A couple of worthwhile matches of Italian food and Australian wine from the past week:
1. Spaghetti with a sauce of speck, braised onion, rosemary, a little fresh tomato, and just-picked harvest of home-grown broad beans and peas. A 2009 Kay Brothers McLaren Vale grenache had an inky character that went well with the speck, onion and rosemary in the braise, and allowed the sweetness of the vegetables to come through.
2. 2005 Williams Crossing pinot noir (the Curly Flat second label) with double-peeled broad beans smashed up with olive oil, mint, salt and parmesan. Spread on grilled sourdough bread you have wiped over with a cut clove of fresh garlic. The sweet and salty in the food brought out the clean, refreshing acid of the wine, with the developed, just-mushroom characters doing well with the char on the bread.
Simple stuff, but reinforced to me the fit between honest Italian food and the diversity of Australian wine.
Showing posts with label Kay Brothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kay Brothers. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Moscato and globe artichokes
A small experiment last night at a dinner. The globe artichoke crop here is large, so I picked 14 and after soaking to evict the earwigs, boiled them up to serve with melted butter, salt and balsamic vinegar dipping. There was a bottle of Kay Brothers 2010 moscato unopened from the dumpling dinner Friday evening, so this was the match-up.
Globe artichokes, particularly if you eat quite a lot and they aren't denatured by preserving, have an interesting impact on sweetness perception. The further you go with eating them, the effect of making subsequent food or liquid seem sweeter heightens. But what about with sweet wine, like moscato?
The effect on sweetness was as expected, but could be partly counteracted by vinegar if used in dipping of leaf bases. But there was also an impact on perceptions of bitterness and astringency which I had not expected. The moscato became sweeter following the artichoke, but an astringency also appeared when tasting the wine that had not been there when having it beforehand. Not something I have a particular explanation for, but a fascinating experiment.
And I still have around 40 artichokes still to pick of the first flush. The dry-land Mediterranean landscaping of the front yard is loving this wet year.
Globe artichokes, particularly if you eat quite a lot and they aren't denatured by preserving, have an interesting impact on sweetness perception. The further you go with eating them, the effect of making subsequent food or liquid seem sweeter heightens. But what about with sweet wine, like moscato?
The effect on sweetness was as expected, but could be partly counteracted by vinegar if used in dipping of leaf bases. But there was also an impact on perceptions of bitterness and astringency which I had not expected. The moscato became sweeter following the artichoke, but an astringency also appeared when tasting the wine that had not been there when having it beforehand. Not something I have a particular explanation for, but a fascinating experiment.
And I still have around 40 artichokes still to pick of the first flush. The dry-land Mediterranean landscaping of the front yard is loving this wet year.
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