Dinner 7/14/2010

Sarah and I went over to our landlord's again for dinner last night. His friends nephew was in town from Lucca, and I guess he wanted to have some younger companions for Alessandro, who was 21. It was a good time, and we had some interesting wines.

The first wine that we had was the 2008 "Klee" from Racine Winery, which is a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. This wine was tasty--herbal nose (actually, smelled like weed to me at first), and sour cranberry-ish fruit. It had been open for a day or two, so maybe not showing its' best. Not anything to write home about, but good pinot under 20$ is always good.  

We brought over a bottle of 2007 Schiopetto Friulano, which we've had a couple of times, so we opened that as well. Interesting to have the middle vintage of this wine--2007 in comparison to 2008 and 2006. 2007 is made in a bit of a leaner style, but with "explosive" apricot aromas. Very stony and well made, but I don't think I liked it as much as 2008, which was a tad bit richer if memory serves me correctly. B+ Claude made his own smoked salmon and stuffed piquillo peppers with said salmon and jalapeno's, and then put it on top of a basil cream sauce with slices of avocado. Pretty damn good; definitely more creative than anything I would have thrown together. Went okay with the Friulano. Claude also made some deep fried squash blossoms that he picked up at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market. Not the best match for the Friulano. Something sparkling would have been better, but shit, I shouldn't complain. They were really good.

Next, we opened bottles of the 2005 "Cuvee Constance" VdP Cotes Catalanes Domaine Calvet-Thunevin and 2008 "Zenith Vineyard" St. Innocent Pinot Noir. The "Cuvee Constance" is Grenache, with 30% Syrah and 10 % Cinsault thrown in for good measure. Imported by Eric Solomon--generally a mark of quality. Around 15$ or so, even with 5 years of age. I had thought after smelling it that it must have had a good amount of Syrah in it due to the extremely peppery aromas. I guess I wasn't that far off. Drinking really well, but I don't know that there would be much point to keeping this one any longer. Fresh red fruits, lots of depth, and plenty of acidity to balance out all the pepper. I liked this wine quite a bit. B

Claude has been talking this winery up for a while, so I was excited to taste this wine. Also from the Willamette Valley--the Eola Amity Hills. St. Innocent purchased an interest in the Zenith Vineyard in 2006; it used to be called the O'Connor Vineyard. Killer nose. Definitely Pinot. Candied cherries and the "pinot funk," which in this case, I'm going to say is a little bit herbal. Definitely better than the Klee. A fruit bomb, but with a whole lot of acidity and grace to balance it all out. I like this wine. B+/A- Oh, and to eat with these wines we had some sliders. Yeah, sounds so white trash or something...except that we had sliders with foie gras and buffalo. Tasty stuff. Better than whatever I would have cooked up for dinner, I suppose. Then we had some cheese--La Tur from Piedmont (always delicious), and a crottin from Redwood Hills Farm. Claude speaks French (as well as something like 5 other languages fluently...we are humbled), and informed us that the word crottin means "turd." Anyways, I guess this cheese was quite a bit larger than what is typically called a crottin in French. He was thinking that perhaps the Redwood Hills Farm people weren't aware of what crottin meant. This was a good cheese too. The St. Innocent wasn't working out too well with the cheese for me, so I had a little bit more of the Cuvee Constance, which was a better match. Then we went home, and went for a walk, and went to bed. Because we have to work, and Claude doesn't.