Veni Vidi Veneto

Nadia Zenato’s upcoming visit to Shubie’s reminded me of a couple things:

• I love Zenato’s wines. 



The best radicchio I have ever tasted!

• I love the Veneto region of Italy, where the wines come from. 

I was lucky enough to spend a 6 or 7 days in the region once, and they were some of the best days I ever spent in Italy. The weather was perfect—despite the fact that it was the middle of January. The landscape was picturesque everywhere I went. The food was, of course, fantastic—I still think longingly of the loose-leaf Radicchio di Treviso that they grow there (yes, after five years, I still think about the radicchio—it was that good!) And I got to visit Zenato’s estate.

Conditions were perfect for tasting their amazing wines, but even now, on a dreary New England day in October, without a Roman ruin or piece of radicchio in sight, I still love to drink them. Here are some of the highlights: 

Grapes drying to make Amarone

1. Zenato Lugana: Zenato’s winery is located on the southern end of Lake Garda. Aside from being one of the most picturesque places in all of Italy, this is a perfect place for growing the local Trebbiano di Lugana grape, which is what they use to make the local Lugana wine. It's a wonderfully fresh, soft, floral white, and Zenato has done a lot to bring it out of the depths of obscurity. Pinot grigio fans beware—this could be a new favorite.
   
2. Zenato Valpolicella (pronounced “val-po-lee-chel-a”): Made from indigenous grapes grown in the Valoplicella region, a little bit east of Lake Garda, this light red is a classic from the Veneto. With notes of cherries, violets, and even almonds, it’s great with chicken and polenta. Actually, it's good for just about any occasion--a perfect "house red" for anyone tired of pouring cabernet or pinot noir.
3. Zenato Amarone: The granddaddy of wines from the Valopolicella, made by drying the grapes out for four months or so before crushing them. This yields an incredibly rich, powerful wine, with dense dark fruit flavors, and notes of dried fruit, smoke and spices. These are amazing wines that can be cellared for many years (if you have the patience). 

Because so much of the the grape is lost to evaporation in the process, though, Amarones are pretty expensive wines. If you want to get a feel for what Amarone is all about without spending the big bucks, you can try Zenato’s Ripassa. To make this, they take the regular Valpolicella and add the left over pommace from the Amarone, giving the wine an Amarone-like character, without an Amarone-like price!

Lake Garda

Shubie's Global Community of Flavors

Chef Lynne's latest addition to the FoodBar menu, the Marblehead Muffuletta sandwich, got us thinking about how incredibly global our selection is. At any given time throughout the year, you could order Middle Eastern Falafel, an array of Asian Noodle Soups, a classic New York Reuben, Bahn Mi (a Vietnamese-style sandwich), a bowl of gazpacho, and even our own Local Cobb Salad Wrap, stuffed with a slew of locally grown veggies. It's a truly global community of flavors and recipes, right here in Marblehead!

And now joining that community is Chef's own take on the Sicilian-inspired sandwich from the Central Grocery in New Orleans.

For those of you not lucky enough to have tried one, a Muffuletta sandwich is typically made with an array of Italian cold cuts, sliced Provolone, and the key ingredient: a chopped olive salad, with cauliflower, celery and carrots, all steeped in olive oil and some vinegar. Put it all between two slices of muffuletta bread (a hearty Sicilian sesame bread that gives the sandwich its name), and you've got yourself a sandwich big enough to keep you fed all week!

As I said, the sandwich originated in the early 1900s at New Orleans' famous Central Grocery, a market in the French Quarter. As the story goes, Sicilian immigrant farmers selling their produce in the city would come to Central Grocery for lunch. They'd buy muffuletta bread, some cold cuts, cheese, and an olive salad, and then eat everything separately, balancing their small plates precariously on their knees while they sat. The store's owner, Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian immigrant himself, noticed this and thought it might be easier for them if they sliced the bread and put all the fixings in between. He started making the sandwich, and pretty soon, everyone simply asked for "the Muffuletta."

The Muffuletta is now a staple in New Orleans, a must for all visiting tourists. Unfortunately, it's always been hard to find a good Muffuletta here in the Northeast--until now! Chef Lynne has put her own twist on this classic, and it's too good!

She starts with her one-of-a-kind olive salad, made in-house with her own special blend of herbs and olive oil, carrots, celery, and curried cauliflower (yes, curried--the sandwich now spans three continents!) Add this to a ciabatta stuffed full of sliced  prosciutto, salami, mortadella, provolone and a few leaves of radicchio (no muffuletta bread--those sesame seeds make such a mess!) and you've got another irresistible addition to our global community of flavors at the FoodBar.

Music for Your Mouth

If you read DeMorgenzon's website, the first thing that will probably jump out at you is the fact that they play Baroque music to their vines and wine. Yes, that's right: every bottle of DeMorgenzon's wine has been "listening" to Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and many others from vine to bottle. They cite a number of studies that draw positive connections between music and plant growth.

It's a fun story--and certainly a memorable tidbit that will be fun to bust out at cocktail parties--but there's another method of winemaking that they talk about that really caught my attention. The vineyards are right in the middle of one of South Africa's greatest ecosystems, and they are actively encouraging this ecosystem to flourish within the vineyards (they've also set aside 10% of the estate to a nature conservancy, to preserve this biodiversity). This is where DeMorgenzon's real virtuosity lies.

Modern agriculture is all about growing only the crop you're trying to grow, and basically eliminating the rest. This is where we get all those pesticides, weed-killers, and other chemicals that are starting to sound so scary. The idea was to make it easier to grow the crops without all that other stuff getting in the way.

Of course, we're starting to learn that there are some consequences to these methods, and so a lot of winemakers have turned to biodynamics as an alternative to these farming techniques. I won't bore you with the details of biodynamics, but the principle behind is pretty fascinating: it treats farmland, including the land's natural habitat, as a living organism, and so everything that's a part of this land must be encouraged to flourish in harmony. So if you kill off all the beetles, or wipe out all the weeds, it's like cutting off an arm or a leg--the land will survive, but it will be crippled.

Winemakers who have turned from chemical treatments to biodynamics report amazing changes. The vineyards "come back to life," they say. The vines become healthier as other plants and animals return to replenish the soil with lost nutrients--in essence, the vineyard becomes an ecosystem again. The upshot is that healthier vines produce better wines! It's no surprise that many of our favorite wines at Shubie's are made by producers that employee biodynamic practices.

I should make it clear that DeMorgenzon doesn't claim to be a biodynamic producer. There's a lot that goes into biodynamics (including some practices that seem a little hocus-pocus, like harvesting according to moon cycles), and it may simply be that they don't want to employ all of tenets of biodynamics (I haven't had a chance to ask them about this myself). However, their main goal is essentially the same: encourage biodiversity within the vineyard. It's a wonderful philosophy, and there's a vibrancy to their wines that I like to think comes from the health and vitality of their vineyards. And I bet the music helps, too!

Go to their website to read more about their farming practices, and the amazing things they're doing to preserve what sounds like a truly remarkable ecosystem (after reading it, I certainly want to visit!)

The Oscars of American Cheese

Imagine a room full of over 1400 different cheeses--and you can eat as much as you want. It may sound like a version of heaven to some of you, but this cheesy paradise is a reality once a year at the annual American Cheese Society Conference and Competition.

Every year, hundreds of artisan cheesemakers from across the North American continent bring their cheeses to the competition, where they are judged by a panel, and the best cheeses from a variety of categories are selected (yes, it is someone's job to taste these cheeses, and yes, I wish I had that job!)

We don't go to the conference every year, but we always look forward to the results--invariably, we hear about some new cheese that we end up falling in love with; and invariably, some cheeses that we are already in love with are recognized for being the great cheeses we always knew they were. Here are a few of our favorite selections from the winners this year: 

Vermont Butter and Cheese Coupole

Cypress Grove Truffle Tremor, 2nd Place, soft-ripened, flavor added category: From the makers of Humboldt Fog, this is a pasteurized goat cheese with a think, bloomy white coat that creates a foggy gray rind.  Made with black truffles, a wedge looks like a slice of moist layer cake, and the full tangy flavor of its crumbly, smooth paste is sheer perfection.

Roth Kase Gran Queso, 1st Place, ripened Hispanic and Portuguese style category: Slightly sweet, but with an extra-sharp tang, this cow's milk cheese is great for cooking. It melts and blends well, and is perfect on top of some pasta or in a quesadilla. Or munch on it after dinner with a glass of Port!

Vermont Butter & Cheese Coupole, 2nd Place, original goat milk recipe category: This distinctive goat cheese is molded by hand, and has a smooth and creamy texture with aromas of fresh flowers, citrus and hazelnuts.  It is perfect for a cheese board with its mild, fresh milk flavor. (Incidentally, their products won several awards this year, and we have most of them in stock!)

Nettle Meadow Farm Kunik, 1st Place, triple creme category:Creamy and delicate, this decadent triple-cream cheese is made from a combination of goat's milk and Jersey cow cream. This unique blend gives Kunik a rich, tangy and buttery flavor, making it a perfect match with a glass of champagne.

A Local Favorite: Westfield Farm's Blue Log

Westfield Farm Blue Log, 1st Place, external blue cheese category: A unique twist on blue cheese, the blue mold in Blue Log grows only on the outside of the cheese. One of the few external blue chevres made in the world, it has a fresh, clean, creamy flavor. Made locally in Hubbardston, MA!

Go here for a list of all of this year's winners!

Pairing Cheese with Wine: The Acid Test

“What wine would go well with this cheese?”

We get this question a lot. Everyone loves the classic combo of wine and cheese, and serving the two together is pretty much a no-brainer. But picking out which wine goes with which cheese is much more challenging. There are so many cheeses and wines to choose from, how can you tell if the ones you’ve picked out are meant to be together?
 
And make no mistake—there are a lot of unhappy cheese and wine couples out there. Sometimes the cheese is the culprit: some cheeses are so flavorful that they overpower most wines. Epoisses, a great French stinker, is traditionally paired with red Burgundy (always made from Pinot Noir), but I’ve never been able to make the pair work. The Epoisses always overpowers these delicate Pinots, and I’m left tasting nothing but cheese the whole way through. Frankly, I think the best wine to go with this cheese is probably beer! A nice, full-bodied ale, such as Ommegang Abbey Ale, would probably do the trick.
 
Sometimes the culprit is the wine: some wines just aren’t very cheese-friendly. I have a hard time finding a match for some California Cabernet, the real fruity, oaky ones. In wine-speak, I would say that they lack some of the structural elements necessary to pair well with cheese. In normal-person-speak, I’d say that they just don’t play well with others, and I end up with an exhausting mish-mash of cheese and wine flavors in my mouth.
 
So what’s the key to a happy cheese and wine marriage? There are no hard and fast rules, and trial and error plays a big part, but with our many years of hard work and research (read: drinking lots of wine and eating lots of cheese!) we have some suggestions to help you along. I’ll be sure to post more later on, but here’s one to start you off: high acid wines tend to be cheese-friendly.
 
You know that tingling you get on the side of your tongue when you drink some wines? That’s the wine’s acidity, and it helps a wine from being overpowered by a cheese. We often pair lighter, high acid whites (like Picpoul de Pinet) with rich and moderately flavorful cheeses (like Moses Sleeper)—the acidity cuts through the milk fat and cleanses the palate, and the richness of the cheese actually adds a little extra body to the wine. The two complement each other well.
 
More on wine and cheese pairings to come later. There are so many great combinations out there, so be sure to experiment, and let us know what works for you!