core, it’s more or less all the same. It’s recognizing that there’s more to food than swinging through a drive-thru and shoveling fries into one’s face.
Hobbies and jobs are ways of focusing our minds, challenging ourselves. Food is a necessity. And a business. And a hobby. And an area of public debate. And a key component of every culture. It touches everything around us. So in many respects, is there any more interesting, holistic hobby? Is it any surprise that being a “foodie” has become so popular?
From the most basic cooks to those with a library of historical food texts, anyone can relate to some component of food.
So working with the COLORS team became a real pleasure as we dug into not merely our task but our shared passion. I learned a lot, and the second night, a big group of us went to Slows BBQ to hang out.
But mostly, we worked.
Some of us left the group for an hour or two to chat with experts or to attend workshops on topics like packaging, food hub start-ups, and finding capital for new food businesses. But more or less, we dug in around a table, talking, thinking, and typing. Two days later, we had a 30-page marketing plan, an event planning guide, a concept for empowering workers to promote COLORS via social media, and a host of other ideas.
Winning: The COLORS of Money
What some of us didn’t realize was that there were financial awards available. Our facilitator, Cheryl, did a fantastic job of guiding some answers to questions that would be judged by a panel on the third day, and Minsu worked with the team on a presentation that highlighted our accomplishments.
We were thrilled to see the results: COLORS won second place among the judges and also won the “people’s choice” award, the combined total for which nearly doubled Minsu’s initial marketing budget.
Obviously, I was pleased to see such tangible results for the project we worked on – but there were other amazing ideas presented that day.
The Delridge Produce Co-op mentioned earlier elected to move to a stand-based concept to lower costs and put together a plan to make it happen for the residents of southwest Seattle. The Farm to School Hub in Colorado is launching two pilot projects aimed at 14 school districts and over 100,000 children served real food. The Village Marketplace in Los Angeles (pictured below) learned how to scale their business up and clearly received very practical advice regarding equipment and processes to make the expansion sustainable while paying a very decent living wage to their soon-to-be new employees.
So here was my big takeaway: Living up to it’s name, the conference proved that it is indeed possible to make good food work.
As a society, we may be limited by the bureaucracy and lobbyist-fueled big agro machine that wants us to eat genetically engineered corn-fed beef burgers on corn-based bread and wash it down with a corn syrup laden drink. But as individuals, we all have interests and ideas. And we have the power to choose to act on those interests and ideas. Not everyone can open a community kitchen or a food hub or a stand at a farmer’s market. But anyone can shop at one, volunteer for one, support one.
So make good food work for you. It’s not always simple, but it’s never all that hard.
Quick Tasting Note: Fauterie 07
As much as I love shopping locally for wine at places like Western Market or Elie Wine Company, the reality of life in Michigan is that our three-tier system and distributors often serve as a barrier to new things. In some respects, we have one of the most vibrant food retail scenes in the country — people elsewhere would be thrilled with our assortment of ethnic markets, our farmers’ markets, and our access to all sorts of ingredients within a few minutes drive time of any area of Detroit of the suburbs — but it’s like pulling teeth sometimes to get the best wines, beers, and spirits.
Tonight, I’m drinking a bottle I picked up at New York’s Chambers Street Wine: Domaine de Fauterie’s 2007 Saint Joseph from Les Combaud. Wines from this region have to be predominantly syrah, and that’s fairly evident here from the inky color. Despite the heavy looks, it has some lightness. Initially ripe and fruit forward, there’s a lot of bright acidity on the finish — a very currant-like flavor. The longer it sits, the more evident the tannins and a subtle campfire smoke flavor become. With a case discount, I paid $25 for this bottle, and it’s worth every penny. Delicious but packed with both power and nuance.
(13% abv. Imported by “USA Wine Imports,” a Jeffrey Alpert Selection, who’s also responsible for some delicious Jura wines I’ve had recently.)
