Fork and Gobble It: Wineberserkers Part 2 “The Pre-Fest”

It is Wednesday, the 19th of October and I have eight guests plus my wife and myself coming for dinner tonight. The menu was designed to allow me time to be with my guests and much of the big jobs are done. Veal shanks are braised to falling off the bone tender. A delicious and hearty soup of Escarole and Canellini beans, spiked with spicy dried Chorizo is made and ready to serve. A velvety and rich mousse of chicken liver bears the pungent fragrance and flavor of Burgundy Truffles and will be spread on toasted bread and crackers. I have small but significant details to attend to. They are the items that would not hold their freshness if prepared in advance. Tender cheese crackers derived from a recipe by Canal House Cooks will go with the champagne we'll drink during the cocktail hour. I bake chocolate shortbread to decorate vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries for dessert. The saffron risotto that will serve as the bed for the Osso Bucco, must be made practically at the last minute. Of course greens will be washed and a dressing prepared for salad. To complicate things just slightly, my friend Mike Pobega was doing a pizza course and I would give him the run of the kitchen for that time. I needed to have my stuff done and ready to go.

The Chocolate Shortbread
Canal House Tender Cheese Crackers
Guests began to arrive at 5pm. Because it was a mid-week affair, I had planned to have dinner on the table around 7pm. As people came in and bottles were opened the tempo began to pick up. Many, many bottles of wine were beginning to accumulate on the side table. Lots of Barolos, but oddly enough this crew is also a Bordeaux loving crowd. There was also the odd bottle of Fado Blanco, a Portuguese white wine from the Alentejo region that we've loved all summer. We had the oven revved up to 550F so Mike could start rocking out the pizzas. This was a Berserker party in full swing.




The 2003 Domenico Clerico Pajana was pretty much as I anticipated. It is a testament to the winemaking skill of the estate. The fruit was a little subdued, but still very lively. The tannins were still assertive and the wine still retained a pleasantly surprising amount of acidity. Unfortunately many of the Bordeauxs that were brought that evening were spoiled by cork taint including two Ducru-Beaucaillous, the 1986 and the 1998 and an '86 Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande. Luckily I had a 2004 Pichon sleeping in the cellar. I brought it up and opened it. Although still young, it was drinking very well.

The pizzas tasted as good as they looked. The soup was met with raves and the veal shanks were meltingly tender. All the guests were satiated and very content.

With food and wine surpassing expectations, these ten friends ate, drank, and enjoyed each others company in the full knowledge that this was just the beginning of a week full of this kind of fun.

Wine 101: From Grape to Wine

Earlier this month in Sonoma, a few UWS staff members were fortunate enough to witness the harvest, as well as take tours of a few wineries.

One of the things we were able to see firsthand is how grapes turn into wine, and it wasn't as glamorous as one might expect!

First, the grapes are harvested, crushed and sorted to get all the stems out. Care must be taken in this step, because the stems contain oils that could negatively affect the wine. The crushed grapes go into these big bins with dry ice to cool them down. (Apiphobic author's note: While this is going on, there are BEES. Lots, and lots of bees! Shudder!)


The crushed grape juice (and skin - remember, red wine is red mostly because the juice remains in contact with the skins, not because the meat of the grape itself is red) goes into a big tank for fermentation.

Red wines usually ferment in larger containers - stainless steel tanks or large wooden vats - and then age in small oak barrels after the juice has been strained of the skins.

Here is a rare glimpse into a fermentation tank. Thanks to the wonder of modern technology, we're able to see it; the tank itself was too dark to see into. I only saw what it looked like after I looked at the picture!


We were... lucky enough (if you can call it that) to be able to sample some of this fermenting juice. It was... interesting. It was, in essence, rotting grapes. The smell was yeasty and almost sulphury, and after the tiniest taste, I spit the juice out before my taste buds really had a chance to experience what was going on. It absolutely amazed me that in between delicious grapes and delicious wine, THAT happened.


So, after the juice hangs out and ferments for a while, and the skins lend their color and tannins to the juice, it gets drained and put into barrels and ages for anywhere from a few months to many years. The barrels are usually oak, French Oak being the best and most expensive, reserved for very fine wines. Other common oaks are Hungarian and American. Wineries reuse barrels for up to 6 years, then they are discarded for new barrels. One 60-gallon barrel yields 300 bottles of wine!


We also got to taste from barrels, as well. This is at Kunde winery. The taste of the wine in the barrel was way different from the fermenting juice!

While the grape tasting, fermenting juice tasting, and barrel sampling were all fun experiences, I do have to say that my personal favorite part of the winemaking process is getting to enjoy the finished product!

Fork and Gobble It: Wineberserkers Part 1 “The Pre-Fest”

A few years ago, the common passion for good wine and good food led a spirited but very unorthodox group of people to come together. They, like many others who shared the same interests, posted their experiences on the internet on bulletin boards created for this subject. This group however turned out to be a little too free spirited, and maybe just a little too crazy for the rest of the internet wine community. They needed to find a place where they could be themselves as lovers and enthusiasts of good wine, good food, and like minded company. Out of this need Wineberserkers.com was born. Now nearly three years later we continue to post, blog, and gather. Each year for the last three years we have held Berserkerfest NYC with a weekend dinner at Manhattan's Peking Duck House. It is an event of sufficient draw to pull attendees in from all over the country. Texas, California, Washington, Massachusetts, and any other state you can think of; we come forth to party. Of course when folks travel this far it can't just be for a weekend. So the festivities begin mid-week with small gatherings at local restaurants or homes of friends and revelers. I am one such reveler and host. So this past Wednesday ten crazies gathered at my home for a night of eating and drinking to warm up our consumption muscles for the weekend.

I planned a menu that would hopefully keep me at the dinner table for most of the meal.

-Cocktail Hour
-Chicken Liver Mousse w/Burgundy Truffle
-House Made Cheddar Cheese Crackers
-Pizza by Pobega (a selection of pies made to order by my fellow Berserker Mike Pobega)
-Escarole and Bean Soup w/Chorizo Picante
-Osso Bucco Milanese (Braised Veal Shanks over Saffron Risotto)
-Salad of Mixed Greens
-Vanilla Gelato w/Fresh Strawberries and Chocolate Shortbread

I would make the veal shanks on Monday, the chicken liver mousse and soup on Tuesday, and the rest would just fall into place on Wednesday afternoon. For a cook like myself, source is everything, so I ordered the shanks from John's Meat Market in Scotch Plains. They are an old school family butcher shop, repeatedly honored as one of the best in the state. When I picked the meat up Monday morning it was as impeccable as I expected it to be.


These would get seared off and then cooked slow in stock and a little red wine.


After two hours in a slow oven they were falling apart tender. The shanks would cool and remain in their cooking broth until Wednesday and the flavors would just get better.

Tuesday I picked up what I would need for the chicken liver mousse and escarole soup. I had already ordered the truffle I needed. Truffles, those prized fungus of legendary status, are seasonal. Summer truffle season was over, and the potent winter truffles from France's Perigord region were a few weeks away. In the interim there is a truffle that comes from Burgundy. It is not quite as potent as the other two, but it was all that I needed for this dish and is about one tenth the price. Chicken livers can be raised to rock star status when they are given the right treatment. Sauteed in a little butter and olive oil with shallots, then doused with good brandy, they get pureed with hard boiled egg yolk and heavy cream. I push the puree' through a sieve to make it smooth and add grated truffle to it. It never fails to get raves.


Used as a filling for deviled eggs, it is a killer hors d'oeuvres. I simply put the mousse into a crock and served it with crackers and warm toasted bread.

Escarole and Bean soup is one of those peasant soups my Mom served us as kids and is still my favorite winter soup. It can't be simpler. Sauteed onion and garlic, some kind of spicy dried sausage, Canellini beans, and escarole are all cooked in good chicken stock until the beans are tender. Each component stands out and is essential to the dish. It is delicious and satisfying all at once and with some good crusty bread is a meal in itself.


The big pieces of the menu were now done leaving only the items that could not be done in advance. The soup and shanks would benefit from a day or two in the refrigerator and being practically complete, would free me up to enjoy the company of my guests.

Osso Bucco usually conjours up the notion of a Barolo, the famous Piemontese wine, for pairing. I had picked up one from Domenico Clerico, the 2003 Pajana. 2003 was a terrible year for Barolo because it was such a horribly hot summer and Nebbiolo, the grape from which the wine is made, really does best with moderate ripeness. The upshot was that Clerico being such a fabulous winemaker, was able to read and adjust to the conditions. While this is not a great Barolo, it is a very good one. I looked forward to the wines my guests would bring and the excellent time we would have the following evening.

Wine 101" Brick by Brix

Last week, I was lucky enough to be treated to a fabulous "business trip" to California wine country: Sonoma and Napa. The experience was amazing and my colleagues and I are working on our travelogues now - We'll be sharing pictures and stories with you very shortly.

Still being a relative newbie in the world of wine, I have a lot to learn, and last week I learned a LOT. We were fortunate that our trip to California happened to occur during the harvest season, so we not only got to witness the "picking," but also some crushing, destemming, and other grape preparations.

One thing I learned about was how the vintners know when the grapes are ready to be picked. There is an instrument called a refractometer that measures the sugar content in the grapes. Below is our tour guide, Leo, from Rodney Strong Winery, holding a refractometer.


Leo took a grape off the vine, and squeezed a bit of the juice from the grape onto the lens of the refractometer. He passed the instrument around and we all got to hold it up to the sundlight and look inside. Inside contained numbers and lines, kind of like a ruler. The line where the dark and light meets is called the "Brix Reading." The Brix reading is named for A.F.W. Brix, a 19th century German inventor. Each degree Brix is equivalent to 1 gram of sugar per 100 grams of grape juice. About 55% to 60% of the sugar is converted into alcohol. The estimated alcohol that a wine will produce is calculated by multiplying the Brix reading by 0.55. Therefore, a 20 Brix reading will make a wine with about 11% alcohol. The grapes for most of the wines we discussed on our trip had readings of 20 - 25. One exception was our final winery, Mumm Napa, which specializes in sparkling wines. They pick their grapes at "low sugar, high acidity," which yields a lower-alcohol beverage.