Adding my voice to the overwhelming chorus of satisfied visitors to Café Cimino might seem a bit trite, but a recent meal at this venerable West Virginia Bed and Breakfast is among the best I have ever experienced and I want to share it with you.

I am no stranger to over-the-top, multi-course, belly-expanding meals accompanied by flagons of wine where mile walks between courses are necessary for diners to safely consume the prodigious quantities of food and drink presented.

So when Café Cimino proprietors Tim and Melody Urbanic asked me to discuss the attributes of the wines selected for a nine-course meal they were planning, I immediately flashed back to several very unpleasant experiences I have had trying to eat and drink everything put in front of me at such bacchanalian extravaganzas over the years.




These days, I am trying to transition from gourmand to gourmet (even though I know I’m kidding myself) so the thought of testing my will power to exercise restraint when offered a multi-course Italian food and wine feast was- at the very least -daunting. But hey, sometimes you just have to suck it up and do what you do best.

I have had the pleasure of dining at Café Cimino on several occasions so I knew going in that Chef Tim and sous chef (and son ) Eli are masters at extracting maximum flavor from their culinary creations with just the right size portions. Still, this was to be a marathon meal with accompanying wines from Barolo in the region of Piedmont of northwest Italy.

The WinesNestled in the northwest corner of Italy in the shadow of the Alps, Piedmont is home to perhaps the most revered of all Italian wines – Barolo.  The grape from which Barolo (a town and region) is made is nebbiolo. For a wine to be labeled Barolo, it must be made in the geographical confines of the government-designated appellation. In addition, Barolo must be aged for two years in oak barrels and one year in the bottle before it can be released for sale. Barolo can range in price from about $40 to several hundred dollars a bottle, and can continue to improve in the bottle for decades.




For our dinner, we were treated to a six-bottle vertical tasting (1993-1998) of wines from the Buon Padre Vineyard of Giovanni Viberti. Established in the 1920’s, the Barolo of Giovanni Viberti is produced in a very traditional manner with a focus on the vineyard site and farming the grapes to achieve the Viberti style. The wines were provided by one of Tim and Melody’s friends who asked them to put a special Piedmont-inspired dinner together that would accompany the Viberti Barolo.

Five lucky couples began the culinary odyssey at 3 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon with an aperitif of Carneros chardonnay to warm up our palates. I had arrived a couple hours before and decanted the six Buon Padre Barolos into crystal decanters. I’ve discovered over the years that Barolo, particularly wines less than 20 years old, truly benefit from the aeration that decanting provides, allowing the wines to open up and demonstrate their complex layers of aroma and flavor. In addition to the Barolo vertical, some diners contributed a 2009 nebbiolo, a 1978 Barbaresco (both wines from Piedmont) and a 2005 Barolo to the meal.

Then the feast began…. and continued for five glorious hours. We enjoyed our final (cheese course) on the lovely porch of Café Cimino. For those of you who have never experienced a multi-course meal with accompanying wines, I’m sure you’re wondering how we all felt at the conclusion of this epic journey. Actually, quite well thank you. And anyway, we all spent the night in the delightfully comfortable digs of Cafe Cimino.

The Menu
1st Course
Bagna Cauda~ Warm Herbed Olive Oil & Garlic Dip With Grissini~ Breadsticks
Tocco Prosecco
2nd Course
Cream of Asparagus Soup
2009 Elio Grasso Nebbiolo
3rd Course
Old World Gnocchi~ with Gorgonzola Sauce infused with Chamomile Grappa
1994 Buon Padre Barolo
4th Course
Intermezzo~ Chilled Sliced Cucumber with Mascarpone & Strawberry

5th Course
Rabbit Cacciatore
1995 Buon Padre Barolo

Veal main course with the '93 and'97 Buon Padre

6th Course
Veal Stuffed with Salami Rustico, Polenta with Truffles & Asparagus finished with Roasted Garlic and Grana Pandana
1993 and 1997 Buon Padre Barolo
7th Course
Baby Lettuces w/ dried Fruits, Toasted Pine Nuts & 18 year old Balsamic
1996 Buon Padre Barolo
8th Course
House-made Chocolate Tartufo with Bing Cherry center, Hazelnuts & Cream
1999 Guerrieri Rizzardi Vin Santo
9th Course
Assorted Cheeses from the Piedmont Region of Italy
1998 Buon Padre Barolo and 1978 Borgono Barbaresco
The VerdictGuilty on all counts - of succumbing to the culinary artistry of Tim and Eli, the gracious hospitality of Melody and the wine making virtuosity of the Viberti family.

Good golly! I spent a good part of last week in our nation’s capitol where the temperature was a sizzling 98 degrees. And while I perspired my way through a few business meetings, I knew, at the end of the day I would be sipping some lovely beverages. I did just that and then enjoyed an anniversary dinner at my favorite DC restaurant .

Washington is a very underrated food town, and that’s a shame because the city just brims with a bevy of eateries that rival establishments in some of the more recognized culinary burgs such as New York City, Chicago and San Francisco.

My absolute favorite dining address is the Obelisk Restaurant on P Street in northwest Washington. There is no sign on the unimposing building housing the small one room Tuscan restaurant, but once you’ve experienced the food, you’ll always find your way back for more.

The four-course prix fixe menu is $70 a person, but it is worth every cent and more. The wine list is very small, but well selected with an excellent sampling from Tuscany. Before the meal began, we were treated to four appetizers that were so good it was hard to imagine that the courses to come could be any better. They weren’t…but they were just as good!

How about these little ditties for starters: imported Italian Burrata  (a fresh cheese made from mozzarella and cream) with extra virgin olive oil, thinly sliced smoked duck breast with black cherries, fried, stuffed baby artichokes and cheese-stuffed zucchini flowers.

The meal that followed included porcini ravioli with a sage butter sauce, black bass with peppers and fennel, and lamb chops with sweet onions and rapini. A cheese course and dessert capped off the meal. A bottle of 1999 Podere Brizio Brunello Di Montalcino was liquid silk and a perfect match for the ravioli, lamb, appetizers and cheese course.

Next time you’re in DC, I really hope your give the Oblelisk a try, but you’ll need to call for reservations ((202 872-1180).
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Warm weather does cause me to alter my usual reliance on red wine as the go-to meal accompaniment. Instead of my usual practice of sipping a glass of white as an aperitif, I am using these cooling beverages with the lighter-styled foods gracing the table at Chez Brown.

I am particularly fond of Soave, the Italian white from the Veneto. If you are one of the many out there who view Soave as an unworthy alternative to the more famous white varietals such as pinot grigio, you might wish to try these two wines.




 
2009 Anselmi San Vincenzo ($16) – This Soave is comprised of about 80 percent garganega, 15 percent chardonnay and 5 percent trebbiano. Fuller-bodied than most Soave’s, the San Vincenzo is full of ripe apple and vanilla custard flavors with a crisp, balanced finish. I sipped this baby recently with a smoked chicken Cesar salad.

2009 Re Midas Soave ($12) – This bottling is a more traditional lighter-styled Soave with a slightly grassy aroma followed by melon, lemon and almond flavors. It finishes with a little zing of acidity making it a great match with pasta salad sauced with basil

When I first started getting serious about wine, Chablis was the generic term for any white, particularly those mass produced vinous products that were bottled in half or full gallon jugs. No one knew anything about varietal labeling or even that there were different types of grapes that produced different types of wine.

If it was white it was Chablis and if it was red it was Burgundy. Anything that sparkled was simply Champagne.

That’s all you needed to know. And if you drank wine in public places, people sipping martinis or chugging cold ones looked down their noses at you as if to suggest you join others of your ilk under the Southside Bridge.

But when wine began to become somewhat acceptable, those same cocktail snobs became wine snobs and the game was on.

It became “tres avant-garde” to squeeze in next to someone at the local beer garden and proclaim for all the world to hear: “I’ll just have a glass of Chablis.” So what if the bartender had to reach with both hands under the bar for the humongous jug, and then struggle to get some of the stuff into the glass.

We were so cosmopolitan!Of course, none of us knew the composition of the wine back then, (nor did we care) and most of us were just happy not to gag on the swill that passed for wine. When I recall those days, my embarrassment is only somewhat tempered by the realization that our casual misuse of the terms Chablis, Burgundy and Champagne made the French completely insane.

Where am I going with this? Well, in the past month I have had the pleasure of sipping some excellent “real” Chablis. Of course, Chablis is an appellation and a region within Burgundy where the primary wine-producing grape is Chardonnay.

Wines produced in Chablis are generally more austere than chardonnay made in the more famous areas of Burgundy (i.e. Puligny-Montrachet, Corton Charlemagne, etc.), but they are considerably more reasonably priced.

The wines are steely textured with exceptional minerality and usually have a big dollop of acidity to balance out the richness of chardonnay. In good vintages such as 2008, Chablis can continue to improve in bottle for a decade or more.

The two wines I tasted were both very closed in at first and required about 30 minutes to open up. They also had bracing acidity and were not wines you could easily sit down and sip as an aperitif. Both wines definitely require food, but once paired with an appropriate dish (in this instance pan sautéed cod), they showed their complexity and ability to marry seamlessly to the meal.

These Chablis should be readily available and priced under $30 a bottle. The 2008 Gilbert Picq Chablis is more lean and austere than the 2008 Joseph Drouhin Vaudon Chablis Premier Cru. I would advise cellaring both since I am convinced they will develop over a period of years into fuller, richer versions of what they are right now.

With summertime upon us, it is logical for most of us to sip lighter  whites such as pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc, riesling or a whole host of other refreshing wines. It’s also common for us to drink lighter-styled reds and even chill them a little before consuming them.

One of the best lighter-textured reds is Valpolicella. Produced from the relatively obscure corvina, rondinalla and molinara grapes, this red wine can be a very pleasant sipper and an excellent accompaniment to barbecue and other warm weather foods.

Today, however, in keeping with my annoying practice of taking a literary detour, I am not going to expound on the virtues of this lighter style wine. But I am going to discuss Valpolicella, and what happens to this timid quaff when a process called ripasso is employed during  wine making.  And, I’m also going to recommend the best wine I’ve ever tasted that uses the ripasso method.

To make a ripasso, new Valpolicella wine is refermented by combining it with the pressings or pomace from Amarone (which is essentially Valpolicella on steroids), and sometimes with the addition of dried raisined grapes.

The resulting ripasso wine is considerably darker and fuller bodied than Valpolicella, but not as powerful as Amarone. The ripasso process was invented in the early 1960’s by the well-respected Valpolicella producer Masi.

Recently, I had the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with Allegrini Pallazo Della Torre. The 2007 version of this wine could be the best ripasso-style Valpolicella ($25) I have ever tasted.

Bursting with ripe, dark plum and blackberry flavors, a nose of cola and cherries and with bracing acidity, this wine is tour de force (that means good in Cajun’). I paired the wine with grilled rack of lamb that had been marinated in olive oil, Dijon mustard, garlic, coarsely ground black pepper and lemons. Yummy!

In addition to Allegrini and Masi, other ripasso producers to look for are Zenato, Bertani, Tommasi, Farina, Righetti and Mazzi.
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Excellent Food and Wine App
I’m always looking for new food and wine pairings to spice up my usually mundane existence and to give me something to look forward to at the end of busy work day. And, while there are literally millions of combinations from which to choose, there are literally millions of combinations from which to choose!
So, wouldn’t it be great if there was some quick “go-to” way to make your wine buying decisions easier? And, it sure would be nice to find a complimentary dish to accompany that wine selection too.

Well, a new free mobile application can do just that!

I have pointed you in the past to the website of wine writer Natalie MacLean  (www.nataliemaclean.com) who devotes her life to helping us make wine selection decisions a lot easier. Her new mobile app will also help you pair that wine with a complimentary food too.

With the “Wine Picks & Pairings app” you can use your Smartphone camera to snap a picture of any bottle label bar code in the wine shop and get tasting notes, scores, and food pairings too. Pretty cool!

Natalie is a certified sommelier and an accomplished wine writer who knows how to provide concise and easy to understand information on the sometimes arcane world of wine and food. Check out her app.

I have been on an Italian wine kick recently, sipping my way through all manner of vino and loving every second. It started with an Italian family wedding where the food was matched with fiascos of wine, including many hailing from that boot-shaped peninsula.

It kept on going when my brother, who thinks he is innately blessed with a sommelier’s palate, paid us an extended visit and proceeded to drink his way through my now depleted cellar. To be fair, he did share a few of his vinous treasures - most of them older Barlos and Brunellos – so I shouldn’t complain too much (but I am).

Don’t get the impression, however, that we focused only on reds. No siree, we sipped everything from pinot grigio and arneis in the north to verdicchio and grillo down south. In addition, we tasted a whole lot of other whites and reds in between to accompany the prodigious quantities of food we prepared and consumed.

As I waddle around here now in self-imposed detox, I’d like to share with you some Italian wine suggestions, particularly bottles that pair well with the lighter-styled foods of summer. The versatility of these wines insures that, while they certainly do well with Italian dishes, you can match them with just about any cuisine.

All the wines recommended below are available in selected wine shops around the state. Oh, and be sure to pop the reds in the fridge for about half an hour before serving them. So here you go.

2010 Falesco Vitiano Bianco ($13)– This Umbrian lovely is made from equal parts of verdicchio and vermetino (a grape mostly grown in Sardinia). It is chock full of ripe green apple flavors with tones of minerality. Nicely balanced and refreshing, the wine would be an exceptional match to Salad Nicoise.

2010 Zenato Pinot Grigio ($14) – This is an atypical version of pinot grigio that, while delicate, exhibits a fruit forward richness and roundness in the mouth with an almost viognier-like aroma. This wine would be great to sip alongside a portobello mushroom, scallion, chevre and ham omelet.

2009 Mastroberardino Sannio Falanghina ($18) – I know the name is a mouthful, but so is the wine with a nose of anise and stones along with ripe pear flavors. This is a spicy white from southern Italy that you could very successfully match with steamed clams. 2008 Zenato Valpolicella Superiore ($18) – One look at this deeply colored wine and you think it has to be a ripasso (check out my last post) but it’s not. Still, this valpolicella is richly textured and at the same time refreshingly balanced with loads of black cherry and cola flavors. It would be great with grilled chicken basted with garlic, olive oil, rosemary, lemon and coarsely ground black pepper.

2007 Prunotto Dolcetto d’Alba ($19) – This is a wonderfully refreshing lighter-textured red from Piedmont in northern Italy that constantly flies under the radar with consumers. With flavors of raspberries and cherries and excellent balancing acidity, this is a wine to accompany brats, Italian sausage or burgers on the grill.

2009 Prunotto Barbera D’Asti (($17) I’m a big fan of barbera and this one is full of plums and blackberries with great balance and a long finish. It also has some tannin that would allow it to continue to age with grace for a couple more years. Try it now with cappellini in a sauce of fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic and pecorino romano.

Enjoy!