Wine Tasting for Grad Students: How a $7.00 Tasting is Sometimes Better than a $7.00 Meal

9 Jul

I’ll be leaving for DC very, very soon–I’m flying out there on the evening of August 2. Thus, I’m trying to spend some quality time with SoCal friends before I do.

Jonathan L., my erstwhile LegalZoom co-worker, poet, historian, and future Columbia grad student, was in the neighborhood. We’re both fond of wine, so we decided to have a bit to drink together before we again went our separate ways.

Where else than Lou?

Now keep in mind that we’re both going to be grad students in the near future; not only that, we’re both going to be living in rather expensive metropolitan areas. Personally, I had enough money that day for wine tasting or dinner but not both. Oh well. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

We met up at Lou at around 7 pm. The place was dead. There were, including us, seven patrons at that time. No matter. We had a job to do.

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2006 Bodegas Enosur “Tierra Prometida” Malbec

7 Jul

My brother and I were going to cook a tenderloin roast yesterday for dinner. This called for a red.

Not just any red–something that could stand up to thyme and rosemary. Something that would accentuate the lovely rareness and juiciness of the meat.

I was thinking of something from the Cotes-du-Rhone, but bleh. I haven’t been impressed with any of my selections from that region lately. I was at a loss as to what to get.

Luckily, Chris at Mission Wines had the perfect wine: the 2006 Tierra Prometida malbec from Bodegas Enosur, which is located in Mendoza, Argentina.

This wine is a solid malbec, dense but silky, tasting of plum and chocolate and a whiff of tobacco. With the roast the wine revealed notes of herb and pepper… very good match with the thyme and rosemary combination. The medium tannins of the Tierra Prometida worked well to cut through the “fat” of the tenderloin. There’s not a lot of fat on a tenderloin, anyway, so any more tannic wine might have been too much.

I tried some of the leftover wine tonight with Korean food: rice, kimchi, kalbi, and even some raw crab pickled in soy sauce. Surprisingly, the malbec went well with the spices and strange textures of the Korean food. There was just enough umami for the crab, enough body to counteract the acidity of the kimchi, and enough fruit for the kalbi. My usual aversion towards mixing sticky rice and wine (in my stomach, NOT in a bowl, mind you!) was overcome, and I had a very enjoyable meal.

I would highly recommend the Tierra Prometida. It might even be better than the Maipe malbec I love so much!

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Wine and Dine at Lou on Vine!

6 Jul

It’s funny how seemingly different things are related. For instance, it’s been well-documented on this blog that I love Intelligentsia Coffee. I was reading more about this specialty coffee roaster online when I came across this New York Times article on the interior design of Intelligentisa:

I really like the blue and white tile. (Thanks to the Times for the picture!)

At any rate, Intelligentsia’s space was designed by a woman named Barbara Bestor. I found that she had also designed the interior of a quirky wine bar / restaurant called Lou, which happens to be in a seedy strip mall–sandwiched between a Thai massage parlor and a 24-hour laundromat–off of Melrose and Vine in Hollywood.

I did some more reading on Lou and liked what I read: a fair-sized and eclectic wine selection? Check. Hip interior? Check. Good food? Check. All I needed was to actually go.

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A Triumphant Return!

3 Jul

After a long, involuntary hiatus from the drinking of alcohol I have again been getting my liver “wet”. I am ashamed to admit that my tolerance has gone way, way down–much too low for the amount of drinking that must needs take place in DC this fall.

I dipped in gingerly a few days ago, having a Firestone Double Barrel Ale after dinner. It got me legitimately “crunk” (keep in mind here, good readers, that I AM Asian, after all… my ancestors weren’t exactly quaffing tankards of beer around some round table in the forests), but it was a delightful feeling. The Double Barrel Ale is a good beer, moderately hoppy, somewhat sweet, a rich amber color. The only down thing about the DBA was that it had an off-putting aftertaste–more like an afterfeel… a bit syrupy, but not in a pleasant way. Oh well. It was a good beer, though not one I’d put into my standard rotation.

Today after work my co-workers and I opened a long-saved bottle of Joel Gott “815” cabernet sauvignon. (Named after the birth date of Gott’s daughter.) Four of us chipped in a few bucks each for the bottle back in MARCH, but there never was any real occasion or opportunity to open it up and enjoy. What better day than the day before the Fourth of July?

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How Getting Wisdom Teeth Pulled is Good for the Specialty Coffee Industry

24 Jun

I’ve written previously about my trip to Intelligentsia Coffee and how getting lost on the way prevented my good friend Jonathan from being mugged. I should also state that I recently had my bottom two wisdom teeth out (in three and two large pieces, respectively), which has prevented me from drinking alcohol. For the first two days, I couldn’t even drink coffee, which was a relative purgatory for me.

I had the opportunity recently to tour Intelligentsia’s new LA roasting facility in Glassell Park (near Glendale)–my family might be opening a coffee shop sometime soon, and we wanted to take a look at different coffee wholesalers. Let me tell you: it was awesome! The wine analogy would be like visiting a wine cellar–not the vineyard, where the grapes are grown, but the place where the wine is actually fermented and bottled.

Five thousand square feet of roasting machine, tasting equipment, office space, sacks and sacks of green coffee beans (which are extremely hard, odorless, and tasteless, actually), and bags and bags of freshly-roasted coffee. The air was permeated by a delightful warm coffee smell, as if I were in the middle of a perpetual breakfast. Intelligentsia’s pretty damn serious about their coffee.

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Grüner Veltliner: the Perfect Match for Seafood Pasta (and Father’s Day)

16 Jun

So the thermostat has been going up slowly but steadily–we now are in the high 80s here in SoCal. This means beer and white wine weather.

Yesterday, as we all know (or all now know) was Father’s Day. My family decided to stay at home and cook dinner instead of go out for some fancy affair. My brother decided upon angel hair pasta with a sauce of mussels, shrimp, basil, tomato (apparently from Canada and therefore 100% immune from salmonella), garlic, and white wine. He was in charge of buying the food: I, of course, was in charge of getting a wine to drink and with which to cook.

We found ourselves at Whole Foods, which apparently is the nation’s #1 wine retailer for 2007 or something. They do have a pretty good wine selection, and I spied a bottle of grüner veltliner, that spicy, peppery Austrian white that is one of the next big things in the wine world (though not according to David J. D. over at Horny for Food). It’s still relatively obscure–though almost cliché in some circles–so it’s a great bargain, especially given its quality. I picked up a bottle of velt.1 grüner for a cool $9.99. Excellent.

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The Priest Who Became a Clown Who Became a Winemaker: 2006 Jean-Luc Matha “Cuvée Lairis” Mansois

14 Jun

Having been born and raised in the Los Angeles area, I had to drive quite a ways to get to and from Berkeley during my breaks. Luckily, I like driving, and I liked the sensation of starting the journey on the 5: setting out before the dawn and entering the hills and valleys of Angeles National Forest before emerging from the Grapevine on the other side.

I liked driving through the grand expanse of land that is the Central Valley, that incredibly rich swath of earth from which much of this nation’s produce is coaxed. I am always reminded of my mother’s roots in the South Korean countryside, of growing up on a country estate. We didn’t get too much greenery in Alhambra, California, so the abundant agriculture of the Central Valley always amazed me. Continue reading →

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Coffee Tasting

10 Jun

I’m beginning to think that I’m drinking too much coffee for my own good. My stomach feels sour, I’m tired, have headaches, and am super-dehydrated. What’s worse, I’m drinking less alcohol. WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?

Coffee for me exists on a dichotomy: I love the cheap, quick stuff from Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonalds, coffee that serves as a quick pick-me-up in the mornings. Love it or hate it, fast food and donut coffee is all about drinkability. It’s delicious, inoffensive, easy on the body, and cheap. It’s also probably the healthiest item I’ll be having for breakfast.

I also love the artisanal, “third wave” varietals of coffee, beans that hail from single sources in Guatemala, Ethiopia, et al. These are coffees that have body, that have character, and have a “2” after the dollar sign.

Despite their price, I still consider artisanal coffees to be a bargain because I view them from a wine perspective. $17.95 for a pound of India Peaberry from Peet’s? Well, that’s about 30-35 cups of joe. $17.95 will get me a nice wine that will yield maybe four or five glasses.

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François Chidaine Sauvignon Blanc & Pasta with Soft-Shell Crab

1 Jun

I’m not such a big fan of crab. I do love its delicate flavor and firm, succulent meat; however, I hate having to get through the shell and picking through its carapace for little slivers of flesh. It’s a pain in the ass.

My dad and brother, on the other hand, are crab aficionados. My dad especially loves the green glands and other assorted guts underneath the top shell. He often mixes rice in the top shell of a crab once the legs and other assorted pieces of meat are gone.

I came across this recipe from “The Minimalist” of The New York Times for pasta with soft-shell crabs:

(Thanks to the Times for this picture!)

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Unibroue’s La Fin du Monde

31 May

I had posted a few weeks previously about Unibroue’s “La Terrible”.  I felt that it was one of the best beers I had ever tasted.  One of the reasons I loved it so much was that it had a fascinating mouthfeel, a very complex texture complemented by wonderful flavors.

After writing that post, there were quite a few people who commented that I should try Unibroue’s “La Fin du Monde” (The End of the World)–an interesting name for a beer, I thought.  I had opportunity to pick up it from the new Whole Foods on Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena, along with some pre-made, frozen cioppino and a rosemary ciabatta loaf from Trader Joe’s.

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